All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Reshaping Toronto’s Future

Posted on November 19, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

In the quiet before the hubbub of the new administration at City Hall starts up again next month, retiring city councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby penned an opinion piece in the Toronto Star this week about what could be, arguably, the most important piece of governance business that will emerge next term: ward boundary review.

By provincial mandate, ward resident populations must be relatively uniform across the city. Toronto’s already been challenged by the Ontario Municipal Board as, I think, the requirement stipulates that no ward can have a population 15% higher than the city-wide average. As it stands right now, a couple wards have grown 30-45% above the average number. On top of which, the current wards and governance structure have been in place since 2000. So a review is overdue.

The process is already underway, with background research beginning last summer. Public consultations start in early December. Final recommendations will go to city council sometime in the first part of 2016.

Why is this so important?

For starters, we should try our best in a democracy to make sure everyone is represented equally. As it stands right now (or, at least, as of the 2011 census), Ward 23 Willowdale is home to over 88,000 people. That’s almost double the nearly 45,000 people living in Ward 18 Davenport. Such a glaring discrepancy must affect the relative performance of the respective councillors in those wards to the detriment of residents living in the more heavily populated ward.

Councillor Lindsay Luby is bang on dismissing the nonsense demand to use this review to cut the council number in half. How does it serve anybody to tilt things in the direction of less representation, putting a greater burden on city councillors? It guarantees more of a top down democracy and creates an even greater distance between residents and their local representatives. The city has grown by some 700,000 people since amalgamation. That’s more than 3 Windsors. Having fewer councillors simply waters down local democracy.

In a more abstract vein, given the entrenched parochial sensibilities that have so strongly emerged the past 4 years (Scarborough Deserves A Subway!), it might do us a whole lot of good to look hard at the geographical component of the boundary review. Will it be possible to disrupt the politically exploitable divisions that are based on little more than what are former municipalities? While it would be fun to try, obviously you can’t take a knife and extract, say, Ward 38 and plunk it down on the Mimico lakeshore but is there a way we can shape wards based on current realities rather than previous history? That’s a genuine question. I don’t have an answer but I think it’s worth exploring.

Since 2000 Toronto’s wards have been aligned with federal and provincial riding boundaries, 22 cut in half to make 44. Lindsay Luby suggests that this is ‘less confusing for the electorate’. On that point, I’d differ with the councillor. I think, in fact, it adds an added layer of confusion for the electorate. During this recent municipal campaign, I talked to numerous candidates, and heard it myself at the few doors I knocked on, voters wanting to know what candidate X was going to do about healthcare or the grade 7 curriculum or to stop that damned Stephen Harper. None of which a municipal politician has much of a hand in dealing with.

Such an easy overlap of jurisdictional boundaries can’t help but contribute to an easy confusion in the minds of voters. It’s a situation that might’ve been exacerbated during this term since the 2010 municipal election we had one federal and two provincial general elections and a host of by-elections throughout the city. Still, I don’t see how aligning local wards with the ridings of the other two levels of government at all helps clarify the roles each play in the lives of the city’s residents.

More cynically, I’d suggest such a configuration only really serves the purposes of the political parties operating at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa. It makes for easy compiling of voters’ lists and helps them in establishing ground games and footholds in areas of the city they’re looking to take runs at during their own election campaign. It encourages backroom party involvement in municipal elections for reasons not always beneficial for the city but very much in the interests of the parties.

What we need from this ward boundary review is a made in Toronto, for Toronto solution. The city needs to establish new political turf (if not an entirely new governance model), free from past grievances and fiefdoms, free from outside interference. Given the fact that we may have a new voting system in 2018, ranked ballots, if both the province and new council push it through, this is an ideal time to attempt to completely remake the city’s political landscape. The future starts next month.

Have your say. Help redraw the lines. The opportunity to take control of local democracy here in Toronto is soon upon us.

— hopefully submitted by Cityslikr

Oh, Etobicoke

Posted on May 18, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

If you’ve ever found yourself staring incredulously at the awful antics of some elected representative and stopped to wonder, Who the fuck elects these idiots?, have a quick gander here. It appears it really does take a village.

“Staff of a residential home for developmentally disabled youth with mental health issues newlyopened in a north Etobicoke neighbourhood faced an angry, anxious group of residents Thursday night.”

…

“Griffin Centre is a non-profit, multiservice mental health agency that operates five residential homes across the city and in Richmond Hill and offers programs and services funded by the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Ministry for Children and Youth Services.

The centre recently purchased and renovated the house at 22 Jeffcoat Dr. where four challenged youth, some with autism, have lived for the past two months. All have learning issues and emotional problems, which include anxiety, depression, explosive anger and complicated family situations that prevent them from living at home, Deanna Dannell, Griffin Centre’s director of youth and family support services, told the crowd.

Staff are in the house “24/7” she said, adding staff are trained to deal with “aggressive and volatile behaviour, part of which is knowing when to call the police. Typically, we don’t have emergency services come as much as they have in the last few weeks.”

Asked the nature of police calls, a 23 Division officer explained police remove a child from the home under the Ontario Mental Health Act and take them to hospital when the child is a danger to himself or herself, or a danger to others, including other residents or home staff.”

Within 10 minutes of the meeting arranged by the ward councillor of the neighbourhood, Doug Ford, at the 23 Division police station, some of the ‘anxious residents’ were demanding explanations.

“This is not a place for mental people. This is a residential area. Why don’t you build a house out on a farm?”

“There is nothing wrong with what the Griffin group is doing with these children. They’re just doing it in the wrong location.”

“What do I say to my three kids under the age of seven when one of these kids freaks out? When my child says, ‘Mommy, why are there police here again?’ What do I say?”

“The solution is for them to move out. Locate the facility in another place. This is a community for people, not for that. I have nothing against the kids. If the kids need help, they need help.”

Is it any wonder these people elected someone like Doug Ford (and his brother Rob before him) to represent them at City Hall? The lack of empathy or understanding. Their inability to deal with anyone who isn’t just like them. The shocking sense of entitlement. This is a community for people not for the mentals.

Of course, their councillor did pretty much what we’ve come to expect from him in situations like these. Pour gasoline on the fire of outrage. After arriving 25 minutes late, of course.

“You can’t destroy a community like this,” the councillor said. “People have worked 30 years for their home. My heart goes out to kids with autism. But no one told me they’d be leaving the house. If it comes down to it, I’ll buy the house myself and resell it.”

No one told Councillor Ford the mentals would be allowed to roam free. I mean, come on. His heart goes out to the kids but what about the normal people? The hardworking normal people?

What’s with Etobicoke? Especially those areas of it represented by the Fords, Doug Holyday, Gloria Lindsay Luby. If it’s not group homes or social housing they’re trying to keep at bay, they’re opposed to children being raised downtown (L’il Ginnys) or sidewalks. Yeah, they’re against sidewalks.

How the fuck are we supposed to build a cohesive, healthy, equitable city when we don’t share certain core values, one of which is not locking away those suffering from mental illness out on some farm or other institution? We tried that for awhile. It didn’t really work out that well.

Sloughing off something you may even deem to be worthy but just not desirable in your neck of the woods onto another part of the city is the exact opposite of neighbourly. Few of us are generous enough in spirit that we seek out areas to live that, I don’t know, highlight the marginalized. We all want a comfortable piece of mind, a safe place for us and our kids and our grandkids to go about their lives.

But we don’t all see difference as threatening, objectionable or unwelcome. That’s what you say to your young children, Mr. Anxious Resident, when they ask what’s going on at that house on the street. We’re not all the same. But that’s OK. Some people need different things in order to live their lives and we can all help out by gracefully accepting that and doing our utmost to adapt to different circumstances.

By being better neighbours.

— mystifiedly submitted by Cityslikr

InGloriaLindsayLubyous

Posted on May 16, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Goddammit!

Can we please stop having this fucking conversation?

All due respect, nobody in this ill-arranged shotgun of a marriage we call amalgamated Toronto is getting screwed, is getting more than their share, isn’t getting anything in return for what they put in.

Once again today, Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby went to the resentment well in defence of her no road tolls and just let my neighbourhoods be stance.

“Etobicoke already pays a lot but doesn’t always get its fair share in return,” she tweeted. “True in transit, sewer, roads, other services.”

This has been a regular lament from the councillor since she became more active on social media during this, not coincidentally I imagine, a municipal election year. Divide and conquer. Us versus them. That it’s simply not true is of little concern, it seems. Just say it enough times and it develops a ring of truth.

I mean, what kind of person would keep repeating a factual inaccuracy again and again?

As we have written here numerous times previously, way back in 2008 then just plain ol’ regular Councillor Norm Kelly commissioned a report, Fair Share Scarborough, to see if, well, Scarborough was getting its fair share of city services over the first decade of amalgamation. While not exhaustive or conclusive, it certainly pointed in the direction that Scarborough was not getting the short end of the stick although you wouldn’t know it, having listened to the Scarborough subway debate over the last year and a half.

Now, unless Councillor Lindsay Luby has evidence to the contrary, we should assume that none of the former municipalities are getting shafted in terms of who’s getting what. Saying otherwise, with no numbers to back up such a claim, is nothing more than cheap parochial politicking. It exhibits a startling lack of leadership and contributes nothing more than discord to our civic discourse.

A while back, friend of All Fired Up in the Big Smoke, Himy Syed gave us a theory about the suburban-urban divide plaguing Toronto. The biggest political wound this city received from amalgamation was the loss of the Metro level of government. It was the pan-416 institution every one of the former municipalities could band to together to rail against. Damn you Metro council, they could say, shaking a fist at Metro Hall.

With that gone, collective anger was re-directed toward Toronto City Hall. It became the target of all that wasn’t working. We pay our taxes there. What do we get in return?

Maybe I’m wrong in assuming that’s what Councillor Lindsay Luby is doing. Downtown gets everything and we get nothing. Maybe she’s actually suggesting Etobicoke subsidizes York, North York, East York, Scarborough and not just the old legacy city of Toronto.

Any way you cut it, her tactic is not any more constructive than it is true. And as long as we keep electing this type of tribal representation, we are doomed to continue rehashing these false arguments and petty antagonisms over and over and over again. In her misguided and outdated defense of Etobicoke, Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby is working to the detriment of the city as a whole.

— fed uply submitted by Cityslikr