Tag Archives: Scarborough

With Equal Conviction

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Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.

— attributed in some variation to Daniel Patrick Moynihan

What a quaint notion, put severely to the test earlier today on CBC radio’s Metro Morning. Perpetually cloying Mary Wiens took to the streets to talk to a couple regular folks about the pronounced death of Transit City. First up, Odessa who faces a daily 3 hour round trip commute from the hinterlands of the inner suburbs to the downtown core. Transit City was planned with her in mind, it could be safely argued, to reduce her commute time. She tells Wiens that she’s looking forward to the new LRTs.

But alas, Odessa voted for Rob Ford. Why? His outspokenness. When Wiens informs her that the mayor was angling to kill Transit City and replace it with subways, Odessa was all over it, never asking a pertinent question or two, like is the mayor’s plan better than Transit City or would subways help her commute more than Transit City.

Next came Denis Lanoue, a much more politically active individual than Odessa but no less factually challenged. Lanoue, president of the Heathwood Ratepayers Association in Scarborough, is also active as part of the Save Our Sheppard group. He just so happened to turn up in the parking lot of a local Tim Hortons to give the CBC a piece of his mind an interview.

Like our new mayor, Lanoue and his group (S.O.S.) hates LRTs (or streetcars as he calls them), convinced with precious little evidence to back it up that LRTs on Sheppard Ave. will end life as we know it there, bringing wrack and ruin just as they did along St. Clair West. “A modest subway expansion is all we need,” Lanoue writes on the S.O.S manifesto. No fuss. No bother. Details to follow.

But Lanoue isn’t just interested in having his say on Transit City for Metro Morning. He wants to inform the audience exactly why there is that downtown-inner suburb divide. Two words: David Miller. According to Lanoue, all was hunky-dory under Mel Lastman but something changed late in Miller’s 1st term or early in the 2nd. What exactly? Lanoue doesn’t really say except that, residents of the inner suburbs just got fed up with handing all their taxes over to pay for things downtown.

Which would be grounds for anger and outrage if it were true but as we have written previously here and here, no one has ever pointed to any evidence or studies that show the downtown core being subsidized by the inner suburbs. In fact, Scarborough councillor Norm Kelly commissioned a report to look at the numbers and come up empty. Yet, Denis Lanoue grabs the mic on the CBC and pronounces it to be true, anecdotally pointing to the proposed 5 story ice rink down on the waterfront as proof positive.

So why does the CBC grant 6 minutes of airtime to the uninformed or deliberately disingenuous? Just because everyone has an opinion doesn’t mean they have to be heard. We already know they’re out there, muddying the debate and discourse, and getting their man elected mayor. Shouldn’t the media be providing more pushback and disputation and less a simple platform for anyone and everyone to air it out? The pursuit of uncovering truth and revealing facts and all that kind of high-minded sense of purpose.

Now, maybe I should view Wiens’ piece this morning not so much as investigative journalism as it is an exposé into The Minds Of Rob Ford Supporters. She did question a couple of the claims made by the interviewees but not directly. Only in gentle asides to the listeners that struck me like she was talking behind her subjects’ backs. Hey. If people are willing to give their opinions a wider voice, then we should at least be solicitous enough to publicly tell them that they’re full of shit when they are especially if their views, opinions or beliefs could possibly have an adverse impact.

So sure, everyone’s allowed to have an opinion. The question is, does that mean every opinion should be accorded equal weight and value? Chances are, if they were, we wouldn’t be having this discussion about public transit because we’d still be living in caves, arguing over how exactly to build that fire again.

— submitted by Cityslikr

Budget Surplus. What?!

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Truthfully, I don’t know what to make of this week’s announcement by the city of their $275 million surplus. At first glance it’s like, whoah! (Keanu Reeves reference #1.) That’s a big number. More than half of what the council needs to cover its $500+ million budget ‘gap’ next year. Although, just how much credence we should give to that projected number, I’m not sure, given the regular ‘surprise’ surplus announcements over the course of the past year, $100 million, $180 million, $275 million.

Then again, I try not to be swayed too much by the power of big numbers. Yes, 275 million is substantial. It could fund a lot of programs, maybe build one subway stop, pay down some debt. But in the scheme of a $9.2 billion budget, well, it comes out to about 3% of it, .03.* In fact, the latest adjustment from $180 million up to $275 million represents a little over 1% of the total operating budget. So not an unreasonable accounting revision when talking billions of dollars.

At which point I realize that we’re talking about a fucking budget surplus! Why did we just throw away the last 10 months or so on an election campaign railing about out of control spending, gravy trains, retirement parties, plant watering, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah? It seems that, in fact, just the opposite was true. That in these dire economic times, our City Hall was fiscally managing matters very, very competently. Prudently, even.

Yet, over the course of the past 10 day post-election period, we’ve attempted to explain away this discrepancy, pointing at maps and opining that the campaign as it played out was merely the manifestation of the anger out there, especially in the inner suburbs at their feelings of exclusion within the amalgamated city. OK, so why weren’t we talking about that directly then? Why was the election narrative railroaded into a simplistic, simple-minded package, easily spewed out by our simpleton mayor-elect and his zombie horde of followers? (Yeah, I called Rob Ford a ‘simpleton’. Winning this election doesn’t erase the past 10 years of buffoonery.) If we elected our mayor and council based on a lie, a mirage, what hope do we have of real issues and concerns being addressed by them?

Perception is reality, I keep reading. Tell the people what they want, and then give it to them. Yeah well, I’m just wondering when it was we took the blue pill and started living in the Matrix. (And the 2nd Keanu reference.) The reality is, our outgoing council and mayor were not fiscally irresponsible. Sputtering out tired examples of bunny suits and shifty sole-sourcing doesn’t change that fact. The inner suburbs think all their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent on the downtown core? Show me the numbers. Nothing I’ve seen so far indicate that. Scarborough councillor Norm Kelly commissioned a study to examine that claim. The numbers were inconclusive at best.

Just because we elected a new mayor and councillors based on lies and misinformation does not mean we have to allow them to govern likewise. Rather than looking for common ground and areas of compromise, those readying to stand in opposition (and those in the middle waiting to see which way the winds are blowing) to the new administration and its handful of allies need to remain firm in the face of what will clearly be a continued distortion of facts and reality. Letting them bullshit their way to power was a misstep. Enabling them to do so while in office will be tantamount to collaboration in their ongoing battle to keep this city divided and detrimentally parochial.

* My math is always suspect but, if anything, I’m over-estimating the surplus’s percentage of the operating budget. I think.

— dutifully submitted by Cityslikr

One Councillor And One Mayor Are Not Enough

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Early on at last night’s Ward 19 council debate, it became clear to me that Toronto’s post-amalgamated governance structure is woefully lacking in delivering us the representation we need and deserve. As the questions piled up (both prepared from business and residents association as well as the audience’s more free form stylings), most expressed concerns about purely local issues. The moratorium on restaurants and bars on Ossington Street. Park upkeep and organization at Trinity-Bellwoods. Traffic congestion in Liberty Village and parking at the CNE.

Undoubtedly, some of these have city wide implications concerning matters like density and park management, but it still felt awfully parochial, if I can use that term non-derogatorily. The debate was held in a parish, after all. So why not `parochial’?

Local matters should be the main duty of those seeking a council seat. To look out for the interests of their constituents. Councillors represent the peoples’ voice at City Hall.

But this leaves the city wide view in the hands of the mayor and the mayor only. Councillors sit on various committees that oversee municipal aspects for the entire city like transit, police, planning but they remain councillors first and committee members second. Leaving us with one voice in the face of 44 who must straddle the line between city building and ward defending. Sometimes these two roles not only don’t jibe but are in direct opposition to one another.

Which may explain some of the palpable anger and discontent at the debate last night toward outgoing councillor for ward 19 and mayoral candidate, Joe Pantalone. He was accused by many of non-responsiveness and unilateral decision making. Perhaps this was always the case but I can’t help thinking that as a high ranking official in the Miller administration, Pantalone stopped looking out for the concerns of those who had elected him while he was concentrating on the bigger picture of Toronto as a whole.

A city of this size and diversity cannot be properly represented by one official and a handful of councillors who are secure enough in their ward positions that they can attend to wider city matters. We need another municipal level of government (yes, I said another level of government) whose sole purpose is for the greater good of the city and to coordinate its place within the entire GTA region. A Board of Control, say, elected from the ashes of the former cities of Toronto, York, East York, North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke. Call it, oh I don’t know, Metro Council. But this thing with a mayor and 44 fiefdoms doesn’t really seem to be fully functioning.

It’s a dilemma I’ll be facing when it comes to deciding where to cast my vote for ward 19 councillor. On one hand, there’s Karen Sun. From her, I get a sense of someone looking to contribute to the building of a better city. That’s not to say she won’t stand tall for the people of this ward. She just seems to have a bigger vision. One that goes beyond the Trinity Spadina border.

On the other hand, there’s David Footman. Having just encountered him last night, it would be presumptuous of me to make sweeping generalizations about his campaign but what I saw at the debate (and read from his campaign literature) is a bull terrier in defense of ward 19 and the people living here. Mr. Footman very likely possesses thoughts about the city in its entirety. Upon first impression however, his strengths seemed to be very much local, on the ground.

Toronto voters should not have to make such a choice. Or rather, there should be a second option. To vote for someone like David Footman whose primary job is to look after our neighbourhood needs. And to vote for Karen Sun as our representative for matters encompassing the entire city. Such a system was in place back before we were all one city. Nothing about amalgamation has ameliorated the situation to the point where we don’t require a similar set up again.

— undecidedly submitted by Cityslikr