It’s an easy trope, the old person bumbling with some electronic device. The unwieldy TV remote, a black brick with buttons, useless in finding The National with Knowlton Nash. Long snaking grocery store line-ups as an elderly customer taps futilely away. “Here?” “No, here, ma’am,” “Here?” “Why don’t we try and insert your card, ma’am, and then enter the security code.” “The what?!” (As a matter of fact, since you’re asking, I can’t use the self-checkout because I’m buying beer here.) Text messages and their endless series of identical screen shot attachments. “Give me your phone for sec, grandpa.”
Ageist? Almost certainly. But in my ripely mature defense, being old allows me great latitude to indulge in a little mockery of the aged. Continue reading →
I don’t know about anybody else but I don’t find that sentiment all that reassuring coming from an elected official.
Sure. We can debate. We can try and make evidence-based decisions. We can, I don’t know, dance the watusi. But you know what? At the end of the day, the universe will unfold as it should. Whaddayagonnado?
After nearly 30 minutes of, I wouldn’t say ‘intense’ grilling but not softballing from Steve Paikin, covering contentious issues like police carding, the Gardiner east expressway, the Scarborough subway, Mayor John Tory essentially gave us the figurative shrug. “The universe will unfold as it should.” Keep calm, folks. Daddy’s got a handle on things.
That the mayor doesn’t was clearly underlined by The Agenda host when asking some pointed questions about the decisions Mayor Tory’s been making lately. “Do you still support carding?” Paikin asked him. “I support the need to reform the policy,” the mayor responded.
Never mind that there had been an attempt to reform the policy in 2014. An attempt the police services under then chief of police Bill Blair simply ignored, essentially thumbing its collective nose at its civilian oversight body, the police services board and creating what Mayor Tory now refers to as a ‘vacuum’. Tomato, tomatoe. Insubordination, vacuum.
“Previously the police service hadn’t been able to agree with the police services board on policy,” Mayor Tory told Paikin. Just like that. As if it’s perfectly reasonable for the police services to choose simply not ‘to agree’ with directives from the board that’s in place to oversee their actions. Whaddayagonnado? The universe unfolds as it should.
This was the first example of gaps, let’s call them, that Paikin permitted the mayor. Moments of clarification that, not pursued, allowed Mayor Tory to sound perfectly reasonable. There weren’t many of them, to Paikin’s credit. He was much more assertive than many of us thought he would be although he tended to be more deferential at times than he needed to be.
“Thanks for indulging me.”
“You know I’m just putting you through your paces here.”
“That fine,” replied Mayor Tory.
That’s fine?! Of course, it’s fucking fine. You’re the fucking mayor.
At one point of during the conversation Mayor Tory pushed back at Paikin: “You’ve put me in the position of defending my own decisions. Which is what you do…” yaddie, yaddie, yaddie. Geez thanks for defining Steve Paikin’s job for us, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. His job is to put you in the position of defending your decisions. Your job is to defend those decisions.
Which, when he wasn’t doing it flintily, the mayor did opaquely, with a lot of words being said, few in any meaningful way.
The Toronto Star’ Jennifer Pagliaro captured the mayor’s response to Paikin’s question that if reports came back suggesting overlapping transit demands for both the Scarborough subway and his own SmartTrack plan, would he reconsider changing his opinion on the need to still pursue both.
Well, put it this way. One of the reasons they expanded the study area of the current environmental assessment that’s going on is to take account of the fact that SmartTrack was going to be something that would hopefully proceed forward. And so obviously these studies are being done for a reason and I’d be irresponsible if I said we’re going to do them and then ignore what they have to say, but I think on the principle of building a subway, all three government made decisions on that.
Anybody want to try and parse that noise?
All three levels of government have decided to build the Scarborough subway, so, that’s pretty much a done deal. And I promised 22 stations in 7 years with my SmartTrack plan, and I’m not one to break my campaign promises except for that TTC fare increase but free transit for the kids! Look at me. Do I seem like the irresponsible sort? I certainly wouldn’t ignore any report unless it didn’t jibe with my strongly held opinion like on the Gardiner east hybrid option. In other words… What was the question again, Steve?
In that space in time in which John Tory has sprung up as mayor now referred to as the ‘calm after Ford’, we squee in delight that the city has a mayor who doesn’t merely grunt and exhale heavily into a microphone. Mayor Tory says words! In sentences that form paragraphs!
It’s inconsequential that often times all that verbiage makes little sense, doesn’t directly answer direct questions, simply fills the silence with resounding nothingness. Compared to “I’ve got plenty to eat at home”, our Mayor Tory is simply Churchillian. We shall fight with obfuscation! We shall fight with bafflegab! We shall fight with mumbo jumbo! We will never surrender to forthrightness and candour!
I applaud Steve Paikin and The Agenda for politely pushing the mayor out of his obvious comfort zone of unchallenged press releasing and revealing a surprising degree of thin-skinned petulance. Words, well spoken but ultimately meaningless, are no better than farting noises. Bullshit is bullshit, am I right?
“The universe will unfold as it should.”
We need to realize now that John Tory’s version of ‘should’ is much different than the one too many of us bought into during last year’s campaign. While he comes across as more articulate than his predecessor (again, a low bar), it’s obvious this mayor is no less bound and determined to pursue equally detrimental goals, flying in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence and expert advice, if necessary to do so. Should? No soothing words should convince any of us otherwise.
We’ve all heard the defense of ‘traditional marriage’ – that between a man and a woman –made during an argument against same sex marriage. The one about how the latter will ‘undermine’, ‘diminish’, ‘make mockery of’ the former. As if up until recently, traditional marriage had been some rock solid institution, a sacred bond that those who entered into it never undermined or diminished. Only serious practitioners of the heterosexual persuasion like Hugh Hefner could uphold its honour.
A similar line of reasoning seems to be at work in the debate over extending the right to vote in municipal elections to permanent residents. (Steve Paikin runs it up the flagpole in an excellent 2010 session with Desmond Cole on the subject.) Somehow allowing non-citizens to vote at the local level will cheapen the act for the slim majority who exercise their franchise at the best of times during a municipal campaign. Choosing not to vote should be the privileged right of citizens and citizens only.
While no one would argue that the right to vote is the bedrock of any democracy, to maintain that it should be the sole entitlement for those holding citizenship suggests that it is the only determinant to a democracy. As if democracy is synonymous with voting. If someone wants to be a part of our democracy, they only can do so upon getting their citizenship.
But democracy is so much more than that or, at least, it should be. Voting is a small albeit vital component of the process, something that happens, more or less, every four years. Democracy is a larger, daily commitment.
And the flipside of that would be citizenship is more than simply the ability to vote in elections. So to argue that somehow conferring the right to vote on permanent residents diminishes citizenship rings hollow for me. Citizenship, like marriage, is an institutional designation and what you do under its banner will determine the quality of it, won’t it? If voting is contingent on being a citizen, does deciding not to vote when that right has been bestowed upon you call into question your citizenship?
I’ll grudgingly accept the assertion that only citizens should be allowed to vote at the federal level although I’m not entirely convinced as to why. But at both other levels of government, I can’t think of a reason why that should be the case. If someone has chosen to live in a particular locality that is, ultimately, overseen by a provincial government, the argument escapes me that they should be allowed to vote for their representation only after they’ve become citizens.
Let’s not forget that we’re talking about a group of people who’ve already indicated their keenness to be part of the community by becoming permanent residents. So pick a standard. A six month residency requirement? A year? During which time, a permanent resident is paying taxes, using amenities supported by those tax dollars, sending their children to schools or going to school themselves. Once they meet the time line, why not allow them to have a say in who’s making the decisions that affect their lives? How does allowing them to do so in any way diminish the notion of a wider citizenship?
I’d like to think of voting as something of a citizenship starter kit. An introduction to how shit works here. Your opinions and views matter as much as your tax dollars to the proper running of this place. One stake, a very important stake, in a functioning democracy.
It’s also possible that extending the vote to permanent residents might make politicians more aware, let’s call it, of the pressing issues newcomers face. If there are areas of a city, say, with high concentrations of permanent residents unable to cast a ballot, just how much attention will their local representatives pay to them. Taxation without representation and all that.
Back in 2006, then mayor David Miller attempted to put this debate on the front burner. The Community Development and Recreation Committee revived it again last week with a request for a staff report on the idea. Perhaps if it were as simple as a council vote on the matter, we wouldn’t be still talking and doing nothing about it. Unfortunately, it’s just another example of how we as a city don’t control our destiny. It’s a matter that Queen’s Park must decided and they will only do so if we show that’s there’s enough support for the idea.
If only those who had the most to gain actually had a vote in the matter.
“Here?” “No, here, ma’am,” “Here?” “Why don’t we try and insert your card, ma’am, and then enter the security code.” “The what?!” (As a matter of fact, since you’re asking, I can’t use the self-checkout because I’m buying beer here.) Text messages and their endless series of identical screen shot attachments. “Give me your phone for sec, grandpa.”
Just like that. As if it’s perfectly reasonable for the police services to choose simply not ‘to agree’ with directives from the board that’s in place to oversee their actions. Whaddayagonnado? The universe unfolds as it should.
