Municipal Politics – Babel-on-the-Bay

Carry on John.

October 29, 2021October 28, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Despite having sat on many boards over the years and chaired a few—and this includes business boards as well as charitable and political and (the very worst) condominium boards, I have never been paid a cent for my efforts. I thought it was all done for free. Sure, I know that there are honoraria for outside business directors but when you are also an employee, it is part of the job.

But lately we have been hearing about annual honoraria in the category of $100,000 and up. And we are wondering why?

Why would Toronto mayor, John Tory, be paid $100,000 per year by Rogers?

Many of us were aware that Tory had worked for Rogers in previous years. Until the Toronto Star dropped the bomb on us the other morning, we might not have known he is still being paid by Rogers. The Star tells us he is paid for being an advisor to the family trust that runs Rogers. No doubt the Star’s minions at city hall are busy searching the voting records to see how many times the mayor should have, or did, declare a conflict of interest.

I would expect that a person of Tory’s integrity would have bent over backwards to avoid any complaint or possible conflict.

With this present term, Tory will complete eight years as mayor of Toronto. And despite his conservative party background and leanings, I was delighted to support his initial candidacy. He might be old school, but he is one of the good guys.

In the past eight years, John Tory has earned our trust. He has been an outstanding mayor in a rapidly growing and complex city and in troubled times. He has been there for the city, for its people and has been relentless in serving their needs. He has been a mayor in the style of a Hazel McCallion of Mississauga, a Naheed Nenshi of Calgary, though not quite as acerbic as the famous Charlotte Whitton of Ottawa.

More than anything else, John Tory has been there for Torontonians in the face of a 100-year pandemic. He has provided leadership, confidence and good sense for millions. He has done the job.

And we can view his annual stipend from Rogers as just part of his pension. He deserves it for what he has to put up with. And if he wants a third term as mayor, the only answer is: Carry on John!

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What’s in a Name?

July 12, 2021July 11, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Now they have done it. The lame brains on Toronto city council are actually discussing changing street names because of real or imagined transgressions in the past. All I know is that Peter Street in Toronto is a fine name for a street. I have no idea who it was named after and I don’t care. It’s a keeper.

But John Street is another matter. There have been some disreputable John’s over the years. I had a brother named John. It would probably be nice to honour him, though his first wife might disagree. She is a nice lady, check with her.

Some of my other brothers could be appropriate street names. George Street in Toronto was a fashionable address some hundred or so years ago. Since then, the downtown street has fallen into disrepute. Maybe the city fathers and mothers could find a nice street in Rosedale or Lawrence Park more befitting my late brother George. He was a great and much-loved guy but he would be embarrassed having St. George Street named for him.

Two more brothers, who live in the United States, already have nice Toronto streets bearing their names. I noticed in checking one of the streets, that a house there was for sale for two-and-a-half million. That is not much considering today’s prices but much more than in the Wellesley and Sherbourne area where we lived as kids.

Maybe Toronto should solve the whole stupid naming business by numbering the streets. That way, north-south streets could have the even numbers, east-west streets would have the odd numbers and roads that curved or ran diagonally could be named crescents or avenues and could be named after former mayors and councillors. That way everyone would be happy except for some people on avenues.

I remember when the city confiscated homes and ran Dundas Street East through, for the people out at the Beach. The new Dundas replaced some of the old street names in Toronto’s east end and a few vocal locals were mad about the change. They thought most people considered Dundas a sleazy street in the downtown area of the city. I thought they were bigoted. Dundas Street, at that time, had the best Chinese restaurants in the city, where the street ran through Chinatown.

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Brampton’s mayor is not Barrie’s best!

May 18, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

As outsiders, Barrie residents might not know as much about politics in Brampton but we sure know the mayor. In a straight trade for Brampton’s former mayor for Patrick Brown, we know we would have got the best of the deal. The one thing for sure is that in a head-to-head race against the incumbent mayor in his home town, Patrick knew he would be lucky to get 25 per cent of the vote.

And it is not as though the Brampton mayoralty is what Patrick wanted. He was at loose-ends, after resigning (under duress) from the leadership of Ontario’s provincial conservatives. He had noted that the now to-be-elected chair of Peel position was up for grabs and that job looked like it would pay as much as $200,000 per year. It was akin to being super-mayor of Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga. Patrick went for the brass ring.

That was until the new conservative leader Doug Ford heard about his plans and cancelled the election for chair in Peel. Patrick took a quick look at the mayoralty situation in Brampton—since that was where his base vote to win the Peel chair was located anyway. Patrick’s strength is hardly in his looks, sartorial elegance or pleasing personality. He is a student of politics and some people think of him as a fair-to-middling retail politician. (A retail politician is one that can sell the folks back home but never has reason to raise hand or head in parliament.)

Patrick’s punch in Brampton is the 44 per cent of people there with roots in the Indian subcontinent. All he had to do was promise to convert most of Brampton’s parks into cricket fields. The years of the British Raj in the subcontinent had developed an inordinate love of cricket. And when only about 35 per cent of municipal voters bother to vote, Patrick’s ploy prevailed.

Not that the road has been smooth since. Patrick is just as confused by the pandemic as any other inept politician. He gets his licks by pointing out the paucity of hospitals in Brampton, trying to manipulate his city councilors and interfering with Brampton’s human relations. Barrie doesn’t miss him.

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Those pesky preferential ballots.

May 13, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is always good to hear from loyal readers. And from some readers who enjoy arguing. One of the frequent arguments is over different types of voting. In more than 4,000 commentaries posted in Babel-on-the-Bay over the past ten years, I get the most comments about this aspect of our Canadian politics. The archived Democracy Papers on voting systems, from 2007, still draw daily interest from countries around the world.

One of my regular readers is true to his home town of London, Ontario. He wrote the other day to tell me, once again, how well preferential voting works for that city.

As much as I like and admire Ontario’s London and have visited the city many times on business, political activities and to see friends, I hardly think the city has had enough experience with preferential voting.

Let me explain a situation where preferential voting at the municipal level would have been a disaster. This is real: We had a situation in the mayoralty race in a city of similar size to London. The candidates included the incumbent mayor, a recently defeated member of the legislature, a previous, likeable mayor, two councillors hoping for a crack at the mayoralty and three other candidates in the ‘also ran’ category. The reality in that race was that nobody had much chance of getting 50 per cent of the vote.

The danger under preferential voting was that the candidate with the most second choice votes would be the winner.

The candidate I was helping was one of the councillors. He lacked the experience of the other four serious contenders. His campaign chair asked me to run the ground game for him. This involved analyzing areas of high turn-out to send the candidate to canvas, selecting polls for canvassers and for literature drops and then recording results for election day action, as well as analyzing the reports.

After a hot summer of canvassing, I knew my candidate would win handily under first-past-the-post rules. He did with 39 per cent of the vote.

But under preferential voting, my candidate might have lost. The former, likeable, mayor would have gathered most of the second-choice votes. If he had run a stronger campaign, under preferential voting, he would have been more of a threat to my candidate.

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Pondering the politics of the potty.

December 13, 2020 by Peter Lowry

There are issues that people will step up to and there are issues that cause them to smirk and back away. I was reading a very intelligent story the other day about the politics of the toilet and the need for our politicians to grow backbones. To quote a current television commercial about toilet paper: “Everybody does it.” And our politicians have to recognize it.

But it happens at the most elemental level of politics that people are unwilling to face the issue. I took a problem to my city’s mayor over two years ago and it still has not been fixed. I worked hard to get that guy elected ten years ago and he is in the middle of his third term in the mayor’s chair. And yet, he cannot handle the need for public toilets in a city of around 150,000 and summer visitors in the tens of thousands.

I have checked out venues around the world for people to meet, to congregate, to be entertained and to enjoy food and I have always walked away from facilities with inadequate or inconvenient washroom facilities for the numbers expected. It is part of looking after your guests.

Well, I can tell you now: Do not come to Barrie, Ontario if you cannot say no to your basic human need to go to the toilet.

I told the mayor that my barber was frequently requested to provide toilet facilities to desperate people from across the street at the GO Train terminus. Since there are no Go Train employees working in that location, they think that toilets are unnecessary. The provincially run commuter train and bus service expects people to wait for trains and busses but there are no toilets at that terminal. They have a ghost station on the property, the historic Allandale Station, that cost the citizens of Barrie considerable money to restore, but nobody has ever thought to restore its old washrooms or use it for any other purpose.

Frankly, the mayor and council in Barrie have shown no backbone at all. They pretend they do not pee or poop like anybody else!

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Breaking Faith with Canadians.

November 29, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Before people started accepting news in free form as whatever was trending on social media, we were encouraging business and government to work together. We called it by various names such as business-government partnerships but the essential component was the need to understand that the ultimate beneficiary was supposed to be the Canadian public.

In the late 1980s, one of the more remarkable examples of this partnership was SkyDome in Toronto, where the Blue Jays came to play baseball. At a shared public-private cost of around $600 million, few people really understood the benefits to the people of Toronto, of Ontario or Canada.

For one, it put more lustre for Toronto on the world map. It generated billions in tourism. It drove a steady stream of rebuilding to that part of Canada’s largest city. It helped bring Toronto to life. At least it did until ignorant provincial politicians paid off the debt of about $400 million and sold the building to private interests, including Labatt Breweries, for $151 million. Which seemed like quite a bargain despite the continued financial problems of the time. Labatt’s solution was to sell SkyDome in 2004 to Rogers Communications for $25 million.

But the death knell of any landmark is when you try to give it a new and commercial name. It is still our SkyDome, to us old time baseball fans.

But would you believe that these people who got SkyDome for a song, are now talking about tearing it down. They think they can build another smaller baseball park, with natural grass, nearby.

This new park would be further ‘enhanced,’ according to the proponents with new condominiums and office towers to improve the revenues from the property.

Luckily, the land that SkyDome sits on is not part of the deal for which these schemers paid so little. The lands are leased from a federal government-owned company that specify the only use for these old railway lands is for a ball park and entertainment facility. We might be lucky if this agency says ‘No’ to this new plan.

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The last campaign.

November 1, 2020 by Peter Lowry

You never know which one is your last campaign. You always look forward to your next until reality says your last was your last. I can no longer climb the front steps of homes they build today. Without a safety railing, steps spell danger.

But without the ability to test what people are saying at their doors, you have no feeling for the campaign. Without listening to the why of peoples’ votes, you can never really forecast the outcome.

I remember in my last campaign, about a week before voting day and the only people in the office were the candidate, the campaign manager and myself. I was finishing entering some ground game results and the candidate and the campaign manager were discussing the opponents’ possible strategies on election day.

It was no surprise when the campaign chair asked me to run the ground game instead of asking me to be campaign manager. I was new to the city at the time and directing the ground game and teaching volunteers taught me a great deal about the city.

I realized that despite what the campaign manager was spending on polling, neither of them admitted that we were assured of a substantial win.

The mayoralty race had eight candidates. The incumbent was running but not putting up any effort. Two were conservative, one a previous mayor and another a previous member of the provincial legislature. Two candidates were nominal liberals, our guy and another sitting councilor. There were another three candidates in the category of ‘also-rans.’

Our guy was coming in first with about 40 per cent of the mayoralty vote. Second place was the former MPP because of his name recognition. I told them how the other candidates would do and even included the three ‘also-rans’ who might collectively get three per cent of the votes.

The campaign manager had his polls to support his view but in challenging my figures he made the mistake of ridiculing my figures for the three ‘also-rans.’ Since the three of us would never bet on our own race, it was safe to bet on those candidates. I made a ten-dollar bet with the campaign manager that these candidates would not get three per cent of the mayoralty vote.

It was mean of me to point it out to our team at the victory party, but the campaign manager had to pay on his foolish bet.

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Why does Toronto want ranked ballots?

September 19, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Toronto City Council needs to take a very hard look at ranked ballot voting. It is no panacea. It is a solution for a problem that does not exist. It is a way to choose the least controversial of multiple candidates. And why would you want to do that?

Or maybe people are just tired of the same-old first-past-the-post voting.

To be positive, this system of voting seems to encourage the least likely candidates. It has been used in political parties recently and judging by results there, it has disappointed more people than it has pleased. And why you would want to disappoint the voters is a good question?

We might also consider that ranked balloting is preferred by more candidates because it encourages more of them to run for office. Judging by experience with this system of voting, we know that it tends to sort through the voting process to produce the least controversial result.

The one thing you can count on is that the more candidates in the race for the position, the less likely that you will get the most preferred candidate. The simple reason is that if nobody gets a majority of votes, the choice falls to the second, third, fourth or fifth most favourite—as chosen by the candidates dropped from the race. It becomes a numbers game and you might as well just toss a coin.

The city was authorized to allow ranked balloting back in 2013. In typical Toronto council fashion, the idea was dropped for 2015. It was revived again for 2022 (since the city is on a four-year voting cycle now, instead of two-year).

Mind you, if the city cannot find a supplier that can count ranked ballots for 2026—and carry out all the other requirements for ranked voting that the province requires—then we can wait for 2030. And whether people come to their senses by then, is the responsibility of an entirely new generation.

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A fond farewell to Joe Atkinson.

August 29, 2020 by Peter Lowry

As an undeniable Torontonian, I have always had a special place for the Toronto Star. Sure, I have worked for the Globe and Mail, written for the long-dead Toronto Telegram but my oracle was the Star. As Canada’s Numero Uno daily newspaper, it has been my lynch pin with my country and my principles. The Star ran a eulogy for the Atkinson Principles at the beginning of August in the form of a full-page advertisement for the paper.

With the headline: Different times. It also went on to try to embrace “Enduring truths.” These are truths that the owners of the Toronto Star for the past 50 years have now abandoned. They are also my truths:

A strong, united and independent Canada. (We need to keep working on that one.)
Social Justice. (An ongoing battle.)
Individual and civil liberties. (For all.)
Community and civic engagement. (And always check both sides of arguments.)
The rights of working people. (Make that all people.)
The necessary role of government. (Not too big and not too small, it has to be just right.)

But will the new owners respect these more than a century-old truths? Why would they? These people are in the money game. They are players, not journalists. They are gambling on the potential for profit from a precious commodity, information. And information is only as good as its source.

I feel the five families who rescued Joe Atkinson’s legacy over 50 years ago have let us down. They have ended their struggle to keep the legacy alive. Their intent was honourable but, in the end, they have failed us.

We can look at what Paul Godfrey and his American friends have done to PostMedia for their own ends and wonder how long the new owners of the Star will try to work within the Atkinson legacy.

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Comparing colonial India to Canada?

July 26, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Why have so many people from the sub-continent immigrated to Canada? What attracted them to this country? These people are welcome. This question is raised because of a really confused op-ed in the Toronto Star last week. It was identified as being written by a gentleman who emigrated from India and became a Canadian citizen. He was lauding lawlessness.

What the hell was the Star editor thinking who allowed this garbage in Canada’s largest newspaper? Why would the headline writer not balk at saying: “Protesters are indeed justified in tarnishing colonial statues.”? There is no realistic justification for lawlessness in Canada.

And murder and lawlessness were never in the code of India’s Mahatma, whom the entire world honours. And yet, to this day, India is beset by religious intolerance and mistreatment of minorities. And the writer thinks murder and mayhem are the answer?

Not in Canada, thank you.

When a rabble such as the Toronto people calling themselves Black Lives Matter break the law, their leaders should be arrested. They were defacing public property. They were dishonouring Canada by splashing paint on a statue of John A. Macdonald. They were being destructive by trying to paint statues from the past of Edward VII and Egerton Ryerson.

They should remember the words of William Shakespeare: “The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

The writer in the Star lauds the decision of the Indian government to change the name of a square in the ancient city of Calcutta to honour some murderers. We are told that this gentleman writer is also a student and an educator. He seems to have a lot left to learn. He advocates renaming Dundas Square in Toronto to honour the three Black Lives Matter activists with their silly paint. That will be a damn frosty Friday in July!

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