Category: Municipal Politics

To Live in Interesting Times.

by Peter Lowry

Returning home from a visit to Toronto this past week was like returning to a peaceful oasis. Not that Barrie does not have more than its share of construction going on with homes as well as the rebuilding of the Highway 400 bridges through the city. Yet Toronto felt like a battle ground. I spent most of a day driving around the city east to west and up to the northern suburbs. I never knew just where I would come to another traffic jam in a city of constant construction. And I see that the Don Valley Parkway is still jammed at any hour.

Toronto is no longer a city for a polite driver. It has the rude drivers of New York City at the speed of the crazy drivers of Rome, Italy. But I loved the experience, the learning, the old views, the new buildings, the staggering heights of new condominiums. I saw a lone transit vehicle test-driving the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Ask when it will open and Torontonians will laugh while people in Scarborough are bitter as delays and construction seem to forbid them access to downtown.

But the political anger was the most interesting. Oh sure, the younger generation seem to have bought into some of Poilievre’s bull, yet over all, the city is cold hunting grounds for conservatives today. The jokes about Doug Ford are among the most scatological I have ever heard. Any Torontonian who tells his neighbours that Trump Lite Poilievre is just what Canada needs might as well move.

They don’t have many positive comments on Justin Trudeau but then Poilievre came out with that common sense crap borrowed from the Mike Harris government, he cut his own throat. That conservative provincial government was the worst experience of the last quarter century in Ontario, I read a column in the Toronto Star last weekend where a sycophant of Poilievre had written that the conservative leader was taking a “back to basics approach.” Anyone who believes that Poilievre is going to improve life for Canadians, lower our taxes, as well as food prices, energy and trade must have just fell off the turnip wagon.

I was surprised when Trump won the presidency in the United States. It was a serious learning experience. The same type of bad news could happen here in Canada, and we sure as hell would regret it.   

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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On a Bicycle Built for Two.

by Peter Lowry

Okay Toronto, how are you and your new mayor doing? Is she getting all those Torontonians out of their cars and onto bicycles? Has she had Dundas Street renamed? Is she keeping us seniors out of High Park on the weekends?

High Park is a remarkable asset to Toronto. It is like Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London or the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. It is a place of pride in the city. The cherry blossoms are a time of beauty. Enjoying the wisdom of Shakespeare on a summer night is an inspiration. It is a place for the peaceful animals in the zoo and a quiet place for a family picnic on the grass. What it is not is a place for incompetents to be making foolish rules.

Do bicycles rule because of a mayor without a driver’s licence? Does the ‘woke’ council waste time and money on changing the names of streets?

The selection of this replacement mayor was based more on name recognition than any known competence in leadership. She has lived off the voters’ largesse for many years. She was never a knowledgeable councillor, nor an effective member of parliament. Does she just live off the all to brief popularity of her husband?

What has she accomplished too date on the budget problems of a great city? Has she brought Queen’s Park to heel? Has she brought home gifts from the feds in Ottawa? Has she solved any of the critical needs of the city? Is Scarbough always to be left to mouldering in the east? Must Scarborough suffer without proper transportation to fit its needs? Is the Eglinton Crosstown LRT to be just a playground for the province? And what the hell is the Ontario Line hoping to accomplish?

The critical need today in Toronto is homes. These are homes for newcomers and homes for the poor, fighting so hard to keep up with inflation? People cannot sleep on the streets in a winter city.

Toronto needs to tell the province to take its spa away from Ontario Place and return the land to Toronto citizens for the playground that was always planned. And a Science Centre needs to be central to the needs of the city’s schools.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Chow’s Choice.

by Peter Lowry

Olivia Chow had a Hobson’s choice. And both choices were wrong. The temporary mayor of Toronto soon found that she was out of her depth. She was never expected to get along with the federal or provincial governments and the foolish voters of Toronto, who voted for Chow, got the rebuff that they deserved.

What did you expect from a person who rides a bicycle to work? The new mayor thought she had two possibilities to fix the immediate problems at city hall. All the problems needed was money. She picked what she thought would be the easiest mark.

Did she need to be told that provincial governments were responsible for the municipalities in their province? And wasn’t it a bit presumptuous of her to ask the federal government? It was finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland who took the trouble to explain to Ms. Chow where she had erred.

Ms. Freeland not only explained to Ms. Chow how the system worked but she also made reference to the many billions already provided to the province by the federal government and to the city so that they could supply the services required by the citizens in Toronto. She politely did not reference the recent disclosure that the province had tucked away some $10 billion that it had not spent to help restore the healthcare system in the province.

Ms. Freeland also reminded Ms. Chow of the communications with the previous tenants in the mayor’s office—including mayor John Tory and deputy mayor Jennifer McKelvie. She had told the two of them that while the federal government had willingly helped Toronto with some billions of dollars for some of its major projects, the province was the proper source for the funds being requested. The provincial government had the legal and moral responsibility. It also had the money.

Freeland lectured the one-time member of parliament that the spending capacity of the federal government was not infinite. The federal government hardly runs a never-emptied ATM for the provinces and the cities of Canada. As much as the government might like to, there are limits.

And Ms. Chow will have to take her problems to Mr. Ford’s government at Queen’s Park. And, of course, we all wish her well in dealing with those skinflints.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Cyclists Capture Toronto City Hall.

by Peter Lowry

It is hard to believe that the replacement mayor of Toronto came to her first day at city hall by bicycle. You have to wonder about the voters in Toronto who promoted this mayor. The city is going to have to pay her almost $200,000 per year and she rides a bicycle to city hall.

I am not opposed to bicycles. I grew up in Toronto at a time when you could ride around Toronto on a bicycle in summer months. Vehicle traffic was lighter and roads were less crowded. I got to know my city. I was always disappointed in the fall when I had to store my bike for the winter.

No sensible person rides a bicycle year around in a city that can be beset with ice and snow for almost half of the year. And while I share the general concern about global warming, I hardly think it is going to eliminate winter any time soon. Cycling is a questionable practice even when it is just raining. When drivers’ view is impaired, bicycles become a road hazard.

It is hard to believe that the current mayor claims that she does not have a driver’s licence. That sounds like trouble. Is she going to forbid traffic on the streets where she wants to cycle? The thing to remember about Toronto is that it is mostly on the level east to west but from the lake north to the city limits is an up-hill haul.

A good friend of mine was a member of city council when they first started promoting bicycles at city hall. When they challenged him to ride his bike to city hall, he would arrive at city hall on his bike with a flourish, telling everyone how enjoyable it was. He admitted to me, quietly, that the bicycle conveniently fitted into the limousine trunk for his trip home, up-hill.

But this is a new day at Toronto city hall. The bicycle riding ones have won. She made much of her accomplishment as she took office. She brought her own claque of bike-riding supporters to cheer her on. Accomplishments of John Tory’s time at city hall were all but forgotten. The new mayor claimed that Toronto could find its feet again. To find its swagger, she said. And that is something I would like to see, someone swaggering on a bicycle.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Chow’s Impossible Job.

by Peter Lowry

Not being a fan of the new Toronto mayor, all I can do is commiserate with my Toronto friends. The truth is that Olivia Chow has taken on a task well beyond her capabilities. She was never a good councillor when she was on city council. She was waste of a seat in parliament, the time she was there. She never has been a leader or had any of the attributes of a successful mayor.

And the tasks facing her are daunting. She has Doug Ford running things at Queen’s Park and he is waiting for her to fail. She might have a bit of an edge in Ottawa where Jagmeet Singh might put in a good word for her with Justin Trudeau. She should not count on it.

The feds would likely choke if she goes to them for the full $1.5 billion of Toronto’s budget shortfall. And even then, this might be the least of her problems. How do you get the housing so desperately needed built today when the run-away renovation business in the city is drawing off so many of the trades needed to build new homes.

I was in Toronto on the weekend and I kept seeing all those towering new condominiums and wondering why the roads are in such crappy shape. Aren’t all those new buildings paying their taxes?

Since Mike Harris slammed the city together as a megacity, we have had a succession of mayors trying to make the city make do on less. The city at least could hold its head high with John Tory at the helm, but even he struggled with cheapening the service of city hall. It is a long time ago that people criticized my friend Phil Givens when he was mayor of the smaller city for buying a large piece of art for Nathan Phillips Square. The Givens, Dennison and Crombie era of mayors for the old Toronto was a time of increased pride in our city. We were growing rapidly and Queen’s Park might have been run by conservatives at the time but they understood their responsibilities to the cities of Ontario.

I liked how John Tory handled the job of mayor but even he failed to restore some of that pride, people felt for the city as it was back in the 1970s.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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About That Vote.

by Peter Lowry

This is a follow-up on the disastrous mayoralty byelection in Toronto the other day. And it was a disaster. It was never the 102 candidates to be mayor, though that part was amusing. It just goes to prove that in a true democracy, anyone can run for elected office. It would be nice if the people had some qualifications but we seem to ignore even that constraint. Early in the game, I gave Olivia Chow the nod as the one to beat. I did not support her.

But I think that any time you have more than a half dozen people running for an elected position under first-past-the-post voting, you should be prepared for a run-off election. For Chow to be mayor of Toronto with 37 per cent of the vote by about 40 percent of eligible voters is a disgrace. In effect, the voters were letting less than 20 per cent of the eligible voters make this critical decision for them.

In over 60 years of being eligible to vote, I have never failed to go to vote. I have made a habit of always voting in the advance polls. I have most often voted for the most progressive candidates. In municipal elections, I have voted for lots of losers because I wanted to encourage them to try again. I really cannot understand how anyone can alibi their failure to vote. I do not want to insult those who could have voted and did not bother but they should visit a country where the people who live there do not have the privilege of voting—and see the difference.

And I am sick and tired of those who dismiss the idea of a run-off election because of the supposed cost. We need to grow up and finally allow Internet voting. That creates polling places at most libraries, businesses, homes and people with smart phones. If the multiple computers used to house the voters’ information gets hacked, you will know and you will plug the hole in the dike. By using random systems, you force the hacker to hack one name at a time. They will soon learn that it is not worth the trouble nor the possible persecution.

Besides, you only need a run-off vote when no candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the votes in the original election. Our democracy is worth the extra cost.

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P.S. If Toronto had a run-off vote after last Monday, I would have bet on Ana Bailão to be the winner. 

Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Is That Democracy?

by Peter Lowry

If about a third of the registered voters go to vote and just more than a third of them vote for the winning candidate, what credibility does that person have in office? Follow the figures and you find that the winning candidate was elected by about fifteen per cent of potential voters. Is this our middle finger raised in salute to democracy? It just happened in the Toronto byelection for mayor.

Toronto voters now have three years to regret what they have done. Olivia Chow is no leader. Since I have heard she has no driver’s licence, I expect she thinks she can ride her bicycle to work at Toronto city hall. Chow just means more bike lanes and more congestion on the roads. It makes a regrettable statement. It would also be a very foolish thing to present a target such as that for the invective of Toronto’s pissed off car and truck drivers.

And that will be before Toronto homeowners find out how high their municipal taxes need to increase. That will happen because nobody at Queen’s Park or on Parliament Hill (other than new democrats) really wants to hear from Olivia Chow.

At least no more than most of Toronto council. Our cities are not vested in solutions for inflation. Their problems are very different from provincial and federal regimes.

And don’t forget that municipalities are creatures of their provinces. Premier Ford has hardly finished getting even with some of the people at Toronto’s city hall. Chow will find no welcoming mat at Queen’s Park—unless she comes for the ridicule and denigration.

It is funny, when you think about it; the early countries on this world were built around city states and the early development of democracy. Today, cities are the financial backbone and industrial strength of their countries. That might be hard to explain to someone such as Doug Ford but those with a classical education would understand it. Another thing that Doug Ford does not understand is that Toronto is still in the top ten of the world’s most livable cities. The world is watching and Ford will be taking out his petty feud with Toronto. Every move he makes against Toronto council harms the city’s reputation and livability. He is a fool because his vendetta can do harm to our country and its reputation as a democratic success story.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Embarrassing Barrie.

by Peter Lowry

It has been 12 years since I launched Babel-on-the-Bay.com. Initially a frequent theme was Barrie’s city council. They were often humorous digs at the mayor, with city councillors relegated to the chorus. There was a gap in the commentaries when I decided to help my ward councillor become mayor.

 It did not take me long to realize that Barrie was a different political scene from what I was used to in Toronto. I found that there wasn’t as much party politics involved in the local politics and a better neighbour to neighbour relationship. I found I was working with conservative and new democrat supporters to get a liberal elected mayor. It was a fun campaign and we won against two former mayors and a former member of the legislature.

But having a liberal mayor and a mainly conservative council was not such a good idea. Much of what needed to be done over the next 12 years did not happen because of the conservative majority on council and the ‘not-invented-here’ (NIH) attitude of the municipal employees. Problems that could not be fixed with asphalt were not welcomed by either council or staff.

And if our current council had not embarrassed the entire city the other day, we would be no more than an over-taxed city with a do-nothing city council.

Our new mayor is a conservative nebbish who spent one term in Ottawa and wisely chose not to run for a second term. Why he wanted to be mayor was unfathomable to those of us who paid attention to his previous terms representing a ward and his less than stellar service in Ottawa? We had been ignoring him until this week.

This is a guy, who as MP for part of Barrie, vehemently opposed safe injection sites for drug users in the city. Despite not being a lawyer, he was strongly opposed to this attempt to save lives because he considered the sites illegal.

Now as mayor of our city, he and the council passed a motion directing staff to take action against panhandling in Barrie, giving homeless people food on city property, without a permit, and providing a shuttle service to send thehomeless elsewhere, while getting the provincial government to pay for it.

When the motions came to council for approval, they weaseled out because of the scathing publicity they were getting from residents of Barrie and across Ontario.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Weakness of Democracy.

by Peter Lowry

Nobody ever said that democracy is perfect. It is just expected to be better than any of the alternatives. After more than a few years of trying to understand democracy, as we practice it in Canada, I find it frustrating that people do not give it the thoughts and inspection it needs to serve us all better. A good example of the problems is what is happening in regard to the byelection in Toronto next Monday for a replacement mayor.

It is important to note that this byelection is not for a temporary position. It is for the next three years. It is at a time when Toronto faces serious problems. The city is tying itself in knots with its successes. It is becoming an unaffordable place for people. It is a city built for motorized delivery systems, where the streets are clogged with personal automobiles and systems for moving people have become too expensive and too politicized.

It is a city needing compassion. The homeless are unwanted and largely ignored. We live in a climate where you have to house the indigent. We need permanent housing, not just emergency solutions at the time. The bright lights of the city attract them. We have to accommodate them. And yet we continue to hurt them.

And how does this mesh with our democracy? According to the overly broadcast polling, we will elect someone ill-inclined to help solve the problems. In city council and in parliament, Olivia Chow has proved she is but a nebbish, taking, not giving on city council or in parliament. She practices a harsh socialism, without compassion.

Maybe there are just too many in the race for the byelection to really understand the potential of some of the candidates. There are only two though who bring some expertise to the problems facing the city council. In an effective democracy, inquiring minds would be searching out these two candidates and getting out and supporting one or the other.

And the critical need is leadership. Which of the two is capable of leading city council over the next three years? I give you Ana Bailão and Mitzie Hunter. They both have the skills needed, though Mitzie Hunter is the more experienced politician. If you really want to do something worthwhile next Monday vote for one of them.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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They are all Super Mayors.

by Peter Lowry

The idea of Barrie’s mayor being given undemocratic powers by the province is hilarious. In a poll to determine the least competent mayor in Ontario, our mayor might be, at least, a close runner-up. This is the guy the local conservatives sent to Ottawa as an MP by some 86 votes, and only stayed for one term. Maybe he found it difficult to find the parliament in Ottawa when the house was sitting. Maybe it was because they didn’t give him anything important to do.

It is damn lucky that this guy is permanently out-voted on city council by his conservative peers. The very thought of him having any power to do anything is frightening. This is the guy who supported Maxime Bernier to be leader of the federal conservatives. He came back to Barrie and, I guess, nobody seemed to want to rush to give him a job, so he ran for mayor. And won, because people knew his name.

He was following a mayor who actually did some hard work for the past 12 years. The mayor ran for the Ontario liberals last year and got creamed. Last I heard, he was working for the regional council up in Muskoka, probably helping them keep Muskoka for tourists.

One of the reasons you have to laugh at all this super mayor business is that the key words in the provincial announcement are “To support us.” In other words, you get to have these super powers as long as you do what you are told. Municipalities in Ontario are not only creatures of the provincial government but now they are enslaved to it. A friend, who loves chatting about politics, speculated that this might be all very well for the Tories but what if an NDP government follows them at Queen’s Park? And all those conservative mayors start rebelling.

Never forget we have this fiction in Ontario that there is no party politics at the municipal or school board levels. That is crap. All parties tend to select people who have gone through the starter stages of politics with school boards and local councils. This is to determine if they are the stuff for higher office. Even Doug Ford had to start at Toronto city council to determine if he could survive at the provincial level. Mind you, even our mayor in Barrie could pass on a few political tips to Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]