Municipal Politics – Page 18

Pedal fast, pedal hard, death lurks.

June 26, 2015 by Peter Lowry

As a youngster, exploring the City of Toronto by bicycle on bright summer days was a wonderful option and a great learning experience. Those were gentler times and traffic was not too congested in a city of less than a million people. Add another one and a half million people in the same area and you have an entirely different situation. Cycling in the same traffic lanes as automobiles on major arteries today means that cyclists are going to get injured and killed.

There are very good reasons for this inevitability. They are a temperate climate, topography and traffic congestion.

To start with, Toronto is in a temperate zone. With an average of about 121 centimetres (47 inches) of snow each year, over six and seven months, there are just too many days of bad biking. There are also quite a few days of rain that that can also make cycling less than pleasant. The problem this creates is that over the winter auto drivers forget about cyclists. After a really tough winter, they have had their own problems with traffic and cyclists’ sudden appearance in nice weather creates a new hazard.

This is not to say that it is not pleasant when some good weather shows itself to take your bike to work downtown. It is hardly a problem that first time after the winter because going downtown in Toronto can be mostly downhill. Coming back home up those hills is something else. And no cyclist wants a boost up the hill on someone’s front bumper.

But the main problem is that Toronto has been tied in political knots for too many years. The city has fallen behind in meeting its transit and transportation needs. With crumbling infrastructure and senior levels of government playing cat and mouse with their responsibilities, the city is a mess. City streets hardly need an additional challenge from bicycle enthusiasts. Toronto cannot move people. It cannot move goods. And the only solution we hear from the biking nuts is we should have stiffer fines for killing cyclists and pedestrians.

The facts are that these so-called ‘vulnerable’ cycling people are turned loose on city streets without any requirement for training whatsoever. Many are unaware of the dangers that await them on busy streets. Too many are unaware of even the basic rules of the road. They are just another statistic on their way to happen.

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You have to admire Toronto’s Mayor Tory.

June 11, 2015 by Peter Lowry

What do you want Toronto? With an unapologetic news media and an unrepentant collection of councillors ganging up on him, the best mayor Toronto has had in almost 50 years is hardly feeling much love. The poor guy has been doing the best job he can. He has been hustling hard now for just six months and he has shown that he can handle that mind-numbing job with class and style.

It is hard to believe that Toronto wants Rob Ford back. And it is for sure that they do not want poor Olivia Chow bicycling down to City Hall every day?

Whether the Toronto Star likes it or not, the voters chose Tory. The newspaper will probably have to put up with him for the next three and a half years. They should heed what our old granny used to tell us: If you can’t push, pull. And it you can’t pull, you best get out of the way.

There was a bunch of has-beens who showed up at city hall recently to tell him what to do with the crumbling Gardiner Expressway. You would think that if those people had any understanding of the kind of mess they left for John Tory, they would just shut up.

The facts are that there are no good solutions to the Gardiner. It is a patchwork covered with band-aids that was never finished. It became a dinosaur when the Spadina and Scarborough Expressways were scrapped. Toronto has suffered enough with bad planning and ignorant municipal politicians. It hardly needs more critics. And you can hardly keep scrapping expressways until you build a decent transit system.

We need to remember that Toronto is saddled with a political system designed for a city of maybe 15,000 people. With more than 2.6 million people, the city is impossible to manage. It is absolutely amazing that anything is ever decided.

Toronto’s political system is best described as a 44-passenger school bus packed with unruly, disobedient street urchins. The mayor is just a temporary driver and he is trying to get the little brats to tell him where the school is so that he can get them there. They have their own ideas about where to go. And there is no fuel in the vehicle anyway.

What Toronto really needs is a dictator such as we elect at Queen’s Park or in Ottawa. Neither the Premier nor the Prime Minister really needs those people who were elected with them. They are an unnecessary expense. And it would be a blessing to dispense with those self-serving councillors in Toronto.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

An e-mail on preferential voting.

May 31, 2015 by Peter Lowry

To: [email protected]

Dear Minister McMeekin:

You must have missed reading Babel-on-the-Bay on March 26 this year. That was when one of the postings was devoted to Toronto council’s request to your Ontario ministry for preferential voting in that city’s municipal elections. The posting was about why this might not be a good idea.

It is obvious that under the pressures of your ministry’s work load, neither you nor your staff have had time to analyze the city’s request. Should you require further discussion of the subject, this writer would be pleased to help.

First of all, having been involved in municipal, provincial and federal elections for the past 53 years, we have some hands-on experience. And having held every position on a riding executive other than chair of the women’s committee, we have considerable political awareness. And having once run as a Liberal candidate, we have also spilled blood for the party.

But even then, it takes extensive study of voting systems and government structures around the world to truly understand their strengths and weaknesses. In response to the 2007 Ontario referendum on mixed member voting, we authored the Democracy Papers, a series of documents supporting our first-past-the-post voting system. The Democracy Papers are archived in Babel-on-the-Bay.com and even eight years later are accessed daily by researchers from around the world.

The very simple answer to people supporting preferential voting is that it is a system that makes the losers the choosers. It is not the complication of the ballot that is confusing. It is the suggestion that the voter has to make more than one choice. It is like back when Toronto had two aldermen per ward. A lot of mediocre candidates got elected because of that second vote.

Toronto has to be saved from its ignorance. And we certainly do not want to spread the disease across the province.

Thank you,

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

A paean for once-great Montreal.

March 28, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Political writer Chantal Hèbert recently wrote a requiem for Montreal in the Toronto Star. She described the city as a political orphan. It is no surprise. Montreal has become insular. It is a city that has forgotten its wondrous past and searches for a future. It is a city that has forgotten that for people to give a damn about you, you first need to care about others.

It was not always like this. There were happier times. There was a glorious Expo and the world came to Montreal. And then there was the crack of the bat by les Expos when the Habs missed the Stanley playoffs. Montreal has produced great business ventures, major medical research centres, prestigious institutes of learning and leaders in the arts. Montreal has much to build on.

We have always loved Montreal for its civility, fine cuisine, chic women, business savvy, worldliness, savoir faire, mix of cultures and, of course, the smoked meat at Ben’s. Montreal was so much more than it is today and it can be great again.

But first the people of Montreal have to learn that language can be a beacon, not a barrier. They have to seize the opportunity to supply the leadership that Quebec so desperately needs to be part of a new prosperity in the 21^st Century.

Chantal Hèbert makes special note of Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre’s wooing of Toronto’s new Mayor John Tory. She sees their working together on the needs of their cities as a very positive step for Montreal. It can work for both and John Tory is probably well aware of the benefits of a united front.

The surprise for Coderre will be learning that John Tory is more left-wing politically. Coderre is a Quebec Liberal and that party now embraces most right wing causes in that province. Toronto’s mayor might be in the same party as Stephen Harper but he is far more progressive.

But if the two mayors can identify the common causes of their respective cities, much can be accomplished. They can each bring their respective premiers on side but it needs both to convince whoever is prime minister for the next few years.

One of their objectives should be the creation of the high-speed electrified rail corridor from Windsor to Quebec City. That is a project of extreme national importance that is needed to restore the industrial, commercial and tourism economies of both provinces and Montreal and Toronto will be major beneficiaries.

Hèbert is quite right. They have to work as a team. Apart they are only pallbearers.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

When losers are choosers.

March 26, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Somebody needs to rap knuckles around Toronto. People who should know better keep coming up with really dumb ideas and nobody tells them to stop being stupid. Once again the gremlins are trying to screw up the way people vote. It is so bad that even Mayor John Tory wants to get in on the act and support preferential balloting.

Preferential voting is a no-brainer for dumb voters. Can you imagine the simplicity of lining up maybe four candidates for councillor in your ward and marking the ballot: 1, 2, 3 and 4? That is when ‘1’ represents the candidate you want and ‘4’ is the one you least want. It is like a beauty contest. The voter might feel happier about voting this way. What is wrong is the way the ballots are counted. That is when the voters are screwed.

Take a look at a current example of the problem: The Ontario Progressive Conservatives are using a preferential ballot in May to choose their new leader. The Tories are going to mark their ballots 1, 2 and 3 for Christine Elliott, Patrick Brown and Monte McNaughton. If Elliott gets 45 per cent of the first votes, Brown gets 40 per cent and McNaughton gets the remaining 15 per cent, you would assume that Elliott will easily get enough second votes from the McNaughton voters to win. Wrong. Most second votes from McNaughton will go to Brown. Brown is second choice of the Right-to-Life people supporting McNaughton. Elliott could lose because of it.

And that is the problem with preferential balloting. When losers are the choosers, the voters are the real losers. This is not the same as a run-off election. You are letting the losers be the choosers.

What a preferential ballot most often produces over time is a dumbing down of the elected body. It is like always choosing the second best chromosomes in a genetics experiment. If you keep doing it, eventually you produce a monster.

And it is particularly sad to hear people say that Toronto City Council should have the same ethnic composition as the population of Toronto. If you are choosing politicians by their ethnicity, sex or colour, you are headed for more trouble than you expect.

Preferential ballots can never replace run-off voting. If you want to be sure that the ultimate winner has the majority of the votes, you have to allow the voters to rethink their decision.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Common-sense thinking at Toronto City Hall.

March 15, 2015 by Peter Lowry

What is this we hear about an upgrade of Woodbine Entertainment Group to a full-fledged casino? The operation deserves it. It was a bad move when Woodbine got caught in the battle between former Mayor Ford and the downtown cyclists. It was almost as though those downtown councillors had never been to Woodbine Race Track. They had no concept of the services Woodbine offers and the excellence of the operations.

First of all Woodbine is Canada’s premier race facility. It hosts the richest horse races on turf or dirt in Canada. Even if you have never punted a $2 bet, the sheer pleasure of watching those beautiful thoroughbreds pounding around the track is something that even a child can understand. And, yes, there is gambling. It supports the purses and the track. There is a reasonable rake.

But to leave the track just with slots to help support its operations today is woefully ignorant. Horses and slots are really not related. And people who bet on horses are people who like a challenge in their gaming. Slots are mindless. You stick money in and hope some comes back. Whoopee.

Since day one of the slots at Woodbine, Ontario race fans have been waiting to welcome table games. We have always felt that betting on the ponies was the closest thing to the game of craps. Maybe that is why we always see craps as such a challenge.

It is table games that are of interest to most race track people and the combination of a full casino, racing, fine dining and entertainment can make Woodbine an outstanding attraction and an even more major employer in an area of the city that is well suited to accommodating the thousands of visitors. Woodbine knows how to do it.

And what right does any councillor who does not know that part of the city have to deny the facility the business to which it is so well suited? A casino is a legal operation in Ontario. It is run under the control of the province. It is not a concern of the municipality other than the taxes it pays and the services it requires. Considering the scope of the Woodbine property and its environment, it poses no problem for the municipality. The casino resort complex at Woodbine Entertainment is to be run by a well funded, well run and respected organization.

The city has been asked for its approval as a courtesy. The city should return the courtesy to the province with a speedy vote and approval of a good business venture and major taxpayer in the interest of the people of Toronto.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Yes, you can fight city hall.

February 9, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Local readers of Babel-on-the-Bay have asked occasionally why we do not discuss city politics in Barrie. The honest answer is that city politics in Barrie is boring and is something of a closed shop. Anyone who gets elected because they want to rock the boat is soon subsumed by the system. Trying to shake the cage from the outside is also a formidable task.

There are three classes of people in this city who wear suits and ties to work. They are lawyers, politicians and undertakers. And this is their town. They will all get a piece of you one way or another. And their aides and acolytes are the civil servants who run things their way anyway.

If you take these civil servants a good idea, they smile, they make nice and they do nothing. Nobody has every told them should pay attention to the taxpayers who pay the taxes that pay their salaries.

One of the best ideas put to these uncivil people over the years was the idea of a large wind turbine on the north edge of the valley where the city dump is growing. It would have been a spectacular statement for the city and viewed by millions every year on Highway 400. It took more than six years of pressing for the ruling to be made that the wind turbine would interfere with the purpose of the dump. No discussion was invited as to how this might be.

And it is not that people have not tried to shake things up by suing the city. Why do you think we have so many lawyers? That lovely train station that was so painstakingly and expensively restored down by the bay in the Allandale area still sits empty and going mouldy as disappointed developers take out their angst on the city.

Maybe that is why we are holding off on the suit we were contemplating launching. The delay is whether the suit will be personal or class action. It really should be on behalf of all the senior citizens in the city. Well, at least those who like hockey. We have this excellent Ontario Hockey League team called the Barrie Colts who play in the Barrie Molson Centre.

But seniors and the disabled are putting life and limb in jeopardy in that facility. There are no safety rails on those steep aisles to the seats. Seniors without sturdy grandchildren to help them to and from their seats are in danger of serious injury. Their attendance at Colts games is discouraged.

And this is not to mention the problem of adequate washrooms. The damn place must have been designed by 20 year-olds with 16 year-old bladders. They should stop selling Molson in places without adequate places to pee.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Will Chief Blair also use the Nuremburg defence?

January 13, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Lawyers at the disciplinary hearing over a senior Toronto police officer’s actions during the G20 fiasco want Police Chief Bill Blair called to testify. The hearing should also hear why Chief Blair has not been charged with the same offences. Here it is almost five years later and the real culprit has yet to be charged.

If Superintendent Fenton is charged with unlawful arrest and discreditable conduct, just whose fault is it? Already known as the “one of the biggest infringements on civil liberties in peacetime Canada,” the G20 kettling of innocent bystanders was a disgrace that nobody wants to let pass so easily. And as any legal analyst can tell you, the Nuremburg defence—that the person was only following orders—is a fallacious defence. The person responsible for the orders and the person carrying out the orders are equally guilty of the crime.

The fact that Chief Bill Blair has never been charged is itself a crime against Canadian citizens. He had the foresight at the time to question his orders. He asked what law was it that allowed his police officers to keep citizens away (so many metres?) from the walled- off section of downtown Toronto where world leaders were meeting. He was given a law that had no direct connection to what he had asked. He did not question it. He promulgated a falsehood.

Bill Blair thinks that he can pass off the guilt to an underling. He has allowed this fall-guy to be charged under a police act hearing with unlawful arrest and discreditable conduct. This is not even before a criminal court judge who can consider the appropriate criminal sentence. It is only a bloody hearing. The worst the hearing officer can do is recommend the officer be discharged from the Toronto Police Service. Maybe he could even send the miscreant to bed without his supper.

Bill Blair will not be heading the Toronto Police Service much longer. His contract runs out in the spring and it is not being renewed. That was not a unanimous decision we hear but it was the decision and tough beans if Blair does not like it. So far he has gotten off easy. He has not acted honourably.

There have been a few rumours of Blair looking for a riding to run in for the coming federal election. Hopefully, he might run for the Conservatives. They deserve each other and they can lose together. Any suggestion that he might run as a Liberal would likely be met with a wall of resistance. It would probably cost the Liberals the riding.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

That was another good year.

January 8, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The New Year came and went and it was such a busy time for political comment that we missed commenting on the past year. And that year needs a look. Babel-on-the-Bay set some records. Readership is up. In 365 days, there were 365 commentaries. Other sites are asking for our commentaries. Others send us readers. The numbers are confusing because so many of you are frequent flyers. This blog is fun but on the occasional cold day, it can also be onerous.

But the record continues. Babel-on-the-Bay called the shots on every election of interest to us last year. The Liberal win in Quebec was a slam-dunk after a nouveau péquiste Pierre-Karl Péladeau blew his opening news conference.

Very few agreed with us that the Ontario Liberals were going to win so easily against the embarrassment of Conservative Timmy Hudak and the incompetence of New Democrat Andrea Horwath. And the amusing part of that was that we guessed wrong in our own riding. We have a very surprised new Liberal MPP from Babel. Since the local Whigs did not think they needed a rabble-rouser around for their token campaign, we missed what was happening in our own backyard.

The best long-range prognostication was the Scottish Referendum in Great Britain. That was a nip and tuck situation but the sensitivity to the Scottish side of the family came through for us. Mind you the Scottish side of the family left Dundee more than 200 years ago, so guess-work also helped.

Municipal elections can be an interesting study but Babel’s municipal election was a snore last year. Only the Toronto mayoralty contest held any interest and Babel-on-the-Bay went with winner John Tory from day one.

There was no question that Americans had tired of Mr. Obama’s rhetoric and both of the American Houses of Congress fell to the Republicans in November. Canadians will be sleeping with a very cranky, dyspeptic elephant for the next two years.

Everyone is now girding their loins (whatever that means?) for the three-way tilt for the pan-Canadian title of Prime Minister some time in 2015. The more serious problem is what this election is going to do to our democracy? That is the real question for the voters this year.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

A new age of civility for Toronto.

December 30, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Welcome to Toronto of 2015. There is a new chief magistrate, a new regime, a new spirit of cooperation with all levels of government and a mayor who brings a new level of civility to the job at City Hall. It is unseemly for the media buzzards to gather waiting for John Tory to stumble. When someone is the answer to all your prayers, how can the news media start to disrespect him before he is even settled in his new office?

The media must still be lost in the infighting of the last council to complain about the new mayor having to accept the skill sets of those tarnished by the previous regime. Sure there are still knives out for the selection of Denzil Minnan-Wong as deputy mayor. What that appointment and others such as keeping Frances Nunziata on as council chair are doing for John Tory is keeping idle hands occupied while he gets a handle on where this council is headed. Did you think there was really very much choice in many of the appointments?

What Toronto is getting is a new lease on life. It has a chance to regain the respect that makes the city a Mecca for North American conventions, a friendly tourist draw from Gay Pride to a Taste of the Danforth and a Caribbean festival love-in and, this coming year, host of the 2015 Pan-American Games. John Tory is well aware that Toronto is much more than the sum of its peoples, its attractions, its infrastructure and its decency. Toronto is a life experience and it takes a spectrum of attitudes, philosophies, knowledge and understanding to ensure its future.

Did the media really enjoy the vulgarity, bombast and lies of the Ford era? Have they forgotten the pleasure of having a couth and sophisticated mayor? This mayor was the choice of a city with a population of two and a half million. What right do we have to question that choice before the cheering is over?

What we would like to see in the next few years is a more grown-up and responsible city council and a grown-up and responsible news media. The downtown luddites on council have to recognize that bicycles do not replace a solution such as SmartTrack. They also have to recognize that a truly open and exciting city is not always what they prefer. Casinos, for example, are part of life and keeping them out of Toronto is a denial of freedoms.

So please welcome John Tory as mayor. He might not share your political philosophy but you know that he is an urbane and decent person. He will do well for Toronto.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]