Municipal Politics – Page 28

Making the Toronto casino the bogeyman.

March 21, 2013 by Peter Lowry

This fiasco has gone too far. Surely there are more important issues for Toronto Council and the Toronto newspapers to worry about. Constantly stirring the pot on a proposed casino is really counterproductive. It is a simple decision.

And any councillor that does not know the difference between guarantees and estimates needs to go back to grade school. If some councillor’s vote can be bought for an estimate of $100 million, why should he or she be reluctant to settle for a more realistic $50 million? It is not as though the money is going anywhere but into general revenues.

Would it really surprise the councillors and pundits to learn that Toronto will likely get more revenue from a casino than Ottawa? It is a simple difference in scale. Toronto serves a market area of over six million people. Ottawa is less than a third of that. Toronto also has some demographic differences and it does not have a pretty little casino already drawing from the market just across a bridge in Gatineau, Quebec.

And the question of a casino has very little to do with mathematics. It has more to do with what the city wants to be when it grows up. Toronto is a city that attracts people from around the world. It is cosmopolitan. It is sophisticated. It has fabulous restaurants and is a centre for design and fashion. It has world-class theatres and entertainments and festivals. It has great hotels, draws huge conventions and tries to have good sports teams in its excellent sports facilities. A casino is just another brick in that yellow brick road.

In reality, the Greater Toronto Area could probably support three world-class casinos. Does the casino have to be part of a larger hotel-entertainment complex? That is a question that the marketing experts can argue. If you were building the casino in the middle of a desert, you would probably need other amenities to attract families. Why does a casino in Toronto need all that additional cost hung on it? Why not use the casino to attract business to the good hotels the city already has? And casinos can support the international cuisine of the city.

When Premier Wynne called Ontario Lottery and Gaming tsar Paul Godfrey into her office the other day, she hopefully told him to try to tone things down. Nobody needs all this foolishness over a casino. And after all, when you have a guard dog like Paul Godfrey to guard your casino profits, you have to let him do the barking.

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Everybody wants the perfect mayor.

March 18, 2013 by Peter Lowry

You can spend a lifetime wanting what will never be. Last week there was a story in a Toronto paper about finding the best candidate, saying the city needs a mayor everybody can get behind. That will never happen.

It is important to remember that in the last municipal election in Toronto, Rob Ford was not the frontrunner early in the year. It was not until well into the campaign that his promise to get rid of the gravy train started to resonate. The only problem was that when elected, he found that there was no gravy train. He also found that bombast and a media following do not replace leadership. Ford had nothing for the voters.

As a councillor, Ford used a personal approach that worked with the voters in his ward. He was never re-elected in the ward because of his accomplishments but because of that relationship. The only problem is that as mayor of a city the size of Toronto, that kind of personal approach is impossible.

Even here in Babel with a population of about 135,000, the present mayor could hardly run for re-election with the approach he used so successfully in his first run for mayor. By your second go-around, your failures start to catch up with you. The best hope is for no competition. More politicians have been re-elected by weak competition than by accomplishments.

Toronto is much more complex. And to try to get elected in a city of that size without the open participation of political parties makes the situation close to impossible. Anyone who thinks that party organizations are not involved behind the scenes also believes in fairy tales. If, for example, Olivia Chow was foolish enough to leave federal politics for a run at the Toronto mayoralty, she would have a solid phalanx of New Democrat workers behind her. She would also find out what Liberal George Smitherman learned: Being strong in the centre city and Scarborough does not mean you can win in Etobicoke and North York.

Surprisingly Toronto today has the same problem as Babel. It is just a matter of scale. Both cities are lacking a sense of what they are and what they can be. A city is not just a place to live; it is an extension of you as a citizen. Today, both are insecure. Politics is not trusted. Hope is tenuous. Aspirations lack succour. People feel used. Where is the leadership of a future? What is that future? It all starts where we live.

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Toronto is no Vegas North.

March 15, 2013 by Peter Lowry

One of the stupidest statements we have heard lately is the claim by some people that they do not want a Las Vegas in Toronto. In a city that is so paternalistic that it used to chain up the swing sets in its public parks on Sundays, there is no fear of that.

You sometimes wonder why people run for municipal elections in Ontario cities. Is it some ingrained belief that only they are fit to tell the rest of us how to live? In our experience in working with neophyte civic politicians, we have found that most are naïve and have nothing beyond a few simple issues on their to-do list of political objectives. Some of the older ones are there to fight a particular change. The younger ones are there to build their credentials for higher office.

It has also been our impression that the longer one stays in municipal politics, the more the brain atrophies from lack of use. It is the singular reliance on the ultra-conservative city staff that allows the civic politician regular re-election for doing nothing. And God forbid, the moribund city staff be called upon to do anything more creative than raise the municipal taxes each year.

In Babel, for example, the question of a casino came and went before most citizens knew it was possible. The city staff wrote a report on the subject that reads as humorous fiction. They quoted every ignorant statement made by people in Babel who had no idea what they were talking about. The quotes from Babel’s own civic politicians were a sad embarrassment of misinformation.

In Toronto, the fear of becoming Vegas North is the silliest argument of all. Anyone who knows Las Vegas can assure you that there is absolutely no danger of Toronto becoming anything like Las Vegas. When hoodlum Bugsy Siegel decided to get into the casino business in the desert town of Las Vegas, it created a notoriety and panache to the resort town that has carried it to this day. The source of hundreds of films and television specials and series, Las Vegas thrills millions of visitors and convention attendees every year. When you play in Las Vegas, you leave reality behind.

Casinos in Ontario are a very small escape by comparison. They are sadly in-your-face authoritarian, badly designed and worse run. You have to close your eyes very tight to imagine that you are in wondrous Las Vegas.

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Star Wars versus the Killer Casino.

March 9, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Do you not wish that you could be part of the great casino adventure? The Toronto Star has even brought in its own Princess Leia from Vancouver to show you how to defeat Darth Vader Godfrey and the Killer Casino. The excitement keeps on growing.

First, we need to update the scene. It seems that Darth Vader Godfrey and his people from the Casino dark side have brought in a death star to be built by MGM and Cadillac Fairview. The plan is for this vast $3 billion casino to take over the entire Exhibition Place Grounds. This dastardly plan was only revealed last Wednesday after city officials and key councillors had secret showings of the scheme at the hotel across Queen Street from City Hall.

The Toronto Star had determined that there was no suitable Princess Leia character among the thousands of actors struggling to make a buck in dear old T.O. The Star brought in a ringer heroine from Vancouver. It seems she had helped found a movement to help stop another (larger) casino in Vancouver. The movement was called Vancouver Not Las Vegas.

Since nobody really wants another Las Vegas, you would think that sensible people would discuss the issue sensibly. Or is that asking too much? It seems that the pseudo Princess Leia was dealing in opinions rather than facts. That is convenient if nobody has any facts but we hope that city councillors leave their biases outside the council chamber when dealing with the issue.

But you really wonder just who MGM and Cadillac Fairview are working for when they promote such a hair-brained scheme? Why would Toronto citizens ever want a casino resort to take over their beloved Exhibition Place? Is there no other place for it in Toronto? Is Toronto that short of development lands?

But the key question is why would Toronto want a resort casino complex? Toronto is already a destination. People come to Toronto for many reasons. It is a city with theatres, entertainments, fine restaurants, year-round activities, hundreds of conventions, fine art galleries and hundreds of attractions. A casino is just another entertainment. What is needed is a casino—that is perfectly legal—and will help complete the mix of activities that are available in an exciting, open-minded and vibrant city.

Princess Leia’s only argument seems to be hearsay evidence about gambling addiction. The only problem with the argument is that if you continue to send addicts to illegal gambling facilities, they will never get the help they need.

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

Pipeline battle is a war of words.

March 5, 2013 by Peter Lowry

The escalating public relations war on pipeline naysayers has certainly won adherents. Just last evening, we were treated to Global’s regular 6:30 pm (EST) national news program coming to us from Calgary that was an unabashed commercial for the tar sands producers. And this morning we note that the Toronto Star editors have been visited by a coterie of Enbridge crusaders reassuring Ontario of their good intentions in reversing Enbridge Line 9 to send bitumen slurry through Toronto and across Southern Ontario. It is a clever quiver of words they use to carry their message.

The Enbridge experts have realized that Ontario motorists (most of us) are pissed about being gouged on the price of gasoline at the pumps. They tell the Star editors that the solution to this is to have Ontario and Quebec refineries use cheaper oil from bitumen. If the Toronto Star editors buy that story, they might also be interested in some swamp land you have for sale.

Up front, industry experts know that the eastern pipeline reversal plan is a way of getting bitumen slurry from the tar sands to Saint John, New Brunswick and Portland, Maine where it can be loaded into tankers. The slurry can then be shipped to countries that do not care about the increased damage to the environment in making synthetic oil out of the bitumen.

What these wonderful people from Enbridge seem to forget to mention is that Enbridge Pipeline 9 is an old pipeline that was designed to carry normal foreign crude to the refineries at Nanticoke and Sarnia from the east coast. To run bitumen slurry through the system, it has to be heated to higher temperatures and pushed through at a greater pressure. When we find the weak points in that pipeline, we will certainly hear about it—as well as smell it and live with it. Nobody can assure us of 100 per cent safety and reliability of the line.

These public relations people from Enbridge are about as subtle as a crutch. One of them is quoted by the Toronto Star as saying it is in the interest of Ontario drivers to keep the Montreal area refineries in business. One suspects that if they had to, the Montreal refineries could—at greater cost and much higher carbon emissions—process the bitumen from Alberta. They would certainly not want to pay world prices for it.

The good news is that some members of Toronto City Council have heard about this pipeline change. They also realize that it runs across the city. The fact that it crosses the two main water courses and could foul Toronto’s drinking water has also been noted. Maybe they will do something about this. The Toronto Star does not seem to be worried.

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

Babel, by definition, is corrupt.

February 28, 2013 by Peter Lowry

A regular reader of Babel-on-the-Bay admitted the other day that he was not interested when the subject of the day is Babel. He likes the description of Babel as a one-pony town but he claims that it is just not an interesting venue for political discussion. Despising the local Conservative MP is hardly unique in his estimation. He lives in Toronto and he ignores that city council. He probably voted for Rob Ford but he keeps it quiet. What he does not realize is that with his attitude, he is in fact encouraging the corruption of that government.

We have to give a damn. We have to watch what is going on. To give do-nothing assent to incompetence and indolence and chicanery means you will get the corrupt kind of government that you deserve. And in Babel, we have the conditions that breed corruption.

We lack the important safeguards such as a strong and knowledgeable news media. Between the TorStar-owned grocery flier wrap and the poor relation of the Toronto Sun, there might be one and a half real print reporters in this town who are grossly underpaid and expected to spend their time writing obits and editing information on pot-luck suppers and other coming events. The local television station provides secondary runs of shows for the CTV network and the local Rogers cable station seems to have difficulty in distinguishing between reporting news and making news. And what people think of the local radio outlets is best left unsaid.

Well-funded and interested ratepayer associations are key to making citizen voices heard by council. The only effective one in Babel was euchred recently when it failed to support its own candidate in an ill-timed by-election in its ward. It did not even seem to know the business in which the winning candidate was involved.

Citizen participation in council committees can be an important source of two-way communication but not in Babel. Those bringing ideas to the committees or directly to council have their ideas brushed aside without semblance of consideration. Even if the petitioner makes it past council, the city staff will bury the upstart’s ideas forever. One of the really clever ways to manipulate the situation with a really persistent idea is to bring in independent consultants who will report exactly what city staff wants to hear.

Oh yes, you thought that the mayor and council were your voice on council. Not in Babel. The city staff manage this city the way they want, and you should not forget it.

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

Revelling in others’ marketing mistakes.

February 25, 2013 by Peter Lowry

It is quite sad that the Toronto Star editorial writers seem to have so little understanding of the vagaries and ups and downs of the market place. Maybe being part of a vast, monolithic organization as Torstar causes them to be somewhat immune to such concerns. In one of their many anti-casino diatribes, they appeared to be chortling over the misfortunes of a multi-billion dollar resort casino in Atlantic City.

Yet, maybe there is a message in this. The problem with Revel, the Atlantic City casino resort, is that it denied everything. It was much too ritzy to survive in that tacky-town market. It ignored the day-trippers from New York who built that city. It focussed on an ocean that everyone turned their back on. It was a marketing experiment by people who must have flunked Marketing 101. And they spent billions during the second worst time in American economic history.

What Paul Godfrey and friends have against calling a casino a casino, we will never know. We can tell you truthfully that nobody visits Atlantic City to see the ocean, be pampered in luxury hotels and enjoy fine cuisine. They come to gamble, dammit.

So what does that mean in Toronto? Why are we talking resort hotels on the Exhibition grounds? Why would anyone want to overcrowd the Convention Centre, basket ball/hockey palace and baseball park area with more hotel rooms and a casino? The truth is that Toronto is already a destination. It has lots of great hotels, wonderful restaurants representing the world of cuisine, the best of theatres, sports, parks and entertainments. All it needs is a few casinos to spice things up and be a full service city.

If you pushed a bit, Woodbine Entertainment could have table games in place in less than a month. It already has a casino in place, if it would just get rid of some of those slots. There are also a bunch of questionable banquet halls around the city where casinos could spring up like magic.

Be honest people. Toronto will never be Las Vegas North. You really do not want it to be. You want Toronto to be the open, friendly, welcoming city that accepts people, it always has been. You do not want to force your standards on others. You believe in live and let live. And if people want to gamble—which is quite legal—you want it to be in friendly, well managed, properly regulated premises. That should be our only concern.

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

Location, location, location: builds casinos.

February 9, 2013 by Peter Lowry

It has finally been deduced that the main argument in Toronto over casinos is where they will be located. Some people got it into their minds that the Toronto Convention Centre would be a great location. All that has done is confuse the issue.

It has already been determined that nobody cares what the residents of Toronto feel about the issue. The level of ignorance among the citizenry, their politicians and the news media has made it clear that any discussion of the facts for or against the issues involved is a waste of time. There are just too many people who are neither interested in facts nor willing to allow others their individual rights.

The few politicians actually willing to fairly discuss the pros and cons of the casino issue are lost in the overwhelming rift between the Mayor Ford supporters and the Mayor Ford haters. If you are a Ford supporter, you are expected to favour a casino. If you are a Ford detractor, you are expected to shun casinos, demon rum and the devil in equal parts.

But the biggest problem—mentioned earlier—is the location problem. The people promoting the Toronto Convention Centre location for a casino are crazy like foxes. They could care less about the infrastructure problems involved. So what if the area is hyper congested and unable to support the sheer numbers of people. That is bonus day to these developers. Congestion makes them rich. That is their nirvana. It assures their future.

If you have never stood outside the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas on a Saturday evening to watch that panorama thingy they do in Vegas, you might not understand. There is a magic to the event. And if you do not have your pocket picked and get groped by at least three hookers, you have not fully enjoyed the scene.

But realistically, the better Toronto locations for a casino are at the west end of the Exhibition Grounds, Woodbine Race Track or at the far end of Scarborough. In any of those locations, the land should be owned by the city and the city’s share of the proceeds are easily ensured.

Of course this might require that some of the city politicians grow up and realize that they cannot stand Canute-like against the tides of human nature. The people in Toronto who want to go to a casino will go anyway. Why give the profits to bus companies?

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

Rallying the anti-casino forces in Toronto.

February 5, 2013 by Peter Lowry

The Toronto Star ran another anti-casino story last Friday. This was not an editorial. It was not even supposed to be an opinion piece. The story was above the fold on the front page of the GTA section—supposedly a collection of news reports concerning the Greater Toronto Area. This story was headlined: Anti-casino forces like odds. The subhead went on to explain: Survey of city councillors shows few support efforts to bring gambling facility to Toronto.

Welcome to the Toronto Star’s version of responsible journalism. This article says 21 of Toronto’s 45-member city council were interviewed. It seems that of the 21 interviewed, 11 of them were opposed to a downtown casino or were leaning that way. Somehow half of the councillors surveyed approved of a casino at Woodbine. You would normally blame the writer for such a confused story but, in this case, the blame should be shared with the headline writer and the editor responsible.

The objective of the story was obviously to promote a new “No Casino Toronto” organization. To quote the Star, this is a group that has grown from three concerned women to “a citywide, social media-savvy force.” It has already spent $3200 and is spending more to hand out 1000 lawn signs. And if the Toronto Star had not reported this, nobody would have noticed.

The group should probably not waste any more money. Their friends at the Toronto Star have much deeper pockets and are going to do their best to torpedo any downtown casino. Besides, the group reports that they have had a recent surge of activity on their Facebook site and Twitter account. They think they have turned the corner. They believe that their warnings of inflated benefits, and social and economic ills can defeat the casino “Goliaths.” Obviously this negative group are contributing no new knowledge to the discussion and are just repeating the same old unfounded claims of the poor working man being duped of his hard-earned wages. They obviously know nothing about gambling’s contribution in the entertainment industry or anything about the fun of gambling.

They think they are opposing large industry behemoths that are out to rape and pillage on their city streets. They appear totally ignorant of the illegal gambling in Toronto and the criminal element that this activity supports. They should take the time to find out more about what they are talking about. And so should the Toronto Star.

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

Toronto Star ramps up the casino war.

January 26, 2013 by Peter Lowry

The Toronto Star has something against casinos. What started as a bias in news reporting is now a constant editorial diatribe. In a lengthy editorial Friday, the paper suggested that a vote on a new mayor of Toronto could include a referendum on a casino. The editorial suggested that a $7 million by-election for mayor could be justified by including this referendum. It is likely that the Star was a bit disappointed with the announcement by the court that Rob Ford could stay in office.

The only problem with the Star’s proposal is that a referendum on a casino would be meaningless. Nobody really cares if a majority of Torontonian’s want a casino or not. It is not their decision to make. Ontario Lottery and Gaming did say that they did not want to put a casino in a municipality that did not want one. They were just being polite. They can put casinos pretty well anywhere they want in Ontario.

Is it illegal to have a casino in Toronto? No it is not. That decision has already been made by the Province. Is it a zoning problem? If it does become a zoning problem, it has to be dealt with by city council—subject to being overturned by the Ontario Municipal Board. Sorry folks, the question as to whether you are for or against having a casino is irrelevant.

And frankly, after listening to and reading the comments of many hundreds of people who do not want a casino in their backyard, you find that the ignorance on the subject is appalling. This is like arguing over a neighbourhood restaurant in the plaza at the corner. If the Italian restaurant there has gone out of business, you do not get a vote on whether a Tex-Mex restaurant can move in. It makes no difference if Tex-Mex food gives you heartburn. You do not have to go to that restaurant.

You probably feel that you are very lucky to live in our democracy. That does not mean that the majority can tell everyone else what they can or cannot do. Democracy means that the people rule but they rule best by respecting the rights of others. Our Charter of Rights makes that point well. The Toronto Star editorial people need to catch up on it.

We fondly remember the days when the Toronto Star was the voice of liberalism in Toronto. It cared about people. It cared about the important issues. It stood up for individual rights. It fought bigotry. It mattered.

Today the Toronto Star appears to be just another cog in an unfeeling corporate machine. It seems it is nothing but a profit centre in a rough, tough media world. It certainly needs better editorial direction. The Star used to be a pretty good newspaper.

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