No mayor seems to read his city council better than John Tory in Toronto. With a few simple proposals, Tory defanged the move by the council’s inner-city left wing to cut the police budget. It led to a long day of debate to the disappointment of the downtown councillors as
Continue readingTag: Municipal politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: In the Wild—West of Toronto.
Who knew? When Barrie’s Patrick Brown, was ejected from Queen’s Park early in 2018, he picked Peel Region for his comeback. Rejected by his fellow conservatives in the legislature, Brown’s instinct was to return to municipal politics. He knows little else. He had no idea though that he had picked
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When NIMBY’s win, we all lose.
It has been almost a year since Barrie city council decided to do further research on a safe injection site in their town. Some of my neighbours were there to tell the councillors that they did not want it in their neighbourhood. I am sorry I was not there. I
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Toronto wants to choose mediocre?
Toronto councillors are setting things up to enable voters to choose mediocre council candidates in 2022. This was brought on by the previous provincial government allowing municipal councils to opt for ranked balloting as an alternative to first-past-the-post voting for council positions. The system seems simple but the complications grow
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It comes down to sidewalks.
Do we trust our governments to spend our tax money wisely? What kind of democracy is this when our municipal politicians hew to the right or left of the political divide? In Toronto, that supposed haven of liberalism, the debate rages at city council about the costs of mechanically clearing
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Repeating history with Doug Ford.
The worst of the mistakes made by Mike Harris, conservative premier of Ontario from 1995 to 2002, was the downloading of provincial government expenses to municipalities. It was a stupid and ill-advised. And despite the lessons learned, we now have premier Doug Ford following in Harris’ draconian footsteps. Where the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mad Dogs, Englishmen and Candidates.
That knock on your door on this hot July day is more likely to be a candidate for the coming election. This time is gold for candidates, they can pick and choose strategic areas of the riding, they can test various approaches for the campaign to come and, most important,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Should Toronto be a Charter City?
There are different definitions of a charter city. In the United Kingdom, the charter is bestowed by the Crown and it enables those cities to make their own rules in regard to municipal affairs. In the United States, cities are controlled by the state where they are located. As Canada
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Toronto knows how to party.
Hey, knock off the complaints about the party in Toronto for the Raptors team last Monday. With three days notice, the decision was to parade the team from the Exhibition grounds to city hall. The effort involved thousands of city employees and police. And it was a rain or shine
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Kindergarten for conservative candidates.
There is nothing new about politicians who learn their craft while climbing the ladder of politics. Many make a start on school board, get to know the people of their area and wait for the right time to move up to municipal councillor. Municipal council, in turn, can become the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Fake news on the opioid front?
We were reading a poster telling us about a community meeting to discuss a proposed safe injection site in the neighbourhood. It invited anyone who wanted more information or had concerns to come to the meeting. We had barely finished reading when a voice behind us said, “It’s all a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Why we are pissed with politicians.
They are even quantifying just how pissed Canadians are with their politicians these days. It makes sense. And interestingly, we see they are happier with their mayors and councillors. These local people are able to generate a 50 per cent approval rate. Provincial and federal politicos do not make it
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Brown bounces back.
This is not a contrite political Patrick Brown bragging about his comeback from being a nobody. This is a brazen Brown bragging that he has bested the best. Comfortably ensconced in the mayor’s chair in Brampton, Ontario, he has four years to choose his next steps. And he expects CTV
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “Keep your enemies closer.”
Born in Chicago in 1901, my mother never did entirely lose the biases of her upbringing. She was something of a traffic hazard the way she drove her walker in the seniors’ residence in downtown Toronto where she spent her final years. I remember one time she was proudly telling
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: To Brampton Town with Brown.
Barrie’s sorry excuse for a newspaper, the weekly Advance, has announced that Brampton mayor Patrick Brown is its newsmaker of the year. Coincidently the Barrie library had a copy of Brown’s tell-all book Take Down: The attempted political assassination of Patrick Brown—by none other than Patrick Brown himself. It was
Continue readingScripturient: The slow death of media credibility
A story in the recent issue of New Republic opens: “A decade of turmoil has left a weakened press vulnerable to political attacks, forced into ethical compromises, and increasingly outstripped by new forms of digital media.” This points to the continuing erosion of public confidence in traditional media. While this
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Persons who help themselves get most.
The headline was supposed to be ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ It did not seem right though to invoke a Deity. Considering how many Deities are promoted around Toronto these days, it could have ended up a three-line headline. This started out to be about Ontario premier Doug Ford.
Continue readingScripturient: SVJI costs continue to skyrocket
As I predicted earlier, the costs for Saunderson’s Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) are going to climb through the roof. And of course you, the taxpayer, are going to pay for it. Last month local media carried stories that the SVJI – scheduled to begin this month (November) – wasn’t going
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Too many senior managers are leaving the City of St. Albert: It’s time for City Council to explain what’s going on
ST. ALBERT, Alberta What the heck is going on at the City of St. Albert? According to the headline on a small news story inside Saturday’s edition of the St. Albert Gazette, our community’s twice-weekly newspaper, “City restructures upper management.” That’s one way of putting it. From here, though, the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Gods are busy; you fix it.
No doubt you have been reading many of these opinion pieces on how to fix this or that at Toronto city hall. We already know that those nincompoops at Queen’s Park think cutting city council in half will solve the problems. Others are lending their low view of things by
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