Toronto Life: Preville on Politics

Preville on Politics

Posts with category ‘General’

Toronto: A nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Philip Preville

Excuse me, are you a tourist? Yes? Okay, then: Hi! My name is Toronto, and welcome to my city! We’ve Been Expecting You!™ Do you like my new slogan? Really? Because it’s important to me that you are Somewhat Satisfied, Satisfied or Very Satisfied with your visit, and I will be asking you about that before you leave. Want to know something funny? The new slogan isn’t new at all! It’s actually a retread of an old ’70s jingle for a hotel chain. It went like this: “We’ll be ex-PECK-ting YOUUUUUUU!” Nice, eh? Anyway, here’s your welcome candle. Let me show you around. No! Really! I insist. I’ve shunted the kids into the backyard, just like Tourism Toronto CEO David Whitaker told me to do. Let’s go. Continue...


The Eglinton Avenue East death trap

Posted on May 14, 2008 by Philip Preville

When I interviewed Councillor Adrian Heaps, who heads the city’s cycling committee, for my column in the current issue of Toronto Life, I asked him if there was anywhere in the city where he thought bike lanes would not work. His answer: Eglinton East, where the cars move so fast at such high volumes that the street might as well be a highway. “I would not put them there right now,” he told me. This morning’s news (“2 dead, 8 hurt”) shows us why. Incidentally, that’s the second median-jumping multi-vehicle crash along that stretch in less than a month (the first didn’t result in any deaths, despite involving multiple cars).

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Privatizing the TTC—how could it be any worse than what we’ve got?

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Philip Preville

I’m gone for the rest of this week, and when I come back we’ll have a brand-spanking-new, totally redesigned—and renamed!—blog to launch in this space. But before I go, I need to point out two items. First, go peek at the very funny separated-at-birth photos of Toronto Mayor David Miller and London Mayor Boris Johnson over on Doug Bell’s blog, Spectator. Second, read Dr. Gridlock’s column in this morning’s Globe, in which he examines the possibility of privatizing part of the TTC, and in which he gets a key component of the logic backwards. Continue...


Toronto incomes are on the decline (or, The Friday Pessimist, Thursday edition)

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Philip Preville

Given that I’ve been harping on the state of the declining economy for nearly a year now, you’d think I’d be happy to have my prognostications repeatedly proven correct. At this point, however, it feels like piling on. Today’s Statscan Daily provides the latest census data on incomes. Dig a little deeper and you discover that Toronto incomes are on the decline—not a relative decline, but a real decline. I can’t find those numbers myself, but here’s a snippet from the e-mail notice I just received from Jack Layton: “The 2006 census data reveals a significant downward trend for Toronto families of 2.4 per cent despite a national increase in income of 3.7 per cent and a provincial increase of 1.4 per cent.” Continue...


The upside of being a have-not province

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Philip Preville

It appears Ontario may soon be on the receiving end of transfer payments. So says this report co-authored by TD chief economist Don Drummond (who seems to issue all the most controversial economic reports) and this screaming headline in the Star. This news, though unfortunate, does confer some benefits. As a have-not province, Ontarians can expect the rest of the country to stop quietly, seethingly resenting them. Henceforth, Ontarians will be made fun of out in the open, in an endearingly corn-pone kind of way. In other words, “Ontarie” jokes will now replace Newfie jokes.

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Get your TTC strike rebate now!

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Philip Preville

Attention all riders! The TTC is offering pass holders up to $9.50 as a refund for the two days of travel lost to the strike. The litany of remaining perpetual problems—poor service, overcrowding, et cetera—will continue to be charged at full price. That is all. Ding, dang, dong.

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Transit Riders of Toronto, Unite!

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Philip Preville

I found myself having an unexpected reaction to this past weekend’s transit strike: I was glad there was no sign of the TTC anywhere. No buses, no streetcars, no workers, no management. Over the course of the past four weeks, everything about the negotiations—the demands, the strike threats, the nail-biting, the coverage, the frequent Bob Kinnear appearances on CP24, the rare, pale and ghostly Gary Webster sightings—has left me hot under my white collar. Some commentators, most notably this one, felt that Friday night’s hasty job action represented the moment the TTC employees’ inner kettle finally hit the boiling point. It was the moment mine boiled dry. I was happy to have it all disappear for a couple of days. Continue...


Good news! Prices going up!

Posted on April 25, 2008 by Philip Preville

I had promised myself that, this week, I would put an end to what has become my ritual Friday Pessimist Blog Entry on the state of the economy. Good thing, too. Everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon this morning. For those of you with an interest in worst-case scenario survival, here’s a quick-read eye-popper explaining how, essentially, mortgage defaults in San Diego have caused havoc for the entire nation of Iceland.

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Why not let the kids redesign Leslieville?

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Philip Preville

The battle over big-box retail is heating up in the city’s east end. SmartCentres is planning a 650,000-square-foot retail development on Eastern Avenue near Leslie Street that may include a Wal-Mart. The city has vetoed the plan. The developer has appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board. Asked to declare a provincial interest in the matter, Queen’s Park declined. The matter goes before the OMB next month. We’ve seen this before. Continue...


The magic number for city labour negotiations: $240 million

Posted on April 22, 2008 by Philip Preville

The last time I ran into Bob Kinnear, head of the Amalgamated Transit Union, was last October at city hall, on the occasion of the council meeting to ratify the mayor’s new land-transfer tax. There were lots of union folks in the bleachers that day, including Brian Cochrane of the outside workers’ union and John Cartwright of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. Now that the city has completed its bargaining with Kinnear and his TTC employees, it can look forward to negotiations with Cochrane and its other unions in the months ahead. One wonders if, after all is said and done, there will be any money left over from the new taxes for anything other than salaries.

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Top two reasons the TTC won’t go on strike (plus one reason why they might)

Posted on April 18, 2008 by Philip Preville

By now, you are either busy making alternate commuting plans for next week or you still have your head buried in the sand about Sunday’s looming 4 p.m. TTC strike deadline. Me, I got my bike tuned up last week. Nevertheless, I see two compelling reasons why a strike will be averted, one for each side of the bargaining table.

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Breaking news: Toronto real estate market goes loonie

Posted on April 18, 2008 by Philip Preville

Wow, desperation sure takes hold fast. The pathological realtors will no doubt be holding their breath until the winning bid is announced.

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The real estate meltdown: now it’s officially official

Posted on April 18, 2008 by Philip Preville

You no longer have to take my word for it. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s newspaper of record (a nostalgia-laden title that is increasingly meaningless, but that comes in handy in times like this when I want to buttress an argument of my own), is today reporting that housing sales are down across the country by a whopping 18.7 per cent in March over the previous year. Even the bank economists are now off the bandwagon.

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The secret lives of elevators

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Philip Preville

Attention all urban planning geeks and infrastructure fetishists: you must read this fabulous New Yorker piece about elevators by Nick Paumgarten right now. The story begins by pointing out one of the great secrets-beneath-our-noses of urban living: the modern city owes its existence not to cars or computers, but to elevators. The story will also make you cry. Might sound improbable to some of you, but those of us with a passion for bricks and mortar always knew infrastructure could do that. Continue...


Enough from Bob Kinnear. It’s time for the TTC to speak up

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Philip Preville

Is it just me, or is anyone else being driven batty by the progress of negotiations between the Toronto Transit Commission and its union? It’s not so much the anxiety of a looming strike—any day now, apparently—that gets under my skin as the entire public relations battle surrounding it. In this, the TTC is being totally owned by union head Bob Kinnear, who nonchalantly drops bombs every time he saunters up to the microphone. Among them, the TTC is playing hardball; the TTC doesn’t want to pay workers their full salary when they take time off due to on-the-job injuries; the presence of provincial mediators won’t solve anything; the TTC wants newly hired maintenance workers to take a 25 per cent pay cut; the negotiations are being undermined by the intransigence of TTC general manager Gary Webster. Clearly, the TTC is an evil empire. And what does the TTC have to say for itself in all this? Nothing. Continue...


401 food: A history of edible accidents

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Philip Preville

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On Monday morning, a tractor-trailer overturned on Highway 401 near Winston Churchill Boulevard, setting loose some 50 pigs into crowded highway traffic. It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of occurrence—the kind of thing you can’t bear to watch, but from which you can’t bear to look away—but, believe it or not, the traffic chopper guys had seen it all before. Over the past 25 years, just about every type of domesticated animal has taken a walk down North America’s busiest highway. (Perhaps there ought to be signs that read “yield to merging livestock.”) And live animals are just the beginning: if you can eat it, it’s been spilled on the 401. Forthwith, a summary of the highway’s recent edible accidents. Continue...


Is the city throwing vacuum waste into the trash?

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Philip Preville

If you read the stories last week about the Toronto city staff report on vacuum waste, you might have gotten the impression that the idea had been given the green light in the West Don Lands, where Waterfront Toronto would like to proceed with it. Here’s how Geoff Rathbone, the city’s general manager of solid waste, put it to the National Post: “Should they wish to proceed with that, it’s really their decision, not ours…. If something like that was built, we could pick up the material at the end of the pipe. So the decision would be Waterfront Toronto’s or the developer’s.” Continue...


“Junior” Giambrone refuses to swallow union bait

Posted on April 11, 2008 by Philip Preville

Yesterday, transit union president Bob Kinnear decided to run an idea up the flagpole and see if TTC chair and political whippersnapper Adam Giambrone was fool enough to salute it: he asked the thirtysomething Giambrone to take over from TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster as the city’s lead negotiator in contract talks. “If Gary Webster is still in control,” Kinnear said, “we are very concerned we will not be able to reach a deal.” He even tried to ply Giambrone with flattery, saying what a good listener he is, but Junior didn’t flinch: “Our negotiating team has the confidence of the TTC commission” was his reply. Still, Giambrone better hold fast and watch his back.

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David Miller and the politics of YouTube

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Philip Preville

David Miller has taken his campaign for a Canada-wide handgun ban to YouTube. He is asking people from across Canada to sign a petition that he will personally deliver to Parliament Hill. It’s a fine and worthy objective. It’s also nice to see someone other than John Tory take the lead on the issue of gun violence in the city. Still, I can’t help but notice that our mayor is full of bold initiatives for governments other than his own.

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There goes the neighbourhood: Top three reasons for plummeting real estate sales

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Philip Preville

Attention, homeowners: the starting gun for the Great Real Estate Meltdown of 2008 has now been sounded. It actually went off about a month ago, though you may not have noticed, since it was sounded in dulcet tones, with a prediction that home sales would “drop slightly.” So much for that: sales in March are down 22 per cent over last year. There are three preferred theories for the drop in sales. Here they are, ranked by the degree to which they are made of wishful fantasy. Continue...


$100,000 worth of sunshine

Posted on April 2, 2008 by Philip Preville

Everyone has their take on Ontario’s public sector salary disclosure records, also known as the Sunshine List, which names everyone on the public payroll earning $100,000 or more. My take is that it’s far more fun to peruse the list yourself, so here you go. You can look up your favourite politician or the prof who flunked you out—or you can parse the many, many, very ordinary job titles earning good dough—and develop your own take.

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How I spent my Earth Hour

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Philip Preville

At eight o’clock every night, I sit in a rocking chair with my son on my lap and read him stories by the light of an electric lamp. Lights out comes around 8:15 p.m. This past Saturday was right on schedule. As Earth Hour approached, my son and I were upstairs while my wife was in the living room trying to get some work done on her laptop—unexpectedly so, since she was supposed to be at work. I had told her at suppertime that I thought we should observe Earth Hour. “Observe” somehow seemed more apropos than “celebrate” or “participate in,” given the event’s religious tint. In fact, the zeal of the daily propaganda in the Toronto Star had kinda put us both off, but we decided to do it anyway.

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Schadenford: The arrest of Rob Ford, city hall hoser

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Philip Preville

Poor Rob Ford. If only he’d slept beside a machine all his life like those Orientals from the Orient, he probably wouldn’t be in this pickle. As you surely know by now, Ford was arrested Wednesday on charges of assault and threatening death in a domestic dispute involving his wife. When you heard the news, did you have that weird paradoxical reaction of being simultaneously surprised and not surprised? Shocked and blasé? You know, the kind of vaguely self-aware reaction that would make for a passable media studies paper or maybe, if you’re Lynn Crosbie, another tortured column in the Globe? Because when you think about it, didn’t the latest circus seem inevitable?

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Richard Florida: from celebrity academic to budget highlight

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Philip Preville

Being Richard Florida comes with some nice perks. Your name really does turn up everywhere, including in government budget documents. Here are the two awkward paragraphs in which he is featured: Continue...


Flaherty vs. McGuinty: Top Five Theories

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Philip Preville

Why is Jim Flaherty going out of his way to pick a political fight with Dalton McGuinty over Ontario’s business tax rate? It’s anybody’s guess, and the guessing is getting good. Let’s run down the top five.

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Toronto, Canada’s new political orphan

Posted on March 19, 2008 by Philip Preville

Paul Wells was first out of the gate with the bull’s eye analysis of Monday’s by-election results, which is that Toronto is becoming Liberaler and Liberaler. It’s echoed this morning by the Star’s Chantal Hébert. In federal politics, Toronto increasingly agrees with itself yet is increasingly at odds with the rest of the country. And it is so convinced of its correctness that it is prone to dismissing other views for their obvious failure to see things the same way it does.

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Make the mayor accountable—give him a political party

Posted on March 19, 2008 by Philip Preville

The Globe scored an exclusive with Mayor David Miller, and the result is a headline plucked from a 2005 time capsule: the mayor wants more powers from the province. Nowhere does the story raise the issue of municipal political parties, even though it quotes one councillor—Brian Ashton—at length who supports them. Reading the Globe and Star on this issue is starting to feel awkward. You have to work hard to write around a growing blind spot.

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Toronto Centre, this is your wake-up call

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Philip Preville

Good morning to the riding of Toronto Centre. It’s Monday, the forecast calls for sunny skies and temperatures around O°C, and you are voting in a by-election today. Did you forget? That’s okay. So did the folks up in Willowdale, the other Toronto riding which also goes to the polls today. The people of Vancouver Quadra in B.C. and Desnethé–Missinippi–Churchill River in Saskatchewan also let it slip. So did the rest of us. We really ought to call these the Daylight Savings By-Elections: something you’d have completely forgotten if your morning paper didn’t remind you.

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I am battery recycling’s nemesis

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Philip Preville

Wednesday’s Globe and Mail was up in arms over a proposal by Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, chair of the public works committee, to create a deposit-return system for batteries in order to keep them out of landfills. In his column, John Barber explains the root of the proposal’s inanity: Queen’s Park will soon be establishing its own province-wide system to divert such materials. The provincial system will be voluntary and deposit-free and involve many drop-off locations. Alas, this is why it won’t work, and I present myself as Exhibit A to prove my point: I am in the habit of tossing used batteries into the trash, and I can’t be bothered to behave differently.

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The genius of Dwight Duncan

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Philip Preville

Mayor David Miller has, for years, repeated that cities need “revenues that grow with the economy.” The unfortunate reality is that the economy doesn’t always grow. A bad year can leave tax coffers dry, and an unexpectedly good year can leave them nice and flush. So Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s announcement yesterday was a clever way of sharing both risk and reward: if Queen’s Park has a good year, the city will share in the surplus, but if it has a bad year or a just-OK year, the city gets nothing. Continue...


Pricing Toronto’s roads: Looks like I have some ’splainin’ to do

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Philip Preville

Toronto Life’s April issue is now on newsstands and includes a column by me that lays out the case for road tolls in the GTA—a surprise, perhaps, to anyone who’s been reading this blog long enough to remember when I used to rail against the idea. Among those smirking with satisfaction will be fellow Toronto freelancer John Lorinc, a long-time proponent of road pricing who once challenged me to a blogger’s debate on the issue. I said I’d take him up on it, then never did; I preferred to change my mind without being hectored into it. Except that I haven’t really been converted to the idea. I’ve just become resigned to it.

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Snow expected. Better put the army on alert

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Philip Preville

Winter brings not only snow, but snow-induced anarchy. Never was a Canadian city so ill prepared for that thing that happens every year between December and March. Martial law may be the only solution.

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Rob Ford insults while the rest of the council wastes time

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Philip Preville

City council met this week. The highlights: half a dozen members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty stormed the council floor in support of the city’s homeless, and Rob Ford managed to insult the majority of the world’s population when he stepped back in time and announced that “Oriental people work like dogs.” He later stated that he never meant to offend “anybody from any community.” In other words: the highlights were the freaky circus sideshows. As far as the actual business of council is concerned, the only thing worth mentioning is how long it took to accomplish so little.

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Memo to John Tory: Unleash the asshole within

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Philip Preville

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I recently got turned on to a blog called Ottawa Watch and found this enjoyable little post about the “asshole factor” in politics. It mentions just about everyone except John Tory, who, judging by my discussions with him and every public display of behaviour, is a really nice guy. Maybe that’s the problem.

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A message from our political leaders: Don’t pay attention to politics

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Philip Preville

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I was away last week, but before I left, the big story was a WWE-style war of words between “Pencil Neck” McGuinty and Jimmy “Hell’s Elf” Flaherty. Upon my return I find the war has “escalated.” Continue...


The elephant in the room is a party animal

Posted on February 25, 2008 by Philip Preville

This blog will be on hiatus for the rest of this week. This means that there’s no point in checking out my take on tomorrow’s federal budget, because I won’t have one (and we will all be better off as a result). Nor will I bother having an opinion on what John Tory did for those three hours on Saturday, except to say that I hope he had a nice nap and that I’m not surprised by his final decision because I think he has a messiah complex: he believes his party needs him (apparently more than anyone else does). But before I go, I do want to sound off, briefly, on the rejuvenation of the “strong mayor” hullabaloo at city hall.

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Flaherty v. McGuinty: Many cans of whoop-ass later

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Philip Preville

Hot on the heels of Wednesday’s melancholy post about the rotten economy comes the news that federal finance minister Jim Flaherty and Premier Dalton McGuinty are going toe-to-toe over who is responsible for it. There are many conclusions to draw from this spat. The first is that the economy must be pretty bad for two government leaders to be so eager to pin blame. The second is that a federal election must be just around the corner. The third is that the stakes are high, particularly for the entire automobile industry and, in a roundabout way, my old pal Richard Florida.

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Toronto road toll report day

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Philip Preville

The board of Metrolinx meets today. Among the issues sure to be discussed: road tolls, which are discussed in Green Paper #4, which went online for public comments just this week. Mark my words, this one isn’t going away.

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A (vague) new plan for Toronto’s future

Posted on February 21, 2008 by Philip Preville

Ask a panel for unanimity and you get vagueness. The mayor’s fiscal review panel—made up of blue-chip businessmen, academics and labour—released its report at a packed press conference this morning. It’s an 86-page opus full of recommendations, the most concrete—and contentious—of which is a proposal to toll the city’s highways (more on that later.) Contrary to widespread rumour, it does not recommend the privatization of Toronto Hydro, although, to judge from what the panelists had to say this morning, I got the sense that at least some of them wish it did.

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House poor indeed

Posted on February 20, 2008 by Philip Preville

Anyone who feels trapped by their mortgage will want to read the cover story in the March edition of Toronto Life (which, alas, is not available on-line, but is on newsstands now). It’s worth the cover price. I mention this partly to plug my employer, but mostly because, between the magazine’s cover story and the articles in my morning newspaper, I feel like everything I read these days has been lifted from The Journal of Shrinking Living Standards. It’s hard to name a household staple whose costs aren’t rising.

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Five reasons Queen’s Park should take over the TTC

Posted on February 15, 2008 by Philip Preville

Councillor Karen Stintz must be enjoying the catbird seat today. Back in October, she was the first to say that the city should hand over the TTC’s subway routes to Queen’s Park. Now Premier Dalton McGuinty has pronounced himself in favour of the Stintz Doctrine. It would be unwise to underestimate the premier’s will on this one, because this is about more than just transit. Here are my top five reasons why Queen’s Park should—and probably will—take over all or part of the TTC.

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Face it, Toronto: it snows here

Posted on February 14, 2008 by Philip Preville

For the past two weeks, I have tried to resist blogging about snow, snowstorms, icy sidewalks and uncleared roads. To me, writing storm stories is like writing about growing grass. Snow and ice happen in winter. Eventually they go away, by one means or another, and the elderly stay indoors for a few days, while the rest of us trundle through—life in a northern town. Meanwhile, every other media outlet in the city can’t get enough of this stupid story. So I’m belatedly joining the fray, just to rub it in by letting everyone know how much I am really, really enjoying all this snow.

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In Toronto, users pay—but for what?

Posted on February 13, 2008 by Philip Preville

Now that the hysteria over recreation fees has subsided—a 21 per cent increase for city programs reduced to eight per cent, which is still more than quadruple the inflation rate—perhaps we can now have a sanguine discussion about the philosophical ramifications of user fees. Whether it’s for recreation or trash collection or anything else, the more the city charges for individual services, the more demanding residents will become, and the less sympathetic they will be when the city cries poor, as it so often does these days.

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The Toronto Lexicon, entry no. 6

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Philip Preville

Snow (sno:) 1. Frozen precipitation in the form of white or translucent hexagonal ice crystals presenting as soft white flakes. 2. A form of precipitation witnessed every year in Toronto, to great astonishment. 3. Precipitation that Torontonians pretend isn’t happening. 4. Potential cause for the implementation of martial law. (See also Cold.)

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The moral and political trappings of pet ownership

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Philip Preville

Church organizations have spoken out against bottled water. One city councillor has proposed a tax on the bottles. It’s bad for the environment, the common weal and your soul. But buy it for your pup.

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When every home is a waste-transfer station

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Philip Preville

I was wondering when someone was going to complain about these. A city that prides itself on its high density, and on its willingness to intensify further still, is issuing trash and recycling bins designed for suburbia. The big ones are the size of condos themselves.

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Raise property taxes all you want…

Posted on February 6, 2008 by Philip Preville

…but don’t mess with hockey. I am at home recovering from the flu, so I missed yesterday’s storm at city hall—but even from my recovery bed I could hear disaster brewing. Tuesday morning’s news of a proposed 18 per cent fee hike for ice time at city rinks was the main topic on The Fan 590. I urge you to pause and digest that information: the all-sports talk radio station—normally devoted to hockey, basketball, football, soccer, fighting, lacrosse and on down to tiddlywinks—was doing a call-in show about municipal user fee policy, and the lines were lit up like the ACC Jumbotron.

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Municipal parties: cast your vote!

Posted on February 1, 2008 by Philip Preville

My column in the February issue of Toronto Life argued that it was time to introduce a party system to city hall. You gotta buy the magazine to read my take, but there are other talented and insightful people besides me writing about it, too. Now the Spacing Wire is polling people on it. Go vote. Continue...


A call from Shelley Carroll

Posted on February 1, 2008 by Philip Preville

I got a call from Shelley Carroll’s office earlier this week, telling me I overlooked some key items in this year’s budget, specifically on issues I have raised previously. Here are two tasty points of crow for me to eat.

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Segregation Schmegregation

Posted on January 30, 2008 by Philip Preville

I hate to bring it up, but… Continue...


Remember the toilet (or, Changing the budget tune)

Posted on January 28, 2008 by Philip Preville

Mayor David Miller and Budget Chief Shelley Carroll—whose name is increasingly whispered whenever talk turns to the issue of potential Miller successors—today announced what they called the first balanced budget since amalgamation. The truth is that every budget since amalgamation has been balanced; what sets this one apart is that Queen’s Park delivered the bailout in advance, so there was no squabbling over the shortfall. Follow this link to see the city’s platitude-filled, stock-photography-laden budget propaganda: updates on all the same pie charts and bar graphs they issue every year, now unfolding in real-time Technicolor, yet still failing to provide any year-over-year comparisons or, subsequently, any detailed indication of how they managed to pull it off.

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Rating Toronto’s Daycares

Posted on January 25, 2008 by Philip Preville

Earlier this week, the city posted quality ratings on their Web site for 650 daycare centres across the city. The ratings are based not on user reviews, but on inspections by city staff. Every centre is graded on a scale of one to four, with three being the city’s acceptable minimum—and nearly everyone’s acceptable: 96 per cent of all centres scored at least a three. Alas, the ratings are actually quite difficult to find: programmers have buried the scores deep in the site’s architecture (here’s an alphabetical list, but you still have to click through a profile to get to the number), and they haven’t made it easy to compare scores. Which kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

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Urbanism 101

Posted on January 23, 2008 by Philip Preville

A StatsCan report confirms the obvious this morning: the lower your neighbourhood’s population density, the more likely you are to travel by car. This does not come as news to the suburbs, which were invented by cars. The real burning question left behind in the report’s wake is this: who are the 43% of Torontonians who live within five kilometers of the city centre yet who drive their cars for all their daily trips? And, more to the point, what do they have to say for themselves? They could be reverse commuters; they could also be Rosedale residents who, despite having a subway line to shuttle them to and from work in minutes, drive anyway. Either way, they got some ’splainin’ to do. Continue...


Transportopia! (or, For whom the road tolls)

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Philip Preville

You can skip tomorrow’s Toronto Star, because here’s what will surely be its front page story: a report recommending every possible road and vehicle tax you can think of—an additional fuel tax of six cents a litre, a vehicle registration fee (which Toronto already has, but which the report says other municipalities should charge too), a $25 annual tax on non-residential parking spaces, and tolls of seven cents per kilometre on all the 400-series highways, as well as the Gardiner, the DVP, and the Red Hill Creek and Lincoln Alexander Parkways.

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Dr. Positive responds again

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Philip Preville

His is the last word.

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Scarlem Scarlem nyah nyah nyah

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Philip Preville

I missed Tuesday’s meeting of the Scarborough Community Council, which means I also missed the tongue lashing they gave Toronto Life over this. Thankfully, the Star was there to cover it for me, though they neglected to mention that the article’s author, Don Gillmor, was in attendance to take his licks. Anyway, Norm Kelly can give me a shin-kicking ‘til my legs turn blue, for all the good it’ll do for his home town. The media is hardly his borough’s biggest problem.

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Dr. Florida and me

Posted on January 16, 2008 by Philip Preville

Have a look at Richard Florida’s take on my Monday post. He provides some context that was sorely missing from Saturday’s Globe article. Note also the discord between his quote of my bio and the real version. If it’s not a typo but a shot from the hip, it’s a clever one. Zing.

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Toronto’s shit smells of roses, says Dr. Florida

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Philip Preville

In case you missed it, the weekend Globe featured the latest in its series titled “Richard Florida Ingratiates Himself.” In each installment, Florida heaps his brainy-sounding flattery upon a different area of Toronto while appearing photographed in its midst with a shit-eating grin.

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The top five political miscalculations of 2007

Posted on December 27, 2007 by Philip Preville

A look back at the year that was, through the lens of failure:

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Toilet trouble

Posted on December 21, 2007 by Philip Preville

It suddenly occurs to me that, since I previously linked readers to Shirley Hoy’s memo on the toilet-bowl story, I should also link to the city’s official list of everything they say I got wrong. I could deconstruct it just as I did with Hoy’s memo, but this has gone on long enough. Besides, not one but two press gallery wags have waded in as arbiters anyway. Wouldn’t want to pile on. Continue...


That stupid map again

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Philip Preville

So I pick up my morning Globe and there on the front page lies the same colour-coded map of Toronto that I saw not long ago in the Star: soft pastel hues downtown, harshly saturated reds in the northwest and northeast extremities. What excuse, I wonder, has John Barber found to write last month’s story yet again? Diabetes? Heart disease? Single parenthood? Weekly hours of TV viewing? Drug use? Transit inaccessibility? Murders?

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Our squishy urban winterscape

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Philip Preville

Nice post today on the Spacing Wire about navigating the snowy sidewalks with a baby. I’m so there. On Monday I walked my son to daycare in his stroller, and we did some serious off-roading in his three-wheeled Zooper. The best fun was the snowbank-hopping: lift the front wheel, take a run at the bank, get halfway up the slope, plant the front wheel, lift the rear wheels, and forge down the far side. My son loved it. But as the week goes on and city crews fail to make further progress while the snow melts, the walking only gets worse—baby or no.

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Suck my waste, Toronto

Posted on December 18, 2007 by Philip Preville

Trash collection is one of those basic city services that seems impervious to new technology: you put your trash out at the curb and a truck hauls it away. But what if, like water, sewage and gas, you could collect it all underground? Vacuum-waste collection—which gets a brief mention in the toilet-bowl cover story of Toronto Life’s January issue—is being touted as the future of waste management, and it is part of WaterfronToronto’s vision for its new residential communities in the West Don Lands and East Bayfront areas. Unfortunately, that vision clashes with city hall’s own idea of a bold, trashy future.

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A different kind of review

Posted on December 17, 2007 by Philip Preville

A task force found that staffers have “deep pride” but also face “despair, disillusionment and anger with an organization that is failing them.”

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Dwight Duncan: the Santa of Queen's Park

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Philip Preville

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Someone had to bring Christmas to city hall this year, and, since it sure wasn’t going to be me, thank heaven for jolly Dwight Duncan. His transit funding announcement has lifted everyone’s spirits, including the press gallery staff at the Globe and Mail, who’ve written an unprecedentedly sunny story. Continue...


The city's imbalance sheets

Posted on December 12, 2007 by Philip Preville

If you’re done reading about how everything at City Hall is in fact just tickety-boo, you can now turn your attention back to the deplorable state of the city’s balance sheets. Continue...


If you've ever lived in Montreal...

Posted on December 12, 2007 by Philip Preville

You’ll want to know that one of the city’s long-standing urban myths has been officially alleged.

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Hey, Hoy! Thanks for the publicity

Posted on December 11, 2007 by Philip Preville

Why do I bother plugging my own work when the city can do the job for me? In response to my January cover story, City Manager Shirley Hoy wrote a 1,200-word alternative-reality memo and sent it out to every city employee. It quickly made the rounds in the press gallery and beyond. Read it here.

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Shameless plug

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Philip Preville

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The latest print edition of Toronto Life is now on newsstands, featuring a cover story penned by me. I had no say in the cover’s design, but I quite like it. Though City Hall is a stunning and iconic piece of architecture, I have never liked the message it sent: two towers huddling into each other, their backs turned on the city, coddling and protecting the council chamber—it’s all too private and insular for a public institution of any ambition. So the potty, though some might find it harsh, strikes me as apt.

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Oh Karlheinz! The Musical

Posted on December 6, 2007 by Philip Preville

Just to throw my voice upon the heap: Karlheinz Schreiber is a con artist, and last week’s column by Rick Salutin nailed his performance on the witness stand thus far. Watching him on TV has reminded me of my own recent run-in with a con artist. Schreiber’s rambling is deliberate; he is refusing to tell a straight narrative because he’s trying to suck us into something, and he’s going to make sure he has us all hooked before he coughs up anything of substance. If he pulls this off it’ll be a grand-scale con for the ages. Salutin says Eric Petersen might try to turn Schreiber into a one-man play, but I say make it a musical. No better way to immortalize a song and dance man.

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The Third Sector

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Philip Preville

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the gala dinner of the country’s first Social Entrepreneurship Summit. It was like walking into a riddle; I arrived not knowing exactly what “social entrepreneurship” was but believing that the term must be code for something, and I was determined to crack it. It wasn’t easy. Social entrepreneurs themselves have trouble defining exactly what they are, though like all good entrepreneurs they know a kindred spirit when they meet one. But here’s what I did learn: governments in the United States and Britain have made social entrepreneurship—whatever it is—a major priority, while in Ottawa it barely registers on our government’s radar.

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How Badly Does Tory Want to be Premier?

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Philip Preville

John Tory fans will want to take a quick peek here. It’s a cute attempt to unseat Tory as leader of the PC Party of Ontario (and a misleading one since it suggests that the movement’s supporters include rock-solid Tory loyalists like MPP Joyce Savoline). Not that this is any surprise. Since the election, I’ve spoken to a few well-placed sources who were surprised that Tory announced he wanted to stay on as leader, given that Red Tories such as himself remain in the minority. (As one said to me, “That’s a real caveman caucus he’s got.”) One is betting that Tory will step down before the convention rather than go through the motions and walk away with a tepid vote of confidence.

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So there

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Philip Preville

I have been told, once or twice, that I was not qualified to write about Toronto politics because I am not from here. Admittedly it’s been rare, but it has happened. And it was rather off-putting to hear, since I was born in Canada and have lived in this country all my life. Anyway, today brings news that we “foreigners”—broadly defined as people born outside this country plus people born outside this province (which includes our British-born mayor, by the way)—comprise the vast majority of Toronto voters. Get used to us. Continue...


Do Hospitals Kill People?

Posted on December 3, 2007 by Philip Preville

I know a few doctors, and most of those I know didn’t have a fun weekend. So far as I can tell, most of the city’s hospital administrators, health-care workers, managers, consultants and academics had a rotten time too. The reason: they are upset over the public reporting of hospital death rates, which were splashed across the cover of the Toronto Star on Friday.

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File Under Stintz, Karen

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Philip Preville

And also under apologies, demanded and not received.

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Spinal Tapped

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Philip Preville

Checking the Google News page today, I learned that Alanis Morrissette had been “tapped” for the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, meaning she is to be inducted. Similarly, Jake Gyllenhall has been “tapped” for the starring role in an upcoming Joe Namath biopic, and Jason Parker has been “tapped” as police chief in the town of Dalton, GA. In my mind’s eye, all three have had a spigot plunged into their thigh, the better to drain and capture their essential humours.

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Toronto, Antiseptic City

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Philip Preville

Yesterday’s post was an ode to cart food, and so is today’s. The humourless Royal Ontario Museum wants to shoo hot dog vendors away from its spiffy, angular new facade. Again I ask: why does a clean and beautiful city have to be a whitewashed, antiseptic city?

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’Round and ’Round with Economic Indicators!

Posted on November 27, 2007 by Philip Preville

Apropos last Friday’s post about a Statscan report which noted that Canada’s rising incomes are being generated not by big cities but by hinterland resource extraction: I was cleaning out some files today and came across this tidbit