Toronto Life: Preville on Politics

Preville on Politics

Posts with category ‘Ottawa’

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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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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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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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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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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Where’d that Star headline go?

Posted on November 9, 2007 by Philip Preville

Sorry for going AWOL on the blog. Long story. Anyway, the front-page headline in this morning’s Star—“PM to cities: Drop dead”—is one for the ages. Kinda makes you feel like you’re living in a parallel universe in which no one is passive aggressive, no one minces words and The Onion is the newspaper of record. But you’ll have to buy the print edition: by 11 a.m. the snarky headline had been erased from the on-line edition. Whatever words it chooses, the Star can crow all it wants: Stephen Harper will never collect a cent of sales tax and then hand it over to municipal governments because it’s bad policy. One Ottawa scribe I spoke to called it “appalling federalism.” Cities may yet succeed in wringing money from Ottawa, but it will not come—it was never going to come—in the form of a GST transfer.

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Crash course on the Canadian economy

Posted on June 14, 2007 by Philip Preville

If you’ve ever bothered to peek at my blogroll down there on the right, you may have wondered why I bother linking to Statistics Canada. Here’s why: Anyone who’s interested in getting tomorrow’s news today should subscribe to StatsCan’s bulletin, The Daily. At least twice a week you’ll find information in there that will serve as fodder for the next day’s headlines. Like this tidbit from today, from which it’s easy to deduce that income taxes will likely make a comeback as an election issue.

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Boy was I wrong…

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Philip Preville

…about this. Except that Alfredsson had a good game. Incidentally, unless I missed something, I think I was also completely wrong about this, which is a shame for Stephen Harper. I presume that, given his stated intention to reform the Upper Chamber, he couldn’t bring himself to support any kind of Senator.

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16.67% of GST revenues for your thoughts

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Philip Preville

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The campaign to have the federal government cough up a share of GST revenues for cities got a shot in the arm yesterday, when the mayors of Canada’s 22 largest cities endorsed the plan that David Miller has already been pushing for months. So the proposal isn’t Miller’s baby any more; it’s quickly emerging as a broad consensus. In fact, at the press conference, many other mayors spoke more convincingly on the matter than he did.

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Mayor for all New Democrats

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Philip Preville

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It’s front page news in today’s Star that Mayor David Miller is no longer a member of the New Democratic Party. He says that, since he must work closely with federal Tories and provincial Liberals to achieve things for the city, he thought it best to avoid accusations of partisanship. Good idea, but actions speak louder than membership cards. Let’s recap recent events.

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NHL politics pool!

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Philip Preville

Just a thought: given that the federal Tories are so eager to identify with Middle Canada, I've got ten bucks that says Prime Minister Stephen Harper will appear at both a Senators and a Flames game before the playoffs are over.

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Toronto the gullible

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Philip Preville

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Let me get this straight. Last Friday, Mayor David Miller and his TTC Chair Adam Giambrone unveil Transit City, a laudably ambitious plan featuring some nice graphic design courtesy of Spacing magazine’s Matthew Blackett. But there was a catch—the same catch as always.

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Get thee north of Steeles!

Posted on March 19, 2007 by Philip Preville

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Peter Kent has switched ridings. Last time, he ran in the heart of Old Toronto and lost. This time he’s hightailed it to the 905. Which tells you everything you need to know about how the Tories perceive their electoral chances within Toronto city limits.

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But did he buy a helmet?

Posted on March 19, 2007 by Philip Preville

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This is silliest twist on tradition since this guy wore these back in 1979. Wonder if he’ll actually wear them in the House.

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Tony Ianno, the comeback kid

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Philip Preville

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It’s March break week at city hall, which means all’s rather quiet in the clamshell. No matter—lots of other stuff to talk about, like federal politics, with a budget next Monday, and an election that could be as little as five or six weeks away. You read it here first: Tony Ianno says he’ll be seeking the Liberal nomination in Trinity-Spadina again, in the hopes of reclaiming the seat he held for about a dozen years before losing it to New Democrat Olivia Chow last year.

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Author Bio Pic

Philip Preville

Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.


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