Canadian Cincinnatus

Toronto Council Seeks to Gag Opposition

Toronto Mayor David Miller's latest plan to silence critics is to change the rules so he and his councilors can use taxpayer dollars to sue for slander or libel.  That means they can sue at the drop of a hat, or more importantly, their critics will know that taxpayer funded lawsuits will fly if they go a little over the top in their criticism of Toronto's government.

Council should be very careful with this for two reasons:

1) Totalitarian governments all over the world seek ways to intimidate and  silence opposition.  Of course, even the City of Toronto act doesn't make Toronto's government anywhere remotely near despotic, but is that the kind of government Miller wants to have something in common with?  It reflects poorly in the public perception.

2) Oscar Wilde.  When the Marquess of Queensberry left a note for Wilde accusing him of "posing as sodomite," Wilde promptly made a complaint of criminal libel.  But what came out during the prosecution of Queensberry was the opposite: the defense proved that Wilde was in violation of Victorian laws against homosexuality.  Not only were the charges dropped, but Wilde ended up in jail.  Wilde's reputation in Victorian England was irrevocably tarnished, and a great playwright was sidelined for the rest of his life.

So here's the danger for Toronto's mayor and councillors: sue with public money, and the public will equate you with tyrants, even though it's not a fair comparison.  Sue and you will bring your critic's libelous statements to the public eye again and again for months, all with columnists reminding taxpayers that they are paying for the councillors' (or mayor's) vengeance.

Okay, just to bug them: what a bunch of weasels!

It might be wiser to quietly kill this proposal and let sleeping dogs lie.  Sometimes, Toronto Council is its own worst enemy.

Mike Downtown

In Toronto 100 Cyclists Trump 27,000 drivers

Toronto under Mayor David Miller suffers from the tyranny of a small well-organized minority led by the Toronto Environmental Alliance and their wheeled division, the Toronto Cyclists Union.

This little army is used like shock troops anytime city hall wants to force through an anti-driver or unpopular green program, and their chief purpose is political theater for left-leaning media.  The intention is to make it appear that there is broad-based public support for whatever it is the Millerites want to change for the worse.

I first saw them overwhelm the deputations that residents of St. Clair West tried to make condemning the purposed streetcar Right Of Way.  Oddly, the first fifteen speakers, supposedly drawn at random from the public to address city council, were all in favor of the ROW, the council chamber packed with their cheering supporters.  An hour later they were done, so the TV cameras and print journalists packed up and left.   For the next twelve hours the residents of St Clair got their turn to speak against the ROW. Nobody heard.

Next I watched with fascination as the TEA stacked a windmill meeting in Scarborough, their members stating that local concerns should be trumped by the needs of the "greater community."  Who cares if the windmills cause noise, disrupt bird migrations or sully the view of the lake.  Oddly, the Toronto Environmental Alliance had trouble hiding their little army among the general public this time because they rented buses to carry them from Kennedy Subway Station to Guildwood Village.  Uhm, what does that say about public transit in Scarborough if even the TEA members find it so inconvenient they need to rent their own buses?

Yesterday they all donned bike helmets and crammed Toronto's council chambers to state that they desperately need bike lanes on Jarvis St.  Forget that there already are north-south bike lanes on Sherbourne St, 500 meters to the east; forget that in warm months those bike lanes are only used by 100 cyclists per rush hour.  Right now Jarvis supports 27, 000 drivers per rush hour, and that continues through the winter, when the number of cyclists plummets.

The bike lane motion passed easily through city council, of course, to the cheers of the purported masses.  The Main Stream Media spoke glowingly of all the bike helmets at city hall.  Again the false message is that this change for the worse on Jarvis has broad-based public support.

Drivers vastly outnumber cyclists and public transit riders (TTC riders are only 19% of commuters.)  But motorists have allowed the enviro-clerics to convinced them that they are sinners--shameful, disgusting sinners who must keep a low profile. 

The truth is that all the anti-driver measures of the Millerites are increasing downtown pollution, not reducing it.  An idling car in stop-and-go traffic produces four times the pollution of a coasting car.  I actually learned that from the TEA when they were fighting a McDonalds Drive thru on St Clair Ave, a battle in which the TEA portrayed MacDonalds as an anti-social environmental sinner.  So the true anti-social, environmental sinners on Jarvis are the TEA and the Millerites.

The enviro-clerics' saint, Jane Jacobs, is often invoked by the TEA: "Who are we building the city for?  People or cars?"

I got news for the TEA:  PEOPLE drive cars.  Voters drive cars.

What drivers need is an activist group based on the TEA model, and the Canadian Automobile Association is too timid for this role.  If drivers stop feeling guilty and start fighting for their right to personal transportation, they can easily overwhelm the Toronto Environmental Alliance.  It would be hard for the Toronto Star to ignore 10,000 drivers at a city hall meeting.

Most people have lives though, and will suffer through the traffic listening to their i-pods or sipping morning coffee for now.  But each time Toronto puts through an anti-driver program, the Millerites lose votes.  This will take time to build, but one day the MSM will be stunned when 27,000 drivers finally outweigh the 100 cyclists, even 100 well-organized cyclists.

The majority can rule.

Mike Downtown.

Toronto's Electricity Rates Set to Rise

When Toronto Mayor David Miller says you can lower your electricity rates, you'd better grab your wallet and hang on tight.  Electricity rates, the price/kilowatt hour that makes up half of the average Toronto Hydro bill, are set to rise 40-60%.

The eco-clerics and David Miller are quick to point out that if you don't mind doing your laundry and dishes after 10pm, and only run your air conditioner or dry your hair dryer in the middle of the night, you could actually save money.

Of course most people will prefer to have their house cool on the summer afternoons, will want to do their laundry during the day on Saturday (there is no weekend exemption) and will prefer to get a good night sleep rather than stay up late waiting to get the best price for electricity before turning on the oven to make dinner.

Since the 10pm to 7am rate is lower than the current rate (4.2 versus 5.7), David Miller is telling the truth: you could lower your Toronto Hydro bill, but the reality is most of us will see it go up.

I actually like the concept of time of use because it's pure capitalist supply and demand.  You want to use power during peak demand, you must pay more.   Even though I run a home-based business and will be hit harder than average with the time-of-use billing, I think it's fair.

But please don't tell me this change has been put in place to help me save money.  The number crunchers have done their work and looked at their pie charts: Toronto Hydro is about to reap the windfall they need to pay for all those smart meters.

So don't be surprised when your electricity bill rises.  David Miller and the eco-clerics will simply tell you it's all your fault.  It's their mantra.

Mike Downtown

We're All Gonna Get in a Fight

I felt it the first time the day I crossed the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan.  It was 1988 and the war was still clear then: good against evil, the mujahideen against the Russians.  The oppressed underdog was about to throw out the occupier.

Shells from the Soviet base screamed right over our heads, outbound to a village on the other side of the plain.  I was unusually aware of my heart rate.  I remember thinking, "Well, you wanted to go to a war zone!"  The exhilaration was a thrill.  I was part of something BIG.  I was invincible.  Better yet, we’re all gonna get in a fight!

This surge of excitement has help precipitate gang wars and world wars, and now apparently, Toronto city hall turf wars.

Toronto Councillor Adam Giambrone, a member of Mayor David Miller's elite inner circle, discovered that Councillor Cesar Palacio, Ward 17, was daring to help the Portuguese community get a special event permit at an address in Giambrone’s ward.

Giambrone didn’t like Palacio muscling in and looking fine on his turf.  We’re all gonna get in a fight.  The thrill must’ve coursed through Giambrone’s blood, because he sent a nasty e-mail promising to, "start looking for ways to make trouble for you," if Palacio dared set foot again on Giambrone's turf.

A tempest in a teapot maybe, but the problem is Giambrone signed it as Toronto Transit Commission Chair Adam Giambrone, and many people in Ward 17 already feel the TTC is doing all it can "to make trouble" in the ward as payback for its citizens daring to fight the St. Clair street car right-of-way.

The first shock to the Ward 17 community came in November 2007, when the TTC suddenly decided to jump ahead on ROW construction and work through the winter in Ward 17.  This left St. Clair between Bathurst and Dufferin, a community with a pro-David Miller councillor, untouched.  Parking was good through the winter in Ward 21, and no lanes were closed due to construction.

Ward 17 on the other hand was crushed.  Traffic was down to a single lane each way.  No parking was possible.  Christmas sales were a disaster at the stores that had fought the TTC in court over the ROW.  The economic impact was punishing.  Worse, because it was a cold winter, most of the time construction didn't proceed at all, so the congestion, lost parking and upset dragged as long as possible.

Now Ward 17 is stuck with an ROW but no streetcar because the TTC now has to connect the two sections of completed ROW through Ward 21.  St Clair through Ward 17, which used to be two lanes each way, is now one lane each way with buses crowding the lanes.  The ROW is just a big unused concrete pad down the middle of St. Clair.

Oddly, when the TTC was ready to go through David Miller friendly Ward 21 in November 2008, they elected to wait until spring of 2009 to mitigate the impact of construction on retailers.  Uhm, where was that concern for St Clair businesses in ward 17 the year before?

The Royal Navy used to have a saying: you can tell a lot about the captain of a ship by how the stoker behaves.  It's common sense, because the captain sets the standard for behavior, is mimicked by his officers as so on all the way down to the stoker shoveling coal in the bowels of the ship.

So what does Giambrone's threatening and vindictive letter tell us about his boss, Mayor David Miller?  Let's hope that all of the TTC's excuses about why they had to crush Ward 17 in the winter of 2007-2008 are true, and their behavior was not an act of vengeance on citizens who dared to hold an different vision for St. Clair.

Giambrone may also want to put his blackberry down for a few weeks because Councillor Palacio doesn't make threats.  He's just taking Giambrone's e-mail to the integrity commissioner.

We're all gonna get in a fight.

Mike Downtown

What the TTC prefers not to broadcast about their new streetcars

1) There will be fewer of them.  This hasn’t been kept a secret, but TTC friendly reporters refrain from dwelling on the fact that the TTC plan is to buy only 204 Light Rail Vehicles (LRVs or plain old trains will do).  Since these trains will replace 248 streetcars, a decrease of 18% of their rail rolling stock, it can only add up to one thing: less frequent service. 

The TTC will point out that each train holds considerably more people than the old streetcars, so I guess we’ll all have lots of company waiting together on those frozen platforms that serve the right-of-ways, (aka: trainlines) that run down the middle of Spadina, St Clair, and if Miller gets his way Sheppard, Eglinton, Don Mills, etc until we’re all broke.  Perhaps we can huddle together like penguins, as the motorists sitting in stop-and-go traffic in their heated cars adjust their i-pods or talk on their cell phones.  Which is the better way?  If I’m going to have to wait, maybe the interior of a Lexus is better than an exterior concrete platform.

2) They haven’t got the money.  The Toronto Star has completely missed this little drama but it has played out in the pages of the Toronto Sun.  Toronto has committed 330 million dollars to the new trains in the 2009 budget, which leaves them 870 million dollars short of the contract price so far.  Since Councilor Mihevc has already stated that the contract will probably cost more and they allowed for extras, I’d say the city is way behind.

The province and the feds have been asked to pick up the tab for these trains on top of all the other funding they’ve already promised for Miller’s Transit City projects (newspeak maximize-traffic-congestion projects)  The province says no way, since they’re already spending 9 billion on Toronto.  Who can blame them?  That's a lot of cash for one city in a big province.

3) The new LRVs have to be custom made, so they’re damn expensive.  Bombardier has to chop several feet and adjust the turning circle of their off-the-shelf LRVs that sell in Europe, so you can say good-bye to the economies of mass production.  Image if the city ordered 200 pick-up trucks from Ford, but demanded they be four feet shorter, two feet off the front and two off the back.  How much would those trucks cost compared to factory trucks?

4) There will be many adjustments required to our streets for the new longer trains.  For instance, the city is spending a year lowering the tracks and changing the grade to a gentler slope on Bathurst through the underpass of the CN line just north of Dupont.  They need an extra three feet of height to get under the CN bridge, and because the trains are longer they must start their descent much farther back from the bridge.  A year of construction must be very expensive.  (A year!  Dude, it only took a year in 1917 to build the Bloor Viaduct, and that was with most able-bodied men off fighting a war.  What’s taking so long?  Oh, union crews I guess.)

My suggestion for Miller and his friends?  Off-the-shelf buses.  They don't need rails or wires.  Their turning circle already works for Toronto's streets, and I bet you can buy three of four buses for the price of each train.  The good news for passengers is that the extra buses will mean shorter waits at the TTC stops.  That's a better way.

Mike Downtown

Toronto Mayor Isn't Fooling the Public This Time

Toronto Mayor David Miller got some nice space from the Toronto Star's website this afternoon, complete with the kind of flattering, statesmen-like photo the Star prefers for Miller, under the headline "Mayor Urges Pay Freeze."

Wow!  Has Miller suddenly discovered fiscally responsibility?  The answer is no, and the Star's readers weren't fooled this time.  In less than 88 minutes there were 37 comments pointing out why this is not what it seems. 

First: Miller is not advocating a pay freeze for unionized staff (by far the majority of city employees), who are getting ready to demand 3-4% wage increases every year for the next three years.  The police union already won a 10% increase over three years last December, making them the highest paid police force in Ontario.

Second: Miller is also not calling for a pay freeze for city councillors.  These same councillors gave themselves a 9% increase in 2006 and have since been pushing it up over inflation every year.

But what amazed me was the readership response to this article.  All of the comments complained either about Miller being in bed with the city unions or Miller's councillors' pay increases.  Most of the comments had 15 to 20 people who registered "agree" with the comment, and almost no one registered "disagree."  All of these comments were critical of Miller and many called for him to be booted from office in the next election.

The Toronto Star is the most left wing large-format newspaper in Toronto, yet it is clear from this little wave of anger from their readership that Miller is finding it more difficult to hide the fact that he is the fat-union mayor, and not the mayor of the little guy.  If the comments about this column are anything to go by, the taxpayers--even the left-leaning ones who read the Star--are getting restless, and that's not a good sign for any incumbent politician.

Mike Downtown

Group Opposing Miller hamstrung by campaign finance laws

As Rob Granatstein  of the Toronto Sun reports:

“The encouraging news out of City Hall is the GOM (Group Opposing Miller) have come to the real world conclusion only one person can run against Mayor David Miller in the 2010 election. Then it gets interesting. How do you decide who has the best shot at knocking off the boss? The answer the GOM is working on may shock you -- a leadership convention.”

About time, I (and doubtlessly many others who are fed up with the incompetent left-wing ideologue David Miller) say. Unfortunately, GOM has run into a wee hitch – campaign finance laws:

“There are huge issues to resolve. How do you pay for it [the convention] when candidates can't spend any money on their campaigns until Jan. 1, 2010, and this would all have to happen in the fall of 2009 at the latest”

People think that campaign finance restrictions are generally a Good Thing, so much so that it has become a motherhood issue in politics. Who would be against them?

However, the problems facing GOM illustrate one of the negative consequences of campaign finance laws – they protect incumbents in particular and the establishment in general from outside challenges. In other words, campaign finance laws prop up the status quo.

People think that by limiting political contributions they are limiting the ability of a few individuals or corporations with a lot of money to have inordinate influence over a politician. And they are right. Campaign finance restrictions favour candidates and parties who are able to muster a large number of small donations over opponents who have to rely on a small number of large donations.

But these same people never stop to think, who is better able to get a large number of people to donate money to them? Answer: the establishment candidate. The dark horse, the new guy, the marginalized, they don’t have a chance in this contest. Even though the establishment is hurt by being cut off from large donations, because politics is a zero-sum game, the establishment gains if the alternative choice loses even more.

The fact of the matter is, if you are coming up from nowhere, you can’t afford to play by the usual rules (which campaign finance laws codify). You need to innovate, which you can’t because now it’s illegal.

The feverish mind of the conspiratorial left imagines that only evil right-wing reactionaries benefit from no campaign restrictions – scoring huge bags of money from equally evil multinational corporations. The facts however paint a more balanced picture. In 1968, left-wing Democrat Senator Eugene McCarthy  ran for the Democrat nomination on an anti-war ticket against President Johnson (the establishment candidate, thanks to being the sitting President). Though McCarthy did eventually lose, his early success spooked Johnson enough that he quit the race. His run was made possible because of a handful of large donations from a few sympathetic rich liberals. If he tried that today, the post-Watergate finance laws would throw him into jail.

Fortunately, David Miller is now so unpopular that GOM may be able to rise above artificial campaign finance impediments. But the fact must be faced; campaign finance restrictions do help secure the establishment. 

Toronto Spends Extra 100 Million On Defective Buses

The Toronto Sun quietly reported last week that the Toronto Transit Commission no longer wants to buy hybrid buses because they break down a lot and they don't save much fuel.  These buses cost an extra $200,000 per bus, not including GST.  After buying 500 buses that's an extra 100 million dollars to date, with 120 more on delivery in 2009--a shocking amount that is not mentioned in the Sun article.  The reader is left to do the math.

That the city of Toronto can waste far more than 100 million dollars on defective equipment with hardly a word reported in print media is disturbing.

By comparison: the MFP computer leasing scandal resulted in the city paying 42 million more than council approved for computer leases.  A little known councillor named David Miller pointed out the extra expense and demanded (rightly) an inquiry.  The MFP scandal played in the media, especially the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, for years.  It was even brought up several times by Miller during the last election as a reminder of why he should be re-elected mayor.

The TTC suddenly says it's all the federal gov's fault because they "forced" the TTC to buy hybrid buses.  Funny, I've heard Miller complain a lot about the federal government over the years, but I've never heard him state that this was an onerous condition on the money that was generously provided for TTC buses.  I find it hard to believe the "green" mayor was against it when Paul Martin's liberal minority insisted on hybrid buses.

The purchase of the MFP computer leases definitely stank and was an example of city hall employees and councillors giving cushy deals to friends.  While there is no evidence of corruption with the purchase of these hybrid buses, there is certainly evidence of poor decision making, enough to prompt an inquiry.

Here are the questions that should be asked:

• Who verified the manufacturer's claims that the buses would save 20-30% in fuel?  Since the TTC has found that the buses barely save 10%, this would have been easy to disprove before the purchase with a simple test drive.
• Did anyone put a test bus through the paces to ensure it could withstand a typical city route without repeated breakdowns?
• What other buses (hybrid or otherwise) were considered?
• Did anyone lobby the federal government to have the hybrid bus condition removed when it became apparent that the buses couldn't perform?

What the Main Stream Media should ask is whether spending an extra 200,000 per bus was sensible even if they did meet the manufacturer's claims.

Of course, David Miller has received new strong mayor powers from Dalton McGuinty, so it will be impossible for a couple of rogue councillors to force a vote on an inquiry as Miller did with the MFP scandal when he was a councillor.  David Miller got elected the first time with the symbol of a broom for the clean sweep he was bringing to city hall.  Apparently that broom was to sweep unpleasant mistakes under the carpet.  The MSM should be ashamed that they are complicit.

Mike Downtown