TheToronto Environmental Alliance, the city’s leading environmental advocacy group, has released its latest smog report.
The bottom line: The summer of 2006 was pretty good, thanks mainly to lots of rain, that washed the bad stuff out of the air. The political weather climate in the city, however, was hot and smoggy. Toronto City Council has developed a bad habit of passing resolutions without taking practical actions.
The final grade: C-.
- Michael Shapcott
There was a fire in the house almost directly across the street from our home on Thursday evening. Thank goodness no one was seriously hurt, but the fire gutted the house, and probably did damage to the two adjacent homes.
Within a few minutes of the alarm being sounded, there were ten fire trucks crowding on our street and perhaps 50 or more firefighters. They did a thorough and impressive job battling the smoke and flames, and firefighters were on the scene throughout the night (and even this afternoon).
It’s good to know that professional and well-trained firefighters are close at hand, when they are needed.
And I’m proud, as a taxpayer, to support this publicly-funded service.
There are, of course, plenty of right-wing ideologues who say that taxes are bad, government is bad, public services are bad. They imagine that private markets can efficiently and fairly meet every human need.
The firefighters are just one of many examples that prove the anti-government ranters wrong.
Many years ago, firefighting was a private business. Homeowners paid directly to a fire fund. If an alarm was sounded, the firefighters wouldn’t respond if the house that was ablaze was not part of their private scheme.
There were many problems with a private-market model for firefighting.
First, it was very expensive and the service was, let’s face it, pretty lousy. Without the broad base of public taxpayers to provide the foundation for a professional firefighting service, the response was, at best, hit and miss.
Second, if a fire broke out in your next-door neighbour’s home, and they weren’t covered, then the fire service wouldn’t respond until the fire spread to your home. And that’s a great big problem.
The fire last night was bad, but it was contained mostly to the one home. The firefighters didn’t allow it to spread to the rest of the neighbourhood.
Let me say it again: Thank goodness for government, and taxes, and firefighters.
- Michael Shapcott
The awful smell from Toronto’s waterfront last week wasn’t the polluted water, but the suspicious details of the behind-the-scenes deal that has delivered a $35 million payout for a $22 million bridge that was cancelled.
The bridge-that-never-was was supposed to span a few metres across the channel to link Toronto’s island airport with the downtown. Bridge boosters had hoped that a new fixed link would goose up business for the money-losing airport. But Toronto residents have said “no” and “no” again to the plans by the undemocratic Toronto Port Authority for the expansion, so financial compensation to pay for the decision to stop the bridge was engineered.
Part of the extremely generous compensation package ($20 million) appears to be a back-door (and therefore illegal) subsidy to the newly-formed airline that has started flights from the island airport. It’s bad enough that taxpayers are giving secret handouts to businesses (which appears to be a clear contravention of the federal legislation governing the waterfront), but this particular business will spew cancer-causing pollutants across the downtown if it is allowed to continue.
Why would an airline get such a generous subsidy?
Why are taxpayers being forced to back a private airline company?
Why all the secrecy, if it’s such a good deal?
Toronto’s island airport deserves to be shut down. That’s been the consistent message for years – a message that the rogue agents at the Toronto Port Authority have ignored for years.
Imagine all the good things that the $35 million could have bought for the people of Toronto. Make a list, then cross all the items off because not of a penny of that money will benefit the people of Toronto. And our waterfront will continue to get a whole lot less liveable.
- Michael Shapcott
Toronto mayoral candidate Stephen LeDrew is not just another pretty face with a bowtie. Like any good politician, he is capable of making tough choices. Like his decision to pay for the private school education of his kids instead of paying his taxes. LeDrew learned the hard way that you don’t mess with the revenue man.
His priorities reveal an interesting mindset. Most parents, me included, dutifully pay our taxes and support our kids in the public school system. LeDrew – a past president of the Liberal Party of Canada – seems to think that the public school system is not good enough for his children.
Now, taxes are not a fun thing – but they are a basic responsibility. In addition to paying for public schools and health care, taxes build the physical and social infrastructure that creates wonderful and healthy communities. Taxes pay for roads and public transit. Taxes help people find jobs and keep jobs.
You’d think that anyone running for public office would believe in public services, and would understand that public services have to be supported by a fair tax system.
But then, the history of the federal Liberals during the 1990s was to cut important spending (on items like health, education and housing) and reward wealthy individuals and profitable corporations with tax cuts.
Paul Martin boasted that his year 2000 budget offered the biggest set of tax cuts in the history of Canada.
Apparently, not big enough for LeDrew.
People who seek public office should support good government and understand its role in promoting the public good.
- Michael Shapcott
Promoters of Toronto’s bid for the 2015 world’s fair – like bid boosters everywhere in the world – claim that this particular mega-project will deliver a great deal more benefits than the tax dollars that are required.
Of course they do.
They say that the fair will cost taxpayers $2.8 billion, including a $700 million deficit. But don’t fear, they claim that the urban circus will deliver $13.5 billion in economic spin-offs.
So, it’s obviously a good deal, right? Hold on a minute!
To do a fair comparison, it’s important to calculate the economic spin-offs of investing that same $2.8 billion in something else, like health care, or housing, or public transit. After all, investing public funds in public initiatives generates big economic spin-offs and leaves a permanent legacy (better health, better homes, better transportation).
Bid boosters asked a carefully constructed question and are delighted with the answer. They asked Torontonians: “Do you support or oppose Toronto’s bid for the world’s fair?”
Fully 83% said yes.
But what if the question had been: “Do you support spending $2.8 billion in taxpayers’ funding, including a $700 million deficit, for the world’s fair?” Would 83% still say yes? I don’t think so.
Since it is federal taxpayers that will be expected to provide the big financial guarantees and cover big costs, imagine asking this question to taxpayers in Medicine Hat or Halifax: “Do you support spending $2.8 billion in taxpayers’ funding, including a $700 million deficit, for a world’s fair in Toronto?”
Fact is, there has been no meangingful public debate about the world’s fair bid, just the usual marketing campaign to boost the bid.
- Michael Shapcott
A busy airport with hundreds of thousands of passengers annually right in the middle of downtown Toronto?
Not a good idea. We need a clean, green waterfront.
There has been a long and active string earlier about the length of the runway.
Let’s shift the discussion to positive uses for the island site.
Of course, there’s the “big picture” - the Greater Toronto area needs adequate air facilities (even while remembering that air travel is environmentally bad). That’s the 10,000 metre perspective.
Let’s drop down to 10 metres – and focus on the Toronto island airport conversion project.
What’s best for the site:
- more urgently needed parkland to link with Hanlan’s and other nearby sites;
- other kinds of recreational space;
- housing or community services;
- or, what?
Toronto’s waterfront is too valuable to be wasted on a money-losing airport.
Community Air is raising important objections to the island airport, and to the activities of the Toronto Port Authority.
- Michael Shapcott
In cities like Toronto, we’ve created plenty of opportunities for people to say “no” – no to new affordable housing, no to necessary health or social services.
But we don’t create opportunities for people to say “yes” – and figure out smart and sensible ways to building healthy and inclusive neighbourhoods.
For instance, affordable housing projects have to go through plenty of ringers – far more approvals, informal and formal, are required for affordable housing than, say, high-priced condominiums. We’ve given neighbourhoods many tools to say “no” to affordable housing, and far fewer tools to say “no” to high-end ownership.
But we’ve failed to offer opportunities to say yes. For instance, instead of allowing the boisterous minority in our neighbourhoods plenty of chances to kill affordable housing, why don’t we set local targets (for instance, why not require that each of Toronto’s 44 wards must add at least 100 new affordable homes every year). Then leave it to the ingenuity and creativity of local residents to figure it out. What’s the best way to incorporate new affordable homes into the existing neighbourhoods?
Let’s argue about how to say “yes”, instead of always arguing about “no”.
- Michael Shapcott
As the November municipal election looms closer, and the election campaign moves into high gear, Toronto needs – more than ever – elected officials with big dreams and a commitment to practical actions.
For too long, the city has been in thrall to the ranters and the shouters – politicians who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Forget about being timid, let’s be bold.
If Toronto is, as is fondly remembered, a city of neighbourhoods, then let’s have some neighbourhood champions.
Not the mean-spirited type who want to build walls to keep this person or that person out, but civic leaders who embrace the big tent and work in practical ways to draw everyone in.
We’ve had glimpses of true greatness in the past. Like the Healthy Toronto 2000 initiative of the 1980s. It painted a wonderful and compelling big picture, then identified specific initiatives that will get us from here to there.
Torontonians used to beam with pride about the story told so many times that it has practically slipped into urban legend: A film crew scattered garbage on a local street in order to make it look like a gritty, grimy U.S. street; then during a lunch break, a real TO work crew came by, spotted the mess and picked it up.
That couldn’t happen today. Too many small minds unnaturally focussed on cutting this and cutting that have slashed away at the city work force.
Starting here, and starting now, it’s time to look ahead with confidence.
- Michael Shapcott
Paul Godfrey, former municipal politician and eminence grise about city hall and now sports businessman, continues to yearn for a bigger stadium stadium.
Years ago, as Metro Toronto Chair, Godfrey had an idea for a stadium that would be funded entirely with private funds and would cost $75 million. That stadium grew into what used to be called the SkyDome – a huge sinkhole of public funding that cost about $600 million. After some financial flips, the SkyDome was bought by Rogers Communications recently for $25 million.
Wotta deal! All those public dollars into a building bought at bargain basement prices by a private businessman.
Gordfrey presides over the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team that is a major tenant of the overbloated stadium and he zealously protects the stadium from all threats. A couple of years ago, Godfrey blocked plans for a seniors’ apartment building across the street from the SkyDome because he was worried that the old dears might be a security threat.
Godfrey has always wanted a bigger stadium for an American football franchise. He had hoped that Toronto’s last failed Olympic bid would deliver the tax dollars to fund a new sports stadium.
A warning to municipal, provincial and federal politicians: If you are approached by Godfrey and hear the words football stadium, just scream no and run in the opposite direction.
- Michael Shapcott
Anyone who knows anything about sports knows that the big bucks are in corporate sponsorships and related dollars. The flinty-eyed gnomes of the International Olympic Committee zealously guard their corporate dollars, and on down the sports feeding chain.
So why, on earth, did the City of Toronto practically give away the most lucrative part of its new $62.5 million soccer stadium?
As usual in these cases, taxpayers will pay most of the costs while private corporations will reap most of the benefits.
Next to lucrative defense contracts, sporting endavours are probably the best way for corporate welfare bums to pick the pockets of humble taxpayers.
Here are the numbers for Toronto’s soccer stadium, as reported in the business section of The Toronto Star (so, of course, the numbers must be right!):
- taxpayers have been forced to pay $54.8 million of the total stadium cost – that’s almost 90% of the bill.
- a private company, Maple Leaf Sports Enterprises, is supposed to kick in $18 million.
However, MLSE is apparently getting set to sell its stake to the Bank of Montreal. Those canny bankers know a good deal when they see one.
Once the deal goes through, BMO will have a 20-year exclusive hold on corporate sponsorship fees, fees from private boxes and other fat little items. The deal is expected to deliver as much as $27 million in the first ten years.
What’s worse, every time some rich corporate rents a private box, not only does BMO bank the revenue, but the taxpayers will get another hit as the corporation deducts the expense from their taxes as entertainment.
So, taxpayers pay to build the stadium, and we pay again every time a corporate guest chows down on an over-priced hotdog, and a private corporation banks the revenues.
Sweet.
The head of Toronto’s 1996 Olympic bid, Paul Henderson, crowed to a documentary filmmaker back in late 1980s that he had figured out a bunch of ways to hide corporate revenue (including luxury box sales) from the grasp of the International Olympic Committee. He was rewarded for his cleverness by being appointed to the IOC a few years later.
There’s big money to be made in sports.
Too bad that it’s taxpayers’ dollars.
Even worse that it flows right into the bank account of private corporations.
It all brings back sweet memories of Toronto’s SkyDome. Paul Godfrey, then chair of the Metro Toronto Council, promised in January of 1982 that the sports stadium could be built with $75 million in private dollars. Some people apparently believed him.
The final dollars are still murky, but it cost about $600 million – most of it from taxpayers. By 2004, Rogers Communications offered to buy the building for $25 milion – about 4% of the original cost.
Paul Godfrey, who was the architect of the original financial disaster, emerged at the end as President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, one of the major tenants at the SkyDome – whoops make that the Rogers Centre.
After all, they paid 4% of the construction cost. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to name it and make all the revenues?
That’s how is works in the world of $port$.
- Michael Shapcott
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