Here are a few headlines worth following today, and I’d love to hear your comments about:
The City of Toronto Act: the new law passed yesterday at Queen’s Park will allow the city to make its own decisions on taxation and laws. Generally, this should be good for the City but many of the politicians involved have only given it lukewarm support. From our perspective it looks like a good start, as it will allow the city to set the rules about development (possibly decreasing the power of the OMB). Here’s the Star’s take on it, and here’s another from the Globe and Mail.
A profile of architect Jack Diamond: The creator of the new Opera House gets the fluff treatment in the Star today.
A new highway north of Toronto? Greater Toronto needs a major new expressway to serve the swelling urban region and Ottawa is ready to pay a share, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says. But he says, “We do have a need for highways outside the city of Toronto…. I wouldn’t even call them highways, but they need to be transitways. I do not think we’ll see a significant public highway built in southern Ontario in the future without public transit as part of that right-of-way,” he said. Memo to Flaherty: more roads means more room for more cars which can only mean more pollution. Study after study show that creating more roads does not ease traffic pressures but only creates more of it. We only need those transit right-of-ways you are talking about (oddly enough, this is coming from a person who helped put the TTC in the dire financial straights when he was a high-ranking cabinet minister in Mike Harris’ provincial government).
Blog TO has some great videos of the Four Sisters smoke stacks coming down as the Lakeview Power Station (a decommissioned coal generator) was demolished yesterday morning. Also check out Murray Campbell’s column in the Globe and Mail today — it talks about the hypocritical symbolism of the station’s demise.
Graffiti to the rescue: The Globe has a profile of the Style in Progress’ Bell box mural project. “This project is redemption for me,” says one graf artist. “It means the City of Toronto is finally condoning graffiti art as an art form. We are finally acknowledging that graffiti artists help our city.”
This is not a public space issue, but I feel a need to respond: mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield says Toronto unions have become outdated. [Articles in The Star and the Globe and Mail] Say what? Certainly, unions in Toronto are part of the power structure and have done some stupid things (see TTC wildcat strike). But to say they are outdated is one of the most insane things I’ve heard Lady Jane spit out. I will use one example to rip her a new one: my mother worked for the City for 10 years in the Public Health department and was sadly stricken with a rare illness in the late-80s. She was supposed to go back to work within a month of her operation — instead she has slowly deteriorated over the last 18 years and is now in a wheelchair and often bed-ridden for weeks at a time. Her living and medical expenses are paid for by her disability coverage that the union fought so hard to put in place in the 1960s and 70s. Without the collective help from the union and the financial assistance built into the CBA, she would have been a single mom left with $15,000 of medical bills a year, no income, and a son to look after as he was just about to enter university. How freakin’ outdated is that, Jane? Unions may at times seem bloated and self-serving, but there is another side to them that has very real benefits that make all the difference in the world to its members.
6 comments
Re: Four Sisters Stacks:
What is the current status of the Hearn Plant in the docks? Can we expect a similar event there soon?
Thanks Jim, another person weighing in on transportation planning in the GTA is just what we need! How about you leave it to the pros, and provide financial support for existing plans instead?
How quickly people forget that the 407 was supposed to be a way to bypass traffic jams by going around the city. Too bad it just encouraged even more sprawl…
A new highway north of the 407? Jeez. When will it ever end? Will there be highways up to the north pole or something?
perhaps we could build that highway…er,transitway in newspeak…with non union mexican works on a guest program. yes, that’s perfect.
“No new highways without RTs running all the way down their middles.” Yeah, hard to design in, pedestrian walkways, vertical parking, etc. But still: a useful rule?
I am going put myself out on a limb and risk myself getting skewered, but I have to agree with Jane Pitfield on the union bit. After having worked as part of the union for 2 years with Toronto Social Services, I am of the mind they are one of the largest impediments to improving city services. Simply put, I found the union culture bred at atmosphere of mediocrity that was truly depressing. The are some absolutely wonderful people working for the City, but the problem is, the union protects everyone, which includes the bad apples. The supervisor’s knew exactly who wasn’t pulling their weight, but couldn’t do anything about it. The good people quickly realize that get the same pay as the people who do no work and never get fired. Heck, they sometimes have to do extra work on account of them. It doesn’t take long for even the best worker to get burnt out under these conditions.
It’s great that your mother had that support, but I am of the mind that this is something that should be provided to everybody. If ODSP isn’t good enough, then improve it, but there is no reason why someone who works for the city gets special treatment as compared to someone who works for say, McDonalds. I know I worked ten times as hard at Second Cup than I ever did at the city.
I think that labour laws and benefits should be improved for everyone, and unions scrapped. Public service is very important, those working for the government should have higher work standards than everyone else. If city staff were able to get their productivity and service standards up they would never hear a word about privatization. Not having to turn a profit, the city should have any easy time outperforming private companies.