MAYORAL RACE
• Rob Ford uses Obama-style ‘robocalls’ to connect with voters [The Star]
• Vote for Pantalone “a vote for Rob Ford”, Smitherman says [The Star]
• Will the left follow Mihevc to Smitherman? [The Star]
• James: What I like about Smitherman [The Star]
• Ad Watch: Rocco Rossi’s radio spots [The Star]
• Election Ephemera [The Star]
• For David, hardly Miller time [Globe & Mail]
• Toronto mayor endorses deputy for election, dismisses strategic voting [Globe & Mail]
• Mayor Miller speech cancelled due to poor ticket sales [Globe & Mail]
• The perils of voting anyone-but-Rob Ford [Globe & Mail]
• Toronto Mayor David Miller endorses Joe Pantalone as his successor [National Post]
• Chris Selley: Endorsements bring little to campaigns [National Post]
• David Miller’s more out of touch than ever: Levy [The Sun]
• Coulda been contenders [Eye Weekly]
• George Smitherman and Sarah Thomson: Best Frenemies Forever [Eye Weekly]
• Vital signs good [Now Weekly]
• Hope in Ford country [Now Weekly]
GTA ELECTIONS
• Slip-sliding Oshawa needs help gaining traction [The Star]
• The Smell Test: Jackson’s pellet plant [The Star]
• Don Valley test [Now Weekly]
TRANSPORTATION
• Driveway restrictions for new properties only [The Star]
• It’s time to bring the TTC under provincial control [Globe & Mail]
IMMIGRATION
• Which immigrant would you choose for Canada? [Globe & Mail]
• Economic migrants taking Canadian jobs – Customs agent [The Sun]
CITY CULTURE
• Lack of desire causes much AGO drama [Globe & Mail]
• Toronto’s top 10 independent coffee houses [Eye Weekly]
• Nuit Blanche and the value (or lack thereof) of art criticism [Eye Weekly]
CITY BUILDING
• Province halts work at indigenous site [The Star]
• New building rules would cost Toronto, councillors worry [Globe & Mail]
OTHER NEWS
• Parliamentary committee to probe G8, G20 summits [Globe & Mail]
• Charges laid after spy cameras found in Toronto washrooms [The Star]
• Some safety recommendations not implemented at Central Tech [Globe & Mail]
• Orders issued to curb hoarding at Wellesley St. highrise [The Sun]
11 comments
re “Vote for Pantalone “a vote for Rob Ford”, Smitherman says”
I feel the opposite way: a vote for Smitherman is basically a vote for Ford. I don’t think that Smitherman and Ford are different enough to consider strategically voting for one over the other. Both plan to cut services, squish transit city, and pee on the bike plan. It’s not how the city should be run.
Radwanski’s column on the TTC takes the issue and turns it into a black and white. My preferred option would be a provincial/metrolinx member on the TTC commission (perhaps two) so that a regional focus can balance local needs. If we think the our local bus and streetcar service is bad now, what will happen if the province takes over the TTC and re-directs resources towards regional priorities? Will there be local accountability?
NOW magazine is out to lunch. How else can one explain that they believe that Toronto’s GDP rising from 87 billion in 1987 to 121 billion in 2009 as being an indicator of strength. 87 billion in 1987, indexed to inflation, is 145.5 billion in 2009 dollars. That is a real decline 20% Now add in population growth and the per captia GDP in Toronto shows a more serious fall. Per capita GDP for Toronto in 1987 was $39,545, indexed to inflation it would be $66,882 in 2009. In 2009 GDP per capita in Toronto was $48,790. That is a decline of nearly 30%.
In the other article about Ward 2, NOW uses 2006 unemployment stats for both the ward and city. Can NOW not afford any fact checkers?
RE: Ben
Smitherman, wants to modify Transit City, not destroy it. Ford on the other hand…
RE: J
The TTC would benefit from more of a regional focus. They have the local focus down pretty well, but that won’t help make getting from Rexdale to Rouge Hill any better. Nor will it help help to get people from the inner-suburbs to the outer-suburbs or other regional trips. Also, local trips can be completed in other green ways such as walking or active transport (cycling, roller blading, skateboarding, etc), with long distance trips become limited to the car, if transit is not attractive.
RE: Glen
In my Urban Studies class, we were talking about job loss, and my prof brought up a good point. Toronto isn’t just losing jobs to the 905, but the country is losing jobs to the far east. I’ll agree that Toronto’s tax system is out of touch, but it merely a symptom to a much larger problem…
Re: Ben’s comment about Canada losing jobs to the far east. No kidding. I called Bell “Canada” a few weeks back and much to my surprise, I was speaking with someone in Manila. Many banks have also moved call centre operations to India (my former employer did just that a few months before I left). What kills me is that the level of customer service is noticeably inferior, and the general lack of knowledge about our country astonishing. The gentleman I spoke with in Manila (who’s name was “Edward Smith”), asked if I was close to Calgary when he was verifying my Toronto address. When I told him that no, those two cities are a good 3000km apart, he seemed genuinely surprised. I realize there are huge savings to be made by corporations shifting call centre work overseas, but something has to be done to at least curb this trend. It is very unsettling.
RE: Ben
Yes i agree, but a complete upload by the province is overkill. We have to look at the trips being made before deciding to allocate resources between regional and local. Just how many trips are being made from Rexdale to Rouge Hill?
For example, Metrolinx wanted Eglinton to serve a regional purpose – Kennedy to Pearson – with fast trip times on SRT 2.0 technology (i.e. Vancouver SkyTrain). This would have been at the expense of the LRT which balances local (surface travel, more stops) and regional needs (midtown tunnel).
Ben, There are many factors that effect employment. Some are global, like currency manipulation and some local, like property taxes. If property taxes were not an issue then during the period that the 905 region created 800,000 jobs, they city of Toronto should have also experienced employment gains (not to the same extent though). While this was occurring Toronto lost 100,000 jobs. Head offices, back offices, and industry was not disappearing from the face of the earth or across the globe. They moved up the street, just outside of town.
Toronto, like any city, is not equipped to respond to global influences. It needs to focus itself on what it can do, or what it does currently, that has an impact. In this regard the city has been a failure.
19 tickets sold to hear Mayor Miller speak about “Our Magnificent City” at the local Canadian Club? Am surprised they managed to sell that many.
Leo,
unfortunately that is the how economics works. The only hope to really stop that kind of shift is to either to lower our living standard to theirs, or to raise their living standard to ours, or (more likely) meet somewhere in the middle. Of course there are other possibilities, instead of stopping the shift of low-skill jobs to developing country, finding new high-skill jobs to replace them, like what IT did to north Americans 20 years ago. Unfortunately now IT is gradually becoming a low skill job itself, and there really isn’t anything major to replace that yet.
Yu, we could also put our producers on equal footing by challenging mercantilism. While most people believe that labour costs are at the bottom of the massive transfer of jobs abroad, that is only a small portion of it. Capital cost subsidies, differing labour and environmental regulations (and enforcement) have a much larger role to play. While the job losses in manufacturing were tolerable when displaced workers could find employment elsewhere, in the US home construction filled this void for a while, when that bubble burst the cost of off-shoring became apparent. China, et al. have come to dominate many industries, like steel production, chemicals, semiconductors. Not because of cheap labour, or any natural comparative advantages. If the steel mills in Hamilton paid the same price for ore and coking coal, and could pollute as easily as there competitors they would be more than competitive.
Large corporations find it easier and more profitable to move production abroad than lobby for an even playing field. Unfortunately today the goals of large corporations are completely severed from those of country.
Yu, the trends regarding the increasing migration of jobs shows that the issues are not specifically high-skill vs. low-skill, but rather which jobs are region-specific (ie are much higher or next to impossible to shift to another region abroad) and those that are not. It’s not that IT jobs are now low-skilled jobs but rather that employers have found a way of shifting these jobs to areas where they can pay a lot less to do these jobs. What few governments want to acknowledge is that globalization is basically about driving down living standards, labor/safety standards and environmental standards. Those jurisdictions where standards are lowest are where jobs tend to migrate to. And make no doubt. More and more jobs are becoming non-region specific. That said, stats also show, as Glen has pointed out in the past that the job losses within the City of Toronto have happened at a much faster pace than losses in the surrounding GTA municipalities… Which means there is another factor at play specific to the City of Toronto.