CANADIAN POLITICS-TORONTO:

NO PAN-AM GAMES IN TORONTO:

Vancouver is not the only Canadian city that has caught the "games fever". The Pan-Am Games, participated in by countries from the western hemisphere, are held every four years in the year preceding the Olympics. Toronto, along with the cities of Lima and Bogota are in competition to hold the 2015 games. Naturally there is opposition, and the best place to gather information on this is the No Games Toronto website. Here's an article, originally published in the Now Toronto magazine, reprinted on their website that explains some of the opposition to Toronto's games bid.

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Let the Pan Am games begin
Mayor pumps Pan Am projects for priority ’hoods, critics jeer:
By Paul Terefenko
Twenty Pan Am delegates, here to soak up our city’s pitch for the 2015 Games, may have given the GTA a foretaste of things to come.

Commuters were stranded Monday (August 31) when the delegates were given a private, VIP, plebe-free rush-hour GO Train tour.

If the Pan Am Games come to Toronto, will the promised community-building infrastructure stimulus and transit boost leave a select few happy and wealthy and the rest of us abandoned on an empty platform?

Well, let the games begin – and we don’t mean sports events. Foes of spectacularized sport kicked off their campaign as well on Monday at a small rally across from U of T’s Varsity Stadium.

“[The Games] are not a bargain-basement special,” says Helen Lenskyj, professor emerita and author of several books challenging the Olympics.

“Just because the Pan Am Games are about half the size [of the Olympics] doesn’t mean they’re half the price.” Toronto could expect 5,500 athletes, but she warns it only took 7,000 to result in 30 years of debt after Montreal’s Big Owe(lympics).

The projected $2.4 billion price tag, much of it funded by three levels of government, is bound to balloon, she says. It’s a golden rule for major sport fests. Just look at Vancouver, with its now notorious cost overruns and budget shortfalls.

OCAP’s John Clarke offers up the quintessential anti-mega-event rap. “The record of these extravaganzas is a horrible one, a hideous one. We’ re-talking about allocating billions for fluff. [The Games] will facilitate gentrification that will facilitate the exclusion of homeless people.”

Okay, we get the point. It’s going to be pricey. There will be debt. The city will be prettied up at the expense of the marginalized.

Right. But Toronto has learned some stuff since the days of Mel Lastman and his Olympics pandering. In fact, much of the current bid is in the province’s hands.

“They really have held the pen on this,” says Mayor David Miller’s spokesperson Stuart Green.

The city’s $49.5 mil contribution to the Games is a sliver of the overall price tag and is being positioned as a benefit for low-income Torontonians, like the $170 mil aquatics facility at U of T’s Scarborough campus, which is being pumped as a service for a nearby priority neighbourhood.

“The Aquatic Centre would be of broader use,” says Green. “There would be city programming in it.”

There’s also the possible benefit from developing the brownfields of the West Don Lands, slated for an 8,500-person athletic village (and, of course, added tax revenue).

Now add the fast-tracking of the Scarborough-Malvern LRT line from the 2014 starting date, so the disadvantaged burbs can stop freezing their ass waiting at bus stops.

But all this doesn’t budge Lenskyj on the “who benefits?” front; she’s sure goodies from this project will never be equally distributed.

“Sure, some jobs are created when a city hosts a mega-event. Some of those are really short-term. Some are McJobs – nasty and cheap,” she says.

But wouldn’t we have great athletic facilities left over after? Lenskyj, a sportswoman herself, doesn’t think so. “They’re not the kind of facilities you take the kids to on a Sunday afternoon. State-of-the-art or not, they turn into white elephants.”

She notes that such events inevitably reinforce class divisions – even on the global level. “We all know the government’s position on Mexicans and visas, but these requirements will be suspended [for participants.]”

I must say, I did feel a little like a second-class citizen myself later on Monday, when Julio César Maglione, who led the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) delegation, said T.O. would have “excellent” Pan Am Games and that we could be good enough to host the Olympics.

Which basically translates into “You’re not actually good enough, but we’ll flatter you so you sink a ton of cash on a sub-Olympic event.”

And if you’re waiting to absorb more info, the PASO pick comes in November – as in two months from now. Talk about fast-tracking.

FROM OCAP:THE ONTARIO COALITION AGAINST POVERTY:

SPECIAL DIET ALLOWANCE FACES NEW DANGER:

It's been quite awhile since the issue of poverty got so much public attention. The Toronto Star has a 'War on Poverty' campaign underway. Private member's bills at Queen's Park and in Ottawa are pressing for a $10 an hour minimum wage. Now, the City of Toronto's Medical Officer of Health is publicly calling for the McGuinty Government to provide the 750,000 people in Ontario who live on welfare and disability with a 'nutritional allowance' to close the gap between their sub poverty income and that which it would take for them to eat properly.

OCAP recognizes these developments as real outcomes of our fight for adequate income. We fully support, and, in fact, demand, that social assistance rates must be raised to a level that allows for a healthy diet and a decent life for those who must turn to it. We do think it is important at this time to put forward our reservations.

McGuinty's Minister of Poverty, Madelaine Meilleur, has immediately responded to the calls for a nutritional allowance with qualified approval. She throws out the usual cynical nonsense about her government's "improvements' for people in poverty and then, suggests that a nutritional improvement could be included in changes to the social assistance system set for the Spring. If Ms Meilleur is preparing a nutritional allowance, something about it smells like it's gone off.

The unspoken backdrop to the notion of a food payment as part of welfare is all the work that has been done over the last couple of years to enable thousands of people to access the Special Diet Supplement. By organizing community clinics and spreading the awareness of the Supplement far and wide, OCAP and its allies have challenged the erosion of welfare rates and the wilful use of poverty to drive people into the lowest paying jobs on offer. Tens of millions of dollars worth of Special Diet payments have been forced from the Government. It's no secret that the Liberals are out to win back what they have lost in this regard. They hoped that they could stop the drive for decent income by rewriting the Special Diet form and making it harder to get the Supplement. However, our clinics are still going, and the Special Diet is still be accessed. It is in the context of their desire to wipe out the gains of the Special Diet campaign that the Government suddenly discovers what its own Ministry of Health has known for years- social assistance rates are set well below the level where people can eat healthy diets. The danger of all this starts to become clear.

OCAP demands a general increase of 40% to assistance rates. This percentage is not just pulled from thin air. It is what has been lost over a decade and the only way that people on welfare and disability can hope to live decently. We believe the Liberals, as they prepare for an election, may introduce with a fanfare a hopelessly inadequate nutritional benefit. This would allow them to further restrict the special diet and additionally push aside the fact that the portion of a welfare cheque that is devoted to shelter (ie rent) is notoriously inadequate. The "shelter subsidy" almost never equals anything close to what is actually paid for housing. in general, we should be wary of the kind of "reforms" the Liberals have in mind. As has been true with every "improvement" the Liberals have made so far they are likely to try and use the process to increase the degree to which welfare forces people into low paying jobs and forced "volunteer" labour.

We believe that any call for the Liberals to bring in a payment to meet nutritional requirements needs to be clear that such a measure must be part of a 40% increase in welfare rates and oppose any moves to eliminate the Special Diet as a health preserving benefit.

Left to its own devises, this Government will finish its term of office with welfare recipients in Ontario poorer than when it took power. Don't trust them and don't stop challenging the social crime of poverty they have on their hands. Force them to raise the rates.

Also OCAP has reported on further developments in their fight to oppose the closure of the Cabbagetown Restaurant (previously mentioned here on Molly's Blog) owned by Victor Chiang. the lawyers for the restaurant have issued a letter asking that the decision on the liquor licence for the restaurant, scheduled for Feb 7th, be delayed so that new evidence can be presented. A previous hearing on January 29th allowed little opportunity for evidence in favour of the defendant to be presented. Local land developers are anxious to close down the restaurant as part of the gentrification campaign for the area, despite the fact that the restaurant is mainly a "hangout" for elderly pensioners who live nearby.

At a Solidarity Night organized by OCAP on January 20th John Clarke of OCAP bought a "round for the house" with part of the $10,000 legal settlement cheque he received from his lawsuit against the Toronto Police Service over his treatment following his arrest at the June 15th, 2000 Queen's Park Protest.

For more on these and other issues see the OCAP website listed above.