CANADIAN POLITICS TORONTO:

OCAP SPEAKS OUT ABOUT RECENT TORONTO CIVIC ELECTION:

No doubt they are cheering at the Fraser Institute with the recent election of Rob Ford as Mayor of Toronto. Never mind that "fiscal conservatives" have had a very dismal record at keeping budgetary deficits under control. One has only to look to our "beloved" federal government to see what "ending the gravy train" actually means. let alone the record of conservatives in power elsewhere in North America. Deficits are them. What is actually means is dealing out the gravy to others that are more favoured by a conservative mind-set. This will mean just as much expenditure, though on different items. True to his word ford's first priority on becoming Mayor of Canada's largest city is a "war on graffiti". What this means in reality is diverting the works and engineering department of Toronto from such things as road repair to cleaning walls. Looks good on the surface I guess.

Ford's election has made news across the world- literally. It has even been reported in the Chinese 'People's Daily'. How significant it is is another matter entirely. When the heat dies down it is likely that Ford will not be able to keep even a fraction of his "promises" about "cutting waste". A lot of his voodoo economics rests upon the assumption that there is enough spare city land to sell off to his friends (at no doubt reduced prices) to push the city into a surplus situation. The idea of tax cuts coupled with no reduction in services is, of course, pure fantasy.

It is, of course, civic election season here in Canada. Ford's election is actually less significant than that of the election of Naheed Nenshi as Mayor of Calgary. Not that his reign will be any different from that of a conservative such as Ford in terms of waste and cronyism. Yet, it was significant not just because he is of East Indian heritage (via Tanzania) nor because he is a Muslim. In Calgary !!! What is most significant is that he has been a University professor. The idea of Calgarians elected an "intellectual" of any political stripe says volumes about how much that city has changed in the past few years.

Meanwhile here in Winnipeg we will have our own civic election tomorrow. As usual Molly will not be voting. In terms of the mayoralty candidates it is the crooked right represented by Sam Katz versus the bureaucratic left represented by Judy Wasylycia-Leis. Hardly anything to chose from. It's all who you want picking your pocket and how you want the ill gotten gains spent. I'm almost tempted to vote in the local councillor elections just because the property developer candidate Jeff Browaty, the incumbent, approached me while I was trying to do some yard work and annoyed me. Never mind that he is into real estate which in my mind means he should be automatically barred from running for municipal office. His attitude and his physical appearance reminded me of two things. One is that he looks just like a mass murderer ala Colonel Russell Williams down in Ontario. The other is that he looks and acts like the high school "football hero" that school authorities used to use to bully the students back when I was young. Perhaps such people have more likelihood of ending up as mass murderers. To my family's great credit my brother broke the collarbone of one of these thugs when we were in high school. Threatening, pushy, obnoxious and interfering with my work. Sorry, Jeffy-poo, there are some you can't bully into putting a sign on the lawn. Don't even bother speaking loudly and demandingly at me. I'm not one of your underlings.

Ah well, the politics are over, but the struggle continues. Here's an item from the Ontario Coalition against Poverty (OCAP) about their opinion of Toronto's new Mayor.

CPCPCPCPCP
OCAP Gets Ready To Confront Rob Ford‏

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty Gets Ready to Confront New Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Eight years of the progressive Mayor David Miller has meant little for the poorest people in Toronto. The former City Council and David Miller are responsible for 312 shelter beds for the homeless being cut with only 60 ever replaced. Promises of new shelters have been empty rhetoric, with people waiting years for any new spaces to open up. Gentrification has continued at high speed, Toronto Community Housing is looking to sell off properties, while the waiting list for housing is almost 10 years long. Transit fares have gone up and accessibility was one of the first things to be cut from the budget. Welfare rates are shamefully inadequate, while city administrators willfully deny people access to vital benefits such as the Special Diet Allowance. Poverty in Toronto has continued to grow under a so-called progressive Mayor. The City of Toronto is increasingly divided between the rich and the poor.

Now Toronto has elected Rob Ford as its new Mayor. OCAP knows Ford and his priorities all too well. He has consistently supported cuts to Welfare/ODSP including the recent cut to the Special Diet Allowance, spoken out against social programs, community housing, affordable transit, the homeless and immigrants. Ford's rhetoric in this campaign has been to 'end the gravy train at City Hall' and to 'respect the taxpayer'. What Rob Ford really means is all too familiar; cutting social services, housing and transit, while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. We will see cuts to services that poor people need on top of an already existing lack of funding to services thanks to Miller. If anything, the 'gravy train' for the rich will be all that Ford cares about.

"Rob Ford's agenda is the same as Mike Harris’ was in the 1990s –attacking poor people to benefit the wealthy." says OCAP organizer John Clarke. “During the Harris period Ontario saw unprecedented civil dissent and disruption, we are putting Ford on notice that he ought to expect the same." OCAP will be working with communities across Toronto to fight Ford’s agenda and defend the rights of poor people.

Media inquiries:416-925-6939

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To get involved:

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

www.ocap.ca

LOCAL POLITICS WINNIPEG:

WINNIPEGERS OPPOSE SECRET CORPORATE GIVE-AWAY:

The following news item from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is about a recent poll that says that 80% of Winnipegers think that the secret deal with Veolia for "consulting services" in relation to upgrades to Winnipeg's sewer system should be made public.

There are a huge amount of questions that flow from this issue. The first that comes to my mind is "why" present city employees are not capable of laying out plans for such upgrades. They may or may not be capable, but it has never been made plain why such plans could not be done on the present city payroll. Either our present city employees are capable or they are not, especially the more highly paid managers amongst them. Who knows, and if they are not we will never know why.

The second question comes from an observation. The secrecy of the contract with Veolia is merely one more outrageous example of a persistent culture of secrecy surrounding City Hall and its relations to consultants. Our present Mayor Sam Katz may be a particularly arrogant defender of this culture, but he is hardly unique. He can also hardly be suspected of benefiting personally from this deal. Katz is the dinky little Mayor of a dinky little city in the middle of nowhere, and his personal wheelings and dealings are several levels of magnitude below those of an international company such as Veolia. It would take some serious creative accounting for Sam to be bribed on this matter. The Mayor's unyielding defense of this rather unique form of civic contracting is more related to his desire to preserve secrecy in other matters than from anything related to this particular deal.

It should also be noted that the public opposition to this secrecy on the part of the other mayoral candidate for Mayor Judy Wasylycia-Leiss lacks substance. Like most political promises it lacks enforceability ie a written commitment to either carry through with exposing the deal or cancelling it altogether. This means a "no-escape" provision to her promise such that it cannot be reneged on "in light of new information" if she wins. Put it in writing before a notary public Judy !

Even more importantly it lacks generality. While the present contract may be particularly large, and may have options for yet another billion dollars attached to it such things are hardly unique to the Katz administration. Neither are they a particularly "right wing" invention, even though it may be argued that public defenders of traditional "morality" are generally more corrupt than their opponents. The leech-like behavior of "consultants" was as much a feature of the Mayoralty of that darling of the left Glenn Murray as it was of any right wing administration. The only difference is in the sums involved.

Let the reader note that Judy has not made any promise to have all city contracts open to public scrutiny ie available of the City of Winnipeg website. The only contract that she has more or less promised to open to public scrutiny is the Veolia one. Cough up with the rest Judy, including others that might be undertaken in an administration of your own. No generality in democracy from Judy.

The other salient fact about Judy's promise is that it lacks "enforceability". If her promise were connected with another promising to set up a process for both recall and generalized public referenda about major capital projects she would be much more believable. That, however, is something quite remote from the ideological commitments of our so-called "left" these days. In general our "left" has evolved into an elitist position of distrust of ordinary people whose only difference from the elitism of the "right" is that it has an academic brown shirt squad in the post modernists. But realistic social democratic politician hardly call on such things in "real time". Mostly they act by evasion, a more traditional and less rhetorical way of coming to power.

So...if Judy were to couple her promise to put this item into public view with a)a written guarantee, b)a similar guarantee to put any give-aways to her own friends into public view and c)a similar written guarantee that the public could block such actions and also remove the politicians who go back on such promises then I'd be inclined to vote for her.

Well pigs don't fly and Judy will do such thing. Therefore Molly will do what she has always done ie not vote. This is for the purpose of making it plain that there is another way of doing politics that is considerably different from the habit of many of merely "kicking the bastards out" whether they be right wing bastards or left wing ones. This is, of course, a long range point of view, but it is better than taking a short term view of the "lesser of two evils" and accomplishing nothing. That's what voting in this election will do.

Here's the item from CUPE. While it has to be admitted that the poll in question was a politically motivated poll this fact is both obvious and trivial. I would be utterly surprised that the number who think this contract should remain secret is less than 80%. In actual fact the 20% who said they preferred secrecy are probably people who recognized the poll for what it was and answered this way just to be difficult. Here's the story.

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Winnipeg residents reject secret sewage contract—poll
Survey shows eight in ten want Veolia contract details made public

A Probe Research survey shows that 78 per cent of Winnipeg residents believe that all the details of the 30-year contract the City of Winnipeg entered into with the private contractor Veolia Canada should be made public before the October 27 municipal election.

Meanwhile, the poll—commissioned by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)—shows overall opposition to the Veolia deal is also strong as 61 per cent of Winnipeggers oppose it, with 39 per cent in support.

“Clearly Winnipeggers have serious concerns with the mayor and council’s decision to enter into a 30-year deal with a private company to maintain and operate Winnipeg’s wastewater treatment plants,” says CUPE National President Paul Moist.

“For the past two years, concerned citizens have called for the city to be open and transparent about contracting out our wastewater plants,” says Moist. “And for two years the city has ignored these calls.”

“Winnipeg voters deserve to know the scope of this deal,” he says. “They deserve to know how much this deal will cost them and their children 30 years from now. They deserve answers to these questions before they go to the polls on October 27.”

Moist says keeping water and wastewater services in public hands is a key priority for CUPE and its members. CUPE has mounted campaigns opposed to water privatization across Canada and the world. CUPE has also worked with other community organizations in opposition to Winnipeg’s decision to seek out a private partner to operate and maintain its wastewater services since 2008.

Probe Research conducted the citywide telephone survey of 601 Winnipeg residents between September 16 and September 30. The margin of error is ±4.0, 19 times out of 20. Full results of the survey can be downloaded from the electronic version of this release at cupe.ca.

CUPE is Canada’s largest union representing more than 600,000 workers, including 26,000 in Manitoba.


For more information, contact:

Liam Martin
CUPE Communications Representative
Tel: (201) 612-0901
Heather Fraser
Senior Communications Officer, CUPE
Tel: (613) 237-1590



Read the poll by Probe Research
(271 kB)

Read the Veolia fact sheet
(34 kB)

LOCAL EVENTS WINNIPEG

MAYORAL CANDIDATES SPEAK ABOUT DOWNTOWN WINNIPEG:

This is one I definitely won't be attending, but some may have an interest in such things so I reproduce it here. No doubt it will be a great forum for the various and vaporous candidates for Mayor to promise endless wondrous improvements. One should never forget, however, that the present state of downtown Winnipeg is the result of decades of such great "improvement" schemes. Insofar as Winnipeg has "vibrant neighbourhoods" (and yes there are some ) such things have not been the result of political gifts.

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Mayoral Candidate Forum on Downtown
Time Thursday, October 7 · 5:30pm - 7:30pm

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Location Manitoba Hydro Place, Atrium
360 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, MB

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Created By Downtown Winnipeg BIZ

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More Info http://www.downtownwinnipegbiz.com/home/events/mayoral_forum/

Thursday, October 7, 2010
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Manitoba Hydro Place
Atrium, 360 Portage Avenue

Come hear the Mayoral candidates discuss their positions on a variety of downtown issues, under the scrutiny of moderators Richard Cloutier and Dan Lett.

Topics include:
Let’s talk downtown safety: what will work?
Events are awesome, but street closures are pricey—will the city support event street closures like it used to?
Fix up downtown infrastructure—show us the money for sidewalks, streets, garbage cans and more!
To bus or not to bus: what about rapid transit?

Moderated by: Richard Cloutier, CJOB
Dan Lett, Winnipeg Free Press

Coffee provided.

Presented by:
Downtown Winnipeg BIZ
Exchange District BIZ
the Institute of Urban Studies

Produced by:
The Winnipeg Free Press
CJOB

Partners:
The Winnipeg Real Estate Board
The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce