Saturday, September 15, 2007

A time out for TO

It's no secret to anybody that the city of Toronto is in serious trouble. Rather than bitch and complain about the cause of this phenomenon like I usually do in this blog, I've decided to instead bitch and complain about three causes this time. Lucky you.

1. Downloading and the failure of Canada's political system

The current fiscal crisis in the city of Toronto has underscored a serious flaw with Canada's current democratic system. For all intents and purposes, the federal, provincial, and municipal governments are run as separate corporations where their individual revenues and expenses must be balanced. In Canada, we are currently faced with the situation where the federal government is rolling in dough, the provincial government is scraping by, and the municipal government is poorer than an obese hooker (and probably just as cracked out).

This fiscal imbalance can probably be traced back to the Jean Cretien/Mike Harris years, where somebody clued into the fact that they can save money by downloading expenses onto the government below them. This move has a dual purpose, where the reduction of expenses for these governments paints a false rosy picture of their financial situations, while at the same time creates the appearance that the government below them is at fault. Back when news started to surface about Toronto's financial situation, people were very quick to blame Mel Lastman, yet were perfectly happy re-electing continuous Liberal federal governments.


In the end, we're dealing with a situation where Canadian politicians have managed to find a way to pander for votes while simultaneously failing to do what is right for their constituents. This is a situation that has been happening far too often in this country in all levels of government.

2. David Miller

Now that I've talked on end about why we shouldn't be blaming the mayor for the state of affairs in this city, let me try and explain why everything is David Miller's fault.

Although most of the city of Toronto gave Mayor Miller a huge vote of confidence by easily electing him to his second term, the current fiscal crisis has proven that his leadership abilities are seriously lacking. The situation that Miller is faced with can be summed up with "you need to play the cards that you're dealt". In the case of Miller, he's clearly been dealt a 2-7 off-suit, yet instead of folding to conserve his chips, he's decided to go all-in and blame the dealer for his subsequent loss.

There's no question that Toronto's financial situation is in the shitter, but simply whining about the situation isn't going to help us. This attitude is typical of far-left politicians: pass the buck and don't offer any real solutions. This is exactly why John Kerry lost to George "Dubbya", and exactly why Buzz Hargrove (leader of the Canadian Auto Workers Union) made the ridiculous statement that the government should stop encouraging people to buy fuel efficient cars because it was "unfair" to North American auto companies. Forget the fact that these car companies are diverting R&D funds in order to pay the union members ridiculous salaries... it's always somebody else's fault.


For that matter, how many millions of dollars were spent in the various "give Toronto more money" campaigns Miller has instituted over the years? It doesn't take a genius to tell you that publicly calling out upper levels of government to get what you want is futile (and surprise surprise, it was). Now we're left with a situation where the city is scraping for every dollar it can find (or at least, that's what we're being told). We could have really used those millions of dollars right now.

3. Lack of ideas, lack of action

Toronto city council is gradually getting the reputation of a bureaucracy filled with pointless in-fighting and a complete lack of cooperation, and it's showing. Any reasonable idea that has come before city council is usually met with opposition from a local niche group, and is dead before it even gets off the ground.

Let's look at one contentious issue: the Toronto waterfront. Many proposals have come forward over the years, yet nothing has or will be agreed upon. The sad thing is that the city has a magnificent waterfront park at its fingertips that is mostly going to waste: Toronto Island. The island actually used to be a peninsula whose link was washed out by Hurricane Hazel in the 1960s. Since then, residents of the island have vehemently opposed and blocked any talk of building a bridge to reconnect the parklands to the city, and people are forced to either pay for and take the ferry across the gap or buy their own boat.


Either option requires people to spend far too much time and money to go to a place that should be publicly accessible. While I can understand the argument for banning cars on the island and controlling the noise from the airport, there is no reason why pedestrians shouldn't have free access to it. Building a pedestrian bridge to the island is a cheap and easy solution to completely open up the waterfront, yet a handful of island residents are somehow succeeding in blocking any construction, claiming that the increased noise resulting from more park-goers would be unreasonable. Meanwhile, city council seems to be at a stalemate on this issue (as usual), terrified of losing their precious votes, and completely willing to stick with the status quo.

This same idea can be extended to the TTC. Any resident can tell you that transit in this city is not running efficiently, yet council refuses to stray from the current system. Do we really need a subway running every five minutes at 1:00am on Wednesdays? Is it really wise to run a bus route at a time when only a handful of people are able to take advantage of it? The TTC should be expanding routes into areas that will bring them the highest ridership, and therefore generate the most revenue. Like it or not, the government is a business, and as such, it is in their best interest to serve the highest amount of customers possible, even if it means losing the vote of a small minority.

There's no question in my mind that Toronto is a great city. However, if it weren't for the greedy vote-grabbing actions of our politicians, we could be living in the best city in the world.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Bombs away!

The big news around Southern Ontario today is the capture of an apparent "Canadian Unibomber" around the DVP area. According to this article, the man "was involved with sending letter/parcel bombs that were received around Southern Ontario recently."

While I'm thrilled they caught the guy, the first question that popped into my mind was, wait.. what letter bombs? Reading (much) further through the article, there is yet another mention of the bombs;
  • One letter recipient sustained minor injuries. The other noticed an odour and called police. A letter bomb was also sent to a Guelph residence earlier this month. Police are advising residents of southern Ontario not open any unexpected packages or letters.
Whoa, shit. So apparently there were crazy letter bomb blasts in Southern Ontario throughout the month. Now, having a subscription to the newspaper, you'd think I would have remembered reading something about this, but nope. I mean, if this was on CNN, it would be a huge story. But here in Canada, random explosives infiltrating our postal system are more of a "meh" issue. To sum things up:
  • American headline: "LETTER BOMBS TERRIFY THE REGION: YOUR FAMILY COULD BE NEXT!"
  • Canadian headline: *no articles found*
Ahhhh... it's uhhh... good to be Canadian.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Str8 acting? OMG, WTF!?

I've started to notice that there's this huge stigma in the gay community with the use of the term, "straight acting". I've seen countless people use the phrase in their profile only to have dozens of people flame them (no pun intended). And I'm not just talking about casual insults; I'm talking about full fledged "die you fucking homophobe" posts.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, "straight acting" refers to a gay man that exhibits traditional heterosexual qualities. This is analogous to referring to an Asian person as a "banana" (which doesn't seem to carry the same negative connotations).

Now here's what makes me want to buy an arsenal of nukes and give them to a bunch of Arab extremists in an effort to destroy the world (thanks for the idea, 24!). Every gay man is well aware of the true meaning of the term, yet they use it as an excuse to flame open homosexuals for exhibiting what they consider to be "straight qualities". They act as though a fellow gay man that doesn't neatly fit into their definition of a homosexual is somehow "acting". In essence, they are propagating the exact stereotypes that they are trying to extinguish, and have become "reverse-homophobic".

In my opinion, this type of a person represents the lowest common denominator (note to self: never use math as a phrase ever again). They are clearly well aware of the issues facing minorities, yet they are ignorant enough to propagate these prejudices. At least most homophobes can claim that they don't personally know a gay person... reverse-homophobes can't use the same excuse.

To be fair, reverse-prejudice isn't just limited to the gay community. Stephen Dion recently announced he would ensure that 1/3 of Canadian ridings would have a female running in the next election, even if a male in that riding happened to be more qualified. Similarly, Many American colleges practice "affirmative action", which essentially results in deserving white students (regardless of the neighbourhood that they grew up) getting rejected by schools just because of the colour of their skin. I honestly don't see how this is any different from the practices of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, who is deporting white farmers out of his country so that black farmers can take their place.

In conclusion, yes, I am a straight acting gay man and proud of it. I like my sports, I like beer, and I love hot guys. If anybody has a problem with that, we can always settle this over a nice game of one-on-one basketball….

….uhhhh…. I’m talking about the video game of course. Queers can’t play basketball, you silly goose!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Duck and cover


Border up your windows. Stock up on food rations and flashlights. Protect your children. Run if you have to. They were in the same room.