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.