Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The year that was and the year ahead
(December 29) - When this year started, I made a commitment. I would lose weight and get into better shape. I end the year on the same note.
Twelve months ago, Tiger Woods had one thing in common with people everywhere. He’s a better golfer than I am. By the end of the year, I had one thing in common with thousands of others. I’m a better person than he is.
It has been an interesting and memorable year. My granddaughter had her second birthday, my father had his last. Lynne and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Of people who used to be children, my oldest turned 40 and my youngest reached her quarter century.
My older brother turned 65. My younger brother celebrated his 61st birthday by going on a 122-mile bicycle ride. Sixty-one miles out, 61 miles back –in one day. I didn’t match that, but I did get my first set of hearing aids. That’s something neither he nor Tiger has.
But 2009 wasn’t all about me, was it?
It was a lot about political brinkmanship in Ottawa. At the start, we almost had a coalition government of the Liberals and the NDP. It failed because the leaders of the two parties counted their chickens before they hatched. They didn’t anticipate how the prime minister would respond to what ended up as amateur hour on the opposition benches. Like a pair of inept chess players, Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton thought they had Stephen Harper in checkmate. They didn’t realize he had one decisive move available, and he used it to checkmate them.
By year’s end, the Conservative government had put itself in contempt of Parliament. A vote was passed requiring the government to release certain documents related to the treatment of prisoners of war in Afghanistan. The government flatly and boldly refuses. What can the opposition do? They spent the last year propping up Harper’s government. If they find a way to do something, Harper will repeat his coup de grace. He’ll end this session of Parliament and go away until spring.
When the year began, Stéphane Dion was on his way to becoming only the second Liberal leader who didn’t become prime minister. At the close, Michael Ignatieff seems set to become the third.
At the provincial level, the roles are almost reversed. It is the Liberals who are mired in ongoing scandals such as eHealth and the Lottery Commission. They are floundering, stubbornly clinging to power while showing little imagination or vision. They now float the idea of selling the LCBO, even though it is the biggest money maker they have outside income taxes.
The provincial Conservatives are equally adrift. They sound foolish when they criticize the Liberals for doing the very things they have long advocated themselves. The NDP’s Andrea Horvath is leading a focused and credible fight against the Harmonized Sales Tax and other symbols of Liberal mismanagement.
In the municipal arena, it has been another year of achievements and disappointments. In total, the former outnumber the latter. They opened the new city hall. They also opened Norfolk and Wyndham streets. The sewer pipes they found were a sight to behold. There are more streets to fix next year, so get your shock absorbers tuned up.
We will have a municipal election in 2010. We might have a federal one. We won’t have a provincial. Beginning next week, candidates for city hall can declare themselves, start campaigning and raising money.
Of all the things we’ll do next year, the most important will be to sift through all the noise and focus on the facts.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Mugs of eggnog and a lump of coal
(December 22) - Forget all that rubbish from the lunatics who say Christmas is under attack by invading hordes of immigrants. It isn’t. It was beaten senseless by the credit card companies ages ago.
You don’t have to be a practising Christian to have a pleasant Christmas, or to wish a merry one to people you meet. I’m not and I do.
It’s the season for remembering friends and giving a little something to people you don’t know. That’s why we buy a couple of extra non-perishables with our groceries. Instead of bringing them home, we drop them in a food bank bin. Not knowing who will be on the receiving end makes the giving more meaningful.
The same spirit lurks in the background of the very successful United Way drive this year. The $2.66 million raised will go a long way for those who have been hit hard by the recession. Tough times bring out the generosity in most folk.
It is time to hand out warming mugs of eggnog. First in line should be all of you who donated to one or both of the United Way and the food bank. Without you, a lot of families would not have much of a Christmas at all.
I’ll offer another mug to our mayor and councillors. They did a good job of dealing with the mess left behind by higher levels of government. Regular readers know I would have liked to see a higher tax increase to preserve the services we need. Oh well. That’s behind us now.
We lost bus service on holidays, but kept sidewalk snow plowing.
We delayed the opening of the east side library branch, but helped downtown businesses by keeping free on-street parking in the downtown.
I’ll offer an extra mug of eggnog to Coun. Maggie Laidlaw. She made a motion, which went un-seconded, not to delay the library branch opening. The delay has been accepted by the library board. Laidlaw’s motion had no hope of success, but it was a graceful gesture. It would have been nice if the Ward 1 councillors had supported it, just as a nod to the good people on the other side of Victoria. I hope those residents understand that in June they will have a library branch to be proud of. It will be worth the wait.
It appears we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. I have raged against the Laird Road interchange on the Hanlon for many years. I don’t intend to stop. But the raging shouldn’t happen on Carden Street. Take it down Woolwich Street to MPP Liz Sandals’ office.
The problem is with the province. I am told they have a hold on land east of the Hanlon, which can’t be developed until the interchange is built. So no eggnog for the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Transportation who refuse to let go of outdated traffic flow concepts. Give them a lump of coal instead. They are the ones who can alter the plan and unlink its components.
We started squeezing the Hanlon land 30 years ago. Much of it was run of the mill farmland. Not particularly sacred, but the corn was good. When the province decided to build a four-lane highway from an arbitrary spot on the 401 to Woodlawn Road, they unleashed a chain of events with its own internal dynamic. It is hard, almost impossible, to stop.
I’ll offer a mega-mug of eggnog to the first person to come up with an effective plan to divert the provincial government from its mega-project mentality.
Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, do it wisely.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Cutting taxes is not a cure-all
(December 15) - Tonight’s budget is not so much an admission of failure as an accusation. Councillors have found themselves stuck between a snow drift and a bus pass. The forces that brought them here are out of their control.
The accusations of failure must be directed higher up, to the federal and provincial governments. For the past 30 years, they told us the solution to our economic problems is to cut taxes and reduce government spending.
It was a lie. The economy today is in worse shape than it’s ever been. It is true enough that there is only one taxpayer. My taxes go to support the services provided by all three levels of government. That didn’t just start today. It’s been the case for as long as I can remember.
Before we get into the debate about the city budget, remember one thing. Taxes are not evil. They are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
We pay taxes to get everything from universal health care to weekly garbage collection. There is a cost to everything, and it has to be paid. When you add up all the services provided by all levels of government, you come up with the final bill. The full cost of living in Canada. It’s a lot of money. It has to come from taxes.
When one level of government cuts taxes, the burden falls onto lower levels. By the time it reaches the city, there is almost nowhere left to go.
Federal and provincial governments can run deficits. Cities can’t. All they can do is choose between undesirable options. Two of them are to raise taxes or cut services. There is a third option, but I’ve never heard anyone raise it until now.
We are consumed by a fear of a tax increase. All of us. The councillors who charge it, and the rest of us who pay it.
Tonight, we’ll see the distance they will go to avoid one. Eliminate sidewalk snow plowing. Raise the price of university student bus passes, even though all students pay $61 per semester whether they get one or not. Build an east end library branch but leave it sitting unopened until June. Why do all this and more?
To avoid paying more taxes.
What we can’t hear is a willingness among the members of our community to bite the bullet. The citizens who make Guelph the city we all want to call home are not accepting the consequences of the choices they have made over the past 30 years. They are not sitting at the kitchen table telling their kids it is time to face reality. We have demanded lower taxes, and now we can’t fund summer camp programs. Wives are not telling their husbands about the city’s third option: “Well, dear, we have brought ourselves to a nine per cent property tax increase, so we’ll need to cut back on the number of digital TV channels we receive.”
Oh no. We’d rather save $89,000 by eliminating a dining room program at the Evergreen Seniors Centre.
We have come to the point where everyone must suffer except us. Everyone but me must pay the price for the fiscal mismanagement of the federal and provincial governments we elected. That is not how to build a community. It is an insult to our parents and grandparents, the people who made great sacrifices to build the country that is being dismantled before our eyes and with barely a whimper of protest.
A 9.2 per cent tax increase is not fair to me. A 4.5 per cent increase is not fair to my community.
To whom is council responsible?
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
It's gonna get messy
(December 08) - City council goes through the next step of its budget setting process tonight. Last week councillors heard from staff. They were told what they can afford, and when they can buy it. Tonight they hear from citizens. You can tell them what you want them to spend money on. Next week they hear from themselves. They’ll debate and decide.
According to a report from the CAO, Hans Loewig, just staying even would mean a 9.2 per cent budget increase. More than half of this, he says, results from a projected revenue shortfall of $8.1 million in 2010. The rest is from contractual commitments. This alone sets up a mess. It gets worse when you see the proposed measures to reduce the increase to 4.5%, or to 3%.
By last Saturday, 31 people were on the list to speak to council about the projected cuts. Scan down the list and you can bet there won’t be many speaking in favour.
One proposal is to recover $667,000 by eliminating free on-street parking at downtown meters. Downtown business owners will be there to say why this is a bad idea.
Forty-two thousand can be saved by closing Lyon’s pool. Those who use it to cool down are pretty hot.
Ending sidewalk snow plowing will save about a hundred thousand. Ending bus service on stat holidays, cutting back a meal program for seniors, forcing all staff to take five days off a year without pay, and staff layoffs are all on the table. Opponents of each cut are on the speakers’ list. Probably some supporters as well.
It’s going to be messy. This is the election-year budget, and our councillors have not left themselves any wiggle room. Someone somewhere in town is hurt by each proposed cut. The capital budget picture was bad enough. It is spreading into the operating one. This is where the pain will be even more acute. It is also where most of tonight’s delegations are coming from.
No one wants to see a nine per cent property tax increase, but what will we give up to avoid one? Sidewalk snow plowing? Fine if you can depend on property owners to do it. We all know that many won’t. Still fine if you are reasonably healthy and get about in an upright manner. If you have some mobility challenges, you need a clear path. The city has a responsibility to provide one.
Should we cut funding to the neighbourhood groups? Two Rivers, Onward Willow, Waverley Drive, Brant Avenue, Hanlon Creek and others provide good services to families all over town. They do things like community gardens, breakfast programs, clothing exchanges, children’s activities for PD days when parents still have to get to work.
Who wants to see downtown businesses strangled? Who wants to see people put out of work? Who wants to see access to youth sports programs reduced? Or participation fees increased?
A tax decrease today always leads to an increase in out-of-pocket expenses tomorrow. It always has and it always will.
If the only way to get from a 9.2% to a 4.5% or 3% increase is to nickel and dime our citizens to death, we have failed badly as a community.
It doesn’t have to happen. There is one construction project that will cost us about $16 million. That’s what we are spending to help the province build a cloverleaf on the Hanlon at Clair Road. We should step back. Tell the province it is the wrong project at the wrong time. Just say no and put our money into people instead.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Cycle of violence is never-ending
(December 01) - I still remember the shock and horror of the CBC national news 20 years ago.
A man, angry and twisted by a hatred of women, walked into a Montreal engineering school and shot 28 people, four men and 24 women. Fourteen of the women died. There was no question, no doubt about his purpose. He declared his hatred for feminists. In his mind, any woman attempting to get ahead in life was a feminist. In one classroom he ordered the men students to one side and then shot all nine women, killing six.
It brought into focus, in the most graphic and disturbing manner possible, the reality of violence against women. Although such concentrated violence has not been duplicated in Canada, either before or since, individual acts continue unabated.
There is one difference between what happened that day in Montreal and what happens every day of the year in homes across the country.
The women who were shot in Montreal did not know their attacker. They were anonymous victims who suffered from a man’s blind rage. Almost all women who are beaten, stabbed, shot and abused know who hurt them. It was the man who, on their wedding day, promised to protect her. The man who, the night before, told her I love you. The man who couldn’t understand why she left him. The man who is a role model to his sons. Someone she thought was her friend, her companion, her lover.
You don’t have to look far in Guelph to see this ugly reality. You could sit in on any of the anger-management programs going on every day of the week. Most of the men who sign up have come nose-to-nose with a court date. When up against an assault charge for laying a beating on a wife or girlfriend, they take the best advice any lawyer will give: get ready to tell the judge that you are remorseful and trying to change your ways. When the charge goes away, so does the remorse. When remorse disappears, restraint goes with it and a woman gets hurt again.
You would also see it if you could look in on any of the several shelters operating throughout Guelph and Wellington County. Even if you could, you shouldn’t. They are not open to casual observers, and you don’t want to go through what people go through to qualify for a bed in one. Shelters are where the women in our lives go to escape the men in their lives.
What will it take to end this cycle of violence? Sometimes I despair that anything will. It is so deeply and darkly ingrained. If the people who create our cultural landmarks continue to defend Roman Polanski, there may not be any hope.
Polanski is a brilliant filmmaker. He directed movies such as Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist. He also had a troubled personal life. In 1977, when he was 44, he was convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl. He fled to Europe before sentencing. Now he faces extradition back to Los Angeles. Hundreds of other filmmakers and actors, people like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, have rallied to his defence.
Polanski can afford $4.2 million bail. He can do house arrest in a $1.6-million chalet in a luxury Swiss resort. He should not use his money to evade justice. Time does not heal all wounds, and money does not buy forgiveness. The rich and the poor can be equally abusive. Neither should get away with it.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
