"From the Left"The 2002 Guelph Tribune columns
"From the Left" opinion columns which appear every second Tuesday in The Guelph Tribune, more frequently during the municipal and federal elections. These columns appeared in 2002.
Table of Contents
It is Christmas Eve, and we can all take time to be with friends and family. One of the best gifts our city has received this year was the recommendation by the Pesticide Review Committee to limit the cosmetic use of lawn chemicals. If this is implemented in the New Year, we will all be feeling a bit better, and breathing a bit more comfortably, by the time next Christmas comes along. Some owners of lawn care companies are in a panic over this. They are running around doing their imitation of Chicken Little, raising fears that the sky is falling. They even went so far as to spend some of their hard earned cash on a misleading full page ad in this paper a couple of weeks ago. Chemical sprayers masquerading as the Environmental Coalition of Ontario is a lot like the local Tories calling themselves the Coalition to Defend Public Education. It is an oxymoron. For those who are wondering, an oxymoron is a contradiction in terms - not a person with the strength of an ox and the brain of a Bush. The lawn care folk should stop concentrating on how they have done things in the past, and start looking at the new opportunities that are opening up. There will be just as much, possibly more, work for them in the post-pesticide world. Natural, organic lawn care requires a lot of thought and planning. My guess is that the people who hire the companies that spray chemicals will be just as happy to hire them to aerate lawns and apply organic fertilizers. The members of the Environmental Coalition will be just as busy then as they are now. They should all take a deep breath, count to ten and stop worrying. Their world is not ending. It is changing. They can counter the public perception of them as dinosaurs by proving they have the ability to change with it. Unfortunately, their performance at last week’s city planning, environment and transportation committee meeting does not give us much reason for optimism. Another alleged “gift” we are about to receive is turning into a burden on us. Some time soon, we are all supposed to receive a cheque for around $75. It is Ernie Eves’ way of apologizing for the damage his government caused through its poorly thought out deregulation of Ontario Hydro. One of the unheralded consequences of this generosity is that our local utility, Guelph Hydro, must now issue the cheques at a cost of about $60,000. Once again our indulgent Premier wants to bribe us with our own money. This is very much similar to the rest of the havoc the Tories have wreaked on communities around the province. They download problems, and then refuse to provide compensation for the extra costs involved. Speaking of Guelph Hydro, it is fascinating to watch the likes of Dan Schnurr suddenly become an advocate of non-profit enterprises. This champion of free enterprise now believes the local utility should be prevented from making a profit. On the one hand, conservatives such as this would privatize every publicly owned venture they can find. Then the new owners would be encouraged to run them at a profit. The proceeds from Guelph Hydro are helping the city provide us with services that would otherwise be paid for through taxes. It doesn’t make any sense to eliminate this source of revenue. Schnurr and Dan Moziar should realize they can’t have lower Hydro bills and lower taxes at the same time. And so another year comes to a close. As a community, we tackled a lot of large issues, and made a lot of progress. On the bright side, we still are not burdened with a Wal-Mart store. That alone gives us a reason to celebrate. Have a good holiday, and get lots of rest. The year that’s coming promises to be just as exciting as the one we’re leaving behind. go back to the table of contents
Statistics Canada released the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) last week. It showed a pretty hefty jump of 3.2 per cent over the figure from last year. A big part of this came from an increase in energy prices in October of this year compared to October 2001. The report says: “The sale of electricity on an open market … is making prices more volatile. Ontario electricity prices remained 23.2% higher than their October 2001 level.” This wasn’t news to those of us who live in Ontario and have been noticing the steep climb in the bills we receive every two months. The hydro bills themselves are very confusing, but the small bit at the bottom showing the total amount owing is as clear as it’s always been. What it shows, in all its clarity, is that yet another major piece of the Conservative’s “common sense” revolution is an abject failure. When they began privatizing and deregulating Ontario Hydro while Mike Harris was still the premier, they had lots of warning about the end result. They had experiences in places like Alberta and California to learn from. Power shortages and price gouging were the order of the day in those jurisdictions. Maybe the provincial Tories were convinced that private energy corporations in Ontario would be more benign, less greedy, than their western counterparts. Maybe they truly believed that corporations here would put the interests of individual consumers ahead of the interests of their own shareholders. Maybe Ontario Conservatives still believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. They were wrong. Their energy efficient tooth fairy quickly turned into the monstrous Hydrozilla. The not-so-comical monster was born in the swamp where Tory policies are hatched. NDP activists managed to capture it and are now bringing it to many of the press conferences organized by Premier Ernie Eves and Energy Minister John Baird. Ernie Eves all but admitted deregulation was a bad, blundering idea. He had the luxury of being able to blame his predecessor while walking away from the mess. Even so, the ham-fisted way in which he is trying to extricate himself is only making matters worse. The rebate to hydro consumers is a pretty blatant attempt at bribery just before the coming provincial election, which could be on top of us as early as next spring. The rollback of rates to 4.3 cents per kilowatt hour is another matter. Although welcomed by consumers such as myself, it is loaded with a ticking time bomb. It does not just apply to individual homeowners. It also goes to the corporations that use, and often waste, huge amounts of electricity. This will result in a massive transfer of tax dollars out of general government revenue and into the bank accounts of private energy suppliers. In the early days of deregulation, some quick buck companies sent people door to door with fixed rate energy contracts. The government will now subsidize these companies for the difference between the fixed price set by Eves and the market price at which they must still buy power. Aegent Energy Advisors, a consulting company that supported deregulation, issued a report on November 15 saying “the Ontario government’s steps to fix the problems of the deregulated market have essentially gutted all of the key principles that were the objective of the exercise. In freezing power prices for consumers, the government has taken a risk that could cost $800 million in the first year alone.” This is over and above the billion dollars in Hydro profits Eves earmarked for the rebate cheques. The money could have been used for frivolities such as health care, education or environmental protection. Eves has gotten us into a sorry mess, and he can’t get out of it cleanly. His best bet will be to kill off Hydrozilla and return the province to the system of public power that worked well for us since the turn of the last century. go back to the table of contents
The dogs of war are still growling at each other, pacing in circles, watching and waiting for an opportunity to attack. They know that if they wait long enough, and growl loudly enough, the fight will come to them. The presidents and prime ministers and generals remember how to start their wars. They do not know how to prevent them, how to step back and find a saner way to settle their differences. Yesterday, people throughout Canada paused to remember their friends and relatives who have died fighting wars in far away lands. Men and women who were part of the last world war still go down to our cenotaphs every year, wearing their poppies, laying their wreaths. They are mostly in their middle eighties now, and every year there are fewer of them. As they grow older, they still remember their comrades who could not. Throughout the twentieth century and the first couple of years of the twenty first, there has always been a war somewhere on our planet. Never have we had a complete peace, never a moment when the working people of one country were not away from home doing the politicians’ dirty work, killing the working people of another country. It is a madness the world seems unable to escape. The politicians say they remember, but why don’t they ever learn? Even today, the Bushes and Blairs, the Husseins and bin Ladens, are flexing their muscles, rushing headlong into the valley of death. The killing could come in its traditional way, through ground troops shooting at each other, and aeroplanes dropping death from the sky. Or it could come in the more modern forms, from crewless drone bombers or clueless suicide bombers. It doesn’t make much difference. In either event, the victims end up just as dead. In 21st century warfare, more and more of them are non-combatants, innocent by-standers who couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough. It doesn’t seem to matter to our political leaders that hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens are already marching in protest against the war preparations, as happened last Saturday in Florence, Italy and a few weeks ago in London, England. Nor does it seem to matter that hundreds of thousands more people around the world signed petitions calling for an end to the killing cycle. All that seems to matter is that Middle Eastern oil fields must be controlled. The people who run the countries in which they are located and those who run the countries in which the oil is consumed are fighting for this control. To justify the fight, they convince their citizens the other side is evil. To win the fight, they send their young people off to kill and to be killed. When we put away our poppies for another year, we should not stop remembering and we should not stop working for a peaceful world. Just because conflict has been an ever-present reality for all our lives does not mean it must remain so. Admittedly, the prospects look bleak when we view the recent American election results. The worst of it is that fewer than 40 per cent of them voted, and only a little more than half of them supported the Republicans. Yet from this, George Bush decided he has a mandate to go to war when he so chooses. Any action he might take will not only impact on the Americans. It will have far-reaching consequences for the entire world. He has already approved a military plan involving the invasion and occupation of Iraqi territory. This can only further destabilize a region where politics is already highly unstable. Of all the things we remembered yesterday, the top of the list should be that the people who start the wars are never the ones who fight them. Our sons and daughters will do that, unless we rededicate ourselves to marching, petitioning and voting for peace. To remember is to end all war. go back to the table of contents
In the past year, our hydro bill has risen dramatically. It went up by about 25 per cent. I have many friends in town whose bills went up much more than that, often by 33 per cent or more. Most of the bills I’ve seen, for the July and August billing period, are well over $300. This is all happening under the new regime of privatization and increased competition. This shows very clearly that giving the private sector control of public services does not work. The services are not delivered more efficiently, and they are not cheaper. Those of us who opposed the privatization of Ontario Hydro raised the alarm and predicted that all this would occur. We were right. This debate is heating up again over health care. Our public system has been allowed to deteriorate to the point where politicians from all three right wing Parties – Liberals, Conservatives and Alliance – are now looking at options for introducing the profit motive and competition into the delivery of medical services. Two privately owned hospitals, in Brampton and Ottawa, have already been approved in Ontario. The provincial Liberals, who like to think of themselves as the next occupants of the Queen’s Park throne, say they will assess private hospitals on a “case by case” basis. They cannot be counted on to protect public health care. Last Friday, a Senate committee released a report calling for health care to be funded either through a GST increase or through premiums we’d pay directly. When Council of Canadians leader Maude Barlow spoke downtown last week, she warned about public health care suffering a death from a thousand wounds. The Senate report would hasten this process. Both funding solutions it proposes will shift the burden onto individual Canadian families. Public opinion polls show that most Canadians are willing to pay more taxes if they will be used to pay for vital services such as this. But increased consumer taxes and user premiums are not the way to do it. What we need to do is reverse the tax cuts that have only benefited wealthy Canadians. It is these tax cuts that led to the under funding of health care, education and other social services. The real test of the federal government’s attitude towards public health care will come next month when Roy Romanow submits the report of his Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care. There are some indications of the direction this Commission will recommend to the government. In a statement following the release of the Senate report, Romanow said “it is clear that we will require additional funds to preserve the system and keep it responsive to the evolving needs of Canadians.” Another hint is found in a speech he gave last week in Newfoundland when he said we “need to clearly affirm and collectively recommit to the values and principles upon which Medicare was based and which Canadians feel must continue to guide it.” We can assume from this that Romanow will, at the very least, call for a recommitment to public health care. He may, and should, go even further than this. It is not enough to simply protect and maintain what we have now. The system needs to be expanded to include a comprehensive pharmacare program and more services for long term geriatric care. The focus should also gradually shift away from the treatment of illnesses and towards their prevention. This can be accomplished easily through a simple reduction in the amount of toxic substances in circulation. The government could also allow income tax deductions for money spent on things such as fitness club memberships or minor sports registration fees. This could all be paid for through a new tax on stock market transactions. It all must be a publicly run, non-profit system. If we allow a greater role for the private sector, we will soon see the present Hydro mess shift over into our hospitals and doctors’ offices. go back to the table of contents
George Bush and Tony Blair are no fools. They know when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. A couple of weeks ago, they gave Saddam Hussein fair warning. Either he lets the United Nations arms inspectors into the country, or Iraq would be bombed mercilessly until Hussein himself was dead and buried in the rubble. Just to show the world they were not in a big rush to get the bombs dropping, Bush and Blair asked the UN to give Hussein seven days to comply. An Iraqi delegation met fairly quickly with a UN delegation, and worked out a protocol allowing the arms inspectors back in. The leader of the mightiest country in the world and Britain’s Voice of America were not duped by this transparent ploy. Not them. They are not the local village idiots. Being the astute and capable leaders they are, they saw right away that Hussein only agreed in order to avoid the bombardment of his country and his own probable entombment. Since Iraq’s compliance was obviously not sincere, Bush and Blair have promised to bomb the bejeebers out of them anyway. The nominal reason for all this is “weapons of mass destruction.” Bush and Blair know all about them. The United States controls more weapons of mass destruction than every other country in the world combined. Britain has a whole bunch as well. No one else even comes close. As for Iraq, the last time they were in a shooting war with the Americans its army was in such poor shape that it hardly fought back. The best they could muster were some scud missiles that didn’t destroy much at all. They were weapons of mass derision. The country has been under such tight sanctions it is unlikely to have developed anything of greater consequence in the years since the Desert Storm erupted. Bush and Blair are also trying to convince us there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and international terrorism. The logic here is that Hussein must be severely dealt with because of something he might do at some time in the future. Intelligence gatherers rate a terrorist threat from Iraq as very low. The CIA released a letter last week saying Iraq “appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical and biological weapons against the United States.” It warns that Iraq may resort to these measures if the Americans strike first. The prospects for peace in the Middle East are not great these days. A foolish attack on Baghdad could have horrendous consequences not just in that region, but around the world. Preemptive strikes such as the United States is calling for are bad enough. To make matters worse, White House officials have stated their goal is to effect a regime change in Iraq by whatever means necessary, even holding out the option of having Hussein murdered. At one point, the White House press spokesman said bombs wouldn’t be needed if a single bullet did the job. Seldom has a country’s foreign policy been so openly based on such an immoral foundation. Incredibly, in the face of all this, someone nominated Bush and Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize. Also nominated is a young Toronto man, Craig Kielburger, who built world-wide awareness about the use of child labour to make carpets and clothes through his Kids Can Free the Children organization. The work of Kielburger to improve social justice in the developing world will do more to promote peace than the bellicose rhetoric coming from Washington and London. The tragedy of our times is that the rhetoric gets more attention than the concrete actions of a dedicated young person. Canada should have nothing to do with George Bush’s war. We should not support the use of American and British weapons of mass destruction against some of the very children Kielburger has been helping to set free. go back to the table of contents
It is difficult to identify the one area in which the Tories have inflicted the most hurt on people in Ontario. There has been so much damage in so many areas and it is not easy to quantify it all, or rank it in order of the most severe. We can see a pattern in the way the Harris hatchet swept over us, though. It fell mostly on the weakest and most vulnerable sections of our community. Welfare recipients, the elderly and the young have all suffered devastating blows. The treatment of our senior citizens borders on the criminal. The amount of time one must spend on a waiting list for long term care facilities is shameful. These are people who worked all their lives building this country and paid the taxes necessary to keep their communities vibrant. Now that they are too old to work, or too sick to contribute to the community organizations they helped build, our provincial government is casting them aside and cutting the funding for the long term care they need. At the other end of the age spectrum, our sons and daughters are not being provided with the quality of education they need to survive in the modern world. They need this grounding now so they can find decent jobs that pay enough to offset the shoddy treatment they can expect at the other end of their lives, if the type of government we have endures. But what are they getting instead? Schools with more mould than textbooks. Libraries without librarians. An education system without the resources to properly educate. We have democratically elected school boards that are not being allowed to do their jobs. One of these jobs involves setting budgets, allocating the money needed to pay teachers, pay support staff, heat buildings and generally keep the students in an atmosphere conducive to learning. At the same time, though, these boards have been denied the ability to raise their own revenues. They must work within the confines of money rigidly allocated through a provincial funding formula based on the number of students in a school. The province arbitrarily decreed that they may not adopt deficit budgets. The three that did had their affairs taken over by provincially appointed supervisors who replaced the elected Trustees. In his pre-election attempt to win back public support by smoothing over the rough edges of Harris’ buzz saw approach to social policy, Ernie Eves appointed something called the Education Equality Task Force. Chaired by the president of the University of Guelph, this task force is charged with investigating the provincial funding formula. As it travels the province, it is getting an earful. From Thunder Bay to Cornwall, from Windsor to Ottawa, school board officials are lining up to explain the facts of life to Mordechai Rozanski. He is not hearing a happy tale. He is supposed to report his findings to the Minister of Education in November. Considering the frank presentations made to him, including those by our local education providers, it is inconceivable that Rozanski could gloss over the damage that has been done. He should take some inspiration from the provincial Environmental Commissioner, Gord Miller. His annual report was blunt in outlining the disastrous effects of the government’s environmental neglect, especially as it concerns rural water quality and the preservation of biodiversity. He said the province has “stumbled badly.” Rozanski must be equally blunt in reporting that the government has not just stumbled, but has fallen on its face in its handling of the education system. Families in Ontario have a responsibility to demand that our governments live up to their responsibility to provide, protect and sustain a climate in which our children can acquire the knowledge and tools for a strong take-off into the working world. By the same token, they must also provide the cushions for a safe landing at the end, when seniors are too frail or too ill to provide it for themselves. go back to the table of contents
Poor Brenda Chamberlain. Sometimes she just doesn't get it. I remember, as a child, hearing some sound parental advice. It went something like: It is better to remain silent and let people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and prove it. Chamberlain would do well to pay attention and learn this little lesson. Her comments immediately following the release of a Senate committee report on marijuana were fatuous and misleading. Although the report did recommend making the substance legally available to anyone over 16, nowhere did it say it should be widely available "in corner stores." It suggests something loosely described as "duly licensed distribution centres." There is a big difference between the two, and Chamberlain's fudging of the issue is a mischievous act that does not help the debate. There is absolutely no reason why tobacco and alcohol should be legal and marijuana should not. Those who argue against removing marijuana from the criminal code have, at best, two consistent arguments. Both are weak. First, they say it should remain illegal because it is addictive. They claim that pot smoking is a gateway to heavier drugs like cocaine and heroin. Unfortunately for them, the facts keep getting in the way of this line of thought. As the Senate report points out, close to 30 per cent of Canadians admit to having smoked marijuana at least once in their lives, and about two million Canadians over 18 have used it in the past 12 months. Very, very few of these people go on to become crack heads or junkies. Those who do are driven to the needle by other serious psychological problems that are not caused by what they smoked. The other main argument, and one which Chamberlain uses to crank up emotional responses, is that marijuana must be illegal in order to keep it out of the hands of children. Well, Brenda, we've already missed the boat on this one. The average age at which individuals first try the stuff is 15. They don't get it from corner stores. They get it from their friends and family members who themselves get it, directly or indirectly, from the street level foot soldiers of organized crime. As long as it is illegal, its distribution will remain in the hands of people who don't care what age their customers are. If it were made legal, and distributed through regulated outlets such as liquor stores, there would be a better chance to control access to it. There will still be underage pot smokers, just as there will always be underage drinkers. This, however, should be treated as a parental concern rather than a criminal matter. The biggest objection to pot is the same as for tobacco. Inhaling any smoke into your lungs is not a good idea, even though lots of us continue to do it. Even on this count, pot smoking comes out ahead. Many of us routinely smoke a packet of cigarettes every day. No one could consume 25 spliffs a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So, Brenda, take Bob Marley's sage advice and legalize it. ***** The first of these Tribune columns was printed on September 16, 1995, seven years ago. This is my 180th column. My regular counterpart on the other side of the political spectrum has always been Mike Cuthbertson. Mike recently turned in his typewriter and is moving on to other pursuits. It has been fun debating the issues of the day with him. He is a principled advocate for the conservative viewpoint. If there was anything that really irritated me about our exchanges, it was that Mike always generated more letters to the editor than I did. But then, most of them were taking issue with the points he raised. More letters to the editor are sparked by opposition than by support. I wish him well in whatever he tackles next, and welcome aboard the next challenger. go back to the table of contents
When I was a youngster, the thing I liked best about Labour Day was that it marked the end of two months of idleness and the start of another busy school year. Or maybe it was just on a list of the things I liked best. It may not have been very high up on the list, but I'm sure it was on there somewhere. That was back in the good old days, when education was something governments encouraged. It was before politicians came to the profound understanding that schools and teachers and text books are a waste of money and an unfair burden on taxpayers. Still, Labour Day continues to be the dividing line, the border over which we cross from the giddy land of summer holidays into the grim land of work and school. It also remains a good time to set goals, to decide what we are going to learn and accomplish. At the federal political level, this can begin by assessing the new choices becoming available for the next election. The leaders of all three major Parties announced their plans to step down. Alexa McDonough is the only one leaving with her dignity intact. She leaves her NDP post next January after a peaceful and orderly transition. Joe Clark will go next, pushed out by Party dissidents. A transition date may not be decided until next March. Then there is Jean Chrétien. He will hang around until 2004, when Paul Martin qualifies for Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits. By then he wants to have his protégé, John Manley, ready to take over. In a recent Ekos public opinion poll, these three Parties were all moving up. The Liberals surged, largely because the national media have been telling us for months that Chrétien's resignation will be good news. The Conservatives and the NDP went up a couple of percentage points each. The Reform Alliance crashed down about 15 points and is now in fourth place with very little support east of the Saskatchewan border. So much for Stephen Harper. It is small wonder the Tories, at their Edmonton convention last week, decided not to waste their time with him. I have often thought the Alliance is a lot like a car wreck on the highway. People always slow down to take a look and see how bad it is. Now the rubbernecking is over, and the traffic is moving on. If there is to be any "reunion" on the right, it will probably come when Alliance members abandon the experiment and move back to the Tories. They will also have to give up their hard edge. The Ekos poll shows that only 22 per cent of Canadians think Mike Harris would be a good choice for Prime Minister. He has always been the poster boy for the Reformatories, and three-quarters of Canadians don't want him. After the events and developments of this past summer, it appears that
Canadians could go in either of two directions. We could go back to the
days of three major Parties offering generally left, centre or right-wing
choices to the electorate. Or we could continue with a wider choice of
more issue-specific Parties. In either case, we should set a post-Labour
Day, back-to-school goal of learning how proportional representation could
work in Canada. There are many models of it around the world, and one
or another of them could be adapted to suit our parliamentary system.
It has become clear that electing majority governments with the support
of about a third of the voters is not doing the country any good. With
proportional representation, we can get off the tiresome treadmill of
studying opinion polls, reading tea leaves, studying the entrails of chickens,
and otherwise voting for whoever is being predicted as the eventual winner.
Our choice will be much easier. Instead of choosing the lesser evil, as
defined by the national media, we will choose the greater good, as defined
by our own experience. go back to the table of contents
For the first time in its history, the New Democratic Party will choose its next leader through a "one member one vote" system. Everyone who is a member in good standing as of December 9 will be able to vote next January. Voting will take place in several ways - either by mail-in ballots, at special regional meetings, at a leadership convention in Toronto, or through an innovative and secure system of Internet voting. Apart from the mechanics of this new system, this leadership race is shaping up as a contest over the future direction of the NDP. At the moment, there are six declared candidates. Two of them, Bill Blaikie and Lorne Nystrom, are long time Western MPs who have come to be identified with the "old guard." Pierre Ducasse is a strong candidate from Quebec, hampered to a great degree by the generally low support the NDP receives in that province. Joe Comartin, one of the two NDP MPs from Windsor has very strong support from the CAW. Bev Meslo is the only woman in the running, but she carries the albatross of being the official Socialist Caucus candidate. To my mind, the most exciting candidate in the mix is Jack Layton. Layton has an excellent record in fighting for environmental issues, combating homelessness, promoting public transit, and generally advocating for sound municipal planning initiatives. His term as head of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities gave him a keen understanding of the relationship between our three levels of government. He knows what policies should be implemented by the federal government to ease the burden on Canada's cities. The NDP just went through a long process of self-examination, what it likes to call "renewal." Many members felt that it was stuck in a rut, and that if it kept on doing what it has always done, it would keep on going where it has always gone. This has not been very far. The policies advocated by Layton's campaign reflect a widely held view of the type of grass roots direction in which the Party should move. More than 80 per cent of Canadians live in urban areas, most of them in medium to large cities. It is with them that Layton's vision of Canada will find its greatest resonance. One of the most persistent knocks against Layton will be that he comes from Toronto, and will therefore be unacceptable to voters in the west and in Atlantic Canada. History, though, tells us differently. In electoral terms, the most successful NDP leaders were Ed Broadbent, from Oshawa, and David Lewis, from Toronto. Add to this the fact that Layton was born and raised in Quebec and is fluently bilingual, and you have about the best recipe for success the NDP has found in a long time. A few years ago, when the federal Tories first elected a leader by direct membership vote, a lot of people joined up to support David Orchard. He had a good reputation as a supporter of the environment and an opponent of the Free Trade Agreement. Orchard did surprisingly well, but the overwhelmingly conservative nature of the Conservative Party worked against him. His ultimate defeat was both predictable and inevitable. Those activists who took out federal Tory memberships quickly left the Party. A similar type of enthusiasm will grow around the Layton campaign. He appeals to the same environmental and community activists who backed the ill-fated Orchard campaign. The difference is that when they join Layton's team, they will not be made to feel like bothersome outsiders in the wider Party. They won't be given the bum's rush out the door once the vote is over. On the contrary, they will have the satisfaction of knowing they helped elect a new leader of a Party that embraces their ideals. If and when Layton wins, the entire complexion of Canadian politics will
shift. A federal election in which the choices are Layton, Paul Martin,
Stephen Harper and whomever the Tories dredge up will be an exciting thing
to observe and participate in. go back to the table of contents
Next Friday is the 25th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. I am thinking of this now because Presley's image is one huge, media generated myth. He was a creature of his own hype-manufacturing publicity agents. Early on, he was a genuinely dangerous rock and roll star. He threatened the comfortable status quo and caught the attention of the world. Then he went into the army and was never the same since. He came out as a member of the status quo, a caricature of himself, a make believe rocker. He was on a downhill slide to the Las Vegas lounge lizard he would be until the end of his life. The media blitz, however, never ended. The hype is now controlled by Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc., run by his widow Priscilla, and by Immortal Entertainment, a brain child of his daughter Lisa Marie. The end result of the corporate and media publicity blitzkrieg is that it is now commonly held that Presley was the king of rock and roll. To suggest otherwise is unheard of heresy, a blasphemy, a denial of what everyone knows to be true. Had America not been such a narrow, racist society, there would have been other, much more talented and dangerous candidates to be proclaimed head of the kingdom of rock. Chuck Berry comes to mind. Except that he spent time in jail while Presley was appointed an honorary FBI agent by J. Edgar Hoover. The thing is that the media got it wrong, but people swallowed the story. They are still getting it wrong, hoping people are still swallowing. We saw this played out in the national newspapers in the week since Joe Clark announced he is more or less, sort of, probably, resigning as leader of the federal Tories. What he said was that soon after the federal Liberals hold their leadership review next February, the Tory executive should schedule a leadership convention, unless the Liberals call a quick election, in which case he will stay to lead his Party to another defeat. From this rather fudged announcement, the media are elevating Clark to levels his mediocre political career does not warrant. He is not quite the king of rock and roll yet, but he is certainly fast becoming the prince of politics. If a politician like Clark can be made to look so good - now that he might be leaving - it is only in comparison to the company he keeps. In a crowd of short people, I would appear to be tall. I'm not, though. The other myth the press would have us believe is that a union of the Tory Party with the Reform Alliance will, magically, convince Canadians to lose their good judgment and swarm over to the right hand side of the political spectrum. Get ready for a frantic blitz along this line for the next six months or so. It got almost nauseating last week as reporters salivated over the prospect of Mike Harris walking off the golf course and into the Tory leadership race. At the moment, he'd rather fight crosswinds on the fairway than fight to be "leader of half a Party." While he was premier, Harris was a hard proponent of the "reformatory" trend in conservative politics. Were he the Tory leader, I have no doubt he and Steven Harper would be able to strike a unity deal. I also have no doubt that if they did, it would make no difference to the vast majority of Canadians. Don't get sucked in by the impending deification of Joe Clark and, possibly,
Mike Harris. If either of them is in any way the Elvis Presley of Canadian
politics, it is only in so far as they are hollow constructs of a hungry
media, people with a manufactured style but no real substance. Where,
then, is the real king, the Chuck Berry? We'll take a look for him in
the next column when we examine Jack Layton's bid to become the next NDP
leader. go back to the table of contents
It is only a matter of time now until a gay couple celebrates a legally sanctioned wedding in Guelph. A recent decision by the Ontario Superior Court held that defining marriage narrowly as a union between two members of opposite sexes is unconstitutional. It gave the provincial and federal governments two years to change their laws. The federal government defines who may get married, and the provincial government decides who can get a marriage license. They will either get in line with the way society is moving, or they will try to stall for time by appealing the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. Either way, same-sex weddings are on the horizon. This issue is bringing out a lot of apocalyptic predictions about the disintegration of family values and traditional institutions. I wouldn't take them too seriously. News of impending dramatic changes usually brings these reactions. A couple of years ago, we had the "Gwen Jacobs case." It established that women have the same right as men to doff their shirts in public. The predictions then were that children would be unable to venture out in public without being exposed to the sight of bare breasts. It didn't happen, of course, but the concept of equal rights was taken one step further. This is happening again now on the issue of marriage licenses. Gay and lesbian activists took this cause up to further their fight for rights equal to those enjoyed by heterosexual couples. There is an ironic twist to both of these court decisions. The right of women to walk about bare-breasted was won just as men and women were becoming scared of the sun and worried about skin cancer. The right of gay couples to marry is being won at the same time as heterosexual marriages are on the decline. A US census report in 2000 revealed that 81 per cent of households in 1970 were "family households" maintained by married couples. By 2000, these made up only 69 per cent of all households. Similar studies in Canada and Europe give similar results. The institution of marriage will not be threatened by extending it to same sex couples. More likely, it will be strengthened when more and more individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, evaluate their relationships and find ways to make them more meaningful and resilient. Some of those who are most disturbed by this turn of events are seeing it - I think with some accuracy - in terms of a domino effect. As gays and lesbians accomplish one step in the march towards equality, they are empowered to go to the next step. Instead of seeing this as dominoes knocking each other over, we should see it as bricks falling from a wall. A couple of years ago, a court challenge established that same sex couples in a common law relationship were entitled to the same employment benefits as are heterosexual couples. "What's next?" the worried ones lament. My best guess is that the next brick to fall will be the prohibition against adoptions. Why should heterosexual couples have the exclusive right to bring up children when most of the disturbed and dysfunctional individuals we meet were brought up by one? Let's never forget that at one point in their sorry lives, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka may have qualified to adopt your child. I know a few gay and lesbian couples who would be much better qualified for this task. It has been more than thirty years since Pierre Trudeau declared that
the State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. It has been very
slow getting out of them, though. Instead of letting court challenges
pile up at their door, our federal politicians should find the courage
to remove the barriers to true equality among Canadian citizens. All of
us, regardless of who we choose to sleep with, should have the same opportunity
to participate in the common institutions that bind us together as a community.
And the sooner, the better. go back to the table of contents
Most of the country loves to hate Toronto. I have never lived there, but for ten years I drove up and down the 401 to work there. After a while, after seeing the city up close and personal like that, you begin to understand why. They really believe they are the centre of attention, and that they do things not just differently but better. Recently Ken Dryden, the head of the household at the Toronto Maple Leafs, declared that he sees his team as "Canada's national team." Montreal. Ottawa and Vancouver, I suppose, are just regional events of little consequence to the big picture. It is true enough that Toronto lasted longer in the Stanley Cup playoffs than did either of the other Canadian teams. This was because their goalie, Curtis Joseph, played like a man possessed. Without him, they would have been on the golf course much sooner. So what did the head of Canada's national team do? He let Joseph skate down the 401 to Detroit. Or, you have the Toronto Blue Jays and their campaign to win back fan support by building a better team. Their first steps to improvement were dealing away almost all their best players. One would have thought that a team so badly lacking in competent pitching would want to keep someone like Paul Quantrill around. But no. J.P. Ricciardi must have consulted with Dryden on how to build a national baseball team. I was thinking things like this in the week following Canada Day and our celebration in Riverside Park. As an aside, it may reveal an environmentally heretical side to my personality, but I've loved a good fireworks display since I was a kid on Guy Fawkes Night. It seems that almost half the city shows up in the park every year on Canada Day. It always goes off without a hitch, and the huge crowd always behaves itself well. Similar events take place in cities and towns from coast to coast to coast. This, I think, is an indication of what makes a country like Canada such a good place to live. It is a collection of communities, each with its own identity and culture. We don't need the Maple Leafs or the Blue Jays to give ourselves a sense of identity and purpose. We get it from our own local institutions, and our sense of how we connect with similar communities across the country. There is an optimum size to a city, and it seems that when one gets too big it breaks down. There are things in Toronto that work well, but these are in areas in which Toronto functions almost like a collection of small villages. In other ways, it has simply become too big for itself. Within a week of its civic workers going on strike, Toronto was strangling on its own garbage. Can a city that large ever find a way to control the waste it produces? The province forced an amalgamation against the wishes of its residents, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Instead of forcing smaller cities to merge into larger ones, the province should require them to divide once they reach a certain critical mass. There are many ways in which Guelph is better than Toronto. It's not just because we have the Bookshelf and the Woolwich Arms while they don't. It's also that we have OPIRG, GIRC, the Speed River Clean Up, and Hillside. These forms of community involvement keep a city of our size in touch with itself, and help keep it alive. While we're making comparisons, don't forget Guelph has one of the more intelligent mayors in the country while Toronto has the biggest buffoon that ever set foot in municipal politics. While we take can pleasure from the fact that we are not Toronto, there are positive things to be proud of. When added up across the country, these are what made us want to celebrate Canada Day. I hope you had a good one. go back to the table of contents
Eves is an experienced enough old time politician to be able to count noses. When he did the arithmetic, he figured something out that the rabidly ideological editorial writers at the Sun are too blinkered to see. The suffering caused by tax cuts, at first felt mostly by the working poor and unemployed, is starting to affect the very people who put the Tories into office. They were coming to the conclusion that they will not be voting Tory again. They realize that you can't cut taxes and guarantee clean water. You can't cut taxes and guarantee quality education. You can't cut taxes and guarantee universal health care. You can't cut taxes and guarantee healthy cities. It simply can't be done. Harris tried it, and the voters finally saw it for the crooked shell game it always was. Tory public opinion numbers were dropping like a stone. Eves' mission was to turn it all around. This is why he has done a partial retreat on the privatization of Ontario Hydro. In a few short months, he went from full support of selling it off to the current position of retaining "majority control." The Liberal opposition wasn't opposing the government very strenuously on this. They adopted the typical Liberal solution of rushing off madly in all directions. They were sort of for it, and sort of against it, and sort of on the fence. The NDP launched a province wide campaign that involved door to door canvassing, a tour of the province by Howard Hampton in a special campaign bus, and a series of public consultation meetings. They even overshadowed the energy minister, Chris Stockwell, during the government's own round of hearings. What they discovered during this campaign is that more than 70 per cent of the people in Ontario were opposed to the sale of Ontario Hydro. The Tory's own researching showed the same numbers. So Eves quickly went on the retreat. He has not given up, though. He still wants to sell as much as 49 per cent of the public utility. If you think back to the months leading up to the 1999 election, you will see a definite pattern here. That was when Eves was the provincial finance minister. He brought down a budget which sold off highway 407, the toll road going across the north of Toronto, to a private consortium. It brought the government some quick cash which they used to buy a second campaign victory. Their plan is still to raise cash for the 2003 election by selling half the electrical system. If they think they can get away with it, they will try it. Many people in Ontario who don't belong to unions, and maybe never will,
should be aware of the thanks you owe to unions. The Canadian Union of
Public Employees (CUPE) and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers
Union (CEP) launched the successful court challenge that stopped the government
from selling Hydro One. Were it not for these two unions, we would not
have a public electricity grid in Ontario today. You may not pay dues
to them, but that didn't stop them from fighting to protect your interests.
They each have local unions in town listed in the phone book. Why not
take the time to send them a thank you card? go back to the table of contents
For a change of pace, I am going to write the column this week about things I don't understand. For one thing, there are the people who drop off their yard waste at the Wet-Dry Depot. I go out there with a couple of bag loads every few weeks, as do a lot of other Guelph residents. It's good to see the number of people who take this opportunity seriously. There are enormous piles of rich earth that wouldn't be available to the City without us bringing our compostable material out there. What I don't understand is the amount of perfectly good yard waste bags that are left there. These bags are tough and durable. They are certainly good for more than one trip to the recycling yard. Some people, me included, take full bags out, empty them, fold them up and bring them back home to be used again. Others just heave the full bag onto the pile of leaves and hedge clippings and leave it there. In one way, this suits me fine. It doesn't take long to empty them out myself. I always leave the Wet-Dry with a few more bags than I went there with. This facility is based on the three principles of waste reduction: reduce, reuse and recycle. So why not take the bags home and use them again? Maybe some people have only made it half way across the environmental leap. While embracing the values of recycling, they still love to shop. Using fresh new bags every time they clip the hedge means they haven't given up on the consumer ethos. If they have the money to keep buying brand new bags, I have the time to empty and reuse them. It's an almost perfect partnership. Speaking of recycling, another thing I don't understand is Liberals. They just decided to recycle a used Tory to run against a used-up Tory in the next provincial election. One of the more bizarre side bars to this story was the endorsement of Liz Sandals by the local teachers' unions. These unions have been at loggerheads with the Tory government for most of its term in office. Negotiations with school boards across the province, including here in Guelph, have been fractious and bitter. Liz Sandals, the union leaders' choice for candidate has been a school trustee for years and most recently served as the president of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association. After years of hard bargaining with their employer, the teachers' union leaders want one of their employer's representatives to be their representative at Queen's Park. I am a dues paying member of the CAW. I have been for about 25 years. In all that time, not once did a CAW local union endorse one of its bosses for political office. The teachers' unions just did. I guess it's not just Liberals I don't understand. This strange version of unionism is also a bit of a mystery. Of the two shunned Liberals last Thursday, Niki Mercer can keep on being
one of Guelph's too few anesthetists. Some supporters of the other two
candidates were using the doctor shortage as a reason not to vote for
Mercer at the nomination meeting. I suppose if you are desperate enough,
any reason is good enough. Despite having the weight of the teachers'
unions lined up against her, Mercer did well. She came a strong second.
The third hopeful, Maggie Laidlaw, is married to an active member of one
of the teachers' unions and is a well known city councilor. In a normal
world, this would have been enough to earn her the teachers' endorsement.
Or, at the very least, to leave them neutral. But no. These particular
union leaders obviously prefer one of their employers to one of their
own. The other thing I don't understand is why Laidlaw is sticking with
them. I suppose that when dealing with Liberals, the last thing to look
for is consistency. go back to the table of contents
Never mind minor events like a bunch of federal by-elections, or the provincial government finally getting around to meeting. Let's not even worry about such weighty municipal issues as the right to abstain from a vote. The country, and the city, has been shut down by hockey. Everywhere else, it is just the Stanley Cup. Here in Guelph we get a double dose with the Memorial Cup in town. The prospect of a team from North Carolina going to the Stanley Cup final should send a chill up our spines. This is the State, after all, where people think NASCAR drivers are athletes. Most Canadians know better. We have seen real athletes, and know them to be fine young men who lace up their skates and send opposing players to the hospital. The first two Toronto playoff rounds turned into blood sports as the ice became littered with broken bones. The playoffs themselves have become less a contest of skills and more an endurance test. It has always been this way, or at least it has been since expansion. Back in the good old days of a six-team league, the top four went to a semi-final, and then the two winners went to the Cup final. Everyone was home for dinner by April. Now, with a couple of dozen teams scattered across the American Sun Belt, hockey is almost a year round affair. This year's Survivors Cup playoffs seem to have had a much higher than average amount of broken wrists, shoulders and noses. This is bad enough, but the boorishness on the ice was, in the early games at least, matched by boorishness in the stands. The one fed off the other. It became common sport for a while to boo national anthems. This didn't just happen in hockey. It was also a part of the Raptors brief moment in the basketball playoffs. This is all part of the current patriotic fervour gripping the land to the south. No one should fly anything but the Stars and Stripes. No one should sing anything but the Star Spangled Banner. Playing national anthems at the start of sporting events is a ridiculous habit we have fallen into. There is no reason for it. NHL players come from all over the world now. There are almost as many Russians, Czechs, Swedes and Finns as there are Canadians and Americans in the league, but we don't play their anthems. With a Memorial Cup team from Erie, they'll be belting out the two anthems at the start of every game in the Guelph Spt Ent Ctr. Pity. One of these days, someone should put a stop to it. These are sporting events after all. They don't have anything to do with anyone's national pride. In the other national blood sport, there were seven federal by-elections last week. They showed, once again, how badly mistaken national political commentators can be. Most have written off the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservatives as spent political forces. Time after time, these two Parties show they still have the legs to stay in the fight. They each beat the odds and won a seat from the Liberals. On the other side of the political divide there is still a lot of wailing about uniting the right and beating the Liberals. The by-elections put the lie to that idea. The Alliance won one seat in Alberta. The Tories won one in Newfoundland. In the other five contests, there was not a single riding where their combined vote would have beaten the Liberals and won a seat for either of them. Not even in Windsor, where the Liberals came second and a united right wing vote still wouldn't have pulled them out of a distant third place finish. The Alliance should stop whining for long enough to realize it is not
a divided right that keeps them out of power. Canadians just don't want
them. go back to the table of contents
If we want to find a signpost that tells us our provincial government is floundering these days, we need look no further than their sorry attempt to privatize Ontario Hydro. It is a mess, clear evidence that Ernie Eves inherited a government adrift. The loose cannon he inserted as Minister of Energy and the Environment, Chris Stockwell, wears some of the blame, but certainly not all of it. Stockwell's antics last week were part comedy of errors and part theatre of the absurd. None of it reflected well on him or the government he serves. His troubles began in London last Tuesday with the first of what was billed as "public hearings" into the sale of the electrical utility. It was obvious from the moment these hearings were announced a couple of weeks ago that "the public" was not welcome to express any opinions. Certain invited stakeholders were allowed to make presentations, but groups representing community interests were not. After a little bit of heckling from the gallery, the Minister of Energy stormed out of the room in a huff. Now, Stockwell is not a sensitive new age kind of guy who is put off by minor disturbances in his karmic aura. He is an experienced and ruthless political warrior who has raised many a ruckus himself. Why would he react so inappropriately to a bit of heckling? The answer is to be found in the comments he made to the media immediately following. He said public access to the public hearings might have to be restricted. This was a fitting epitaph for a process that seemed doomed from the beginning. Public opinion polls consistently showed overwhelming opposition to the whole idea of privatizing Ontario Hydro. Yet the Tories thought they could bull ahead and use their legislative majority to make it happen. They had giant financial corporations like RBC Dominion Securities, BMO Nesbitt Burns and Goldman Sachs waiting to cash in on an estimated $120 million worth of commissions when the stocks were sold to private investors. When money like this is to be made, who cares what the people want? Obviously not the Queen's Park Tories. Public hearings were the last thing they wanted, and Stockwell obviously hoped his little hissy fit could put and end to them. The privatization process was set in motion last December when Mike Harris announced his plan to sell Ontario Hydro. The legislature has not been in session since, and there has been no public debate over the sale. Eves and Stockwell both affirmed their support for this decision during the Tory leadership campaign. Then a spanner was thrown into the works a couple of weeks ago when a judge, Arthur Ganz, ruled that the government did not have the legal authority to sell it. In a typical move that surprised no one, Ernie Eves reacted to this with a decision to change the law and give his government this right. That's when the wheels really began to fall of the Tory wagon. They have fallen off so rapidly that Eves ended his nightmare of a week by announcing the sale is "off the table for the immediate time being" and that he is not wedded to the idea of privatization after all. It should not go back onto the table until after the next Ontario general
election. By then, we will have had time to assess the full impact of
deregulating the retail end of the electricity business. If the experiences
in Alberta and California are anything to go by, the mood of the electorate
will not be in favour of further deregulation or privatization. Ontario
Hydro has been generating, distributing and selling electricity at cost
to consumers for 100 years. A change on the scale proposed by the government
should not proceed without the express approval of the people. The best
and only way to gauge that approval is through an election. The sooner,
the better. go back to the table of contents
The new-look Ernie Eves cabinet bears a striking resemblance to the old-look Mike Harris cabinet. There should be no surprise in this, since Eves had to build it from the same tired caucus that Harris left behind. The remarkable thing about it is the amount of spin doctoring going on in the big city dailies. They are trumpeting this as a "kinder, gentler" government in which moderate Tories have come to the fore. Who are these alleged moderates? Chief among them, we are told, is Janet Ecker. She moved from the Ministry of Education to become Minister of Finance. The moderate Ms. Ecker, in her previous portfolio, was the person in charge of alienating Ontario's teachers while continuing the government's attack on the education system. Another is the honorable Elizabeth Witmer. Now the Minister of Education and Deputy Premier, she was Harris' first Labour Minister in 1995. So moderate was Witmer that she immediately set about the task of reversing the labour relations improvements enacted by the Rae government. As one example, she took the right to belong to unions away from agricultural workers. A Supreme Court of Canada decision released late last year overturned Witmer's "moderate" action and gave the right to organize back to these workers. What the spin-doctors don't tell us is that moderateness is a relative concept. Politicians like Ecker and Witmer can be portrayed in this way only because of the presence of less desirable alternatives. While Tories like Jim Flaherty remain in the picture, almost anyone else looks better. Our own MPP, the honorable Brenda Elliott, has benefited from these types of comparisons. She is being favourably received as the new Minister of Community, Family and Children's Services, but mostly out of a sense of relief that she is not John Baird. Baird was the previous minister and distinguished himself mostly by the enthusiasm with which he approached his assignment to keep beating on welfare recipients and the province's working poor. The assumption is that Elliott lacks his enthusiasm, and may even mumble apologies as she swings the axe that's been assigned to her. Many local agencies depend on Elliott's new ministry for their funding and continued existence. They were quick off the mark in extending congratulations and praise to the new hand that feeds them. In a quieter moment, some of the people heading up these agencies might want to talk with some survivors of the old Guelph 2000. Elliott was thought, when she became Minister of the Environment in 1995, to be a cheerleader for environmental groups such as this. Immediately upon taking office, she gave them two weeks to pack their bags and get out of town. The Walkerton Report clearly pointed to Elliott as a prime contributor to the environmental disaster that engulfed that small town, leading directly to seven deaths and a mountain of illnesses. Elliott was widely regarded as an incompetent and disastrous choice for such a high profile position. So much so that Harris had to drop her from cabinet and send her off to the backbenches. She resurfaced last year as the Minister of Inter-Governmental affairs, a job in which she did nothing of note, either positive or negative. For doing this, she received a hefty increase in salary and a healthy boost to her pension credits. Now she is back in the spotlight, running a large ministry that has a very direct impact on the lives of most Ontario families. It could be that Elliott has changed and become a competent administrator.
But before we get too enthusiastic about her promotion, we should remember
that these Cabinet appointments have nothing to do with competence, or
the search for moderate political ground. It is all about rewarding the
people who helped Ernie Eves win the leadership. The people who depend
on the Ministry of Community, Family and Children's Services would be
wise to ratchet up their emergency preparedness planning. Just in case
she hasn't changed. go back to the table of contents
I arrived in Guelph 31 years ago, in February 1971. At that time, the city had a population just below 60,000. There was no Willow West Mall, no Stone Road Mall, and no Hanlon Expressway. Alf Hales was unbeatable in federal elections, as were Harry Worton provincially and Norm Jary municipally. Three of my four children were born here, and all three still live in Guelph. They've grown well into adulthood. I met my wife here, and then found out she also moved here from Lachine, on the island of Montreal. Now the city and I are both three decades older and, I like to think, three decades wiser. Our city is 175 years old today. I never will be. In my 24 years before Guelph, I lived in six different cities, but always think of myself now as being from here. I guess seven is just a lucky number. Whatever the reason, Guelph became home, and my life here has, for the most part, been good. Moving here was a refreshing change from the noise and turmoil of Montreal. We had just gone through the October Crisis, and the future there did not look good. Coming to Guelph was something of a political decision as well as an economic one. Some few years earlier, my parents came here when the company my dad worked for, ITT, abandoned Quebec. I was coming to the opinion that the English population in that province was easily the most pampered minority this side of South Africa. It became untenable for me to stay there as a unilingual English speaker. It was more by luck than anything else that I landed in Guelph, but I've always been glad I did. I've watched Guelph grow over the years, and I've observed some of the mistakes we made and applauded some of our successes. Many of the good things that stand out in my mind have to do with environmental issues. For some reason, Guelph has always been at the leading edge in this area. Several years ago we were the first to recycle telephone directories. It may not sound like much now, but it was important then. An enormous waste of paper went through the landfill site with those large phone books. At first, we had to cut off the glued spine, toss it out, and recycle the pages. Then we were the first Canadian community to ditch the blue recycle boxes and separate our garbage into wet and dry streams. Now we are leading the way again with experiments in three-stream separations. As each of these advances came to town, most residents willingly embraced them. We took the three Rs and made two of them work. We are still missing the mark when it comes to reducing the waste we accumulate, but we're doing pretty well in terms of re-using and recycling. Among the mistakes we've made, the Hanlon Expressway probably tops most lists. It cuts like a knife, separating the west side from the rest of the city. When it was built, there wasn't much to the west, but some foresight could have predicted this spread. The error was recently compounded with the construction of a cloverleaf overpass at Wellington St. This is a reflection of the school of thought that believes bigger is always better, faster is better yet, and the solution to traffic problems is to build wider roads. I hope we've learned our lessons, and have come to understand that the primary consideration when planning growth must be its impact on neighbourhoods and the people who live in them. Our advantage is that we now have a mayor and several councilors who understand this. Having said all this, we are still doing a lot better than most other
cities our size. And we can still win the Memorial Cup. So lets take the
chance to celebrate. Have a happy birthday, Guelph. go back to the table of contents
My patience with corporate arrogance - which wasn't much to begin with - is growing thinner all the time. The several big money players in the ongoing battle to bring huge shopping opportunities to Guelph were, once upon a time, fighting as much with each other as they were with the city's Official Plan. Now they have ganged up to try to bring their combined muscle into the ring. Chief among these is Wal-Mart. It continues to portray itself as champion of the downtrodden consumer, an enlightened corporation that is being victimized by the City's refusal to give them an even break. Forbes Magazine lists Wal-Mart as one of the largest corporations in the world, with annual profits of $6.7 billion on sales of $218 billion. The company was begun by Sam Walton and is still controlled by the family. Sam's son Jim is the sixth richest person in the world, with a net worth of $20.8 billion. Another son, John, is seventh with $20.7 billion. A daughter, Alice, and another son, Robson, are tied for eighth with $20.5 billion each. Sam's widow Helen is the tenth richest person in the world with $20.4 billion. That is no less than five of the ten top wealthiest people on the globe. Their combined personal wealth is $102.9 billion dollars. They made it from the giant Arkansas business that wants to bully our small Ontario city into giving up our right to plan our own growth. They didn't become as rich and powerful as they are by leaving the cash register receipts in the towns where their stores are located. It is shameful that the University of Guelph has joined this band of villains. In order to smooth the road for its plans for retail development on Stone Road, it has dropped its opposition to the "6 & 7" proposal to build a Wal-Mart on the corner of Woodlawn and Woolwich Streets. The two development groups cooked up a deal between themselves under which the Ontario Asphalt College would move Zellers a couple of blocks east on Stone Road right away, and Wal-Mart would wait until 2006 to open its store here. In order to succeed, the scheme needs an amendment to the City's official plan, something that the city councilors have been refusing to do. The corporate arrogance of all this is truly alarming. They think a bit of back room maneuvering by company lawyers and executives can undermine the wishes of our democratically elected representatives. They think all this can short-circuit the Ontario Municipal Board hearings where citizens who don't get into the back rooms can express their views. The men in suits - some of whom are women - think we should all snap to attention and share in their vision of how Guelph should grow. It shouldn't happen. We need to urge our councilors to stay the course, encourage them to resist the siren call put out from the heart of Arkansas. As Inspector John Rebus would say, they must have the bottle to stand up to the battle. Wal-Mart is spending huge amounts of money when they don't need to. Land
exists in Guelph already zoned for them. All they have to do is agree
to locate there. Their arrogance will not allow for this. They want to
go where they want to go, and damn the consequences. They cannot fathom
that there could be communities prepared to resist them. Guelph is not
alone in this, by the way. Surrey BC, Nelson BC and Miramichi NB are also
standing up to the giant. Wal-Mart is spending its money to change minds,
and to an extent they have been successful. I used to think it would be
fine for them to locate in the west end, where zoning allows them. Not
any more. If I live until I die, I hope never to see a Wal-Mart store
blemishing the scenery in Guelph. go back to the table of contents
Two right wing Parties had their parties last week and when the air cleared, they each had new leaders. Neither produced much else new. The most dramatic move was over at the Reform Alliance party. They decided that they couldn't find a decent home in Ontario, so they packed their bags and moved back to Alberta. Stephen Harper, their new federal leader, has a very narrow minded view of the world. He'll have nothing to do with the Tories as long as they keep choosing a leader he doesn't like. He thinks all the country's problems can be solved by cutting taxes. That's about it. He and his Party will withdraw to the foothills of the Rockies from where they will preach to the rest of us about the things we don't quite get right. Those things, generally speaking, are trivial matters such as preserving universal access to quality health care. Stuff like that. Harper is convinced that we would all much rather have lower taxes than ready access to a triple bypass operation. I am convinced that the people of Canada will never elect him as Prime Minister. At the moment he doesn't even have a seat in Parliament. Let's hope it stays that way. A couple of days later, the provincial Conservatives tried to save their spot at the public trough by sending Ernie Eves in to take over the mess that Mike Harris created. He can try, but the damage has been done. Not only that, but the people of Ontario will remember that Eves helped create the damage during his years as Treasurer of Ontario. His budgets slashed government services and strangled municipalities while he handed generous tax relief to his corporate friends. He did such a good job, in fact, that he was rewarded with a plum position with an international bank. I expect the tens of thousands of single mothers struggling to raise families will applaud when Eves, in his thousand dollar suits and diamond cuff-links, explains to them how the tax cuts helped eliminate poverty. Like Harper, Eves is a leader without a seat. Let's hope it stays that way. Down here in Guelph, we have much weightier issues to deal with, such as the new signs pointing the way to local landmarks like the River Run Centre and the McRae House. They're not the most attractive things I've ever seen, but I suppose they are a help to our visitors. Strange among them though is the one at College and Gordon, just before a stretch of university-type buildings. It says you are entering the university. Then, just as you get to Stone Road and the buildings get a bit more residential, there's another sign saying you're leaving the university. Well, duh! Then there is the pesticide committee. The city's Planning, Works & Environment Committee thinks it should be composed of citizens chosen randomly from the municipal voter's list. The pesticide industry thinks it should be composed of people who know what they're talking about. This might sound good, but the chemical spraying companies think the only people who know what they are talking about are those who operate chemical spraying companies. Those of us who think many weed killers cause diseases like non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are just ignoramuses. The idea of calling on regular folk to study the issue is apparently abhorrent to those who make money convincing us that a lush lawn without dandelions is the apex of good gardening. I suppose if I had been caught robbing banks and ended up in court, I'd like a jury composed of individuals who have made money robbing banks. The notion of choosing advisory committees at random from the voters'
list, similar to selecting jury members, makes so much sense that it is
a wonder no one has tried it before. Representatives of both sides in
the debate could make presentations to the committee, and the citizens
can choose. Given sufficient information, they'll choose wisely. go back to the table of contents
I was a commuter for many years. Almost fifteen of them driving back and forth to work in Kitchener. Then another ten on the 401 getting in and out of Toronto. Although the average speeds are higher, the 401 is a much safer stretch of road than is highway 7. Sure, there were more collisions on the 401, and the delays were more extensive than ever happened on the road to Kitchener. Considering the volumes of traffic, though, the rate of fatal or serious injury accidents on highway 7 was higher. On a two-lane road, with many hills and bends, there always seem to be drivers taking chances by overtaking the car ahead. The journey between Guelph and Kitchener would definitely be a lot less hazardous if the highway was improved. The question, then, is not whether the redesign should go ahead. Obviously it should. The problem is how. The provincial Ministry of Transportation wants to build an entirely new highway about a kilometer north of the existing road, at a cost of roughly $130 million. This would cut through existing farmland and wetland, paving it over with four lanes of black top. Communities in the north end of Waterloo Region have already endorsed the plan. This is not surprising, since it would give them a speedy shortcut to the 401 when they are heading into Toronto. Despite this, the plan is very shortsighted. Why should we go to the trouble and expense of carving a new road through the fields when the one we already have just needs to be widened and, in the process, straightened out a bit? Guelph's opinion about the new highway 7 was eloquently presented to the Ministry of Transportation during a meeting of the planning, works and environment committee. I was pleased to read the remarks made by councilors McAdams and Birtwhistle. They were reflecting, I think, the opinion of most city councilors and most city residents. Time is on our side here. The highway redevelopment project is unlikely to even begin for several years. There is a lot of land to be acquired and a lot of zoning and funding issues to be settled. By the time this happens, we will have been through at least one provincial election and the troubling Tory times will be behind us. The next government, hopefully, will turn its back on the foolish waste of money favoured by the current one. Another consideration in this debate is the role of an improved public
transit as a way of connecting the two cities. This ties in to the need
for an overall federal and provincial transportation policy that gets
us away from our reliance on cars and trucks. Individual municipalities
operating in isolation cannot solve these issues. Take, for example, the
daily commute from Guelph to Toronto that I was part of until the end
of last year. During the morning and evening rush hours, the highway is
clogged with single occupant cars. Most of the people behind the driving
wheel would be much happier sitting on a train reading the morning paper.
The train is ideal if you work in downtown Toronto. If you are out in
the nether regions of Don Mills, as I was, it's a different matter. The
stress of getting through that city's overburdened transit system either
to get to work on time or to get back downtown in time to catch the train
home is worse than the stress of driving. The same is true, though on
a smaller scale, for those who commute to Waterloo Region. The solution
is not easy to find. It requires a close and complicated coordination
of transit services and schedules in many different communities. It also
requires a commitment by governments to invest in mass public transportation.
Instead of spending $130 million on a new highway, they should fix the
one we already have and build a rapid transit system between here and
Kitchener. go back to the table of contents
Just when we thought we were getting rid of him, Mike Harris has stepped forward to do yet another imitation of Stockwell Day. He is suing the Globe and Mail for $15 million, and sticking us with the lawyer's bill. You will remember that Day did this just before leaving Alberta provincial politics. A Calgary lawyer, defamed by Day in an ill-advised letter to the editor, sued him for damages. Alberta taxpayers were slapped with a legal bill amounting to about $800,000 after the case was settled out of court. There is no reason to expect Harris' costs to be any lower. He is claiming that a Globe reporter defamed him in a retrospective look at the Premier's time in office. The article contained references to his possible involvement in the shooting death of Dudley George, a native protester at Ipperwash. It is highly unlikely that Harris will win his lawsuit. He is named as a defendant in a wrongful death lawsuit, and has been resisting calls for a public inquiry into the Ipperwash affair. A storm of outrage followed the disclosure of Day's legal bill. No less of an outcry should be mounted against this blatant attempt to have the citizens of Ontario pay for Harris' plans to leave office with an extra $15 million in his pocket. Think about it while you're filling out your income tax forms next month. *** While Harris takes yet another trip to the public trough, he is leaving the province's electrical distribution system - among many other things - in a state of utter chaos. We suffered some of the effects of this in Guelph with the recent debate over the future of Guelph Hydro. The question about whether or not it should be run for profit centered largely on the need to retain its market value in case the city needs to sell it off in the future. The utility should be operated to make money, and its profits should be used to subsidize public transit and other pollution reduction programs in the city. The city should not sell it. The province should not be selling off and deregulating electricity distribution in the first place. They have made the sale of Guelph Hydro a very real possibility and have again dumped some very tough decisions onto city council's table. The Harris government took advice and guidance on this from none other than the American energy giant Enron which was also behind the disastrous California deregulation. An Enron director sat on key government committees charged with designing the rules and framework of the hydro privatization scheme. The provincial Progressive Conservative Party received about $7500 in donations from Enron in 2001. That was before it crashed in flames on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, burning many pension plans and individual stockholders. When the private electricity sales teams come knocking on my door, I'll tell them I'm sticking with Guelph Hydro. *** Congratulations to Bill McCreary, Guelph's contribution to the Winter
Olympics. He did an outstanding job refereeing the final gold medal game.
He didn't force his way into the centre of the play the way his counterpart
did in the women's gold medal games. It was almost as if the American
women had a seventh player on their team. The Canadians played over a
third of the game with a player in the penalty box after some highly questionable
calls. The country can be especially proud of the women's team for overcoming
this imbalance. With McCreary in charge of the men's game, the players
at least had a level ice rink on which to skate. It says a lot about how
Canadian kids spend the winter months that of the 17 medals we won, 14
of them were in sports played on ice. Two hockey gold medals, two curling,
one figure skating and nine speed skating medals. To keep this up, we'll
need to get back the ice bound winters we used to have. go back to the table of contents
There is something in the air these days, and it doesn't seem to be winter.
We don't seem to be getting one worth speaking about. It could be the
provincial politics that's keeping everything so warm these days. The
Tories are running a leadership race, with many candidates trying to put
as much distance as possible between themselves and the policies they
helped implement. We should never forget that all of them have served
in the Mike Harris cabinet, and all of them bear some responsibility for
the mess they have got the province into. Some of them are calling for
a moderation of the so-called common sense revolution. Elizabeth Witmer
is saying it has accomplished its goals, its time is over, and the government
should now start pretending that it cares about people. Jim Flaherty,
on the other hand, is distancing himself to the right of current policy.
He doesn't think they should even be pretending to care. If he gets the
chance, he'll tighten the thumbscrews even further. Nothing must be allowed
to interfere with his goal of making the idle rich even idler and richer
while further impoverishing the working poor and the unemployed. Looking at this circus from the vantage point of an outsider, one can't help but be amused at their antics. It is truly comical to hear Tony Clement and Jim Flaherty all but denounce Ernie Eves for being a closet pinko socialist, a sheep dressed up to look like a dinosaur. They've both gone over the top because they are annoyed the mainstream newspapers have already decided that Ernie's the one who'll win. When the media's mind is made up, most of the Party faithful will fall dutifully into line and cast their votes as instructed. It's too bad, because a Flaherty victory would seal the government's doom. As it is, the provincial Conservatives will likely emerge from this affair with a leader who has no seat in Queen's Park. They won't want that to last very long, so they will have to fast track Eves' entry to the legislature. For this, they'll have two choices. Either call an early general election, or arrange for a by-election. The rumour mills have this latter option as the odds on favorite. Ernie's long time pal, Mike Harris, will resign his seat in North Bay and the new leader will run there in a by-election. Locally, the NDP and the Liberals are preparing for the other option,
a quick general election. The NDP will have a nomination meeting before
the end of March, and are still at the stage of searching out a candidate.
Bruce Abel, who had about 12 per cent of the vote in 1999, is interested
in running again. No one else has declared, but some are weighing their
chances. For the Liberals, three women have declared an intention to seek
the nomination. Liz Sandals, a well-known Conservative who recently jumped
ship, is already being touted as the favorite. Maggie Laidlaw, who ran
federally for the National Party in 1993, could upset Sandals' plans.
She has a good base of support with local environmentalists, and came
within a whisker of winning the Liberal nomination in 1999. A third candidate,
Dr. Niki Mercer, has stuck with the Liberals and isn't given much hope
of being selected by them. The Conservatives will once again trot out
Brenda Elliott, the Wicked Witch of Walkerton. Even though Elliott took
over 50 per cent of the votes last time, her re-election is far from assured.
Most observers point out that her time in the sun began with the rise
of the provincial Tory wave, and it will end when they go out of fashion
across the province. It has been a warm winter. Politically, it isn't
going to cool down soon. go back to the table of contents
Brenda Elliott's response to the recently released report on the Walkerton poisoned water tragedy was disgraceful. It showed a complete disregard for the people involved, and showed her to have absolutely no understanding whatever of the principles of Ministerial responsibility and accountability. Elliott's first inclination is to shuffle any blame onto the backs of the people who work for her. As a Cabinet Minister, she claims, she is too busy to be bothered with every little detail that comes her way. If her staff fail to deal with an issue adequately, it's their fault, not hers. Elliott even said she didn't think she was even mentioned in the inquiry commission's report. This only proved that she hadn't read it before commenting on it. She is mentioned very prominently on page 427 of the 716-page report. This is the section dealing with the effect budget cuts had on Walkerton's water supply. Elliott, as we all remember, was in charge of the environment ministry in 1996 when its budget was cut by over $200 million and its staff reduced by 750 people. Elliott approved the plan to gut the Ministry and brought it forward for Cabinet approval. The commission's report clearly links Elliott's actions to the tragedy in five ways:
It's all there in Justice O'Connor's report. You can buy a copy from the government bookstore for $21, or you can download a free copy on the government's Internet site: http://download.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/wreport.pdf. At the time she made her comments on the report, Elliott was not the only person in government who hadn't read it. A week after it was released, Mike Harris admitted to the Toronto Star that he hadn't read it. Neither had the current Minister of the Environment Elizabeth Witmer or the Minister of Health Tony Clement. None of them could be bothered reading a comprehensive report on the causes of a disaster that killed seven people and made another 2300 people sick. Had they put in the effort they should have, they would have learned that the budget cutting actions they were so enthusiastic about were at least partially responsible for the tragedy. It is not good enough for them to blame the Koebel brothers. Although
these two men are also partially at fault, they were not the sole cause
of the poisoned water supply. Elliott, as the Environment Minister at
the time, was supposed to protect us from people like them by ensuring
that adequate regulations were in place and enforced. She didn't do it.
She cannot now avoid responsibility by claiming that she was not properly
informed. A key component of any management job is being accountable for
the acts of the people she supervises. Within the Ministry of the Environment,
the buck stopped at her desk. She can't even pass the blame up to the
Premier by saying "the devil made me do it." She, like him,
was driven by an ideological imperative to reduce costs and pass the savings
along through tax cuts for wealthy Ontarians. She played a significant
role in causing the mess, and she should own up to it. Then she should
resign. go back to the table of contents
What if Sue Richards had taken a different approach to the calendar she produced last year? The calendar would raise awareness about breast cancer and, she hoped, a little money for research into the disease. The approach she took, and it seemed reasonable at the time, was to use images to show that healthy breasts provide us with benefits well beyond their common use as commercial props. The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation thought the project was too close to the edge, too controversial to be associated with. Without their support, Richards was left scrambling for avenues to distribute the calendar and is worried that the time has passed for people to buy it. Local photographer Melanie Gillis provided pictures of normal breasts, not at all similar to the silicone peaks of the annual Toronto Sun calendars that generate far more cash for that newspaper than Richards ever dreamed of raising for the Cancer Foundation. What other approach could Richards have taken? Maybe she and Gillis could have run the photos through a computer graphics program and deleted the breasts. Would nice, breastless women feeding their babies be less controversial? If nothing else, it would draw attention to the growing frequency with which women are undergoing mastectomies. A couple of years ago, the New England Journal of Medicine published a report on the benefits of total breast removal. I'm not making this up. The report said: "for women with a high risk of getting cancer, performing mastectomies while they're still healthy dramatically reduces their chances of getting breast cancer." Now I'm no rocket scientist, but it seems to me that a mastectomy dramatically reduces the chances of a healthy woman having breasts. It makes as much sense as removing the lungs from smokers to reduce their chances of getting lung cancer. What is most impressive about the Breast of Canada project has little to do with how financially successful it was or was not. The important thing is that it was planned and carried through by a dedicated individual who cares about the health of her community. We can contrast this with the recent attitude of our local international trade representative. It appears that Gloria Kovach still doesn't understand what was wrong with signing off an agreement, in China, for a friend who once chaired her election campaign. I don't think the problem was the use of public money to benefit a private corporation. We do that all the time when we provide waste collection and other services, and when we promote Guelph as a good place in which to live and work. As I see it, the problem was in the way Kovach acted surreptitiously, keeping the mayor in the dark, and in the friendship she has with the businessman involved. In many ways, Kovach is doing nothing that politicians at other levels of government don't do. We saw this last week with Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano and his patronage gifts to friends. The only difference between the two is in degree. The higher you are, the better the perks you can hand out. Kovach and Gagliano are cut from the same cloth. It's just that Gagliano's cut is much bigger. The measure of a community's health is not just taken from the level
of services it provides. It also comes from the level of commitment of
citizens, and their motives for becoming involved. Most volunteers are
doing so because they care, not because they want some personal gain.
We are lucky to have so many of them in Guelph. They are a welcome counter
balance to the few who act purely from self-interest. If you'll pardon
the expression, Richards could lose her shirt on this project. She needs
to sell 4,000 more calendars, and they're going for half price. All she
needs is four per cent of the Guelph population to buy one. It's an easy
way to say thanks. go back to the table of contents
As we lurch clumsily into another year, three big issues face our city councilors. Two have been around for a long time, and may or may not be resolved before this year is finished. The third one sprang to life in the dying weeks of last year and is not likely to live very much longer. Here I am talking about Gloria Kovach's faux pas on the China trip. During the Communities in Bloom contest, Kovach played hooky one day and went for a factory tour where she signed off on a business deal for Jim Muir. This would all be a tempest in a teapot, except for some important details that Kovach and Muir overlooked. The first thing is that the mayor should have been made aware of this event, and should have been part of the decision-making. After all, she was the ranking political person on the delegation, and she should have been asked to do the signing off. This is simple protocol, with no connection to local political partisanship. Regardless of how Muir or Kovach feel about it, Karen Farbridge is our mayor. She must be given the respect that goes with the position, and the space to meet its responsibilities. The process was tainted by the fact that Muir chaired Kovach's campaign committee in the past, and this is now viewed as a repayment of political debts. This perception is coloured by the secrecy in which Kovach and Muir cloaked the event. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with what happened. There is a lot wrong with the way it happened. For example, there are many other businesses in Guelph operating with an international reach. Many have dealings in China. How did Muir find out about the trip, and were any other business leaders apprised of it? Had Kovach ensured that the equality of business opportunity extended beyond her circle of friends, I don't think the demand would have been so great as to overshadow the main purpose of the trip. However, the perception of impropriety would not be hanging over the city. Councilors now have to quickly implement a series of guidelines to cover similar instances that may come up in the future, and just as quickly return this mountain to its proper molehill status. The two other issues will take a lot more time to resolve. These are the banning of cosmetic uses of chemical weed killers, and the future of big box stores. Pesticide use should be a no-brainer. The American National Cancer Institute (NCI) says Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma "increased 75 percent over the last 20 years, making it the most rapidly rising cancer after lung cancer and melanoma." Researchers found a huge increase in the disease among farmers who "frequently used phenoxy herbicides such as 2,4-D, which are widely used on crops such as wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, and sugarcane. These herbicides are also commonly used to rid lawns of weeds." City Council must be guided by the precautionary principle. Where there is doubt, they should ban the chemicals and require the use of safe substitutes. Once the initial shock wears off, the lawn care companies will be just as busy as they've ever been. The momentum in the Big Box Tournament swung dramatically over to the city's team at the end of the year. Councilors voted against Wal-Mart's bullying and in favour of our official plan. Good for them. It's not over yet, though. Anyone who follows the letters to the editor in either of Guelph's newspapers knows there are three issues that inflame the passions of our citizens: lawn care, shopping and the bible. Although it is widely debated, the bible isn't coming up for a vote. The other two are. With lawn care, the health of individuals is at stake. With shopping, the health of local businesses is at stake. With both, the health of our city hangs in the balance. go back to the table of contents
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