I'm seeing pushback on the issue of revenue tools for public transit in the GTA which seems to boil down to "2 billion a year is a small part of the provincial budget. Surely they can find it through efficiencies or reallocation?".
Well, they can't. Maybe in a world in which no Harris tax cuts had taken place, but not here and now.
Most of the Ontario budget is tied up with education (mostly schools, some universities -- 18.9%), health care(38.3%), Children's Services(11.2%) and interest on the debt (10.6%). Much of the rest is tied up in fixed costs and programs such as welfare (Ontario Works, in newspeak). Even the courts take 4.1 Billion (3.2%).
When I look at the news, I see signs of all these areas being under considerable financial stress. Hospitals are struggling to meet their budgets; the TDSB has just been fingered as diverting most of a flow of funds intended to help disadvantaged children into general revenues to make ends meet, and universities are strapped for funds; the courts have unacceptable backlogs. It has been big news that the most recent budget has made the first structural improvements to Ontario Works since the Harris years.
Plus, the Ontario economy is still faltering, relative to the strength it had for decades, so revenues are not as high as they might be.
There are, of course, always inefficiencies, though fewer than some people might think. Some "inefficiencies" provide needed redundancies to allow systems to be able to handle variations in need that can surge unpredictably. (How much do we have to provide in the way of space capacity in case H7N9 starts to spread? How much would it take to clean up after a tornado hits some not-too-sparsely populated area, as one does every few years?) And some are one-time items: it's all very well to point at ORNGE and E-Health, but (a) they're in the past and (b) they're over. (And E-Health was small change compared to the really big computerization / health care fiascos, like the one in the UK).
But even if a magic Revenue Fairy were to drop 2 billion dollars on the Ontario Government via "efficiencies", how much would go to transit? Is transit more important than all those other underfunded areas?
There is something decidedly weird about the whole set-up. First of all, there’s the outfit. OK, he’s young, he wants to come across as a typical Canadian guy, and typical Canadian guys of a younger age evidently wear dumpy-looking cargo pants on the weekend. That’s fine. But wait a minute, the job he wants is as Prime Minister, and Prime Ministers don’t usually stop to make chatty videos while on their way to put out the garbage in their grubbiest clothes. I bet Xi Jinping doesn’t do that. I know Putin doesn’t.
In the French version of the video, in fact, a truck drives noisily by just as the video is nearing the end, suggesting, 1. The Liberals only rented the camera for an hour and didn’t want to spend the extra dough to shoot a retake, and 2. Justin just missed the garbage truck and probably caught hell from Sophie when he got back inside.
There’s also the setting. It’s just at the bottom of the front steps of a typical-looking suburban Canadian home. So, is it Justin’s home, or did they drive to Brampton and shoo away some neighbours for 40 minutes while they did the shoot? The video is shot with two black bars on either side and Justin in the middle, looking suspiciously like it’s meant to mimic the Canadian flag. It’s also of suspiciously high quality for what is clearly meant to be a casual, almost amateurish film, meaning the party put great thought and effort into devising what looks like some undergrad’s campaign spot for a seat on the student council.
[A] recent Porter Airlines request to extend its runway to accommodate jets and increased airline traffic has some waterfront residents and community activists worried that Hanlan’s Point is at risk if the extension gets a green light.
Nick Mulé, chair of Queer Ontario, is very concerned. His group holds an annual summer picnic in the park in the tradition of Toronto’s first Gay Day Picnic, which was held at Hanlan’s Point on Aug 1, 1971. He says Toronto’s TNTmen pushed the city to carve out a nude beach at Hanlan’s Point in 2002. “Historically, that place is very important to our community,” Mulé says.
Councillor Pam McConnell, whose ward includes the Toronto Islands, says the extensions proposed for each side of the east-west runway are equal in size to two football fields. Going through with the project would mean losing large portions of the lake. “When you think of it that way, the only place that the extension could go is directly across Hanlan’s . . . Environmentally, this is a disaster. Picture yourself bathing with suits on or off, and every five minutes there’s a jet going over your head.”
Toronto city council voted 29 to 15 on May 7 to authorize a staff study of issues related to Porter’s request. The first part of the study is expected to be reported at the July 3 executive committee and will return to full council in November. The estimated expense of the initial studies is $275,000, with follow-up work expected to cost between $800,000 and $1 million. The city wants to absorb these costs.
After the May 7 meeting, Porter CEO Robert Deluce told media he is “gratified” by the support he heard from councillors and hopes for a speedy approval once the reports are released.
But McConnell says “it’s shocking” that Porter has asked councillors to act urgently because new jet planes have already been purchased. “Imagine the arrogance of a corporation that announces their plans on Wall Street, which are illegal, and buys the equipment to do it, then afterward asks for permission,” she says. “This is not a good corporate partner . . . This is totally unethical behaviour.”
If today both Mr. Harper and the party he leads are actively disliked by more than seven voters in 10, it may be because they have gone out of their way to alienate them in every conceivable way — not by their policies, or even their record, but simply by their style of governing, as over-bearing as it is under-handed, and that on a good day.
When they are not refusing to disclose what they are doing, they are giving out false information; when they allow dissenting opinions to be voiced, they smear them as unpatriotic or worse; when they open their own mouths to speak, it is to read the same moronic talking points over and over, however these may conflict with the facts, common courtesy, or their own most solemn promises.
Secretive, controlling, manipulative, crude, autocratic, vicious, unprincipled, untrustworthy, paranoid … Even by the standards of Canadian politics, it’s quite the performance. We’ve had some thuggish or dishonest governments in the past, even some corrupt ones, but never one quite so determined to arouse the public’s hostility, to so little apparent purpose. Their policy legacy may prove short-lived, but it will be hard to erase the stamp of the Nasty Party.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place-- the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs.
These dead stars are located 150 light-years from Earth in a relatively young star cluster, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus. The star cluster is only 625 million years old. The white dwarfs are being polluted by asteroid-like debris falling onto them.
Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph observed silicon and only low levels of carbon in the white dwarfs' atmospheres. Silicon is a major ingredient of the rocky material that constitutes Earth and other solid planets in our solar system. Carbon, which helps determine properties and origin of planetary debris, generally is depleted or absent in rocky, Earth-like material.
"We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets," said Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge in England. He is lead author of a new study appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "When these stars were born, they built planets, and there's a good chance they currently retain some of them. The material we are seeing is evidence of this. The debris is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our solar system."
[. . .]
Farihi's research suggests asteroids less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide probably were torn apart by the white dwarfs' strong gravitational forces. Asteroids are thought to consist of the same materials that form terrestrial planets, and seeing evidence of asteroids points to the possibility of Earth-sized planets in the same system.
What is overwhelmingly evident is the leadership vacuum at City Hall. Throughout the debate, Mayor Ford wandered in and out of the chamber wearing his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, and seemingly more interested in how the hockey game might play out than a vital debate. (At one point the debate paused momentarily to the sound of whooping—it was the mayor, behind the scenes, responding to the Leafs’ first goal.) But he didn’t even have much to do with De Baeremaeker making a complete fool of himself, and compromising both truth and any sense of responsible transit planning (though he certainly is glad to trumpet subways any time anyone mentions them).
For her part, TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence), having launched the whole process by backing De Baeremaeker’s pipe dreams, sat silently while the debate drifted further and further from any coherence and, by extension, possible support for any “plan” including her own ill-fated One City scheme from a few months ago. Rather than controlling the genie she let out of the bottle and getting three well-chosen wishes for her transit efforts, Stintz is revealed as a sorcerer’s apprentice who cannot control the blind forces she has unleashed.
Procedurally, there is one hope: any formal change to last fall’s LRT-based agreement between Toronto and Metrolinx would require a two-thirds majority of council to be reopened. This may block some of the more outrageous schemes for a time, but won’t undo the damage of a divisive, if-I-don’t-get-a-subway-I-won’t-play attitude on council, and on the residents across Toronto who are watching them spin out of control.
At Queen’s Park, the Tories must be rubbing their hands with delight at yet another chance to embarrass the Wynne government. Meanwhile, the NDP, utterly incapable of actually making a decision without weeks of polling and “conversation,” shows no coherent leadership, and the Liberals have to deal with a fifth column of anti-Wynne Scarborough MPPs.
By a vote of 27-13, council voted to seize the revenue-tools file from Ford’s executive committee. The vote was very close; had the Ford team stalled for Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) to get back from a doctor’s appointment, they would have won. (Responding to this lapse in strategy, one City Hall staffer said, “Strategy? They couldn’t spell cat if you spotted them the ‘c’ and the ‘t’.”)
All of a sudden, De Baeremaeker’s idea to slap on a different transit line seemed grand to many councillors. So they added their own motions. James Pasternak really likes the idea of a subway on Sheppard Avenue, so he put that forward. Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore) had his own ideas for the best transit routes. Sarah Doucette (Ward 13, Parkdale-High Park), perhaps to prove a point, asked Milczyn about resurrecting the Jane Street light-rail route. Even Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East), a world away on a trip to Rome, had a raft of motions introduced on his behalf.
Council had plunged down the rabbit hole, and was more than eager to add squiggles on maps. This was far from the rational, coordinated discussion about transit funding that Metrolinx had requested. In fact, it was up to the most quiet and mushy councillors to remind the room of its responsibilities. Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East) and Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul’s) argued for sticking with the plan and following through on funding it. Ana Bailao (Ward 18, Davenport) spoke about the economic benefits of alleviating congestion, while the typically soft-spoken Mary-Margaret McMahon (Ward 32, Beaches-East York) expressed righteous indignation, which was refreshing, coming from her. By the time they were all done making pleas for reason Matlow had put together and distributed a fact sheet comparing the Scarborough options, distributing it to media and councillors alike.
But the bright spots were overshadowed by the silliness. Doug Ford falsely claimed light rail costs more than subways. The mayor referred to a dedicated transit fund as a “slush fund.” Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) claimed 80 per cent of people along Finch Avenue don’t pay their transit fares. Anthony Peruzza (Ward 8, York West) and Maria Augimeri (Ward 9, York Centre), carrying the NDP banner for Downsview, dismissed dedicated revenue tools in favour of asking the province to raise corporate taxes. Adam Vaughan jokingly proposed a levy on vinyl labels, which would hurt the Ford family business. Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) clipped his nails on the council floor.
It was chaos, filled with self-serving and short-sighted politics, and it offered confirmation to any cynical viewpoints on City Hall. What was supposed to be a mature conversation about how Toronto must get to the next step in building public transit was, instead, the strongest possible evidence that oversight from Metrolinx is needed.
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