Preville on Politics

December 2007 Archive

The top five political miscalculations of 2007

Posted on December 27, 2007 by

A look back at the year that was, through the lens of failure:

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Toilet trouble

Posted on December 21, 2007 by

It suddenly occurs to me that, since I previously linked readers to Shirley Hoy’s memo on the toilet-bowl story, I should also link to the city’s official list of everything they say I got wrong. I could deconstruct it just as I did with Hoy’s memo, but this has gone on long enough. Besides, not one but two press gallery wags have waded in as arbiters anyway. Wouldn’t want to pile on. Continue...

That stupid map again

Posted on December 20, 2007 by

So I pick up my morning Globe and there on the front page lies the same colour-coded map of Toronto that I saw not long ago in the Star: soft pastel hues downtown, harshly saturated reds in the northwest and northeast extremities. What excuse, I wonder, has John Barber found to write last month’s story yet again? Diabetes? Heart disease? Single parenthood? Weekly hours of TV viewing? Drug use? Transit inaccessibility? Murders?

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Our squishy urban winterscape

Posted on December 19, 2007 by

Nice post today on the Spacing Wire about navigating the snowy sidewalks with a baby. I’m so there. On Monday I walked my son to daycare in his stroller, and we did some serious off-roading in his three-wheeled Zooper. The best fun was the snowbank-hopping: lift the front wheel, take a run at the bank, get halfway up the slope, plant the front wheel, lift the rear wheels, and forge down the far side. My son loved it. But as the week goes on and city crews fail to make further progress while the snow melts, the walking only gets worse—baby or no.

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Suck my waste, Toronto

Posted on December 18, 2007 by

Trash collection is one of those basic city services that seems impervious to new technology: you put your trash out at the curb and a truck hauls it away. But what if, like water, sewage and gas, you could collect it all underground? Vacuum-waste collection—which gets a brief mention in the toilet-bowl cover story of Toronto Life’s January issue—is being touted as the future of waste management, and it is part of WaterfronToronto’s vision for its new residential communities in the West Don Lands and East Bayfront areas. Unfortunately, that vision clashes with city hall’s own idea of a bold, trashy future.

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A different kind of review

Posted on December 17, 2007 by

A task force found that staffers have “deep pride” but also face “despair, disillusionment and anger with an organization that is failing them.”

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Dwight Duncan: the Santa of Queen's Park

Posted on December 14, 2007 by

image for Dwight Duncan: the Santa of Queen's Park

Someone had to bring Christmas to city hall this year, and, since it sure wasn’t going to be me, thank heaven for jolly Dwight Duncan. His transit funding announcement has lifted everyone’s spirits, including the press gallery staff at the Globe and Mail, who’ve written an unprecedentedly sunny story. Continue...

Shirley Hoy’s small potatoes

Posted on December 13, 2007 by

That’s one hum-dinger of a memo City Manager Shirley Hoy sent to city staff in response to my January toilet-bowl cover story. It paints a far bleaker picture of what’s going on inside city hall than anything I wrote. The cupboard has to be pretty bare if the greatest success she can point to is amalgamation, which everyone else agrees was a scorched-earth disaster, and which lies at the heart of everything that’s gone wrong since.

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The Hoy memo

Posted on December 13, 2007 by

Shirley Hoy, City Manager, circulated the below memo as a response to Toronto Life's cover story about the challenges facing Toronto's municipal government.

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The city's imbalance sheets

Posted on December 12, 2007 by

If you’re done reading about how everything at City Hall is in fact just tickety-boo, you can now turn your attention back to the deplorable state of the city’s balance sheets. Continue...

If you've ever lived in Montreal...

Posted on December 12, 2007 by

You’ll want to know that one of the city’s long-standing urban myths has been officially alleged.

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Hey, Hoy! Thanks for the publicity

Posted on December 11, 2007 by

Why do I bother plugging my own work when the city can do the job for me? In response to my January cover story, City Manager Shirley Hoy wrote a 1,200-word alternative-reality memo and sent it out to every city employee. It quickly made the rounds in the press gallery and beyond. Read it here.

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Shameless plug

Posted on December 10, 2007 by

image for Shameless plug

The latest print edition of Toronto Life is now on newsstands, featuring a cover story penned by me. I had no say in the cover’s design, but I quite like it. Though City Hall is a stunning and iconic piece of architecture, I have never liked the message it sent: two towers huddling into each other, their backs turned on the city, coddling and protecting the council chamber—it’s all too private and insular for a public institution of any ambition. So the potty, though some might find it harsh, strikes me as apt.

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Oh Karlheinz! The Musical

Posted on December 6, 2007 by

Just to throw my voice upon the heap: Karlheinz Schreiber is a con artist, and last week’s column by Rick Salutin nailed his performance on the witness stand thus far. Watching him on TV has reminded me of my own recent run-in with a con artist. Schreiber’s rambling is deliberate; he is refusing to tell a straight narrative because he’s trying to suck us into something, and he’s going to make sure he has us all hooked before he coughs up anything of substance. If he pulls this off it’ll be a grand-scale con for the ages. Salutin says Eric Petersen might try to turn Schreiber into a one-man play, but I say make it a musical. No better way to immortalize a song and dance man.

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The Third Sector

Posted on December 5, 2007 by

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the gala dinner of the country’s first Social Entrepreneurship Summit. It was like walking into a riddle; I arrived not knowing exactly what “social entrepreneurship” was but believing that the term must be code for something, and I was determined to crack it. It wasn’t easy. Social entrepreneurs themselves have trouble defining exactly what they are, though like all good entrepreneurs they know a kindred spirit when they meet one. But here’s what I did learn: governments in the United States and Britain have made social entrepreneurship—whatever it is—a major priority, while in Ottawa it barely registers on our government’s radar.

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How Badly Does Tory Want to be Premier?

Posted on December 5, 2007 by

John Tory fans will want to take a quick peek here. It’s a cute attempt to unseat Tory as leader of the PC Party of Ontario (and a misleading one since it suggests that the movement’s supporters include rock-solid Tory loyalists like MPP Joyce Savoline). Not that this is any surprise. Since the election, I’ve spoken to a few well-placed sources who were surprised that Tory announced he wanted to stay on as leader, given that Red Tories such as himself remain in the minority. (As one said to me, “That’s a real caveman caucus he’s got.”) One is betting that Tory will step down before the convention rather than go through the motions and walk away with a tepid vote of confidence.

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So there

Posted on December 5, 2007 by

I have been told, once or twice, that I was not qualified to write about Toronto politics because I am not from here. Admittedly it’s been rare, but it has happened. And it was rather off-putting to hear, since I was born in Canada and have lived in this country all my life. Anyway, today brings news that we “foreigners”—broadly defined as people born outside this country plus people born outside this province (which includes our British-born mayor, by the way)—comprise the vast majority of Toronto voters. Get used to us. Continue...

Do Hospitals Kill People?

Posted on December 3, 2007 by

I know a few doctors, and most of those I know didn’t have a fun weekend. So far as I can tell, most of the city’s hospital administrators, health-care workers, managers, consultants and academics had a rotten time too. The reason: they are upset over the public reporting of hospital death rates, which were splashed across the cover of the Toronto Star on Friday.

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Author Bio Pic

Philip Preville

Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.


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