Preville on Politics

July 2007 Archive

How Toronto will eventually tax cigarettes

Posted on July 27, 2007 by

Funny thing happened back when the city was still mulling over its many new revenue-taxing power-tools. One of the powers under consideration was a levy on cigarettes. Chatting with Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong in his office, he pointed out just how many small, independently-owned convenience stores there are in the city. Bazillions. Some crazy figure. Anyway, Minnan-Wong says to me, these entrepreneurs all depend on selling tobacco to earn their living. “What do I tell them if we tax cigarettes?” he asked. My response: “You tell them you’re going to let them sell beer and wine.” I was only half-joking, but the scenario may yet come true.

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The axe that fell down on Mike Colle’s head

Posted on July 27, 2007 by

… can be found here. To sum up the week’s events in provincial politics, then: McGuinty apologizes after a member of cabinet staff makes a racial slur with regards to a black job applicant; a senior campaign advisor is forced to apologize for a sexist comment about women preferring to bake cookies over campaigning; and now the Liberals look like they’re buying friends in the province’s ethnic communities. Wow. What a bunch of Common Sense Revolutionaries. Next week’s forecasts call for high temperatures. If the province is forced into rotating brownouts, McGuinty will look like he mismanages the big files too.

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The sound of bureaucrats laughing

Posted on July 23, 2007 by

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When she met with the media on Friday, City Manager Shirley Hoy, city hall’s top bureaucrat, didn’t mince words about the depth of the city’s financial crisis: even if Queen’s Park agreed to upload the cost of social services tomorrow, she explained, Toronto would still need to raise new revenues of its own. When asked what could possibly have been gained, then, by council’s decision to defer a final vote on the matter, she offered a pregnant pause with a purse-lipped smirk—trying hard to conceal a smile, I thought—before saying, simply, “I can’t speculate.” This was a bureaucrat’s sneaky sense of humour shining through: unable to comment on the ineptitude of her political masters, she let the question speak for itself. There was nothing to be gained by a deferral, and councillors would know that if they’d only been paying attention.

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Perfectly clear?

Posted on July 20, 2007 by

Mayor David Miller says he’s been clear all along about the consequences of failing to adopt the proposed new revenue tools. Hmmm. The city’s Web site includes a page full of reports, facts and figures from the last five months here. Nowhere can I find anything that spells out such consequences as the service cuts the city is now contemplating. I point your attention, in particular, to Question #2 of May’s public consultations, which misleadingly asks: “What type of expenditures should the new revenues be used for: Enhanced existing services? City-building type initiatives? To help solve the fiscal imbalance?”

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So like I was saying about manufacturing a crisis

Posted on July 19, 2007 by

The mayor is belatedly with the program.

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The defining issue of our time…

Posted on July 18, 2007 by

… is of course climate change. But I have been sounding alarm bells on this blog about economic prosperity for a while now. And if you read this new report from TD Bank, you might, like me, come to the conclusion that, in this city and in this province, prosperity ought to have at least equal billing with the environment. In fact, prosperity ought to be the driving force behind every initiative at City Hall, and the defining issue of the coming provincial election.

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How not to handle a political hot potato

Posted on July 17, 2007 by

If a government wants to introduce new taxes, it helps to manufacture a crisis. You have to make it seem as if there is no choice but to raise taxes, by poisoning the alternative: voting against new taxes means closing recreation centres and swimming pools, it means trash in the streets, and so on and so on. This is exactly what David Miller said yesterday, the day he lost a crucial vote on the proposed new land transfer and vehicle registration taxes. Too little too late: Miller has been conspicuously silent on this issue up until yesterday, and the voting result amounts to one very badly fumbled hot potato.

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Cesar’s Palacio

Posted on July 16, 2007 by

[UPDATED] What other name could the city possibly give to the casino proposed by the councillor for Ward 17 – Davenport, if they choose to adopt it? Palacio’s proposal to study a casino is just one item on a busy agenda full of high-profile items, including off-leash areas for dogs, official plan amendments for the West Queen West Triangle, a new lawsuit against the city from Porter Airlines (how about that?) and of course the city’s proposed new land-transfer and vehicle-registration taxes. Palacio proposes the casino as a means of avoiding the new taxes. But there’s an odd similarity between the two proposals.

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Against my own self-interest

Posted on July 12, 2007 by

Talk radio has been going nuts all week over the city’s proposed land transfer tax. Adam Vaughan, though he’s not among the architects of the tax, keeps going on AM640 to defend it valiantly. Callers are livid. I’m a first-time homeowner—hasn’t even been a year now—and I know that this tax will reduce the value of my investment. And yet, I don’t give a damn. I think this tax makes sense.

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Two strikes against the bohemian city

Posted on July 12, 2007 by

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Everyone’s been aflutter since the weekend over the news that creative-cities guru Richard Florida, who encourages cities to embrace their bohemians, will soon be living and teaching in the city. It was such good news that it took everyone’s eye off the ball in the West Queen West Triangle, the front line in Toronto’s battle for bohemian ascendancy, where Mayor David Miller has been dealt another blow.

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Yet another argument against congestion pricing

Posted on July 10, 2007 by

…can be found in this report, which will go before Budget Committee today. You can’t price the roads as an incentive to take transit when there’s no room left on the bus.

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Act Up, where are you?

Posted on July 9, 2007 by

Today, when the Board of Health meets at city hall, on the agenda is a report recommending that the city ask Queen’s Park include the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine as a publicly-funded service for females aged 9 through 26. Excellent news. Now: what about men? More specifically, what about gay men?

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Dogs have no rights

Posted on July 5, 2007 by

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Quick reaction to today’s news: owning a pet in the city is a privilege that comes with many responsibilities and no rights whatsoever. This is not the current reality, but I believe it ought to be, and while I try to be pragmatic in my approach to most things, on this one I take a hard line.

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Since we’re dreaming up new transit vehicles…

Posted on July 5, 2007 by

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…how about these? I’m not the only one to suggest the return of the lofty dirigible. The Green Party of Canada’s Alexander Duncan mentions the thought in passing, via Buckminster Fuller. They’re good on fuel and, if adopted, even more iconic than streetcars.

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The Floating Rocket Lives! Maybe!

Posted on July 4, 2007 by

Not along the Don or the Humber, as I foolishly suggested, but on Lake Ontario, from Bluffer’s Park and Humber Bay Park. Just an idea for now, but an appealing one, and one that would go a long way towards making Toronto feel like the waterfront city it’s supposed to be.

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Our pay-per-view future

Posted on July 4, 2007 by

News for media junkies: Today’s Statscan Daily reports that television had a banner year for advertising revenues in 2006. Two salient tidbits. One, the post-lockout return of the NHL has swollen the CBC’s coffers. Two, the pay-per-view segment of the industry produced the highest revenue growth and the most swollen profit margins. It took a quarter century, but pay-TV has finally caught on, so expect broadcasters to find more ways to make you pay. If only those blasted video-on-request menus weren’t so bloody slow and difficult to navigate. Attention cable and satellite companies: the first of you to integrate a search function into your service, allowing subscribers like me to find titles quickly, wins.

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The happy-go-lucky, cycle-commuting councillor

Posted on July 4, 2007 by

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Glenn De Baeremaeker is unfailingly one of the happiest and most ebullient members of city council. I hadn’t met him up close until just last week, but even at the press gallery’s hundred-foot distance to the council chamber floor you can feel the positive energy he radiates. This has bugged me for months now. The guy seemed to me too bloody happy in his job, which is kind of grating. But now that I’ve met him I understand why he carries such a spring in his step: it’s the high endorphin levels that he gets from cycling to work every day. De Baeremaeker is the councillor for Scarborough Centre, and his home is more than 20 kilometres from city hall, or a full hour each way. I accompanied him on his morning commute last Thursday, and believe me, that’s a load of endorphins. (I took a couple of photos on the rare occasions when we paused, including once to call an assistant and once to pet a puppy.)

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Counting cars

Posted on July 4, 2007 by

After yesterday’s lively discussion about the relationship between Toronto and its suburbs, along comes this clever little story in today’s Star. It’s clever because the story is based on a city report that’s nearly a week old, but that no one wrote about. It’s the Cordon Count report, which is actually a pretty important piece of paper, since it tracks the number of cars that move in and out of both the city’s outer limits and the downtown Central Business District, or CBD.

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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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