Preville on Politics

April 2008 Archive

The upside of being a have-not province

Posted on April 30, 2008 by

It appears Ontario may soon be on the receiving end of transfer payments. So says this report co-authored by TD chief economist Don Drummond (who seems to issue all the most controversial economic reports) and this screaming headline in the Star. This news, though unfortunate, does confer some benefits. As a have-not province, Ontarians can expect the rest of the country to stop quietly, seethingly resenting them. Henceforth, Ontarians will be made fun of out in the open, in an endearingly corn-pone kind of way. In other words, “Ontarie” jokes will now replace Newfie jokes.

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Get your TTC strike rebate now!

Posted on April 30, 2008 by

Attention all riders! The TTC is offering pass holders up to $9.50 as a refund for the two days of travel lost to the strike. The litany of remaining perpetual problems—poor service, overcrowding, et cetera—will continue to be charged at full price. That is all. Ding, dang, dong.

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Transit Riders of Toronto, Unite!

Posted on April 28, 2008 by

I found myself having an unexpected reaction to this past weekend’s transit strike: I was glad there was no sign of the TTC anywhere. No buses, no streetcars, no workers, no management. Over the course of the past four weeks, everything about the negotiations—the demands, the strike threats, the nail-biting, the coverage, the frequent Bob Kinnear appearances on CP24, the rare, pale and ghostly Gary Webster sightings—has left me hot under my white collar. Some commentators, most notably this one, felt that Friday night’s hasty job action represented the moment the TTC employees’ inner kettle finally hit the boiling point. It was the moment mine boiled dry. I was happy to have it all disappear for a couple of days. Continue...

Good news! Prices going up!

Posted on April 25, 2008 by

I had promised myself that, this week, I would put an end to what has become my ritual Friday Pessimist Blog Entry on the state of the economy. Good thing, too. Everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon this morning. For those of you with an interest in worst-case scenario survival, here’s a quick-read eye-popper explaining how, essentially, mortgage defaults in San Diego have caused havoc for the entire nation of Iceland.

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Why not let the kids redesign Leslieville?

Posted on April 23, 2008 by

The battle over big-box retail is heating up in the city’s east end. SmartCentres is planning a 650,000-square-foot retail development on Eastern Avenue near Leslie Street that may include a Wal-Mart. The city has vetoed the plan. The developer has appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board. Asked to declare a provincial interest in the matter, Queen’s Park declined. The matter goes before the OMB next month. We’ve seen this before. Continue...

The magic number for city labour negotiations: $240 million

Posted on April 22, 2008 by

The last time I ran into Bob Kinnear, head of the Amalgamated Transit Union, was last October at city hall, on the occasion of the council meeting to ratify the mayor’s new land-transfer tax. There were lots of union folks in the bleachers that day, including Brian Cochrane of the outside workers’ union and John Cartwright of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. Now that the city has completed its bargaining with Kinnear and his TTC employees, it can look forward to negotiations with Cochrane and its other unions in the months ahead. One wonders if, after all is said and done, there will be any money left over from the new taxes for anything other than salaries.

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Top two reasons the TTC won’t go on strike (plus one reason why they might)

Posted on April 18, 2008 by

By now, you are either busy making alternate commuting plans for next week or you still have your head buried in the sand about Sunday’s looming 4 p.m. TTC strike deadline. Me, I got my bike tuned up last week. Nevertheless, I see two compelling reasons why a strike will be averted, one for each side of the bargaining table.

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Breaking news: Toronto real estate market goes loonie

Posted on April 18, 2008 by

Wow, desperation sure takes hold fast. The pathological realtors will no doubt be holding their breath until the winning bid is announced.

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The real estate meltdown: now it’s officially official

Posted on April 18, 2008 by

You no longer have to take my word for it. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s newspaper of record (a nostalgia-laden title that is increasingly meaningless, but that comes in handy in times like this when I want to buttress an argument of my own), is today reporting that housing sales are down across the country by a whopping 18.7 per cent in March over the previous year. Even the bank economists are now off the bandwagon.

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The secret lives of elevators

Posted on April 17, 2008 by

Attention all urban planning geeks and infrastructure fetishists: you must read this fabulous New Yorker piece about elevators by Nick Paumgarten right now. The story begins by pointing out one of the great secrets-beneath-our-noses of urban living: the modern city owes its existence not to cars or computers, but to elevators. The story will also make you cry. Might sound improbable to some of you, but those of us with a passion for bricks and mortar always knew infrastructure could do that. Continue...

Enough from Bob Kinnear. It’s time for the TTC to speak up

Posted on April 16, 2008 by

Is it just me, or is anyone else being driven batty by the progress of negotiations between the Toronto Transit Commission and its union? It’s not so much the anxiety of a looming strike—any day now, apparently—that gets under my skin as the entire public relations battle surrounding it. In this, the TTC is being totally owned by union head Bob Kinnear, who nonchalantly drops bombs every time he saunters up to the microphone. Among them, the TTC is playing hardball; the TTC doesn’t want to pay workers their full salary when they take time off due to on-the-job injuries; the presence of provincial mediators won’t solve anything; the TTC wants newly hired maintenance workers to take a 25 per cent pay cut; the negotiations are being undermined by the intransigence of TTC general manager Gary Webster. Clearly, the TTC is an evil empire. And what does the TTC have to say for itself in all this? Nothing. Continue...

401 food: A history of edible accidents

Posted on April 15, 2008 by

image for 401 food: A history of edible accidents

On Monday morning, a tractor-trailer overturned on Highway 401 near Winston Churchill Boulevard, setting loose some 50 pigs into crowded highway traffic. It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of occurrence—the kind of thing you can’t bear to watch, but from which you can’t bear to look away—but, believe it or not, the traffic chopper guys had seen it all before. Over the past 25 years, just about every type of domesticated animal has taken a walk down North America’s busiest highway. (Perhaps there ought to be signs that read “yield to merging livestock.”) And live animals are just the beginning: if you can eat it, it’s been spilled on the 401. Forthwith, a summary of the highway’s recent edible accidents. Continue...

Is the city throwing vacuum waste into the trash?

Posted on April 14, 2008 by

If you read the stories last week about the Toronto city staff report on vacuum waste, you might have gotten the impression that the idea had been given the green light in the West Don Lands, where Waterfront Toronto would like to proceed with it. Here’s how Geoff Rathbone, the city’s general manager of solid waste, put it to the National Post: “Should they wish to proceed with that, it’s really their decision, not ours…. If something like that was built, we could pick up the material at the end of the pipe. So the decision would be Waterfront Toronto’s or the developer’s.” Continue...

“Junior” Giambrone refuses to swallow union bait

Posted on April 11, 2008 by

Yesterday, transit union president Bob Kinnear decided to run an idea up the flagpole and see if TTC chair and political whippersnapper Adam Giambrone was fool enough to salute it: he asked the thirtysomething Giambrone to take over from TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster as the city’s lead negotiator in contract talks. “If Gary Webster is still in control,” Kinnear said, “we are very concerned we will not be able to reach a deal.” He even tried to ply Giambrone with flattery, saying what a good listener he is, but Junior didn’t flinch: “Our negotiating team has the confidence of the TTC commission” was his reply. Still, Giambrone better hold fast and watch his back.

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David Miller and the politics of YouTube

Posted on April 8, 2008 by

David Miller has taken his campaign for a Canada-wide handgun ban to YouTube. He is asking people from across Canada to sign a petition that he will personally deliver to Parliament Hill. It’s a fine and worthy objective. It’s also nice to see someone other than John Tory take the lead on the issue of gun violence in the city. Still, I can’t help but notice that our mayor is full of bold initiatives for governments other than his own.

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There goes the neighbourhood: Top three reasons for plummeting real estate sales

Posted on April 4, 2008 by

Attention, homeowners: the starting gun for the Great Real Estate Meltdown of 2008 has now been sounded. It actually went off about a month ago, though you may not have noticed, since it was sounded in dulcet tones, with a prediction that home sales would “drop slightly.” So much for that: sales in March are down 22 per cent over last year. There are three preferred theories for the drop in sales. Here they are, ranked by the degree to which they are made of wishful fantasy. Continue...

$100,000 worth of sunshine

Posted on April 2, 2008 by

Everyone has their take on Ontario’s public sector salary disclosure records, also known as the Sunshine List, which names everyone on the public payroll earning $100,000 or more. My take is that it’s far more fun to peruse the list yourself, so here you go. You can look up your favourite politician or the prof who flunked you out—or you can parse the many, many, very ordinary job titles earning good dough—and develop your own take.

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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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