Archive for November, 2009
George Jumps Ship, Sort of – Risks Run in With Law to Keep Paycheque
I write this as a resident of Toronto. I’m sure as President of Wind Concerns Ontario I will be providing comment on the impact of Smitherman’s departure on the renewable energy file later.
So George Smitherman decided today after eHealth, OLG and the royal mess up that has been the Ministry of Energy it was time to move on to see what kind of damage he could do in Toronto.
Smitherman being Smitherman has decided to turn the office of MPP for Toronto Centre into his piggy bank while he rolls out his campaign. There is a problem with his strategy and I want to point it out before I go any further. Smitherman is planning to file in March, so five months from now.
The law is very clear – you can’t spend any money when running for office in any municipal election without first filing your nomination. It’s not like a federal or provincial election where riding associations can spend outside the actual election period to get over the limit and run a longer campaign.
Just how Smitherman plans to be declared as a candidate and not file, and still expect to do anything is beyond me. He is running for Mayor – that means events, rallies, staff, polling – all things that cost money.
I get that he would like to keep his paycheque, but that doesn’t mean he can get creative with the municipal elections act to preserve a paycheque he will no doubt not be earning as he prepares his bid.
I don’t care what party you belong to – watch this and watch it closely. How will he run and not spend a penny before he files in March? No money means no website, no flyers, no room rentals, no events, no staff.
Does anyone honestly believe he won’t spend any money running for Mayor for five months? He also can’t raise money legally either.
Beyond the fact that I think he is walking into a situation that will make him look ethically suspect at best, his media stuff today demonstrated exactly why this is a bad idea.
Smitherman demonstrated duplicity in his first interview as a candidate.
1) Smitherman criticized Council for not rolling back their cost of living increase. He is a member of a government that voted to raise their salaries by 25%, even while the government was in deficit. No vote on a rollback has been planned.
2) Smitherman attacked the Council for it’s first instinct being to tax to solve it’s financial problems. McGuinty’s government has never seen a balanced budget in over five years in office, and has added tens of billions of dollars to the debt. Smitherman has headed up the two largest ministries, each which surely have relied on deficit financing. Unlike the Province which raises the taxes of our grandchildren to solve their financial issues, the City has to balance the books at the end of the year. As far as I am concerned both deficit financing of an operating budget and tax increases are the same thing.
3) Smitherman shot at Councillors’ sense of fiscal responsibility. That’s not a statement I will dispute, but this is the pot calling the kettle black. The 2.4 billion dollar Pan Am Games is a joint venture with all three levels of government, meaning Smitherman and his friends in cabinet are responsible for enabling Toronto to blow $800 million on sixteen days of sports six years from now. His Ministry will be funding much of the province’s share, just as they funded $400 million of a $1.2 billion streetcar order of which the City is on the hook for $800 million. Those are two projects where Smitherman has enabled the drunken sailors to spend $1.6 billion.
4) On referring to the Mayor’s chair as ‘a bully pulpit’. So much for ‘post-ideological’ governence. Smitherman is proposing to scare half of Council into doing what he wants as a means of governing. I doubt members of Council are going to be up for this, and expect and hope they will vigourously oppose him on the ground as they seek re-election.
Smitherman has enemies. He has attacked a number of constituencies in the City and province and what better opportunity than an election where the guy is vulnerable to respond.
It will be a very sad day for our city if Smitherman is elected.
I encourage everyone to look at the other candidates as they emerge and consider your choices wisely.
4 Comments »Toronto Wins Pan Am Games, But at What Cost?
Toronto is poised to host the 2015 Pan Am Games at a cost of 2.4 billion dollars. It is the first time Ontario will host an international sporting event since 1930 (a number of media sources are citing this fact, but none seem to mention what that was). In some ways hosting an event like this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it does result in investment in infrastructure and leaves behind legacy projects that can be useful to the city after the games are though.
The Province is thrilled as I’m sure many of the participating municipalities in the the GTA. I wonder how residents are feeling about it though.
I passively watch the Olympics both Summer and Winter with some interest, and not necessarily just when Canadians are in the mix. For all of its faults, there is still something to be said about the symbolism of the Olympics and the world wide scope of competition that makes it seem worthwhile – particularly when its on someone else’s dime.
With the Pan Am Games though, I’m not sold Canadians are all that into it. Can anyone name five Pan Am sports without the aid of google, or ten countries that participate in the Pan Am Games? There are a few challenges I have getting excited about Toronto’s bid and I’ll briefly explain them.
Relevance is a big one, but not necessarily the critical one. I just don’t believe the Pan Am Games are relevant to many people in the GTA, and particularly in comparison to something like the Olympics which Canada is hosting in 2010. Nationalism driven by sports for this country is mostly a hockey thing, and more broadly a winter sports thing. I’m not sold that an 11 day summer sporting event in 2015 will have the rousing impact on Canadians you’d expect 2.4 billion dollars to buy. What’s more, the Pan Am games are considerably more popular in Central and South America making Lima or Bogota seem like more natural selections for host cities for both the viewers and the potential positive impacts the games could have for Peru or Columbia.
Cost is probably my biggest objection. In 1999 when Winnipeg hosted the Pan Am Games, they had a proposed bid of $141 million dollars to get the necessary infrastructure in place to host a successful event. Those games generated a profit of $6 million dollars. The 2003 games were hosted in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic at a cost of $175 million. In 2007 Rio hosted the games, but the cost isn’t readily publicly available. The 2011 games will be hosted by Guadalajara Mexico with an expected budget of $250 million. Why will Toronto be spending $2.4 billion on something that has cost others consistently less than 10% of that.
Toronto has other desperate needs for that money. We have a serious infrastructure deficit in the TTC’s capital budget brought on by nixing a number projects in favour of buying those streetcars – a decision that saw the City spend $400 million it wasn’t expecting to in less than 24 hours. We have a $200 million dollar backlog in maintenance in our Toronto Community Housing buildings. There are a number of at risk communities that lack community centres and other recreation infrastructure for youth that could be better helped with this money. What’s more, Toronto is broke, the Province is broke and the Feds are also broke. No one actually has the money to pay for this and each level of government will be debt financing their support for the Pan Am Games.
Considering Winnipeg brought in $147 million in revenue from the games in 1999, what does the City, Province and Federal Government realistically expect the City of Toronto to bring in?
If we’ve got a pot of $2.4 billion these three levels of governments are itching to spend, invest it in Transit City, Affordable Housing, Community Centres, keeping pools open, the waterfront (remember when Lastman, Harris and Chretien announced a billion dollars for that in 2000 – how is that working out so far?). If you don’t want to do that stuff, throw it at Toronto’s debt and free the City up for interest payments. Almost anything would be a better use than this. To me hosting the Pan Am Games is a misguided money loser that should have residents mightily pissed with their governments for prioritizing this over the needs of everyday residents of our city.
I wish I could celebrate with the bid organizers who think all is great. I will say the regional cooperation concept of the games is positive if not just because it is bringing municipal governments together over big infrastructure projects, but at the same time, I would prefer to see them working together on roads, sewers, interconnected public transit and things that will actually improve their city’s and be worth the investment at the end of the days, especially when compared to a 16 day sporting event to take place six years from now in July.
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