Generous Ward 43 Residents Help John Laforet Take Second Place in City Wide Food Poll 2010
Laforet is top Scarborough Councillor Candidate in Food Bank Contest
Generous Ward 43 residents help Laforet take second place in Toronto-wide challenge
SCARBOROUGH, Fri. Oct. 8, 2010 – Ward 43 Toronto City Councillor Candidate John Laforet collected more food donations in Scarborough than any other local candidate as part of a food drive challenge coinciding with the current Toronto municipal election.
With the help of Ward 43 residents, Laforet collected 249 pounds of soup, rice, pasta and other non-perishable food items during the city-wide Toronto Food Poll 2010. This food drive was organized as a friendly challenge among all city councillor candidates in the upcoming October 25th municipal election.
In addition to winning in Scarborough, Laforet took second place overall, competing among the 22 candidates from 18 wards who participated in the food bank challenge.
The Toronto Food Poll 2010 collected a total of 5,008 pounds of food. All food collected goes to Toronto residents who use food banks to help them provide for their families. Final results of the food drive challenge are available at TORONTO FOOD POLL 2010-results (www.foodpoll2010.com/index.html).
“This comes at such an important time,” said John Laforet. “With Thanksgiving this weekend, I’m grateful that so many residents in Ward 43 provided so many donations to the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank. I’m so proud to have collected this food and give a helping hand to people.”
The motto for this year’s Food Poll was “Politics doesn’t matter if you’re hungry…. Everyone needs to eat.” John Laforet was the only councillor candidate in Scarborough’s Ward 43 to participate in this community food drive.
Laforet said food drive organizers took a creative approach to link urban poverty with the current municipal election. Laforet points out that food drives like this are important to many Ward 43 residents, a place where city officials estimate about 3,000 families depend on local food banks. All the food collected by the John Laforet campaign in Ward 43 was delivered to the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank, which supplies food to Scarborough’s volunteer-run food banks.
“In addition to its low-income residents, Ward 43 continues to lack many of the city services that other parts of Toronto take for granted,” Laforet said. “We have no subway service. Some of the worst roads in Ontario are in this ward. And only one library is now operating in this whole ward.”
John Laforet is the only candidate for Ward 43 City Councillor who lives in the ward. He’s campaigning to improve local services – including expanding the subway in Scarborough and revitalizing the historic Guild Inn. Laforet’s priorities also include bringing more financial accountability to City Hall, and addressing chronic poverty issues in Ward 43.
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Toronto 311 to this caller: ‘You can’t always get what you want’
I was downtown tonight and came across a massive hole in the sidewalk by a sewer grate. Basically the sidewalk has been dug away creating a giant hole, that is large enough for a person to surely meet their end in. Clearly the hole was intentional, but marking this with a single pylon and leaving a giant, essentially unmarked hole in the sidewalk, couldn’t have been. No one’s judgement can be that bad.
So I decided something needed to be done to raise this to the attention to someone in a position to do something about it. I called Toronto’s 311 service in hopes that they might be able to help me figure out who to contact to make sure something was done tonight.
I have to say, service was quick. The phone literally rang once before it was answered. I started explaining the situation and the location but the potential seriousness of this issue hadn’t really hit the person on the other end. I was getting frustrated because it seems pretty clear to me that this is a problem. I was put on hold while the 311 representative got more information on how to handle this and what was playing?
And you can’t always get what you want, honey
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime, yeah,
You just might find you get what you need!
The 1969 Rolling Stone’s classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (This link will take you to a YouTube recording of a live performance)
I couldn’t help but laugh.
For any organization this is embarrassing for your customer service line, for the City of Toronto it’s a little too honest. In my particular case, not only could I not get what I want, but what I think people need – the hole properly covered with something (like a plywood board? giant piece of metal?). We see this all the time in other parts of the City when folks are leaving open trenches and holes in roads and sidewalks.
The call ended with the 311 representative asking for my name and phone number, saying she would pass it along and if they needed any more information someone would call. There was no commitment to any action being taken, or even appreciation for the issue.
So I went back, with my camera to take pictures of said hole and here they are. If you get bored, call 311 (they are open 24/7) and ask them to send someone to cover the giant hole in the sidewalk at Yonge and Harbour on the southwest corner that could end really badly if they don’t.
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No Comments »Of Course Wind Energy Lobbyist Rob Silver Supports Rossi’s Proposed Sale of Toronto Hydro
In his latest piece “Why selling Toronto Hydro is a good idea” Rob Silver – a former McGuinty Senior Advisor turned energy lobbyist left out some details which are pertinent to why a guy in his particular trade would be so keen to see Toronto Hydro sold off.
Toronto Hydro owns an incompetent sister company called Toronto Hydro Energy Services that is proposing to build turbines in a part of Ontario where we all know they won’t work. Because the City of Toronto is the 100% shareholder in theory residents should be able to win this fight and keep this money making asset (this is why the City shouldn’t sell Toronto Hydro) from blowing $700 million bucks it doesn’t have on a project that doesn’t work.
Silvers however has made a good amount of money pushing a product that doesn’t work on former colleagues of his. Robert Silver (links are to his filings in the lobbyist registry) has represented the Canadian Wind Energy Association an industry lobby for the corporate welfare cases that make up the wind industry in Canada and fought so hard to have citizens rights taken away.
Joyce McLean – the Director of Strategic Services at Toronto Hydro Energy Services is the past chair of CanWEA. In fact the bottom of every email she sends shares that fact.
Toronto Hydro is a member of CanWEA (Robert Silver’s former client).
Silver has also represented the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association - an organization that founded the Green Energy Act Alliance and literally developed the framework to deprive citizens of their rights, strip municipalities of their planning controls and trample democracy to keep their financially not viable clients in business.
In fact his former boss Dalton McGuinty cited Scarborough Bluffs resident’s opposition to Toronto Hydro’s illegal application to install a wind testing device as the reason for introducing the bill Rob Silver’s clients (OSEA) wrote to take my rights and the rights of my neighbours away.
CanWEA is a member of OSEA as is the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, and the City of Toronto. The Toronto Atmospheric Fund is funding part of Toronto Hydro’s research and the City of Toronto is the 100% owner of Toronto Hydro.
Rob Silver has also represented Trillium Power – a wind farm developer with a pipe dream of putting a ridiculous amount of turbines in the east end of Lake Ontario. Trillium Power had previously been set back by the Ministry of Natural Resources ‘we-don’t-know-what-we’re-doing’ moratorium on offshore wind development in the Great Lakes. The end of that moratorium opened the door for Toronto Hydro to continue planning their project which has been under development since 2003 in some way or another.
Currently Silver is listed as the active lobbyist for Enbridge Inc. – which owns a wind farm in Ontario that is believed to be harming the health of local residents. In fact at a Liberal BBQ Silver’s former boss was hosting, that was being catered by Silver’s client Enbridge – I was threatened with arrest for organizing a protect to voice opposition to Silver’s other client (OSEA’s) Green Energy Act and it’s impact on our ability to oppose Toronto Hydro’s project that was being by the former Chair of another one of Silver’s former clients (CanWEA).
He also lobbies for the Renewable Energy Task Team which is co-chaired by Mike Crawley – President of Aim Power Gen, and the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario). Silver also lobbies for Vestas - the Danish wind turbine manufacturer in addition to lobbying for other wind energy types which can be found here.
Silver’s employment and client list has him firmly onside with the folks who are breaking down the process, denying citizens their right to participate and using pressure and influence to prevent citizen opposition from derailing projects.
In this light Toronto Hydro’s proposal is the most vulnerable as it is still in theory subject to the democratic will of folks who are at least marginally accountable to their constituents.
If I was Robert Silver I would support selling Toronto Hydro too. But as the President of Wind Concerns Ontario, and a Ward 43 resident there is no way I could support any plan to sell Toronto Hydro so long as it has a dual mandate because such a sale would harm my community and this is something folks like Rob Silver must know.
That being said, based on Rocco Rossi’s performance today I wouldn’t expect Rossi knows what Toronto Hydro is up to. His issue knowledge appeared weak when he suggested amalgamation happened in 2000 (it was 1997) or that Councillors voted themselves a pay increase this year (they decided not to vote to cancel an increase they’d passed in 2006).
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