It serves as a great opportunity to get our message out to a far larger audience  (Thomson Reuters is the world’s largest news service)  and I hope will spark some healthy international debate on the merits of this industry and technology in light of the clear process and due diligence failures worldwide.

Watching the election unfold so far it seems clear there are going to be two camps, the folks who want to take drastic action to fundamentally alter how and what City Hall does and those who think tinkering is the way to go.

The province has used the 2010 municipal budget as an opportunity to use spending power to exert more control over the TTC. This is something Torontonians should approach with caution because it means local control will be shared with the province, likely through Metrolinx. This could create an even more unwieldy governance structure for the TTC.

The Premier’s suggestion that the Toronto Election is a good opportunity to discuss the idea of transit workers being declared an essential service was not only off base, but possibly a sign of what is to come with the permanent funding proposal from the Province, particularly in a race that sees the front runners running against City Hall, not for it.

With the significant decisions the next Council is going to have to make regarding Toronto’s future should be top of mind of all voters when they determine who to send to Council in the fall. I believe our next Mayor and members of Council need to focus the municipal/provincial relationship on building a sustainable and workable framework for Toronto to govern it’s affairs with the resources needed to meet the challenge. We need to make sure, whoever is elected doesn’t sell our city short in these negotiations and ensures the Premier understands providing adequate funding to the City of Toronto and the TTC isn’t optional, its necessary.

How about the province just fund a proportion of the TTC’s operating budget because it’s the right thing to do, and historically a role they played.

If there is to be a ballot question regarding anything to do with the Provincial government it should be, which candidate for Mayor best represents our City’s long term interests in negotiating a sustainable framework with the Ontario Government.

Having a principled, honest, socially progressive, fiscally conservative, community oriented voice who is committed to enhancing opportunities for local communities to take a more active role in decision making would be a fundamentally good thing for the City and my community.

Our campaign is grassroots driven, and will need the financial support of those who believe in what we’re trying to achieve if we are to succeed. We have receptive voters, and a good team coming together, but need the tools to run the distance.

I will stand up for local democracy, support effective and efficient public transit, demand action on affordable housing and childcare, while seeking financial sustainability to budgeting. I bring the same passion and energy to these other municipal issues as I have to my principled opposition to Toronto Hydro’s ill-conceived proposal for my community and will demand results when elected.

I am committed to community building, citizen engagement and collaborative decision making. It’s our City and we need a voice at the table reflecting our views. Whether you live in Ward 43 or not, if you want to see active, responsive Councillors who listen to real people and not just the folks on the lobbyist registry, I’m your guy.

We have a good chance of winning here, but not without your help. I can’t do this alone or on your behalf without your active support. It just won’t work.

I’m asking you to consider making a contribution to my campaign if you believe in what we’re trying to achieve.

The City of Toronto has a generous rebate program that all donors regardless of where they live in Ontario are eligible for. A donation of $300 would cost you just $75 as the City rebates the first 75% of any donation between 25-300 with a sliding scale for larger amounts over that. For more information on the rebate program for specific dollar amounts please click here.

Don’t wait for others to step up, because they’re waiting for you to do the same.

Join us, take action and contribute to what can only be a success with your help.

Keep our message alive. Give us the tools to succeed. Click donate  on the right hand side of the screen to do what you can to help.

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Making the decision to run for public office isn’t an easy one, not matter what anyone says. What makes being a candidate so rewarding, is the ability to work on solutions with residents, offer something different, and solutions that will improve the community we each call home. If we continue to work together, and build a vision we can pursue over the coming months, we’ll then have four years to see action on our priorities and truly turn the page for our community.

I am humbled by the response I’ve received so far and motivated that much more to press on over the coming months in hopes that the community can unify behind the only candidate in the race whose got a plan to improve our community moving forward.

We have a long way to go, and it’s going to take the help of many if we’re going to succeed. I want to hear your thoughts, and ideas so please feel free to write me.

Our campaign can only be successful with the financial support of those who believe in what we’re trying to achieve.

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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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Love him or hate him, or even his video for that matter, Giambrone’s campaign in my opinion has demonstrated the best understanding of social media of all major campaigns in the race so far. Sure the video content is doesn’t necessarily paint Giambrone looking mayoral but it has been seen by over 30,000 people in just over a day. Compare with George Smitherman’s official launch video on his youtube page with closer to 500 people, or Rocco Rossi’s Empire Club speech with around 400 viewers over a considerably longer period of time.

A lot of folks are debating the content, whether Giambrone struck the right cord or not, but this early in the game the ’say anything you want about me, but spell my name right’ approach to public relations applies. For a Mayor’s race getting out there and getting noticed is a good first start.

Even if you’re Rocco Rossi and you’re suggesting it is a stunt unworthy of a campaign that should be about policy, the cold hard reality that Giambrone’s team was able to make a video go viral and get their unedited message (regardless of content or quality) to a group that big that quickly AND get traditional media coverage of the whole thing should have you taking him more seriously than you did before.

If you’re George Smitherman – you need to be worried Giambrone will be able to excite the 30,000 or so folks who tuned in in the first 24 hours, because they are an audience you surely need to be able to reach out and win over as well if you’re to maintain a commanding lead.

Finally if you’re Joe Pantalone, your ability to be the main candidate for progressives and those on the left of the spectrum could prove to be a lot more difficult as the new media types that have tuned into watch are a constituency you need to reach if you’re to compete.

Giambrone’s video is certainly not a game changer and likely doesn’t put him any closer to sealing the deal, but it surely will create a good turn out for his launch, and allow him to connect better with individuals early, making it easier to get his message out, unfiltered to a larger audience than the other big name candidates in the race.

At the very least it makes the case for an exciting race to come.

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For this to be a winning effort it will take people from all over to donate their time or their money. If you would like to see this be a winning effort, consider making a donation to my campaign using the paypal button on the right. Donors receive a generous rebate cheque of 75% of the first $300 they donate back from the City of Toronto, meaning a donation of $100 actually only costs you $25, but does so much more to make this a winnable fight.

Our campaign can only be successful with the financial support of those who believe in what we’re trying to achieve.

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In 2008 when Councillor Walker tried to freeze salaries for 2008, the following members of Council voted to prevent his motion from being debated by Council, protecting their raises.

They were: Paul Ainslie (Ward 43); Brian Ashton (Ward 36); Sandra Bussin (Ward 32); Shelley Carroll (Ward 33); Raymond Cho (Ward 42); Janet Davis (Ward 31); Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38); Michael Del Grande (Ward 39); Frank Di Giorgio (Ward 12); John Filion (Ward 23); Paula Fletcher (Ward 30); Adam Giambrone (Ward 18); Suzan Hall (Ward 1); Adrian Heaps (Ward 35); Norm Kelly (Ward 40); Gloria Lindsay Luby (Ward 4); Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7); Pam McConnell (Ward 28); Joe Mihevc (Ward 21); Mayor David Miller; Howard Moscoe (Ward 15); Joe Pantalone (Ward 19); John Parker (Ward 26); Gord Perks (Ward 14); Anthony Perruzza (Ward 8); Kyle Rae (Ward 27); Bill Saundercook (Ward 13); David Shiner (Ward 24); Karen Stintz (Ward 16); Adam Vaughan (Ward 20).

Being an election year, it will be interesting to watch the footwork undertaken this time around. With a $500 million dollar deficit asking Councillors to freeze their salaries in my opinion doesn’t go far enough and is beyond reasonable. I personally would be more inclined, as I suggested earlier, to see Councillors shave 5% off of their salaries, their staff and office budgets for a total savings of nearly $900,000 ($895,619.56). It would be a painless start to filling the giant hole our Council has created and will no doubt expect us to fill with tax increases, user fee hikes and service cuts. While they are at it, they could also cut out the catering of their meetings, for a savings in the $150,000 range. People making far less either brown bag it or buy their lunch at work and it is reasonable to expect in the 90 minutes they have mid day on days Council is in session that they too could source their own lunch.

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Now there are photos appearing of transit workers appearing to be asleep on the job. I have to say when I first saw it, my initial reaction was like many, and I was annoyed. But thinking about it, it became clear that I don’t know enough about the individual to know whether this is medically related or what is going on in their life.

Transit users in the city rely on our TTC employees to literally get us where we’re going. Without the TTC I would have a serious problem getting to work, and certainly couldn’t live where I live and work where I work. I know when I use public transit I am thankful for the workers who drive the buses and help me get to where I’m going because I literally couldn’t live my life the way I do if they didn’t do what they do.

I understand the frustration many have had after seeing this photo, but I still think it is totally inappropriate to use a photo of a sleeping transit worker to attack TTC employees or an individual who could quite likely be suffering a medical problem the individual taking the photo did not know about. I agree with the ATU 113 officials who suggested a better plan of action would have been knocking on the glass and asking the individual if he was OK instead of opting to humiliate him.

I agree things could be a lot better with Transit and sometimes customer service is a part of that. We’ve all met snarly drivers, collection booth agents, and others, but the public treatment of TTC workers certainly doesn’t help improve the situation and does put the union in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation that hurts the City as a whole and all of us in the process.

We need transit workers to keep Toronto moving. Mutual goodwill is the best way to ensure the table is set for fruitful, and uneventful negotiations that can see the TTC to operate without labour interruption. As riders we should pick our battles and recognize this incident isn’t worth the alienation it causes or the energy expended trying to get to the bottom of it, in what has largely become a PR exercise that is somehow tied to the transit fare increase. I suspect whatever the reason it appears this individual is sleeping would still exist if a metro pass was $109, and not $121.

I feel bad for the individual whose face has now been published in each of Toronto’s major paper, and gone viral on Twitter, and think each of us needs to recognize that human decency should keep us from humiliating members of the public service. I suspect if the individual in question was a member of a union that is less targeted for criticism, and not a transit worker we wouldn’t be seeing their picture in the paper or on twitter, and someone would have done the right thing, and checked in on them to ensure they were OK.

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Samsung has been allowed to cherry pick where they would place industrial turbines. Local municipalities and citizens with valid concerns have been shut out, because Ontario’s Green Energy Act strips municipalities of their right to participate in planning decisions for renewable energy projects, and prevents citizens from playing a meaningful role as well.

Ontario electricity users will pay Samsung even more than the current subsidized rates given to other wind or solar producers, meaning this project make even less economic sense than the others. The increased cost of electricity will hurt working families and chase even more manufacturing jobs from Ontario to other, more competitive jurisdictions.The 4,000 jobs being proposed doesn’t even come close to replacing the 350,000 manufacturing jobs lost in Ontario since 2003 or the others we can expect to lose when consumers start paying for this.

Over 100 Ontarians report adverse health impacts from improperly placed industrial wind turbines. The Government is in court where they trying to defend their decision to refuse to conduct an independent health study on the impacts of these industrial devices or regulate internationally recognized setbacks for turbines from people, making this deal even more inappropriate.

This isn’t about climate change. Even the President of the Canadian Wind Energy Association recognizes that because just 12% of carbon emissions in Ontario come from energy production, turbines can’t play a significant in addressing climate change.

Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of 42 groups in 27 counties, will not make this easy for Samsung. We have members in the counties put aside for Samsung, and residents in 25 other counties who are prepared to stand up and fight to ensure Samsung isn’t the latest to build a profit driven project, that ignores the legitimate negative health, environmental and economic impacts they cause.

John Laforet is President of Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of 42 groups in 27 counties standing up to irresponsible industrial wind turbine developments facing their communities. For more information on Wind Concerns Ontario please visit http://www.windconcernsontario.org

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