Posts Tagged ‘CUPE 416 Strike’
City of Toronto CUPE 79 and 416 Strike – Day 34 – Our Urban Forest Suffers From Labour Dispute Too
I’ve written about a number of impacts the City of Toronto strike has had on services ranging from garbage collection, ferry service, child care and recreation programs. Today, I’m writing about the impact of the City of Toronto strike on the urban forest we as Torontonians can be so proud of. Toronto is often referred to as a ‘city within a park’ on many of the municipal signs in our park space. We’re blessed with great tree coverage in a city of our size, and the City’s Urban Forestry Services is responsible for the health, preservation and maintenance of some three million trees on City owned property, in parks, ravines and along boulevards.
Southern Scarborough is an area I know extremely well, and all those who come and see it surely know of the richness of Scarborough’s natural beauty. The trees in many of the communities in this part of Scarborough are often considerably older than the homes built around them. While sharing this place with nature is a great privilege, there are also responsibilities attached to being the neighbours of such great examples of balance between urban life and nature.
Lorie Reynolds, a Scarborough resident knows this quite well and has done a tremendous job along with her husband advocating for the protection of a beautiful 200 year old White Oak tree on city property, just behind her home. She was kind enough to write to me and tell me how the City Strike has impacted this tree’s health, and share with me the history of her involvement working with City staff and her local Councillor to ensure Urban Forestry Services is doing what it can to preserve this White Oak.
As you will see in Lorie’s pictures below, the White Oak tree behind her home has an infection called ‘Anthracnose’ a tree disease that causes spots of dead tissue to appear on leaves, causing them to fall from the tree, weakening it’s health. Sections of the tree become infected and require intervention to treat the tree to keep it healthy through pruning, fungicide, mulching, and lots of watering.
Four years ago, when this particular tree was first noted to have an infection, the folks at Urban Forestry Services came and treated the tree. Things were looking good, but this summer, the Anthracnose fugus returned. Lorie had written to Urban Forestry Services to advise them of this, but received an auto reply message advising her of the strike, and asking her to re-send her email after the strike as staff would not be reading emails received during the labour dispute.
Lorie and her husband have developed what sounds like an excellent system for watering the roots of the tree in the meantime, using an old blue box recycling bin, as they await an end to the labour dispute so that Urban Forestry Staff can once again come out and properly treat this old oak tree and hopefully restore it to it’s previous vitality.
In many ways the Reynolds and this White Oak Tree are lucky that Councillor Brian Ashton is their municipal representative. He is one of the better municipal Councillors in Scarborough and has taken an interest in working with them to ensure the folks at Urban Forestry do what they can to help. Last week, he contacted City Management, who continue to work through the strike to advise them of the situation and see if anyone is able to come out during the dispute to treat the tree.
Lorie Reynold’s Photos
As someone from a well forested community in Scarborough, I have a great appreciation and respect for nature and the many old trees that dot our parks, and private property. Last June, I participated in a ‘Toronto Tree Tours’ nature walk through the Rouge Park put on in partnership with LEAF (Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests) Arborist Todd Irvine, and Jim Robb, General Manager of Friends of the Rouge Watershed. It was quite a fascinating experience that wove the history of the development of Scarborough and it’s tree cover into one narrative. It actually inspired my third blog entry, some three hundred and forty posts ago on June 22nd 2008 – Rouge Park. Trees like the one standing near the Reynold’s homes are real gems, and their work protecting this tree should be commended.
Last year I also wrote about another Oak Tree that had fallen on a playground in High Park and of Ernest Hemmingway’s concern in 1923 about the impacts of urbanization on the City of Toronto’s oak trees. July 31st 2008 Ernest Hemingway on Toronto’s Oak trees circa 1923
2 Comments »
Pictures From Day Three of the City of Toronto Strike
Alright, everyone is talking garbage – here is garbage. These pictures were taken on Yonge Street south of Queen, one of Bay Street at Lakeshore and the vast majority on Queen Street between City Hall and just west of Spadina.
For folks who find themselves holding garbage with no where to put it, do what I did yesterday with a Starbucks cup – I found another Starbucks, stopped in and put it in their garbage. My rationale is that it is really their garbage anyways, and it saved me having to both bring it home or add to one of these ‘garbage jenga’ bins or what I am sure is soon to become some kind of modern urban art. Plus, what are they going to say, honestly? Try it with your next cup of Tim Hortons or Starbucks, it will help keep the streets cleaner, I’m sure.
I also want to note that the dude who threw out a bike tire – that never was meant for one of these bins, same goes for whoever threw the bags of gas soaked dirt near City Hall. I find the black garbage bags mysteriously out of place. That isn’t strike related, it’s littering. Same goes for the lady who abandoned her flip flops.
4 Comments »
Commentary on the Angus Reid/Toronto Star Poll on the City of Toronto Strike
Simply put, the Angus Reid Poll the Toronto Star featured on it’s front page doesn’t make any sense. The methodology is weak. Why would you interview anyone who does not live within the City of Toronto’s boundaries about a local municipal issue? With the greatest respect to the folks in York, Durham and Peel regions, you don’t pay taxes in Toronto, you don’t receive municipal services in Toronto and you don’t vote in Toronto, and as a result your opinions on Toronto issues, particularly extremely local ones like this, aren’t relevant.
Angus Reid may as well have interviewed people in Summerside PEI to gauge their views on the City of Toronto Strike as they are as affected by Toronto’s delivery of municipal services as someone in one of the regions around Toronto. I bet their are folks across Canada with opinions, unfortunately if they aren’t in Toronto, it’s impact isn’t nearly as great on this issue.
Does anyone believe that 14% of folks living outside of Toronto but in the GTA are actually affected by pet licenses, building permits, or parking permits?
How about 41% of non Toronto GTA residents being affected by sidewalk and road cleaning in Toronto? Really?
Something tells me 30% of the GTA’s non Toronto residents don’t use our pools, parks or golf courses and certainly not on week days, making the claim of this impact highly suspect too.
Finally – the sample is not representative of Toronto residents or even residents of the GTA. There is no demographic information attached to the report and because it relies exclusively on an unverified online methodology it has absolutely no margin of error as it is literally the opinion of 600 randos, who self selected themselves as prospective panel participants for Angus Reid’s online surveys.
With no break down of how many of these folks a) actually live in Toronto b) where in Toronto and c) any information about their demographics (age, income level, voting preference, education etc) this poll is pretty meaningless.
Another red herring buried in the poll is the fact that 39% (43% from Toronto and 19% in the rest of GTA) of residents reported being personally affected by the strikes impact on libraries? Really? Because 94 of 99 libraries are totally unaffected by the strike. This demonstrates a data quality issue. If four in ten anonymous, self selecting, online panel participants reported an impact that is literally impossible, how much weight can you put in the rest of their data? It would lead me to believe folks who self selected to participate in this survey have an agenda, however uninformed their are on the issues. It would seem to me that folks who participated over reported negative impacts, some of which are highly suspect or impossible to have actually occurred.
I am not disputing that many are upset and many residents are negatively impacted or frustrated at the strike. I don’t want a strike, I want workers to work and the City managers to manage, but I don’t think bogus polls should be highlighted to try to drive popular opinion in any one direction. I do dispute the results of this poll because it is clear to me their are massive issues with the integrity of it’s findings.
If you want to do a real poll of Toronto residents, it would need to be a telephone survey of randomly selected residents from all six former municipalities within the new City of Toronto. It would need proper screener questions, be representative of Toronto’s population and ask the right questions. If someone provided a bogus answer like ‘library services’ there should be a follow up like ‘in what way has the strike impacted your use of library service’ to explore why they gave that answer and allow the researcher to try to understand motives for giving that response.
Here is a link to the Angus Reid Poll that I think is bogus.
1 Comment »
