Posts Tagged ‘Paul Ainslie’
What It’s About – Why I’m Running For City Council
My campaign for Toronto City Council in Ward 43 began last week and has been building since. We’ve begun to share our message with voters, started fundraising and getting the mechanisms in place to ensure Ward 43 voters have the choice they deserve. We’re running strong, and as a team effort, because any campaign, at least any campaign worth winning is always bigger than the candidate. The video below outlines just what it’s about.
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.
Would you like to comment? Please feel free to visit the Contact page on my site and contact me. Click subscribe if you would like to receive daily updates from http://laforet.ca in your inbox.
Comments OffWill Paul Ainslie Run for City Council in Ward 44?
Today was the first day for municipal candidates to make it official and file their intention to seek public office as a Mayoral, Council or School Trustee candidate. So far no candidates have filed to run in my home ward, Ward 43.
Councillor Ainslie currently ‘represents’ (a term I am using lightly here based on his record) Ward 43 – a community he does not live in. He was elected with an underwhelming 39% of the vote in November 2006, meaning 61% of voters had the right idea last time around.
This isn’t the first ward Paul Ainslie has represented and not lived in. You see in January 2006 Paul Ainslie was appointed to Toronto City Council in a 5-4 vote of Scarborough Community Council (that resulted in an investigation by the integrity commissioner into his former boss and one of his five votes – David Soknacki) to represent Ward 41 – another community Paul Ainslie doesn’t live in.
When his nomination went to City Hall for approval, Paul Ainslie gave a speech. After promising to be ‘fair and honest’ he went on to say:
“In the last month I’ve made a number of different commitments if appointed to this position, I will not run in Ward 41 or any other ward in the city.”
If by different he meant ‘bald faced lie’ as Eye Weekly described it he was correct.
In true Paul Ainslie tradition he went on to lie about the lie when I called him on it through the media. He claimed he promised not to run against incumbents, or that he wouldn’t run in Ward 41 – this was after saying he didn’t say anything to this effect at all.
Here is a video showing what he says. After watching him lie repeatedly for six weeks, I went to City Hall, bought the video of that day at Council and a very talented member of the campaign team put the following together for distribution to the media. His response to the video was he was nervous and didn’t mean to say it – but he’s reading.
If you’re going to run for public office, know yourself better than your opponents – and generally speaking lying never works and is wrong, so don’t do it. In fact when Councillor Ainslie wrote provable lies to me in a private email six weeks ago, I offered him this very advice. I told him that making statements that are provably untrue hurts his credibility and therefore the ability of him to represent my community as people can’t trust him if he can’t stick to the truth.
His term as Ward 41’s representative saw him fight to have the pictures of the former Scarborough Mayors placed in the former City Council chamber, trying to get a bi-law regarding aged or tattered Canadian flags. His most bizarre vote was against a pay increase that passed 23-20, then only to change his vote in favour, making the vote 24-19, which was promptly followed by his former boss David Soknacki changing his vote in favour to against, making it 23-20 again.
Currently Paul Ainslie holds the office of Ward 43 – as I previously stated a community he does not and has not lived in at all during the 2006 election or the term. He does not represent the views of residents, or their best interest and continues to lie about his involvement or lack there of – to paper over his failings.
Paul Ainslie lives in Ward 44 – where he has for years and is raising his family. Considering he is about as attached to Ward 43 as he was to Ward 41 – it only seems reasonable that the failed ‘representative’ would once again find a new community to play City Councillor in – as nominations open.
I will tell you this much – his chances are far better where he lives, than in Ward 43 or Ward 41 as I imagine with these residents and Paul Ainslie the old saying ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me’ is in full play and many residents are lined up and ready to fight to ensure this so-called Councillor, elected on a lie, and publishing lies in hopes of being re-elected doesn’t get that chance again. Maybe that’s why he flipped from Ward 41 in the first place.
He already has lawn signs that say ‘return’ a phrase he chose instead of ‘elect’ like everyone else who ran and had never been elected before and he wisely did not put a ward number on them – making them fully re-useable this time around in his home Ward.
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Open Letter to Ward 43 Councillor Paul Ainslie Re: Toronto Hydro’s Anemometer and His Inaction
Councillor Ainslie,
On November 13th 2009 you wrote a mass email to residents of Ward 43 in which you stated:
“Unfortunately the Province did approve the testing process which will be done via an anemometer for a two year duration. I will be doing everything I can as your City of Toronto Councillor to ensure we receive regular updates on the data being collected by Toronto Hydro. This project is a huge waste of the hard earned money we provide to Toronto Hydro through our tax dollars!”
Where have you been for the last fifteen months while residents have been working tirelessly to oppose this project?
Guildwood has had virtually no representation from you on this issue at City Hall or, for that matter, even in the press. You’ve failed to engage the community or take any meaningful action. What’s more, on a number of occasions you’ve hurt the cause of residents who oppose the turbines.
In 2006, while you were on Council, Toronto City Council approved funding ($100 000) to test offshore wind speeds in order to develop a wind farm. As a member of Council and a Budget Committee member you should have both known about this, and alerted residents to the possibility of a project in the lake. That same year the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, which you were a member of, also approved funding for this research ($150 000). All told this issue was put before two boards and twice before Council, giving you four opportunities to know what was happening and at the very least tell people about it two years in advance.
Instead, you chose inaction and in August 2008 residents found out about the proposal through an advertisement in a newspaper. At that point, a Guildwood resident contacted you seeking your help in order to organize a meeting about this. You chose to ignore that request for nearly two months, and a month after the comment period had closed. Even then, and until now, you have failed to hold a single public meeting on this issue to listen to residents.
With no consultation from residents fighting the proposed turbines, you drafted a motion that not only failed to win the support of Scarborough Councillors, but also made residents appear ‘NIMBY’ because you cited ‘visual impacts’ and ‘beauty’ as the reasons for reconsidering the project. Anyone involved in politics knows that you don’t introduce a motion of this importance until you’re certain you have the votes to pass it, because failing to pass it demonstrates support for Toronto Hydro among a voting majority of Scarborough Councillors.
In November 2008 you asked Toronto Hydro publicly to commit to building no more than sixty turbines off the Scarborough Bluffs. That position is not supported by anyone I’ve spoken to in Guildwood, and what’s worse, even when you were asking them to commit to build 100% of what they wanted and no more, they still refused. It takes a special kind of negotiator to fail to get someone to agree to take 100% of what they want.
By January 2009 you decided not to speak at the community meeting and instead sat silent. Similarly, you were silent when Guildwood residents came under fire from the Premier and Deputy Premier who were vowing to take our rights away, name calling and essentially using the arguments from you used in your motion to label us ‘NIMBY’.
While members of Save the Toronto Bluffs and I were publicly defending the community, you were introducing a motion with Councillor Stintz to help have the City of Toronto help implement the Green Energy Act – a bill that was stripping Toronto of planning control over renewable energy, and residents of their right to participate in decision making.
You have not participated in any of the elevation requests to try to ensure no environmental damage will be done by the anemometer installation. You have failed to use your position on the Toronto Region Conservation Authority to try to protect the lake from this project, or your role on the Atmospheric Fund, the Budget Committee or City Council to do anything to stop this.
Based on your media exposure since January 2009, your failed attempt to take over the Toronto Zoo Board, and subsequent battling over Zoo Board matters, it appears that the Zoo is more important to you than Ward 43 residents.
Your comments that opposition to Toronto Hydro’s project represents a minority opinion in the community, or that George Smitherman calling residents ‘absurd’, and saying residents have worked themselves into an ‘artificial lather’ were both funny and amusing to you, are not the least bit helpful to the cause of residents opposing this project.
You consistently fail to recognize that Toronto Hydro is owned by the City of Toronto and at any time the City could prevent this project from going forward. Yes the province did approve it, but you have had at least a dozen options to kill the project at the City level and time and time again failed to even try. Even if you don’t like it – this is a live municipal issue.
I believe that this is the single largest issue Guildwood residents have ever faced. Being represented by a Councillor who doesn’t live in the Ward or have an interest in local issues is proving to be extremely detrimental to the community.
It is for this reason that any sentence you start with ‘I will be doing everything I can as your City of Toronto Councillor’ must be met with a grain of salt by residents who have seen how unable you’ve proven to be to at handling tasks as simple as writing a letter of support or planning a community meeting.
Waiting until it’s too late to try and look like you’re doing something is very disingenuous and, as someone who has had to get involved to the degree that I have to try to make up for your lack of support or representation for Guildwood residents, I feel the need to make sure that others are aware that your record and your words don’t jive.
I would be pleased to speak to you about real action a City Councillor could take if they were serious about stopping this project, but I have to say, your record would suggest you aren’t.
Sincerely,
John Laforet
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