It’s make it or break it time. Even with a dysfunctional council, a tight-fisted province and a scornful federal government, this city still has a chance to be the envy of the world.The future is closer than we think. For Toronto, that’s good news and bad.
Depending on decisions we make in the next two or three years, this city could become the envy of the civilized world or just another urban casualty.
It’s really that simple. Which is not to say it will be easy. The truth is that in many respects we already know what needs to be done to ensure civic success, but so far how to get it done has eluded us.
On the good side, Richard (Creative Class) Florida has moved to town. Some of the best-known architects in the world – Frank Gehry, Will Alsop, Daniel Libeskind – are working here and the level of design has been driven up a notch or two. The condo boom has meant a wholesale return to the downtown core, and waterfront regeneration has started, albeit slowly and with much difficulty.
If things work out as planned, the waterfront will be the catalyst for a wholesale transformation of Toronto and turn its skyline into a global urban icon.
But it could so easily turn the other way. City Hall has become dysfunctional and Toronto continues to be abused by both federal and provincial governments. Civic underfunding is chronic and the governing structure is woefully inadequate to the demands of the 21st century.
“Nowadays I find myself thinking about that movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, where there are two futures,” says internationally respected Toronto planner Ken Greenberg. “It’s the same with Toronto; there’s an optimistic future and a nightmare scenario. What will happen depends on how we deal with a number of issues.”
These run the gamut from civic governance and financial instability to planning and public transit. Most worrisome, if the nightmare vision comes to pass, is that it won’t be because of a single big mistake but countless smaller ones. This is the most likely scenario, that the city will die the death of a thousand cuts.
Similarly, if it prospers, it will be because we made the right choices – over and over again.
Given Toronto’s propensity for doing the wrong thing, it’s hard not to be skeptical, especially given the breakdown of city council. Most observers agree the politicians who represent Toronto at the municipal level have failed dismally. Indeed, we have reached a point of stasis, where we can no longer look to City Hall for leadership.
But as Joe Berridge, partner in Urban Strategies, argues, “City Hall is almost irrelevant at this point. Municipal government has enormous catch-up to do. At one level, it’s demonstrating why the province and federal government must play a major role in the life of the city. These and other institutions can do all the important things that need to be done.”
Filed under: News | Tags: asian, ignorance, Ontario, racism, simcoe, York
York Regional Police defended themselves yesterday amid a growing controversy over accusations they have dragged their feet while looking into allegations of racist assaults on Asian fishermen on the shores of Lake Simcoe.
At a press conference at Toronto City Hall yesterday, Chinese-Canadian and anti-racism activists accused police of failing to recognize that a series of recent assaults in Georgina were motivated by racial hatred and failing to take similar past complaints seriously.
“Even with such clear evidence staring them in the face, there are still some members of the police who are denying that these incidents have anything to do with racism,” said Avvy Go, a lawyer with the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.
Filed under: Environment, News | Tags: Arista Homes, canada, dalton mcguinty, Durham, greenbelt, Oak Ridges Moraine, Ontario, Pickering, Seaton, Silvio DeGasperis, TAAC Construction
The Superior Court has ordered two companies associated with developer Silvio DeGasperis to pay the province $702,000 in legal costs, saying they used the false cloak of environmental concern to try to bully the province into allowing development on their own Greenbelt-designated land.n a stiff rebuke to what it called “a vexatious and egregious example of abuse of the process,” the court ruled the companies must pay nearly all of the $761,000 the province claimed in costs.
It is possibly the largest such judgment ever awarded to a government in Canada.
“The conduct of the applicants in bringing this lengthy, complex and expensive application before this court as a tactic in the ongoing war (with the province) … falls well within (the meaning of) reprehensible, scandalous or outrageous conduct,” the judges said, repeating observations made at the close of the legal battle in June.
The issue revolved around a controversial land swap between developers and the province that would preserve environmentally sensitive lands on the Oak Ridges Moraine in exchange for the Seaton lands in North Pickering.
But when the Dalton McGuinty government introduced the Greenbelt – a protected strip of land stretching around the Golden Horseshoe – 400 hectares of DeGasperis’s own land in Pickering went from prime real estate to a no-build zone.
DeGasperis launched a series of costly legal challenges against the provincial plan for Seaton, which envisions a unique community of 15 compact neighbourhoods bordering forests and streams.
He tried to argue that his lands were better suited for development than Seaton, in a legal battle he has said cost him almost $5 million.
The judges said the DeGasperis-related companies, which tried to argue their lands were less environmentally sensitive than those the province chose for development, in fact had “no interest in the environmental assessment of the Seaton Lands.”
“Their sole motive for bringing the application was to frustrate, disrupt and delay the Land Exchange as a further step in their ongoing war with the Province and their attempts to harass and intimidate the province into permitting development on their lands adjoining the Seaton Lands,” the judges wrote.
DeGasperis’s TAAC Construction is one of the GTA’s top construction servicing companies, with its housing arm, Arista Homes, among the top 10 homebuilders. He employs 850 and has told industry insiders his companies gross about $650 million a year.
Filed under: Afro-Canadian, News | Tags: , dalton mcguinty, ghetto, government, government of ontario, ignorance, liberals, racism, U of T
‘Ghetto dude’ email sent by mistake: province
Sender says her message to U of T student awaiting callback for job was copied to him by accident
July 21, 2007
Evon Reid couldn’t believe his eyes yesterday morning when he opened an email from the Ontario government’s cabinet office where he’d applied for a position.
“This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before,” said the email to the University of Toronto honours student from the very person handling his job application.
That was it. One stark sentence.
“Ghetto dude? It means I’m black. It’s very insulting,” Reid told the Star yesterday. “It’s still pretty shocking to me.”
As he sees it, the email explains why he hasn’t gotten a followup interview for a job as a media analyst. He applied July 3 but missed a July 10 call from Aileen Siu in the cabinet office.
Although he called her back and sent followup emails, there was no response. Until yesterday’s email.
“Based on my resumé I deserved to be called, but I was not worthy of being called back once they heard my mother’s voice and my voice,” said Reid, 22. “She has a Jamaican accent and it’s about the way I talk. There’s a nuance.”
And so he asks: “Is it standard policy in the (Dalton) McGuinty cabinet office not to hire any ghetto dudes?”
The email was never intended for Reid, according to Siu, who learned she had sent it to him only when the Star telephoned yesterday.
An acting team leader in cabinet office hiring, she said she was “multi-tasking” Thursday when she hit the wrong button and copied Reid on an email she was sending to a job-search colleague.
“It wasn’t directed at Evon at all. That was internal … It didn’t have anything to do with any of the applicants,” said Siu, 26, and a recent U of T political science graduate.
She insisted the email didn’t refer to anyone “outside my circle of friends.”
Siu acknowledged the term is negative but said, “I don’t even know what nationality he is, right?” She added she’s of Asian descent and doesn’t want anyone to think she makes racially based judgments.
Reached on vacation in the Maritimes, Craig Sumi, manager of Siu’s department, last night referred to her as “an unclassified, part-time employee … low level.”
“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” he said.
However, he termed the email “totally inappropriate … a complete error in judgment” and said he’d left a message of apology late yesterday on Reid’s voice mail.
According to Siu, Reid is still a candidate for the position he sees as “a dream job for any political science student/political junkie such as myself.”
He had been instantly intrigued by the job posting on the U of T website as a foot in the door at Queen’s Park.
“A very challenging and interesting position which is a critical part of day-to-day media monitoring and analysis for the Government of Ontario,” said the posting.
The work would be “for use by senior levels of government … (applicant must) write high-level summaries of important issues and events … (working in) the most technologically advanced and comprehensive media operation in Canada.”
Reid thought he’d be a good candidate. His resumé appears stellar:
A summer course in international management strategies at the University of Hong Kong; one credit short of an honours degree in political science at U of T; completed project on paradigm shifts in United States foreign policy; working on another to evaluate the effects of electoral reform on public policy.
Extensive job experience; Get Reel Festival organizer; founder of Canadian International Peace project (at U of T’s Scarborough campus); participant in Forum for Young Canadians on Parliament Hill; etc., etc.
In a reference letter, an executive with White Oaks Conference Resort called Reid “truly a valuable asset to our company … a trustworthy, dependable young man that takes initiative in work that has to be done.”
Reid saw another reason for the email. “I’m from Malvern,” in Scarborough, he said. “The community I live in has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in Canada. I’d hate to think that this (memo) accounts for that.”
