Bow. James Bow.

Some of you may recall my post about Repent Amarillo, a group of busybodies who have engage in acts of harassment and intimidation against legal activities they don’t like, including targeting a swing club, blaring Christian music onto the property and, worse still, going through trash and snapping pictures of license plates in order to get names of various attendees which were sent to the attendees employers, co-workers and neighbours.

The Facebook Group Amarillo Citizens Against Repent Amarillo organized in response and, recently, posted a series of YouTube videos about Repent Amarillo’s activities which, among other things, named certain members of the group. That, it seems, was beyond the pale for some members of Repent Amarillo.

After complaints from Repent Amarillo were lodged, the people who posted the YouTube videos voluntarily removed the names in question, but were rather smug about the whole thing, saying:

The poor little boys of Repent Amarillo cried to YouTube about the videos that were uploaded today. I deleted the boy’s names. YouTube will look at it again in 48 days. (four names deleted -jb) did not like their names and pictures out on the web.

(link)

So, a group of people who see nothing wrong in posting other people’s names to neighbours and co-workers with the intent to shame are upset when their own names are posted to neighbours and co-workers with the intent to shame. Gee, what is that called? Oh, the word is on the tip of my tongue. I think it starts with ‘h’.

Does Bill Murdoch Read My Blog?

True maverick Bill Murdoch becomes the latest in the growing line of politicians who suggest that Toronto should become Canada’s eleventh province.

Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch wants Toronto to be its own province.

The notoriously independent-minded PC would like to see Toronto separated from the rest of Ontario — he believes people in the Big Smoke think differently than in the rest of the province.

To support his idea, he also points out that the megacity has a larger population than PEI.

Murdoch adds that London could be the capital of the new, Toronto-less Ontario.

(link)

Unfortunately, Murdoch is in his typically combative state. He doesn’t want the 905 region separating with Toronto, and then goes on to complain about the rise of rural windmills in Ontario’s power plan, suggesting that this is a Toronto issue. “Where are they going to get their power? We’ve got a nuclear plant. We don’t need Toronto.”.

Sorry, Bill. If this is about giving all Ontarians, regardless of whether they live in Toronto or North Bay, government that fits their needs, rather than a punitive attempt to get Toronto cooties out of your hair, then the province of Toronto includes the regional municipalities of Niagara, Hamilton, Halton, Peel, York and Durham. The issue of provincehood for Toronto is about the need for a regional manager, and that region has long stretched well beyond the boundaries of the City of Toronto, and has done so since at least the 1970s. Most people in the 905 area code already acknowledge that their economic future is inextricably linked to that of Toronto, and that there is a need for service sharing and coordination on a number of issues, including transportation and social services. If Toronto leaves, it has to take the 905 area code with them. Which means that they’d get a nuclear power plant too (two of them, in fact: Pickering and Darlington), and they’d get Niagara Falls.

And, again I’d point out that creating an actual province out of the GTA would require a constitutional amendment — one that likely would have to be agreed to by all ten provinces as well as Ottawa. That’s not going to happen. Regional devolution, on the other hand might be feasible, and might address the issues. Murdoch is especially concerned about the inaction from Queen’s Park on dealing with the coyote issue. That might be something a regional parliament in southwestern Ontario would have more time or inclination to deal with.

And, p.s.: has Murdoch asked Rick Hillier for his opinion on this matter? Whatever Eastern Ontario thinks of Toronto, it is, at least, just down the road from them. How would they feel if the capital went to a smaller town a few hundred kilometres further west from them, anchored in an area which is considerably less rural than they are? You think they might want a capital city of their own? Centered around Kingston, perhaps?

And Now For Something Completely Different

You remember Sally from Coupling? Remember how they ended the series with Sally having discovered that Patrick has hidden a ring with Sally’s name on it in the closet of his love? I like to believe that this short, starring actress Kate Isitt, is Sally, about five years on.

Image via Wikipedia

In an earlier post, I talked about how the current mayoralty race in Toronto features a debate on issues that are, by and large, beyond Toronto’s scope. On matters of transportation, as well as a host of other issues not covered (including garbage collection, economic development, infrastructure, social services and tax sharing), there is a need for a regional manager to administer these areas and assure clear and accountable government, while at the same time maintaining a series of local governments responsive to the issues of the smaller communities within the region.

Fifty-six years ago, the solution to a similar situation was to gather Toronto and its ring of suburbs into a unified, two-tier metropolitan government. And while such a solution seems obvious for the Greater Toronto Area today, the province is unlikely to follow this route, since such a metropolitan government today would be so large as to tilt the balance of power in Ontario. For this reason, the Liberal government in Queen’s Park has been acting as the de facto regional manager of the GTA, which is to their credit. There are, however, risks to this approach. The Liberal government in Queen’s Park is also responsible for other parts of the province, and people in some of these areas already feel that Queen’s Park is too caught up in Toronto’s problems and is ignoring their interests. The polarization of this province that’s occurring as a result of this response helps no one.

For me the ideal solution is the most unrealistic. The issues surrounding the governance of the Toronto region are so large they need a province to manage it, so I believe the best policy would be to create a province of Toronto out of the 416 and 905 area codes of Ontario. This would, however, be a constitutional nightmare to implement, and the other provinces of confederation would be unlikely to support the creation of a Mini Me version of Ontario, diluting their powers and interests in Canada.

So, if we can’t bring Toronto to the provincial level to manage its own issues, perhaps we can bring the provincial level down to Toronto.

Under the British North America Act of 1867 and the Constitution Act of 1982, municipalities do not exist in Canada. Issues of municipal governance are solely the responsibility of the provinces, who have the right to delegate those responsibilities to governing bodies of their own creation. Every municipality in Ontario owes its existence to provincial legislation — some even to the Baldwin Act of 1849. Provincial law determines what cities exist, what they’re called, what their boundaries are, how they are governed, what bylaws they can pass, what taxes they can collect, what fines they can issue, and even how those revenues are spent and whether or not the municipality can run an operating deficit (answer: they can’t).

That’s a lot of power that a province can give away and, theoretically, take back. The province of Ontario could, if it so desired, abolish municipalities tomorrow, and run everything centrally from Queen’s Park. Only the obvious stupidity of such a move prevents them from doing so. But if it can divest itself of all of these powers to several dozen municipal governments throughout Ontario, it can divest its powers in other ways. We cannot create a new province to focus on the issues of the Greater Toronto Area, but the province can create pseudo-provinces through devolution.

We already have a precedent for this sort of thing in the United Kingdom which, twelve years ago, created the Scottish Parliament. Government legislation established the powers and responsibilities of that parliament, and its ability to collect its own taxes. Despite fears that this move would enable Scottish independence, this hasn’t happened, and the Scottish parliament is more popular now than ever. A similar move was made, albeit with a lesser transfer of powers, to Wales, and there is talk about carving up the rest of the United Kingdom in a similar fashion.

There is a need for an accountable regional manager for the Greater Toronto Area, but the other areas of the province have their own issues that deserve attention as well. The political, social and economic make-up of southwestern Ontario is different but no less important than that of Toronto. Rural eastern Ontario is different still, and the National Capital Region is struggling with issues of growth management and congestion, and could use some attention of their own. And, of course, northern Ontario has long felt ignored by the politicians of Queen’s Park that it has generated enough separatist sentiment to launch political parties, and even get speculated on by mainstream politicians in the area.

So, let’s devolve. Let’s create four or five regional parliaments, receiving a share of the provincial income tax, and controlling a percentage point or two of the province’s HST. Give these regional parliaments a clear mandate covering municipal issues common throughout their own region, and leave Queen’s Park to focus on issues common to the province as a whole. Then dissolve all county-level governments and all two-tier regional governments. De-amalgamate all megacities into their component parts.

People have complained that, since amalgamation, the City of Toronto has become too large to be responsive to the needs of its citizens, while ironically being too small to act as a competent regional manager. If Ontario were to restructure itself so that Queen’s Park focused on province-wide issues, and various regional parliaments focused on issues common to the region, we could re-form smaller municipal councils that would, theoretically, be more responsive to the issues of the community. The trick would be to make the lines of responsibility clear, delineating which issues are local, which issues are regional, and which issues are provincial.

This wouldn’t be creating a second level of government, because the regional parliaments would be replacing a level of government that already exists: the counties and the upper-tier regional governments that already span this province. It would, however, consolidate them and make them more visible, which theoretically would make them more accountable.

The Scottish parliament shows that a central government can devolve its powers to a regional manager which maintains the legitimacy of its voting public. And the new governance proposed here would not require a constitutional amendment to create. It could happen. The only thing stopping it is a lack of political will.

Further Reading

• Proposals for New Canadian Provinces and Territories (Wikipedia)
• Northern Ontario Heritage Party (Wikipedia)
• Province of Toronto Campaign Site (provinceoftoronto.ca)

My friends, I give you: the trailer for the movie Suck:

Tip of the hat to Nunc Scio

In response to his personal dislike of the vampire genre (though I agree with him that zombies are cool), vampires still work if you don’t go the cliched route of taboo sexuality. Kick Twilight into the dustbin of history and go check out Buffy: the Vampire Slayer again. Leaving aside the relationships that Buffy had (and abandoned) with Angel and Spike, vampires here work as a metaphor for the bad boy, the rebel, the James Dean of the undead world. It’s no accident that Spike wears long leather coats. And it would seem that Suck is following the same route. Divorced from vampyrism’s sexual escapades — or even poking fun at it — the genre really takes off, in my opinion.

But it is inherently flexible. The zombies took the element of a supernatural force sucking you in and making you one of them, and ran with it. It’s always been there. And it’s instructive that when people describe the Borg or the Cybermen, and their tendencies to consume populations, making people be like them, their methods are described as vampiric, rather than zomberific.

Zombies are different enough that they can be considered a genre of their own (which makes George Romero one of the only people of the last century to have invented an entire fictional trope; how’s that for a feather in your cap), but to me Zombie-ism is a subset of old Vampirism.

Image via Wikipedia

Over on Spacing Toronto, columnists John Lorinc and Steve Munro have collaborated on a debate on whether or not the Toronto Transit Commission should be taken over by the provincial transit agency Metrolinx. It’s an interesting read, and you should check it out. The idea is not as far fetched as you might think.

Metrolinx, the provincial agency set up by Dalton McGuinty’s government to invest in public transportation in the Greater Toronto Area, has already made moves onto the TTC’s jurisdiction, with the support of both the TTC and the City of Toronto. Several of the transit announcements that surrounded Metrolinx’s foundation incorporated projects that had been proposed by the transit commission and Toronto’s city council, including Transit City’s network of six LRT lines stretching across the northern half of the City of Toronto. Funding for the Eglinton, Sheppard East and Finch West LRTs have been secured, and Metrolinx appears to have bowed to the TTC’s recommendation that the Eglinton Crosstown line be built as an LRT (with a lengthy underground section in the middle) rather than a more expensive extension of the Scarborough RT).

But Metrolinx’s contributions came with strings attached. Once the Sheppard East, Finch West and Eglinton LRTs are built, they’ll be owned by Metrolinx and not the TTC, even though these will be operated as part of the TTC, accepting TTC fares and transfers to and from connecting TTC routes. This is a sharp departure from how transit infrastructure was built before. Even when the provincial government covered 75% of the cost of subway construction, ownership of the new infrastructure remained with the TTC. These days, it seems to be felt that with the province absolving Torontonians of their share of the infrastructure construction, said infrastructure should be counted against the province’s assets rather than that of the municipality. The fact that this new infrastructure will operate alongside and even connect with TTC-owned infrastructure is a complication that will be addressed another day.

There have been calls for a full provincial takeover of the Toronto Transit Commission before. I recall such suggestions taking place as early as 1994 when Metropolitan Toronto backed away from new subway construction offered by the Bob Rae government. Whatever the benefits provincial ownership of the TTC may offer, the suggestion that Torontonians might have to give up control over their local transit system, to serve regional interests, has not been popular.

Well, at least until now. As Toronto’s structural problems become more clear, as the financial reserves drain out and the city contemplates a $200 million shortfall in the operation of the underserviced TTC, the suggestions have come from several quarters that the province needs to step forward to share the cost of operating Toronto’s transit service. Toronto mayor David Miller and his council are currently in negotiations with McGuinty’s government about some sort of funding arrangement that could come into play by the end of this year. But some proposals have gone further. Recently, mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi voiced what some have suggested: that perhaps the province should take the TTC off of Toronto’s hands altogether. By assuming full cost, they will effectively close the structural funding gap that plagues the city. And assuming full cost might not be possible without assuming full control.

In making the case for uploading the TTC to the province, Mr. Lorinc makes a strong case for a Greater Toronto Transit Authority serving residents in the 416 and 905 region. Already, tens of thousands of commuters each day travel to and from jobs and other destinations located on both sides of the 416/905 divide. The Greater Toronto Area has a balkanized network of transit agencies each concentrating on their own little patch of land, and attempts to coordinate services to make travel more seamless has been slow in coming. Mississauga Transit buses pass TTC stops on their way to the subway, leaving Torontonians on the hook for the cost of operating poorer service on the same roads. The boundaries between the GTA’s transit authorities make less and less sense each day. Maybe it’s time to eliminate them. And if so, maybe it makes sense for the provincial agency, Metrolinx, to assume control.

However, as I noted in the comments posted after this debate, has Mr. Lorinc given much thought as to what a resident in the 519 region might think of this? Or how about 613? Or 705?

One thing the debates surrounding Toronto’s upcoming election show is that the challenges facing the next council are big — bigger, perhaps, than the council is designed to handle. As all sorts of issues, from transit to garbage collection to economic development, now spill outside of Toronto’s boundaries, the need for a regional manager becomes ever more clear. Just one problem: the provincial government seems unwilling to give us just that.

In 1954, when the province of Ontario created the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, they created an agency that would assure the competent management of Toronto’s regional issues without sacrificing local concerns. The two-tier system worked by allowing the local councils to remain to deal with local issues, while at the same time providing a forum for discussion of regional concerns to take place. But this only worked because of one key criteria: in 1954, the boundaries of Metropolitan Toronto encompassed most of the urban region that was Toronto. By the late 1980s, that percentage had dwindled to near 50%.

Today, the province refuses to create a regional manager for the GTA, instead opting for piecemeal special purpose bodies like Metrolinx to tackle the matter on an issue-by-issue basis. They’ve been leery of regional governance for the GTA since the 1970s when Bill Davis refused a recommendation by former premier John Robarts to expand Metro’s boundaries to encompass Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham and Pickering.

And why would they cut their own throat? A regional government for the GTA would encompass almost half of the province’s population, and an even higher percentage of Ontario’s taxes. It would certainly threaten the dominance of Queen’s Park, creating an elected official that theoretically spoke for half of Ontario.

But the issues of the region of Toronto aren’t going away, and they have to be managed lest the economy of the whole of Ontario is affected. This is probably why Dalton McGuinty has taken the steps he has done to effectively act as the regional manager for the Greater Toronto Area. This is probably why the prospect of a Metrolinx takeover of the TTC is on the table.

Unfortunately, this is likely to fuel greater resentment from the other regions of the province, particularly the north and the rural east, who feel that Queen’s Park is paying less and less attention to their issues and more attention to Toronto’s problems. Already, you’re starting to see the polarization of the province along these lines, and the risk exists that should the government of Ontario shift, the regional manager that Queen’s Park represents (such as it is) may disappear entirely.

It seems unlikely, still, that the province will create a true regional government for the Greater Toronto Area. It’s even more unlikely (by a factor of ten) that the alternate solution of breaking the 416 and 905 area codes into a province in their own right is going to happen. So, what’s to be done? What is to be done?

(Update: March 14): What is to be done? Here’s a suggestion…

We spent the bulk of this weekend cleaning, or getting out to enjoy what I'd like to call early spring weather, but I won't so as not to jinx it. Today, we had our third Sunday of our new family tradition of making pizzas in our oven (with Wayne and Marguerite's pizza stone using Erin's from-scratch pizza dough), and then heading out to the Waterloo Recreational Complex for an evening family swim. The kids are really into both things, and coming home, it is so much easier getting them off to bed.

Still working on Icarus Down and other writing-related projects, so in the interim, here are more pictures of our cute kids.

	Vivian raises her fist high...
	Ker-Pow!!
	Nora rolls her own dough. Also, note her new hairstyle!
	Peering at Mommy's hands.