C'mon, Joe. Light her fire...

On the subject of the municipal election, one of my colleagues said: “I just want someone to light my fire.”

This in light of the news that John Laschinger and possibly his cadre of Miller-ites would bestow their blessings (and considerable political know-how) on the head of no less than our Deputy Mayor, Joe Pantalone, for the mayoralty of this fine city.

I hesitate to place too much credo in backroom boys (or in this case, greybeards is perhaps more apt, but that first Miller campaign was a beautiful thing. And it takes a helluva machine behind any candidate to make a campaign sparkle like that. And we need a glimmer of hope in the current race.

Progressive voters in Toronto have been longing for someone to step out of the lefty wilderness to save us from a pack of right-leaning candidates intent on driving the debate further and further into madness. Eliminate bike lanes? Really?! Let’s talk about real ideas that make sense, not ideas floated with the sole purpose of exploiting downtown-905 rivalries.

“Privatization” is a simple answer to a complex problem – and one that has been shown not to work. “Sell it off” is not a bold policy idea, it’s an excuse for both not understanding current public services and not having any idea how to improve them.

Surely we can come up with something that really speaks to the city that Toronto is and will become. Like extending the vote to non-citizens who are resident in Toronto, online voting, or some of the other ideas that have been floated in the Star’s blog series.

The only progressive candidate in this race is also someone with experience and a solid track record. But if he isn’t heard, amidst the other candidates’ hubbub of hydro sell-offs and slashed council seats (hey, do you really think your councillor is going to listen to you MORE if she has twice as many constituents to look after?), then all is lost.

So light our fires, Joe. Get us talking about real solutions, what’s working in our city, and ride the wave of new ideas that are gathering out there… And while you’re at it, make it sparkle.

About Marit Stiles

How to feed our city

What’s the most important question you can ask that city council candidate, when they come a-knocking at your door? How about: “How do we feed this city?”

When I was about 3, my "back to the earth" parents joined with other St. John’s hippies and brought in a boatload of goats. We had one goat, some chickens and geese. We grew some vegetables in our rocky patch of earth. And, like most people who move to Toronto whether from Jamaica or Nova Scotia, the gap between the chicken that laid the eggs and the omelette before me, widened when I came here.

Too many Toronto neighbourhoods are food deserts, where walking to a grocery store can be far more difficult for a single working parent than taking the car to the fast food joint down the road. And too few families can actually afford to buy food, period, after they pay rent.

Still, much of Toronto is experiencing a food renaissance.

More people are growing food in their backyard, asking for advice from those families that have been growing tomatoes and peppers in every square inch of earth they could uncover, from the day they arrived here 40 years ago. Toronto is a foodie mecca, with a multitude of food choices and a crop of chefs and shop owners with a passion for locally produced, ecologically sound food. On Friday nights, my urban kids can join our neighbours for a pay-what-you-can supper cooked in a brick oven by park staff, made from food purchased at the park farmers’ market. Friendships are made while the seeds of community action are sown.

All neighbourhoods should have a taste of this. More than a taste… a big sustaining gulp.

Well, not all is lost. Check out the Urban Food Strategy released by Toronto Public Health. It celebrates what already exists throughout the city. Foodshare. The Stop. Who knew there was a network of Community Food Animators to help establish community gardens? How awesome is that?

It challenges the City to develop policies that will make it easier to create those community gardens or bake ovens and place fresh food markets in parks and other public lands. Don’t close down the pizza oven, stoke that fire!

It challenges us to think outside the box. Why not demand that Transit City add grocery stores at transit stops so riders can get good food on the way home, and give them another reason to take public transit instead of driving? Use those planning, zoning and licensing powers to ensure ALL residents of this city have access to healthy, safe and culturally appropriate food.

Of course, this won’t make a hill of beans' difference if the provincial and federal governments don’t do their part…in so many ways. Most importantly, let’s make sure people who need income support can actually feed their families.

Hunger in this city is not due to lack of food but lack of money. 82 per cent of Toronto’s social assistance recipients have to pay rent in the private market, and that rent averages 100 per cent of their benefits. That leaves exactly $0 to feed the kids.

Can the City of Toronto do anything about that? I say, how can they not?

Not one mayoral candidate in this election, or city councillor for that matter, should escape your doorstep without answering that question.

About Marit Stiles

Hello surplus! Let's talk child care!

I’m choking back the tears. I mean, let me get this straight: the Tories promise a surplus and give us a deficit, but Mayor David Miller gives us a surplus and he’s slammed for it?

Perhaps it was the show he made of it, but let me tell you I am breathing a sigh of relief that SOMEONE has been handling our finances to the point where we have more and not less… unlike --and indeed in spite of -- other levels of government.

Let’s think for a second about an issue that is dear to the hearts (and pocketbooks) of many Toronto families: child care. For working parents in this city, child care is a constant concern.

Toronto is full of women who have toddled into every day care they could find, while still pregnant, to get their names on waiting lists. And even then, they are told their chances of finding a spot, when and where they need it most, are slim to none. Just this week a single working mother in my neighbourhood was told her child can’t go to our neighbourhood school because there simply aren’t any spots available in local day cares. And she doesn’t need a subsidized spot.

The federal and provincial governments have dropped the childcare ball, and we – the working families they scramble to embrace in their rhetoric – are left juggling increasingly outrageous daycare fees (for example, for one child in kindergarten and one in after-school care, you will be paying close to $20,000/year for daycare). Meanwhile, families with subsidized spaces teeter on the edge of losing their subsidy, and daycare workers remain some of the most overworked and underpaid.

The provincial and federal budgets failed to step up to the plate. All they had to do was come up with a paltry $63.5-million to save 8,000 subsidized spaces. And then, to top it off, city staff propose to cut rent subsidies for some day cares …adding $60-80 a month to fees. That’s enough to push anyone over the edge!

Our little day care is run by a board of parent volunteers, all of us struggling to understand the extraordinarily complex finances involved in running a not-for-profit day care. Right now, we are in the midst of trying to figure out how to keep the day care afloat, trying to ensure that once the much-welcome all-day learning comes to fruition, we will still have enough day care spaces – throughout the city – to accommodate the infants and toddlers and preschoolers…

So, hello surplus. I welcome you with open arms and hopeful heart.

If you are a parent with kids in child care or you ever expect to be one, join in the call for support for child care. Tell the city to shelve the plan to cut the rent subsidy. And celebrate the fact that things at least didn’t get worse...

Recipe for a healthy city

Marit Stiles.

Okay, Toronto, what makes a city livable?

When I moved to Toronto 15 years ago, from a place steeped in its own tremendous and unique culture, but somewhat lacking in diversity, I moved to Sesame Street. Okay, perhaps not literally, but I distinctly remember thinking that Toronto was as different and colourful and exciting to me then as Sesame Street had been to my 5-year-old self, living in Long Pond, Newfoundland.

From my first walk through Kensington Market, to the school playgrounds near our west-end, downtown apartment, teeming with children, to the squash and beans growing in our neighbours’ front garden and the delicious smell of sardines grilling in the backyards: Sesame Street.

I still love my little corner of Toronto. And that’s what makes it bearable to reside in the belly of the sprawling beast that is this city. My neighbourhood is more than a street, it’s a community. Here’s a recipe for why it works:

1. Take one down-in-the-dump park. Add a parent with enough passion and drive to take back that park and form a community of “friends” to embrace it.That park has to be a place where the teenagers playing hockey or basketball can be at home alongside the moms with their organic coffee and the Somali soccer players. Throw in some city staff with the vision to allow that community’s creativity to flourish, instead of stifling it.

2. Add a library, reconfigured and redesigned. No longer a stodgy dark place used by a few, but a bright, functional, inspiring space that makes room for everyone and redefines the library as a centrepiece in the community.

3. Throw in easy access to the TTC, particularly the subway, and you can get to your job in less than 20 minutes at rush hour. A little squished maybe, but you get there.

4. Provide healthy, preferably locally grown food. Start with an organic farmers’ market, add good, healthy food in local shops and restaurants, a small vegetable plot in your own backyard, and a Friday night community supper in the park.

5. Whisk this together with a handful of community schools, principals that live in the neighbourhood they serve, and an alternative option or two within the public system. And don't forget working families will need affordable, quality childcare.

6. And finally, dust liberally with people who, with this infrastructure to support them, throw their homes open to each other. Because it’s the people that live on my street that make my neighbourhood a great place to be.

It’s the fact that – even if your car window is occasionally smashed – your children can play on the sidewalk with their friends every evening.

We look out for each other. We have a cup of flour if you need one, and provide back up childcare in a pinch. We are so lucky this way.

But Toronto is not Sesame Street.

And there's no cookie cutter approach to making the City work. The ingredients may vary from East York to Etobicoke, but the basic recipe remains. We need the supports and services that allow streets to become neighbourhoods, and neighbourhoods to become communities, and we need a city council that allows community creativity to flourish.

Over the coming days and months, I'm looking forward to hearing more about YOUR recipes for a livable city.... my fellow bloggers and people of Toronto. And I'll tell you what questions I'm going to be asking the candidates that make their way to my doorstep.

About Marit Stiles