A smart way to get young people to vote

While walking around York University on Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the City of Vaughan had set up an advanced polling station in the heart of York’s Keele Street campus.

Want the youth vote? Find it online

Recently, I attended a mayoral debate in Ottawa that got me thinking about ways in which the city of Toronto could galvanize its young voters to hit the polls.

Called “Debate 2.0 – Envisioning Ottawa's Future,” it was a 90-minute, web-enabled event that allowed viewers – particularly youth – to interact with candidates either in-person at the National Arts Centre or through online platforms.

Add politicians' robocalls to my 'Do Not Call' list

We're entering the 400-metre sprint portion of the half-marathon that is this year’s municipal elections. I say half-marathon, because my feeling is that too many Torontonians across the political spectrum aren’t feeling full civically, and haven’t fully bought into what longtime incumbents and lifetime politicians (who are phoning it in for re-election, because they can) are peddling.

Moms can make a difference

What if we made anywhere poverty resides a priority neighbourhood, and as part of the prioritizing, worked to empower all the single moms resident there.  This would include all the women who currently struggle at two or three jobs a day, forced to leave their at-risk growing children for long hours at a time, fearing for them but needing to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. 

Inner Ford

Tuesday night's mayoralty debate on CP24 was an improvement, more substance, less emphasis on cutaways.  The candidates let each other complete sentences and thoughts, and mercifully there were fewer interruptions from the painfully young reporter with the big microphone. The moderator is getting better at his job, and the audience was engaged and vocal. Still, not a lot of excitement generated about the election.

John Tory wrapped it up this way, and I think he's right. None of the candidates is giving us a vision of what our city would look like  if we vote for him or her.  George Smitherman talks about a safe city that gets you home quickly.  Not an inspiring vision, nothing to brand a T-shirt with. Rob Ford is all about cut, slash, abolish, and, after Tuesday night, it would seem a Toronto under Ford would have a great big wall erected around it to keep out those troublesome foreigners. 

Ford is his own caricature.

Smitherman needs to show us what his Toronto would look like, in all its aspects.  How business would do, how the arts would fare, how the poor would find a way into the mainstream from the margins, how social justice would play out.  He is an intelligent, well-rounded, interesting man, he has courage and ideas, he looks and feels like a competent and charismatic politician.

One of the reasons I like him is that when he was health minister, he reached out to the psychiatric survivor community, he didn't need to be supportive of us, but he was, and that meant a great deal.

Toronto would move forward under Smitherman, and maybe even onto the world stage, and he is the only candidate ready for that kind of profile. He has depth and smarts, he can be both  a street fighter when required  and a powerful debater, he has -and its just starting to show- a passion for the job.

Smitherman also has his drawbacks: he can be a bully, and I hope he's working to eliminate that side of himself. But he's someone Toronto needs, someone council needs, imperfect, yes, a work in progress, yes, but also someone Toronto can take pride and reassurance in.

About Pat Capponi

When living and dying are beyond your means

The headline in the Star declared that funeral directors can no longer afford to bury the poor on what the city gives them.  They will have to cut back on some of the extras, if they are not given sufficient funds.  Not even death releases people from poverty and cutbacks and indignities, large and small. 

Poverty is not high on the agenda in this campaign, but the future and ambitions of those marginalized men and women, the ones who form dispirited and straggly lines outside food banks, the ones lined up again for a space in overnight shelters, the ones living in concrete towers that sap the life out of them, their fate hinges on who leads the city after the election.

Though Rob Ford would likely not be aware of this, limited as he is to fiscal restraint and voting no as often as a Republican congressman, there has been great movement toward re-vamping the way the city delivers social assistance, a move away from the Harris years where interrogation and humiliation defined the experience of asking for help, to active engagement with clients, positive interventions and  real assistance with work searches or re-training. 

Morale is up among the staff, there is a renewed effort to listen to the voices of lived experience, to improve that fundamental relationship with the caseworker so that clients feel empowered, heard, and helped instead of policed and slammed for their need. There is no doubt that time spent with the worker can make or break a person, a person who desperately wants to be seen as an individual, as worthy of the investment the city makes in him or her.

Last year, I spoke to 1,800 caseworkers about that relationship with their clients, as a former recipient, as an activist, and was heartened by their response, which was overwhelmingly positive.  No one gets up in the morning rubbing their hands with glee over yet another opportunity to stomp on someone's soul.  We all prefer to find job satisfaction in helping, not hurting. Under the mean-spirited OW rules, under the regime of Harris and a mayor who had real difficulty seeing homeless people, never mind helping them, good people became bad cops. With David Miller, people breathed again, felt freer to be themselves, to do right by those in front of them.

All these advances can so easily be lost, reversed, tanked. The man at the helm sets the tone, people fearful of losing their own jobs, of finding themselves on the other side of the desk, will line up to do his bidding.

Lines around shelters and food banks will lengthen, more people will bed down on pavement, even more will lose hope that life will ever get better. And when they die, earlier and earlier as poverty diets and chronic illnesses increase their toll, we will begrudgingly bury them. 

Or we can continue our progressive march to ensure we waste no human potential, we abandon no one to the streets, we elevate our fellow citizens rather than excoriate them.

A lot depends on how you cast your vote.  

About Pat Capponi

Idle thoughts on red lights, traffic flow and pollution

While I applaud the city for recently making their anti-idling bylaw more stringent (decreased permitted idling time from three minutes to one minute) to help reduce pollution. I wonder if there are other ways that the city could make changes to help reduce pollution from cars.

I was driving down Bathurst St. last week at around 1 a.m. and somehow I had to stop at every traffic light from Steeles Ave.all the way down to south of Lawrence Ave.

As I was sitting there idling my car at each of the red lights I kept thinking about the amount of pollution that I was creating. I could understand having to stop and start if I was driving in rush hour traffic, however, I was coming down Bathurst at one in the morning!

There was no more than a handful of other cars on the road and I waited at a number of lights where no other cars or pedestrians crossed my path. I think if we could figure out some way to reduce the amount of unnecessary stopping and starting on major streets when traveling straight in one direction, we would be able to probably reduce our pollution by even more then the savings in emissions from reducing the amount of time one can idle their car.

I understand that if I'm driving along and making a number of turns and stops it will be inevitable that I will get some red lights, but when traveling down a major road with two lanes of traffic in each direction, there must be some way to set the traffic lights so that once you get a green light you can continue to get green lights after that if driving at a continuous speed.

I think the city, its councillors and civil servants should be looking at every way to reduce the amount of pollution we emit when driving as the way our city and region has developed often makes it necessary to drive places instead of walking or taking public transit, the ideal, less polluting alternatives.

About Adam Zendel

Of cops and blocs

Here's the rub, there are no villains in the room. Not among the police officers and brass gathered at the far side of the auditorium, not among the activists and lawyers on the other.  Not even in the middle, where a scattering of Toronto Police Board members prepare for a long afternoon of accusations and demands for accountability.

The usual suspects have signed up for their five minutes before the board -- five minutes is all each will get, and in most cases that's a blessing, because really, nothing new is being said, and the tone some employ is so annoying and superior and over-the-top, it makes me want to rip up my activist card and go sit somewhere else. For these, it's about scoring points, posturing, while some of the others, to their credit, show a lot of reflection, pain and angst. 

Chief Bill Blair is present, but is ostentatiously displaying passive-aggressive behavior by leafing through manuals, chatting to those on either side of him, or staring at the ceiling. Only a few times does he look at presenters, and those times have to do with people who bring some balance to their remarks.  Even so, it clearly distresses him, having to sit and take these hits. And not just him, but the chair and the members as  well, who are quick to take offence.

When your life and your identity have been defined by fighting the good fight, for progressive policies, for inclusion, for fairness, finding yourself the target of finger pointing and blame and outrage leaves such a disconnect in people's heads that they can barely believe this is happening to them, never mind find the wherewithal to accept the onslaught with good grace and hard self-examination. People like the chair, Alok Mukherjee, members like Adam Vaughn and Hamlin Grange, these are not right-wing stooges, these are folks who've walked the walk and fought the fight, dramatically changing the tone since the days of the pistol-packing Norm Gardener. 

That's what's so damn sad about all this, that good people were put in a circumstance not of their making, much like a lot of those rounded up at Queen St.and Spadina Ave. during the G20, and in one weekend lost so much trust, so much credibility, that its difficult to know if they can rebound successfully. 

The police service needs to stop denying that bad things occurred.  They did.  It was clear to anyone watching the coverage (as I did, not wanting to risk the streets) on CP24, not exactly a bastion of left leaning ideology. 

The Officer Bubbles fiasco, the over-enthusiastic take-downs, the collective punishment meted out for hours to those caught up by the kettling tactic, these are not illusory things, there are tapes, there is testimony. 

To deny is to refute everything the Service and the Board has gained over the last number of years, the sense of a new day that Blair brought with him when he talked about the reality of racial profiling by the cops.  This isn't the time to throw up barricades, but that's what's happening.  And in this Chief is wrongly supported by the board, even as they vote to do a very limited investigation of themselves, and by city council, which unanimously voted their support before any public hearing was conducted.

And activists need to stop calling thugs- those who smashed windows, terrified store employees, they need to stop calling them political prisoners and demanding their release.  Violence, whether employed by the cops or by those using black bloc tactics, is wrong and should be punishable, surely we can all agree to that.

I left the meeting four and a half hours after it began, depressed and angry at what the feds have done to us, and what we're doing to each other. 

Mostly, how we're failing our city.

About Pat Capponi

Niagara ads should be a wakeup call for Toronto

The recent controversy surrounding the Niagara Parks Commission ad campaign promoting Niagara by exploiting the negative stereotypes of big city’s like Toronto has struck a nerve with some Toronto residents and politicians.

This overblown reaction by Toronto is based on a deep-rooted insecurity and arrogance that highlights the need for Toronto to do more to promote itself within the GTA and neighbouring regions.

I was planning to write about the need for Toronto to do more to promote itself to the 905, but this recent controversy has added a new aspect to my position.

The depiction of “the big city”, (which is perceived by most to bear a striking resemblance to Toronto) in the Niagara ad campaign is reasonable. Although the characterization of Toronto as crowded, dirty and unsafe is exaggerated, the ads do play into a stereotype that some GTA residents have of Toronto.

Let’s not forget that although Niagara is a friendly cousin of Toronto, it is a competitor when it comes to tourism. As such, this ad campaign is fair game in the battle to attain more tourist dollars. Tourism is a competitive industry by nature. You can either promote your city based on its strengths, or by exploiting another city’s weaknesses, however exaggerated that may be.

It is slightly amusing and somewhat ironic that the backlash from Toronto regarding the ads has actually helped Niagara tourism through additional earned media. It was a crafty decision on Niagara’s part to include this controversial slant to their ads because of the prolonged exposure that it is receiving from the media. And with some politicians wading into the issue, the results will be that much more lucrative for Niagara.

Toronto’s response to the Niagara ads should not be that of anger or offence. It should be a wakeup call that Toronto needs to do more to compete with Niagara and other regional municipalities that are fighting for increased tourism market share.

Toronto is a world-class city that should not be insecure about its strengths, neither should it take these strengths for granted. We have so many attractive features of this city that most would want to experience. We just need to start focusing more of our attention on promoting our strengths, as opposed to complaining about our perceived weaknesses.

About Dan Bordonali

What's the return policy on mayoral candidates?

If we don't like any of our options, can we "return" our mayoral candidates? You know, post them back on the shelf in whatever backroom they came from and find another option?

Don't get me wrong, our candidates are decent people, but I'm looking for something a bit better than "decent". After all, a "decent" mayor can't help Toronto forge into the future, can they?

A few nights ago, I was speaking to a friend about my recent travels to New Orleans and New York City. Like most conversations with 20-somethings who travel abroad ready to become consumed by a life that is similar but starkly different from their own, the conversation found its way to that inevitable path- Toronto vs. *insert cosmopolitan city here*

No, Richmond St. isn’t Bourbon Street and High Park will never be Central Park, but what about the cultures? The people? The spirit of the city?

Make no mistake that New Orleans and New York City are possessed by the spirit of innovation, creativity and resilience. After all, New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz and New York is the birthplace of hip hop. Both genres of music were created out of very oppressive, classist and even racist realities that forced people to turn lemons into lemonade.

Toronto lives in a 21st-century reality where we have, as my friend put it, “an embarrassment of riches”. Decent housing, decent social safety net, decent culture and entertainment. What more do we need? As a city, we have the means to maintain a decent standard of life.

And herein lies our problem.

We are too satisfied with “decent”. We’ve been afforded the luxuries of the first-world modern economy: free public education, health care and a city that would never tolerate the kind of discrimination that was once tolerated our (yes, I’m implicating Canada in this) country's history. My goodness, we can even protest and demand inquiries into the misuse and abuse of power without a death threat or public execution in sight.

Sarah Thompson can hop on the political bandwagon under the tattered banner of second wave feminism because she has a decent business track record. George Smitherman can walk away from a provincial fiscal fiasco and run for mayor with decent chance of winning because he’s a warm, engaging and decent guy (nice to speak to too). Rocco Rossi is a decent fundraiser and influencer, which appears to be all that you need to run a decent city like Toronto. Rob Ford has spent a fair number of years on city council and is the only candidate who can speak to the the inner-workings of the city most intimately, which, combined with his ability to reach the common (wo)man makes him a decent alternative. And Joe Pantalone... well he’s just a decent guy, but that’s about it as far as the mayoral race is concerned.

So with all of this decency, what are we left with with? Forgive me for saying this, but this complacent satisfaction with decent has only resulted in a mediocre mayoral race. A few friends have said that I should hold my judgement until late fall, but dammit I'm tired of watching Smitherman kiss babies, Rossi lap it up at barbeques and Thompson's tweets about days at the cottage. It's a race for goodness sakes. RUN!

It didn’t take long for me to realize that both New York and New Orleans are cities that will not settle for mediocrity. Instead, people demand more. They fight. They create. They resist. They innovate. They push the city to its limits by challenging what was once considered decent rules, decent laws and decent regulations. The people did not settle.

For those of us who are less than satisfied with the selection of mayoral candidates, who do we blame for the lack of selection? Big business? Educational institutions? Ourselves? By living, working and playing in this city, we shape the legacy of this city for the future. If our legacy is one of mediocrity, then expect mediocre leadership.

Next election, we should get candidates to complete a "Are you decent?" questionnaire. Those who score as "highly decent" will be returned. And by returned I mean that they will be immediately thanked for their time and encouraged to stick to their day jobs.

However, those who make it past the questionnaire will be invited to a three-day political ironman/ironwoman challenge created by the people of Toronto. It would include all kinds of challenges like the budget challenge ("find $100M in 48 hours"), a safety perception challenge ("to fund or not to fund: increase police budget or increase grants to communities?"). We could even have a popularity contest on Twitter (how many new followers can you get in one day?). That would certainly push our candidates out of the prosaic box of mediocrity, wouldn't it?

Yes, the ideas are wild, ridiculous even. But we need something to ensure that we don't ever have a mayoral race that leaves me and my well educated peers more inclined to follow Kevin Clarke Twitter feeds than get civically engaged.

About Tonika Morgan