June 2010

Monday 28 June - G20 wrapup

At the start of the month, I wrote about why the G20 summit would not be worthwhile. I was right on pretty much all counts.

As for the criminal element and the police force's response to them, well, that was pretty messed up, too. The cops had a very tough job to do, and I certainly don't envy them having to deal with all the crap that went on. The root of the problem is the criminals. But the cops didn't do as good as job as they should have.

On Saturday, they pretty much let the hoodlums run wild, doing all kinds of property damage, including setting three police cars on fire. It seems that the police forgot that, in addition to protecting the G20 summit from the hoodlums, they still had a responsibility to maintain law and order in Toronto.

On Sunday, they responded by going too far the other way. They forgot that this is a free country where people have rights. They detained crowds of people arbitrarily, arrested people (including, for instance, media members with full G20 media accreditations) for no reason (and most of them were released later without charges), and did a lousy job of taking care of detainees, including denying them even a single phone call and withholding food and water for several hours or more.

There was a lot that the cops did right. But unfortunately that doesn't make headlines. And when they failed so spectacularly in a few instances, those will be the lasting images.

And just to underscore what I'd said before, the real problem is the criminals. If they hadn't been committing crimes such as assault, vandalism, and arson, then everything would have been just fine. The legitimate protesters would have had a chance to get their message out peacefully, the cops would have been able to do their job properly, and everyone would have gone home at the end of the day safe and sound and feeling like things went the way they were supposed to.

Bottom line: it was a monumentally stupid idea to hold this summit in a major urban area. Let's never do that again in Toronto, and let's try to be smarter about planning them in future.

Friday 25 June - In Loving Memory

After coming home on Saturday night, Toby wasn't feeling very well. He was lethargic and wouldn't eat anything. I called the vet first thing Monday morning and they said I should bring him in.

All week, they were trying everything they could to get him to eat, but he wouldn't eat anything. His heart and breathing were under control, but he was having fluctuations in some of his bloodwork; on and off, there were signs of impaired kidney function and of possible diabetes.

Thursday, they put a feeding tube through a nostril and down his aesophagus so they could at least get some nutrients into him.

When I talked to the vet around lunch time today, she reported that he was doing better; he had a bit more energy and wasn't just lying motionless on his side.

But then I got another call around mid-afternoon saying he'd taken a sudden turn for the worse. They weren't even sure if he'd survive long enough for me to get there. I bailed on my client and rushed to the vet's office. He was in terrible shape, having trouble breathing, and obviously uncomfortable. He recognized me, and even snuggled up to me.

It was pretty clear his time was up, and I think he knew it. So I held him and petted him and told I loved him while the vet put him to sleep.

He was a beautiful, loving cat.

Saturday 19 June - Near-death experience

My adorable cat, Toby, wasn't feeling well this week. On Tuesday, he didn't finish his food (which is completely unusual for him), and I noticed that night that his breathing seemed a bit laboured. On Wednesday, his appetite and breathing both got worse. So I took him to the vet on Thursday morning.

They couldn't come up with a definitive diagnosis, but they did figure out that he was suffering congestive heart failure. They treated him to try to make him comfortable and relieve the symptoms. On Friday, when he wasn't getting much better, they suggested I take him to the emergency clinic, where he would not only have 24-hour veterinary care (my local vet doesn't have anyone there at night) but also access to specialists. So I took him to emerg on Friday afternoon.

The emergency clinic managed to get him stabilized and improving slightly, and arranged for their cardiologist to examine him on Saturday morning. She performed an echocardiogram and diagnosed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and prescribed a treatment plan.

The good news is that he was released from hospital this afternoon and is now comfortable and in his own home, where he belongs.

The bad news is that this disease is progressive and incurable: treatment can only slow it, and unless something else kills him first, this is what he'll die of. He'll either die of another episode of congestive heart failure which doesn't respond to treatment, or a blood clot will develop in his heart, travel to another part of his body, and cut off the blood flow. The cardiologist says that the average survival time in a case like Toby's is 4-6 months, so the chances of him living to see 2011 are less than 50-50.

I'm happy he's feeling better and is back at home, where he can get all kinds of love and doesn't have to deal with the stresses of a strange environment, strange animals, and strange people poking and prodding him. Obviously, I'm not happy to know he's near the end of his life, but unfortunately death is a normal part of pet ownership, just like you know that in all likelihood you will have to bury your own parents.

Tuesday 15 June - Toronto's Next Mayor

I don't know who will get my vote yet. I'm not entirely thrilled by any of the candidates, and the one I'd really like to vote for (John Tory) isn't running. But that doesn't stop me from having an idea of what to look for in a mayor. I don't expect any of the candidates will promise all of this stuff, nor do I expect that they'll actually do everything they promise to do. But until you know what you're looking for, you can't decide how well any of the options stack up. So here are some things I think this city needs in its next mayor. This isn't a complete list, and I'm not saying any of this stuff will be easy, but hey, if you want the mayor's job, you'd better be prepared to work hard.

Transit

We need it. More of it. Lots more of it. Particularly higher-order transit (anything that is at least somewhat isolated from road traffic: dedicated busways, streetcars in reserved rights of way, subways, etc.). We did major subway projects in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in Toronto, and then pretty much stopped doing major projects; from the 1980s on, we never built more than a small piece at a time, and while you can achieve lots by building small pieces every year, we instead built small pieces every several years and achieved little. We're long overdue for some major rapid transit improvements.

This stuff isn't cheap, which is basically the main reason we stopped doing it. Unlike almost every other major transit system in the world, the TTC has to rely mostly on farebox revenue and occasional gifts from senior levels of government, instead of getting ongoing operating and capital funding. And when a gift from senior government does arrive, it's usually equipped with handcuffs. The little Scarborough RT was supposed to have been an extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway, but was changed to using different technology after construction had already begun because the provincial government, which owned and wanted to promote that technology, agreed to fund the line on condition that it use that technology. There is a filled-in hole west of the Eglinton West subway station where a new subway line was begun when one provincial government approved it, only to be cancelled after an election brought in a new government; yes, the taxpayer paid for a hole to be dug, and then paid to have it filled in. The little stub of a line on Sheppard is a stub because that's all the funding that was provided.

So Toronto's next mayor must not only understand how important it is to get working on building what should have been built in the last three decades, but also come up with a credible means of funding it. Note that I said credible. "I'll make the provincial government pay for it" (which is part of the transit section of one candidate's platform) is not credible.

Road tolls

That's the answer that the car-hating gang that controls city council will shout whenever anyone asks for how to fund any project, and particularly any transit project.

Advocate road tolls and you lose my vote. It's really that simple.

I already pay a government fee to be allowed to drive. I pay a government fee to be allowed to own a car. Two, actually, since Mayor Miller introduced a tax on license plate renewals. I pay several dollars in gasoline taxes every time I buy gas, with sales tax on top of that tax (yes, a tax on a tax), and with that sales tax set to be jacked up another 8% next month. Now you want to charge me more to drive my taxed car, using my taxed driver's license, burning taxed gasoline, on roads which are built and maintained using my tax dollars? Forget about it.

So our next mayor must understand that road tolls are the wrong way to do this. And let's look at a related topic: congestion charges in the downtown core. Once you make public transit a viable way for everyone who needs to get downtown, then you can make a case for a congestion charge, because driving downtown becomes a luxury. But as long as driving remains the only practical way for many people to get where they need to go, congestion charges are for loonie car-haters, not for the real world. (And yes, you are reading that correctly: if you fix the transit system, then I'll go along with your call for a congestion charge. But only if you do it in that order: carrot first, stick second.)

Unions

Unions are legitimate. No doubt about that. But Toronto's unions pretty much run the show. We need a mayor who's not only not in the unions' pockets but who will stand up to them when needed. Note the last two words. Reflexive union-bashing is not productive. There are times when the city and its unions can work together to improve the way the city runs, and someone whose only position on unions is "they're a bunch of overpaid whiners and whatever they say is always wrong" isn't going to be able to do that. But when they do whine, go on wildcat strikes, go on legal strikes with ridiculous demands (e.g. asking for large raises during a recession or demanding that their incredible gold-plated sick-day policy be maintained), etc., we need a mayor who doesn't just roll over and give them what they want.

Waste

One of our current councillors, who is not running for re-election, used $12k of taxpayer money to throw himself a going-away party at a lavish downtown restaurant. Another councillor, who is running for mayor, is perpetually near or at the top of the annual list of which councillors came the closest to using up their entire office budget, and even goes so far as to suggest that those who make a point of not oinking from one end of the trough to the other (including one other candidate for mayor) are doing something wrong by saving taxpayers' dollars. More than one current councillor has expensed a mascot-style furry animal costume. Until a recent tax court ruling, all councillors got a free TTC pass (and, pending further rulings, they still get free admission to the zoo and other stuff like that).

That's not a good use of my tax dollars, particularly in a city which always has to do various tricks (begging the province for more money, raiding its reserves, selling streetlights to the electrical company, or mysteriously finding a big pile of money late in the budgeting process) to come up with a balanced budget. The next mayor needs to get this madness under control. Spend taxpayers' dollars on things which benefit taxpayers.

Thursday 10 June - Playoff Wrap-up

I managed to salvage a better-than-.500 success rate, but only barely. I was at 7-7 before the final, and I was right about Chicago winning, so I finished at 8-7. Not very good.

Wednesday 2 June - G20 Summit

The G20 summit will be taking place in Toronto at the end of the month. The more news comes out about it, the worse it sounds, and unless the actual summit happens very differently from how the authorities are saying it will, I don't think Toronto should ever host such a thing again. Here's why.

The Good

I'm not one of those who thinks that all international organizations are part of a vast conspiracy to control the world. International cooperation is a good thing, and democratically-elected governments should cooperate with one another. Obviously, to cooperate, they must discuss issues and agree on how to tackle them. And so at the end of the summit, there will be a communiqué released which describes what the participants have agreed on.

That all sounds good, until you realize that as a rule, the communiqués from international summits like this are written before the summit takes place, and only minor editing takes place during the summit. That's right: all the parties communicate before the summit and agree on what they will agree on at the summit. The summit itself is mostly a formality.

So the main good thing that comes out of a summit doesn't even happen at the summit. Let's just cut out the summit, then, and have governments agree on stuff via diplomatic notes, conference calls, etc.

The Bad

This summit grew out of the G8 summit that's taking place in Huntsville the same weekend. Originally, I believe the budget for both summits together was to be less than $200 million. The latest estimate is $1.1 billion, with well over $900 million of that just for security. Like virtually all government projects, the price tag grows each time you look at it, and with nearly a month left before the summit, I don't think anyone will be surprised if it grows again. I also don't think anyone will be surprised if, when the Auditor General digs through the books, it turns out that the true cost is higher than what we've been told.

Now, we've already committed to hosting the summit, so I'm not going to advocate for cancelling it. The government wouldn't listen to that suggestion, and it would give Canada a massive black eye if we bailed on the summit. But even in the world of government spending, where everything goes significantly over budget, how can they possibly justify the massive cost overruns on this thing? How can it possibly be justified to spend $1.1 billion on this summit, at a time when the government is swimming in the deepest pool of red ink in Canadian history? How can it possibly be a better use of the money to host this summit than to pay down our debt and/or stave off some of the program cuts that are necessary to try to trim the deficit? This alone is reason enough that Canada should never host such a thing again.

Yes, foreigners will come here and spend money during the summit. Yes, the rest of the world will get a chance to see what a wonderful place this is, and that may result in some tourism. But those benefits, which are pretty hard to quantify, are the flipside of a big problem: the mess this makes for businesses and people in the areas of the two summits. In both locations, businesses are being forced to close, in some cases just for the time of the summit itself and in others for significantly longer periods. Some roads around the G8 site in Huntsville, including the major east-west highway through the area, are being entirely closed. Similar things are being done in the core of downtown Toronto; while the biggest closure is taking place on a weekend, there will be significant disruption in the weeks leading up to the summit, and some disruption after the summit while the security steps are undone and the area is returned to normal. There will also be significant interruptions to traffic on major highways between downtown and the airport as motorcades make their way back and forth; this will waste lots of time, gasoline, and clean air. I have not seen any cost estimates on the damage this does to a prime summer recreation area on a summer weekend or to the economy in the central business district of the country's largest and most economically important city, and I suspect that if the government has an internal estimate of it, they will go to any lengths to avoid the public finding out.

So this is going to cost the government (i.e. taxpayers) a whole big pile of money, and it's going to cost businesses (i.e. the economy) a bunch more money. I very much doubt that the economic benefits will be worth it.

The Ugly

These events always attract criminals. A significant part of the cost of security is in trying to keep the idiots from committing crimes against the summit participants themselves. But we know from past summits that the morons will just go on vandalism sprees elsewhere. They've already done this at least two times already, weeks in advance of the summit: a bank in Ottawa was firebombed a few weeks ago, and a number of ATMs were spray-painted in Toronto recently. There will be more. They'll throw anything they can find through any window that happens to be nearby, without regard for whether that window is for a multinational company or a locally-owned company selling organically-grown fair-trade coffee. And they'll loot the place once they've broken the window. They'll probably damage road signs, streetlights, traffic lights, etc. And at least so far, the government has stated that it will not offer any financial assistance to property owners or businesses who suffer losses due to the yahoos who are attracted to these summits.

Bottom line

The summit will cost us a crapload of money, hurt the economy, and attract petty criminals and hooligans. And the major benefits of the summit will already have been agreed to by the participants before the summit even begins.

It's going to be worse than useless. We're stuck with it now, but let's not do this again.