Toronto Library Strike

As a lifelong user of public libraries (I can still remember the very first book I took out as a child) and one who aspires to practise critical thinking on a regular basis, I feel for the people of Toronto who are now without this invaluable resource.

Despite the inability of the brothers Ford to appreciate their importance, the central role played by libraries in people's social and intellectual lives is addressed in a column today by The Star's Joe Fiorto. I hope you will take a look at it.

Rob Ford's Absolutism

In a report carried on CBC, Toronto's monomaniacal mayor issued the following pronouncement regarding support for subways:

You are either with us or against us. There is no middle ground.

Hmm, now why does that absolutist assertion sound so eerily familiar?

Are You Afraid of Clowns?

The only ones who frighten me are the ones holding political office. But, just to show you that I have a sense of humour and don't spend my entire life anguishing over the erosion of our values and our democracy, allow me to provide you with this link which, if you ever enjoyed Seinfeld and Crazy Joe Davola, you might find amusing.

I like to think of it as an example of what happens when clowns go bad.

Michael Ignatieff on Syria

The former Liberal leader and professor has a thoughtful article analyzing the situation in Syria with an interesting solution to the problem of Bashar al-Assad's demonic destruction of his people.

Today's Star Editorial Cartoon

I trust this needs no further comment from me:

We Need To Free Ourselves From Our U.S.-Dominated Perspective

I have always thought that one of the biggest tragedies for Canadians is the fact of our proximity to the United States. Not only is our cultural perspective heavily influenced by that closeness, but so too is the way we view economics, which helps to explain the inroads in the past many years that the right-wing has made in our country.

There is an excellent essay in today's Star, written by McMaster Professor David Gouter, who argues that there is much to be reminded of in the economic successes of Northern European countries such as Norway and Sweden, socialist nations that are still thriving despite the economic meltdown brought on by unfettered capitalism in 2008.

You can read his piece here.

A Tale of Two Cities

Yesterday, while my wife was in the store, I, the ever-dutiful chauffeur, waited patiently in the car, first listening to my favorite station, Jazz FM, and then tuning into the CBC news. A story about the impending closure of bookseller Nicholas Hoare's Ottawa store caught my attention.

According to the story, the National Capital Commission, the Crown Corporation that administers federally-owned land and buildings in Ottawa, told Hoare that it was raising his rent 72%, from $84,000 to nearly $145,000 annually, the reason being that it had received complaints from private landowners that its rents were too low. I'll return to this in a moment.

The news from Toronto, under the inept leadership of its bumptious mayor, is even more grim. The city's library workers are out on strike, last-minute talks having failed to secure an agreement to afford some job security for the 50% of library workers who have only part-time hours.

So what does this tale of two cities have in common? In my febrile mind, they both bespeak the often pernicious influence of the right-wing mentality that pervades these times. For example, the NCC is allowing its decisions on rentals to be influenced by the demands of private landowners, while in Toronto, two things occur to me: first, the library situation would likely not have escalated into a strike were the city not led by people with palpable contempt for the social contract, the one that stipulates the primacy of the collective good over individual wants. Indeed, my 'gut' tells me that Toronto civic 'leaders' have little appreciation of the importance libraries have for so many people; secondly, I have a strong suspicion, judging by the rightward drift we are all aware of in the world today, that if public libraries did not exist and were just being proposed now, the concept would be dismissed as too expensive and unfair competition to bookstores.

Without question, our world would be far poorer. Costs cannot always be measured in simple dollars and cents.