I was talking to my good friend Dave, from Winnipeg, the other night. Dave and I have been friends for 40 years. The affinities that bind us include books, movies and, of course, politics. Like me, Dave has a jaundiced, cynical view of those who represent us, seeing them as largely self-serving, selfish to the point of ignoring the real needs of the people.
Dave's tale of the Conservative provincial government currently in power is one of incompetence, conflict of interest and, quite possibly, corruption. It is the same array of scourges we face in Ontario under Doug Ford who, although he promotes a folksy persona, has his heart firmly held in the greedy grasp of business, most particularly the business of his developer friends. Witness the systematic unraveling of the Greenbelt and the circus-like transformation Doug envisions for Ontario Place - a 'world-class' spa.
My conversation with Dave was spent in part in mutual commiseration, but being an Ontarian, I couldn't help but feel that our provincial malfeasance, in all of its corrupt splendour, trumps that of our neighbour to the west.
And I am hardly alone in appreciating the magnitude of the situation here at home, as a variety of letters-to-the editor attest to.
An urban sprawl crisis
Toronto Star
BARRY GRAY THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR FILE PHOTOA rally drew several hundred to Hamilton City Hall to protest the province’s Greenbelt plan and Bill 23 in 2022. Building more sprawl with large monstrous million-dollar homes is not the answer, writes Marion Bartlett.
Get off your couch, we need a housing revolution, March 27
Yes, we need housing. But at what cost? The Doug Ford government addressed the housing crisis with the “More Homes Built Faster Act,” Bill 23. It aims to develop 50,000 houses on the ecological backbone of Ontario, the Greenbelt.
The bill undermines our rights, communities, and markets and defiles our wildlife legacy. It violates Indigenous Rights, puts federally endangered species in further jeopardy, and puts our drinking water and security at risk. All for a few favoured developers who have espoused this plan to make money at everyone else’s expense.
This is not a solution. It is Ford’s folly. There needs to be another solution. I appeal to Ontarians to view the housing shortage broadly, considering human and environmental effects. Urban sprawl is not just an economic issue but, indeed, an ecological crisis.
Jasmeet Dhaliwal, Hamilton
Ford’s idea of ‘partnership’ is an abusive relationship
Toronto Star
Ontario to help cities with shortfall, April 4
I actually laughed when I read Ontario housing minister Steve Clark’s recent comments on the provincial government’s “partnership” with municipalities.
The Doug Ford government is making catastrophic and long-lasting planning decisions that affect cities without consulting them. It’s making revenue stream decisions that affect cities, planning highways that run through cities, paving over significant environmental lands and wildlife habitat, and taking away municipalities’ powers to plan their own cities and towns all without consulting them.
This is no partnership, this is an abusive relationship.
But, we are not to worry, says Clark. If Bill 23 is creating financial problems for our cities, by starving them of development charges that used to be paid by developers, the provincial government will “not hang them out to dry.”
I guess that means that if the province deems our cities sufficiently desperate for the funds required to serve the needs of residents, the province will bail them out. With what? Our tax dollars of course!
Why should the developers, who are making millions thanks to Ford, have to pay for the infrastructure to support their new developments when the taxpayers can do it ?
Make no mistake folks, we are the ones being “hung out to dry.”
Marilyn Ginsburg, Markham
Ford and photo ops
It’s galling to see Doug Ford on another self congratulating photo op this time with medical students. I wonder if he talked about how the health care system in Ontario is imploding as we breathe and he has the money and means to slow/stop this to an extent but refuses to. It would spoil his personal agenda and he might have to consider he was wrong on many decisions and as we have seen before, that does not bode well with him. Once graduated, why would any health care professional want to stay here when you see what you have to deal with in reality realizing you could have it better just about anywhere.
Robert Panchyson, Burlington
There is one major difference between Manitoba and Ontario, however, that is sobering. The former must face the electorate in the fall, while we in Ontario must continue to groan under the yoke of incompetence, greed and corruption until 2026.
Some days, that seems like a very, very long way off.
Well, it appears Pierre Poilievre, that would-be master disinformation-trafficker, has found his true soulmate in another man-child, Elon Musk. They have had a meeting of the minds when it comes to the CBC - dearest Elon has agreed to PP's request that the publicly-funded networked be labelled "government-funded media," a tag that used to apply only to propaganda outlets like RT (Russia Today).
"Government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet's funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content," according to Twitter.
National Public Radio in the U.S. announced earlier this month that it is leaving the platform after Twitter labelled its account as "state-affiliated media," saying that doing so undermines their credibility by "falsely implying that we are not editorially independent."
U.S. public broadcaster PBS followed suit, also leaving Twitter after it received the "government-funded" stamp.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recently called on Twitter CEO Elon Musk to add a "government-funded" label to accounts that promote "news-related" content from CBC.
Such a designation will undoubtedly provide sweet succor to the simple amongst PP's clan of followers (but aren't they all a bit simple?) and will undoubtedly raise his 'street cred' with them. And just in case some of them missed the significance of this label, PP tweeted out that the CBC has been "officially exposed" as "Trudeau propaganda, not news."
The CBC was quick to admonish the thinking behind this assault of the media:
The CBC is a Crown corporation, wholly owned by the state but operated at arm's length from government.
In a statement Sunday night, CBC corporate spokesperson Leon Mar emphasized the government does not influence CBC's editorial content.
The CBC is a Crown corporation, wholly owned by the state but operated at arm's length from government.
Such machinations, of course, only help to illustrate PP's discord-sowing ways that make him manifestly unfit to sit in the prime minister's office; they also, however, demonstrate something else a credulous electorate should bear in mind: his hypocrisy:
In 1986, Frank Zappa appeared on Crossfire, a show that billed itself as a forum for debate between opposing views. In the following clip, (you can see the entire episode here), Zappa makes an observation that, although hotly contested by the other guests, proves to be eerily prescient, given the bizarre ideology currently enveloping the United States:
When I was a teacher, it used to bother me to no end that it only took one or two ignorant, badly-behaved kids to spoil the atmosphere and discourse in a class. For those who think it should have been a simple matter to silence those voices, well, let's just say they don't understand the reality and the dynamics of teaching.
I feel the same frustration today when I see angry men-children like Elon Musk and his Canadian counterpart, Pierre Poilievre, spreading their mischief to gain either attention or political advantage. Take, for example, Musk's impish decision to label publicly-funded media as government-funded, the implication being that they are merely organs of government propaganda. In the United States, this has led both NPR and PBS to close their Twitter accounts.
Not to be outdone, our own domestic mischief-maker, Pierre Poilievre, wants the same designation for the CBC. This is perhaps not surprising, coming from the man who is trying to exact as much political mileage as possible out of his promise to defund the CBC.
Like the problem students I dealt with, they clearly have too much power to influence the agenda. Unlike the classroom, however, all of us have a role to play in mitigating such madness, as pointed out in the following letter from a Star readers:
Bruce Arthur is right to pay attention to Elon Musk and Pierre Poilievre championing the word freedoms in order to destroy it when it comes to the public funding of national media like the CBC. Clearly these two are not reformers but transformers and destroyers of our democracy. As antistatist freedom fighters they appeal to everyone’s sense of liberty while bringing about its end in the media.
Like the typical 1980s neo-con U.S. President Ronald Reagan who identified government as the enemy of the people, Musk and Poilievre regard publicly funded media to express the national will of its people as illegitimate. They demand that the marketplace is the only way to provide free and balanced reporting.
The fact that such free enterprise thinking resulted in Fox News, becoming the lying propaganda media for Republicans only is ignored.
The fact that Musk bought Twitter promising to free it up so that everyone would be heard but turned it into the embodiment of censorship is overlooked. (Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opposition is censored in Indian and Substack notes’ links are censored in the U.S.)
The fact that magical thinking that freedom bestows legitimacy on anything done in its name has proven to do major harm to democracy is ignored.
History has shown that public funding for national media like the CBC is the only democratic economic system that allows individuals to vote for how their money is to be used in the media. They can vote out the government and replace it with a different policy about its funding.
Musk can’t be voted out. Poilievre with such anti-democratic views should not be voted in.
Tony D’Andrea, Toronto
Perhaps a tall order from Mr. D'Andrea, but one that none of us who believe in a healthy democracy can afford to shirk.
The above are the words of one of the officers who recently entered the private school in Nashville which saw a horrible killing spree by a deranged former student. While I am often quite critical of the police and their abuse of authority, that many are brave and selfless is unquestionable. Please watch to the end of the following to hear about that selflessness.
It goes without saying that the public trust is a sacred thing, and what the officer says at the end of the clip reminded me of the heavy responsibility that can entail. It also made me think back to my teaching days. Although a shooting at my school was unlikely, I always knew being a teacher meant that if such a dreadful day should arise, it would require me to do everything I could to protect my students, even if it meant putting my life at risk.
A heroic mindset? Absolutely not. Just part of what it means to be in a position where people's lives and well-being are part of the job, no matter the personal cost - something American politicians in the thrall of the NRA should think about, as physician Jason Smith in the next clip implies after tending to the dying following the most recent mass shooting in Louisville.
May the love of the gun never infect Canada. From the endless experiences of our southern neighbour, the bitter fruit of such a passion is far too obvious.
Although no real good can come out of it, I continue to be both rivetted and repulsed by the ongoing devolution of American society. Everywhere one looks, it is apparent that political leadership inspired by vision and integrity is close to extinction, replaced by demagoguery and pandering to America's basest elements. Indeed, it seems the powers-that-be barely make even a pretence of respect for democracy anymore.
The states are leading the charge in this race to the dictatorial bottom, and the most recent example is a profoundly disturbing one: the ouster of two state representatives from the Republican-led Tennessee House. This anti-democratic action, a convergence of America's love of the gun and hatred of racial minorities, has the attention of the world.
Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives have been expelled while a third member was spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated.
Protesters packed the state Capitol on Thursday to denounce the expulsions of Reps. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson and to advocate for gun reform measures a little over a week after a mass shooting devastated a Nashville school.
Following their expulsion – which House Republicans said was in response to the representatives’ leadership of gun control demonstrations on the chamber floor last week – Jones and Pearson called for protesters to return to the Capitol when the House is back in session on Monday.
Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is White and wasn’t ousted, slammed the votes removing Jones and Pearson, who are Black, as racist. Asked by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota why she believes she wasn’t expelled, Johnson said the reason is “pretty clear.”
“I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said.
According to GOP leadership, Jones and Pearson were expelled because they broke “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor.”Worth noting is that the expulsion is only the third in the state since Reconstruction, the period that followed the Civil War.
Of course, it is hard not to see the real reasons behind the expulsions: the strong influence of the gun lobby which has made a fetish of never saying "sorry," even when so many young, innocent lives have been lost to school shootings. The other reason, of course, is, as Gloria Johnson stated, racism.
Without doubt, the biggest victim of all is democracy:
On “CNN This Morning,” Jones said, “I think what happened was a travesty of democracy because they expelled the two youngest Black lawmakers – which is no coincidence – from the Tennessee state legislature because we are outspoken, because we fight for our district.”
Jones described the session as a “toxic, racist work environment,” and said he spoke out because the House speaker ruled him out of order when he brought up the issue of gun violence. “If I didn’t know this happened to me, I would think that this was 1963 instead of 2023,” he added.
Only in Amerika, eh? One fervently hopes and prays that remains true.
