If you want to amalgamate something, how about snow clearing?

Thestar.com
January 28, 2019
Royson James - opinion

Mere days into the new year and the daily news already leaves one confused, befuddled and nearly exhausted. What is going on out there in Greater Toronto land?

Logic says if Premier Doug Ford’s action to precipitously chop Toronto council in half was motivated by a desire to have fewer politicians, less government and achieve “savings,” then the likes of Markham, Mississauga, Burlington and Ajax can expect similar treatment now that the province is restructuring the regions around Toronto. Plus amalgamations.

Making the city, not individuals, responsible for clearing snow from sidewalks is one of the things that Mel Lastman got right during his tenure as North York’s mayor, Royson James writes.

If that is so, why has Ford hired former (and near-centenarian) Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion as a “special adviser”? That almost guarantees Mississauga will become a stand-alone city, as McCallion has advocated for years, freed of its responsibilities to help develop Peel Region, after reaping the benefits of the union for decades. And with Mississauga gone from the three-municipality alliance, what to do with Brampton and Caledon? Do you see Ford making his nemesis, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, the king in a new stand-alone city of Brampton or, heaven helps us, mayor of Bramtedon? Confused.

Did we not hear that the province is taking over Toronto’s subway? For no recognizable reasons, other than because the “senior government” can do so, legally, and because the premier has always fancied himself the great transit planner who wants subways everywhere so all those “damn streetcars” won’t get in the way of our cars, as his late mayor-brother, Rob, often harrumphed. Have we not been perplexed by Mayor John Tory’s seeming indifference to the impending theft of the single most important artery that keeps our economy pumping?

So, why, considering the proposed takeover, is Tory prompted to call a news conference to claim he is accelerating the downtown relief subway line that’s not yet approved or costed or funded and won’t be the city’s responsibility any day now? Or does Tory know something we don’t? Mystified.

Hundreds of residents plunk down thousands of dollars as a down payment on a Vaughan condo project in 2017. A year later the developer, Gupta Group, refunds their money claiming it can’t complete the project. The would-be owners are screwed. Prices have gone up since the 2017 purchase and many are priced out of the condo market. But wait. The same developer group resubmits a similar condo plan on the same site -- only for more units and a chance at a more lucrative payout.

Robert Paniccia, one of the condo buyers, told the Star’s Tess Kalinowski that the “new” application is an “insult to the mayor, the city, the committee and the residents of Vaughan.” Duh! So, why are Vaughan politicians -- and their political representatives on all levels of government not “insulted” to the point of railing against the new application as an abomination? Distressed.

So, it’s winter again. Surprise. It snows here. And, again, as in every year since the 1998 amalgamation of Metro Toronto’s six municipalities into one big city, some people insist on debating whether individual citizens should shovel the sidewalk along their homes or whether North York had the better idea in city-hired mechanical sidewalk clearing for everyone.

C’mon, people! We are now envisioning driverless cars picking us up and taking us on our rounds and we are still expecting individuals -- the halt, the lame, the blind and the lazy -- to keep every square foot of sidewalk clear for foot, wheel and paws. This is one thing that North York mayor Mel “Bad Boy” Lastman got right. The rest of you should join us North Yorkers where, as Mel famously boasted in Trump-like manner, “We clear the snow before it hits the ground.”

But that’s not what confounds. During the little snowfall last weekend, the secondary and tertiary roads in our Bathurst Manor neighbourhood were so poorly plowed that citizens with shovels could have done a better job. As late as Tuesday, cars could barely navigate some roads; others had segments that looked like many downtown sidewalks plagued with shovel-less residents. This time we were saved by a thaw. None of this is unexpected or rare. If we can’t get snow clearing right, how can we move the homeless off our streets? The very thought dismays.

Mayor Tory’s executive committee did the obvious this past week in endorsing a “Housing Now” plan to build 10,187 housing units on 11 properties across Toronto. One-third will be rented at below-market rents, another third at market rent, and a third sold as condos. Isn’t the need for below-market rental units 10 times the need for new condos? Is this not land owned by the people? Don’t we still have some 100,000 people on the city’s social housing waiting list?

No wonder housing advocates want the mayor to declare homelessness a crisis in Toronto. That type of language -- necessarily embraced by our politicians -- is more likely to propel and demand better use of those 10,187 units. Yes, it’s start. But with no crisis mentality driving this, check back in five years and see how many people have been moved from sleeping under the Gardiner Expressway and in the Rosedale ravine into one of these units.