February 11th, 2009 Andrew Cash
Okay, I’ll say it: this is a boring party, the place you’d be if you’d drawn the short straw
By Andrew Cash
The Ontario NDP is the Toronto Maple Leafs of politics. Like the hapless hockey crew, the ONDP has spent most of the last four decades near the bottom of the standings but dining out regularly on past glories.
Most NHL teams, when mired in the basement, take the time to rebuild, rediscover a sense of purpose, nurture their fan base and a crop of young keeners, and while no one is looking, start getting competitive.
The Leafs, over the last 40 years never did this. Alas, the ONDP over the last decade and a half hasn’t either. With what may be the largest reordering of the capitalist economy since the 30s underway, these should be heady times for provincial Dippers who next month pick a new leader to replace Howard Hampton.
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December 17th, 2008 Andrew Cash
NDP bill makes a beeline for heavy-handed developers chilling citizen dissent with pricey lawsuits
By Andrew Cash
While all eyes have been glued to the wild ride our parliamentary democracy has been taking of late, a real threat to citizens’ power is playing out in near obscurity on the 16th floor of the Bay Street hearing room of the Ontario Municipal Board.
Here, final arguments wrap up on whether a Lake Simcoe residents group should pay the legal costs of a large land developer.
Shortly after winning a several-? year fight at the OMB a year ago to plunk a resort and marina smack dab in the middle of the bucolic Lake Simcoe community of Big Bay Point, Markham-?based developer Geranium Corporation quickly turned around and asked the OMB to make those opposed to the project pay its legal costs.
On the hook for $3.2 million in costs are the Innisfil District Association, some individual members of the group and, surprisingly, their lawyer, David Donnelly.
Though the OMB rarely awards costs and rarely for this amount, the case is being watched carefully by countless residents groups across the province, as well as by Hamilton Centre NDP MPP Andrea Horwath. Last week she introduced a private member’s bill to give residents’ groups protection against what are known as SLAPPs, or strategic lawsuits against public participation.
Horwath says she first came face to face with the problem as a Hamilton city councillor working with a residents group opposing a development. “The threat of a SLAPP action makes it harder for regular people to participate if they are concerned about a project,” she says.
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November 25th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Sure, turbines are great, but eco-bullies could tone down the sermon
By Andrew Cash
Ah, there’s nothing quite like a public meeting in Scarborough to make me feel nostalgic for my childhood home – and for the merits of good old-fashioned political education.
The wind energy showdown, Monday, November 24, at Laurier Collegiate in Scarborough’s Guildwood Village seems, at first glance, like a classic NIMBY battle pitting local residents against downtown greenies and Toronto Hydro bureaucrats.
But it doesn’t really look that way to me, despite the fact that I’m blown away (excuse the pun) by the idea that wind fanning off the Bluffs could power the city’s first turbine operation.
I guess the problem here is that this isn’t an Ontario Municipal Board hearing where folks have to pack the hall because the process is unfair and rich lawyers are trying to take over neighbourhoods for rich developers.
This is a Q&A – one already cancelled once for lack of space – where residents have their sole chance to get Toronto Hydro to address their concerns.
Enviros, hyped and over-organized, don’t seem to get that this is their big opportunity to meet the community, find common ground and ultimately win them over.
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February 7th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Mr. Premier, butt out
McGuinty feeds black schools fracas so we’ll forget Libs created the mess
By Andrew Cash
Local democracy is making a comeback, folks, and Big Daddy Dalton don’t like it much.
Nope, our paternalistic preem has wagged his finger at all those irresponsible trustees on the Toronto District School Board who had the audacity – after listening to their constituents and their conscience – to vote in favour of creating an Africentric alternative school.
In calling for residents to lobby their trustees and “put a stop to this,’’ Premier Dalton McGuinty is fanning the flames of an already heated debate that has, up until his meddling, been a model of public participation. There have been forums, committees struck, kilos of newsprint and stacks of reports going back over a decade.
The January 29 board meeting was a gleaming example of local control in action, and not just because trustees voted the right way. The chambers were packed to the rafters with parents, teachers and students, both for and against, sitting side by side.
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January 31st, 2008 Andrew Cash
A Class act, finally
Board does the right thing and votes for black-focused school
By Andrew Cash
When the “s word,” segregation, gets uttered again, there’s an audible groan from those sitting around me.
I’ve ducked out to the overflow section at TDSB headquarters on north Yonge Tuesday night, and am watching the debate leading up to the board’s historic vote on creating the first Africentric school in Toronto on closed-circuit TV.
About 70 others are here, too, and the main chamber’s jammed to the rafters. They’re all black. I’m the only white, and I find myself wondering how many of those whacking this issue with the “s’’ word ever actually mix with those not of their own kind.
The folks here – young parents with little kids, students, elders, professionals, punks – have been waiting for three hours. They’re good at waiting. I’ve seen many of them before at different public meetings in the north end. Waiting. Waiting for the city, the province or in this case the school board to finally listen.
Their patience is humbling. What many (not all, for sure, but many) have been saying is that an Africentric school is part of what they desperately need if they have any hope of rescuing their mostly male at-risk youth.
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January 17th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Matter of trust
School safety tome shockingly calls for a narrowing of trustees’ role
By Andrew Cash
If you’re a mandarin at the Toronto District School Board, the temperature may be a bit too hot this week. Julian Falconer’s exhaustive report on school safety, dropped January 10, left no stone unturned. But among all the details about sexual harassment and intimidation, the tome goes somewhat silent on one striking fact: if you’re a concerned parent and want to talk to your elected school board rep, good luck.
Fact is, our harried and elusive crew of trustees are busy doing something else a lot of the time. Why wouldn’t they be? They’re earning a poverty-line wage to oversee a multi-billion-dollar public institution – one critical to your child’s future.
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October 4th, 2007 Andrew Cash
To topple a leader
Tory’s faith flub makes Don Valley Wynne’s to lose
By Andrew Cash
Click on the icon to begin playback of the audio clip. The icon will then change. To pause the audio, click on the changed icon. Click again to resume play.
Kathleen Wynne is supposed to do a quick blitz for votes in this Thorncliffe Park high-rise, but instead, on the 15th floor, she stops at the door of a young construction worker.
“If your age group doesn’t vote, that means someone old will vote in your place,” she says as her handlers pry her away.
Wynne’s daughter rolls her eyes, amused. “Oh no, Mom, were you lecturing that guy?” Mother and daughter banter humorously back and forth as they sprint down the stairs.
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September 27th, 2007 Andrew Cash
McGuinty’s taxing courage
Preem’s stirring defence of health tax shows tax rebellion has faded
By Andrew Cash
What’s worse, a government that breaks a dumb promise or a government that implements one? I would have been happy if Stephen Harper had broken his very dumb promise to cut 1 per cent of the GST. I’m okay with Dalton McGuinty breaking his promise not to raise taxes after the Mike Harris wrecking crew saddled the Libs with a $5 billion deficit.
Tax has always been the four-letter word politicians don’t use in polite company. But after last week’s leaders debate, that may be changing. During the televised showdown, we heard McGuinty not once but several times refuse to say that he would repeal a tax. That’s new.
Most pols are only too happy to out-slash the other guy, but it has always been a head-scratcher when political parties say they can both cut taxes and improve services. Neo-cons used this canard throughout the 90s, but today it’s only John Tory and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation who believe it. The rest of us aren’t buying.
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July 19th, 2007 Andrew Cash
PORTLANDS power play
Residents walk out of consulting committee charging Energy Centre kept them in the dark
By Andrew Cash
Laundry isn’t the only thing being hung out to dry this summer in Smogtown. Take Toronto’s east-end neighbourhoods, which have always been our industrial ashtray.
In the bad old 80s, residential backyards in south Riverdale had to have their lead-laced soil removed, and the Commissioner Street incinerator was blithely burning garbage.
And while we can’t be sure that the dust on Riverdalian stereo speakers isn’t still laced with lead, locals also have to deal with the Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant to the southeast, a grand contributor to the generally crappy local air quality.
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May 31st, 2007 Andrew Cash
McGuinty’s Arnie act
Why is it easier for a Republican to be green than a Liberal premier?
By Andrew Cash
Who says coincidences like this only happen in novels? At the very moment when enviro orgs are putting the heat on the McGuinty Libs to pass a private member’s bill modelled after one in California that’ll let us know if the Shreddies we’re buying contain carcinogens, in pops the governor of said state.
Arnold Schwarzenegger reminds us that it may be easier for a Republican bodybuilder to be green than a Liberal premier. Despite the fact that Bill 164, the Community Right To Know Act, has passed second reading and an all-party committee, don’t assume it’s passage is a slam dunk.
Spearheaded by NDP enviro critic Peter Tabuns, the bill would force companies to list cancer-causing agents on product labels. It would also create a comprehensive and user-friendly online pollution inventory so Ontarians can find out which toxins are emitted in their communities and what risks are associated with them.
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