| A study says Toronto is in decline. Do you agree? | |||||
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Livio Di Matteo
Reports that Ontario may soon qualify for equalization payments have awakened Ontarians to the fact that they no longer live in the province they...
Re:Is Toronto in decline?
Business, June 26
Former Ontario premier Mike Harris is blaming Toronto City Hall for Toronto's decline? The same man who destroyed this province with city amalgamations, provincial downloading and massive cuts to all types of funding, including education and health care? The man who increased the responsibilities and costs for city council while cutting funding?
Thanks to Harris, our health-care system and the state of our schools are a disgrace, our infrastructure is crumbling, our industrial tax base and the jobs that went with those companies have disappeared and the land has been bought up by developers. The standard of living of Torontonians is spiralling downward, while the cost of living in Toronto is spiralling upward.
City council is squarely to blame for failing to tackle the problems caused by Harris, as is the province, but they are certainly not to blame for the creation of our troubles.
Janice Barton, Toronto
Stop the presses! Mike Harris (via the Fraser Institute) recognizes that there is an economic problem in Toronto as median income lags and it loses desirable jobs. Then he tells us that "part of the 12-step program for any recovery is (to) admit there is a problem." Wonderful. Let us hope he recognizes another key element of a 12-step program for recovery: taking personal responsibility.
At the conclusion of the latest Fraser Institute effort to dress up ideological musings as "urban policy" research, I look forward to reading Harris's admission: "Toronto has a problem, and I caused it."
Neil Thomlinson, Toronto
The gall of former premier Mike Harris never ceases to amaze me. To sit back, without irony, and suggest that he can discuss these issues while ignoring his complicity in them (his taxation policies, downloading, urban policy in general) is more than disingenuous.
It's a good thing he didn't offer any suggestions on dealing with this imagined decline. Like medieval doctors, Harris has shown he has only one solution: Bleed them again.
Lloyd Gray, Toronto
Groan, groan and groan again. Mike Harris and Preston Manning giving advice on how to run Toronto? Give us a break. Toronto is still feeling the negative effects of the failed policies of the Harris era – amalgamation and the school funding formula, to name but two.
The best thing Toronto City Council could do is to simply ignore any advice coming from the right-wing ideology of Harris and the Fraser Institute.
Irene Bell, Toronto
The Fraser Institute claims Toronto is in decline. It may be right, but it's wrong about the reason. If Toronto is in decline, it is because of federal government greed, which keeps it from sharing the nation's wealth with cities. Ottawa is over-financed and municipal governments are under-financed. The federal government won't even give cities a penny. That's the problem.
Max Moore, Toronto
It was Mike Harris who amalgamated Toronto into the festering glob we have today. Can anyone fail to bristle at the infuriating irony in the former premier, whose malignant rule caused Toronto's current fiscal mess, damning it for the cancer he and his fellow Tory muck-heads induced?
David Allan Stein, Toronto
5 comments:
so did Hitler...
Your comment says volumes about you...
I have to wonder why you spout your idiocy only in comments, where for all intents and purposes they are buried, and why you don't stand up and publish your thoughts in your site?
Don't give me that "I am too busy," "I have a life," etc. crap excuse which is popular with individuals with a self esteem problem.
I got back last week from being away for 2 and a half weeks on business. If you obsessively check IP records like Flaggman does 10 times a day, you see a couple comments were posted from out west. Check if you have that capability. I had very limited wifi access while I was away. Yes, I have been too busy to write full posts. I have however, started a few that I haven't had time to finish.
What speaks volumes, is your typical response. I knew you would publish that one, as you tend to only publish ones you think you can have a some sort of clever response to. If I make a good point, it never sees the light of day. Your laments that you censor nothing is pure bullshit.
I made that comment because I knew it would burn you enough to publish it, and bam you did.
Too easy.
Oh yeah; "I got back last week from being away for 2 and a half weeks on business." and "I have however, started a few that I haven't had time to finish." Next thing I know you will be trying to sell me swampland in Florida.
You are sooooo transparent.....you really need to get a life.
This is posted as a public health advisory.......
you need to take more of the red ones WALTER...
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