Sue-Ann Levy
Levy: Toronto's garbage fight heats up
...talk to the citizens of the old City Of York where Comrade Miller cancelled 3rd party pickup to satisfy CUPE for their support during his election OR talk to the current residents of Etobicoke.
Showing posts with label Comrade Miller Unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comrade Miller Unions. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Considering The Screwing Toronto Citizens...
Sunday, October 17, 2010
MUST READ! Change Will Not Happen Unless...
...voter turnout increases dramatically north of Bloor Street. The waterfront condo owners, ndp island sqatters, social in-activists, unions, artsy/fartsys, and others that feed at the public trough are well organized and make sure they get the vote out to protect their self interest.
Why it's time for change at City Hall
By SUE-ANN LEVY, Toronto Sun
Change is so desperately needed on Oct. 25.
Full Story
All Comments
Rob Ford for Toronto: Editorial
By Toronto Sun
In this election, there is only one candidate running for mayor who is promising the kind of profound change needed at City Hall and who has a credible record indicating he’ll deliver it.
FP’s Lawrence Solomon: Ford’s promised cuts are far too timid
Why it's time for change at City Hall
By SUE-ANN LEVY, Toronto Sun
Change is so desperately needed on Oct. 25.
Full Story
All Comments
Rob Ford for Toronto: Editorial
By Toronto Sun
In this election, there is only one candidate running for mayor who is promising the kind of profound change needed at City Hall and who has a credible record indicating he’ll deliver it.
FP’s Lawrence Solomon: Ford’s promised cuts are far too timid
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wait For It! It Is Not A Typo-Comrade Miller Is Right On The Money
...if the media had been doing their job we would have seen daily marchs by disenchanted taxpayers, burning effigies at Toronto Silly Hall, raucous council meetings, purges of staff and beauracrats, etc. But what we got was a couple of columnists beating their head against the wall and...
Media treat trivial issues same as relevant news, Miller says
Comrade Miller
Clown Council
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Fulford Voted For This Mayor
Robert Fulford:
Mayor David Miller of Toronto, who should be hiding his head in shame over what he has done to my beautiful city, instead had the outrageous chutzpah on Wednesday to endorse one of the candidates running to replace him
...but this the mayor we got:
Friday, August 27, 2010
Comrade Miller's Demise...
Hume: Miller leaves city divided as never before
August 25, 2010Christopher Hume
Only David Miller knows for sure whether he’ll miss being mayor of Toronto, but it’s a safe bet he won’t miss council meetings.
As he presided over his last such gathering on Wednesday morning, it was business as usual. That meant talk about everything from cash-in-lieu-of-parking in North York and waste-activated sludge control to a monumental flagpole in Emery Village and the plight of elephants at the Toronto Zoo.
As gripping as these issues undoubtedly were, things didn’t get going in earnest until council addressed itself to the city’s newly harmonized zoning bylaws.
How appropriate that one of Miller’s last acts as mayor was to deal with an issue that dates back 12 years to amalgamation.
If council approves the new 2,700-page zoning bible, it will mean that there will be only one legal definition of apartment, not five. It will also set minimum height in downtown Toronto at three storeys.
“We can’t ignore this forever,” chief planner Gary Wright told those assembled. “It’s time now to enact this law.”
Indeed, but as so often seems the case, no matter how critical city business may be, it has about it the whiff of ridiculousness. The councillors don’t help a whole lot, even when on their best behavior.
Still, the occasion could not have been lost on Miller. He has talked publicly about his pride in what he accomplished as mayor. But at what cost?
At this point, Miller’s legacy could best be summed up in two words: Rob Ford. Miller might like to talk about Transit City, Toronto, “the greenest city in North America,” or the Mayor’s Tower Renewal, but for many voters he is the guy who caved to the unions last summer and raised vehicle registration fees and real estate transfer costs.
Though a recent opinion poll claims Miller would win re-election easily, many Torontonians are so enraged at him they’re willing to vote for Rob Ford. In fact, they have put the Etobicoke councillor in the lead to be the city’s next mayor. Ford now sits more than 10 points ahead of his closest rival, former provincial cabinet minister George Smitherman.
But as the harmonized bylaw debate made clear, Toronto still hasn’t come to terms with amalgamation; the current election is all about the unfinished issues created by that forced union.
What Miller — and many others — didn’t realize is that a progressive urban agenda does not play well in the suburbs. What seems obvious and necessary to city-dwellers comes as a direct threat to suburbanites.
Toronto has become a community divided as never before. There is anger in the city, anger looking for a target on which to focus. Who better than our city councillors?
But watching council going through the motions this week, it was clear the Miller’s time is over even before it has ended. There was a feeling that the players were simply going through the motions, that they recognized the action has moved to a different stage, and that council itself has become strangely irrelevant.
Miller did his best to stay focused, delivering an impassioned defence of the harmonized bylaw. But the first question, from Scarborough’s Mike Del Grande, killed any hopes for intelligent debate.
Isn’t it true, he asked, that the new bylaw will mean one size fits all? When not even councillors bother to read the fine print, you know the city’s in trouble.
But given the din of the campaign being waged beyond its walls, City Hall seemed quiet and peaceful; the calm before the storm.
Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Poll Speaks Volumes About The Fear Among Special Interest Groups...
...that their spot at the trough will disappear.
Miller Tops Voter Support: Poll
'Liberal' T.O. finally is PO'd
Anyone across Canada who considers Toronto a liberal (and Liberal) la-la land filled with sheep-like residents meekly accepting every new tax imposed on them, hasn’t been paying attention to its race for mayor.
Poll Shows Impressions of Rob Ford Change
Grassroots endorsement for Ford
By DON PEAT, Toronto Sun
Talk about return to sender.
Last place. That's got to sting
Kelly Grant
Mayor's race reduced to mudslinging: Mammoliti
Hey mayoral candidates, where’s the beef?
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Praying nd Hoping Won't Cut It...
...people are going to have to get off their fat asses and go and vote and if they are wise they will vote for the candidate that offers positive change.
It’s hard to believe there are just 13 weeks left until Election Day and we have heard precious little about the 43 ward races.
Not that it really is any candidate’s fault — mind you — since it has been awfully difficult for a would-be councillor to break through the noise of a feisty mayoralty race full of good gossip, some scandal, more than a few twists and turns and some policy thrown in, now and then.
Nevertheless, one should not forget that although the mayor can drive the agenda on council — for better or for worse — he, or she, needs the consensus of the 43 councillors around him, or her.
There’s no doubt that in the past seven years — under Mayor David Miller and his cabal of like-minded champagne socialists — the balance of power has rested with the NDP.
As retiring 26-year councillor Brian “The Silver Fox” Ashton said last week, he thinks council will shift to the centre and possibly to the right depending on how much “anger and disillusionment from the Miller legacy” remains on voting day — an observation with which I wholeheartedly agree.
The political leanings of council will not just be a reflection of the councillors and mayoralty candidate who get the nod but how much those who do win “are willing to trade their philosophical agenda for power,” said Ashton.
He figures even some NDPers, desperate to cling on to positions of power, may decide, for example, that a right-winger like Rob Ford “is the most wonderful guy in the world if he’s mayor.”
Ah yes, I can’t wait to see the grovelling from the socialist hypocrites.
But I digress.
In my 12 years covering the antics at City Hall, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a campaign with so many wards up for grabs — as many as 10 depending on what some of the long-time holdouts decide to do.
Ward 10 councillor Mike Feldman, who’s been in politics for 18 years, said he’ll decide sometime this week whether he intends to run again. He told me he has two letters written and at the printer, who is waiting for the word on which to print.
If does choose to run, he also told me he won’t need to campaign.
OK then.
David Shiner, who’s represented Ward 24 for 19 years, is still tight-lipped about whether he’ll take another stab at council.
He did not respond to requests for an interview last week.
Etobicoke’s Mark Grimes in Ward 6 also has not filed his papers yet to run.
Then there’s the Howard Moscoe-sauarus, a 30-year council fossil, who’s presided over Ward 15 for 30 years. The scuttlebutt is his name will not be on the ballot come Oct. 25.
But whether his daughter (with the same last name) will jump in to replace him, or he’ll throw his support behind another candidate, remains to be seen.
Those three unknowns aside, there are another seven seats up for grabs with the candidacies of Rob Ford and Joe Pantalone for mayor — and the departure from Socialist Silly Hall of Adam Giambrone, Michael Walker, Kyle Rae, Case Ootes and of course Ashton.
The races in each of these wards are wide open.
In Ward 27, Rae’s Toronto Centre-Rosedale ward, there are 14 candidates signed up to date. In Ward 19, Pantalone’s turf, there are 11 candidates. Giambrone’s ward also has 11 candidates vying for a council seat. Unless some of them drop off by the last date to register — Sept. 10 — any candidate could easily win with just 20% of the vote.
In others, like Ward 29 now occupied by Ootes, I’m told the NDP cabal is working overtime to try to re-claim another bit of turf. They’ll have to fend off workaholic and former right-of-centre councillor Jane Pitfield, however.
Ashton feels the other issue in this year’s campaign will be whether those representing suburban wards will hold more power on the next council.
Miller and his inner circle were seen to cater to the downtown dwellers — often leaving the suburbs and the councillors representing these wards out in the cold.
City Hall power shift?: Levy
‘Anger and disillusionment from the David Miller legacy’ could help decide ward races
Last Updated: July 23, 2010 8:57pm
It’s hard to believe there are just 13 weeks left until Election Day and we have heard precious little about the 43 ward races.
Not that it really is any candidate’s fault — mind you — since it has been awfully difficult for a would-be councillor to break through the noise of a feisty mayoralty race full of good gossip, some scandal, more than a few twists and turns and some policy thrown in, now and then.
Nevertheless, one should not forget that although the mayor can drive the agenda on council — for better or for worse — he, or she, needs the consensus of the 43 councillors around him, or her.
There’s no doubt that in the past seven years — under Mayor David Miller and his cabal of like-minded champagne socialists — the balance of power has rested with the NDP.
As retiring 26-year councillor Brian “The Silver Fox” Ashton said last week, he thinks council will shift to the centre and possibly to the right depending on how much “anger and disillusionment from the Miller legacy” remains on voting day — an observation with which I wholeheartedly agree.
The political leanings of council will not just be a reflection of the councillors and mayoralty candidate who get the nod but how much those who do win “are willing to trade their philosophical agenda for power,” said Ashton.
He figures even some NDPers, desperate to cling on to positions of power, may decide, for example, that a right-winger like Rob Ford “is the most wonderful guy in the world if he’s mayor.”
Ah yes, I can’t wait to see the grovelling from the socialist hypocrites.
But I digress.
In my 12 years covering the antics at City Hall, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a campaign with so many wards up for grabs — as many as 10 depending on what some of the long-time holdouts decide to do.
Ward 10 councillor Mike Feldman, who’s been in politics for 18 years, said he’ll decide sometime this week whether he intends to run again. He told me he has two letters written and at the printer, who is waiting for the word on which to print.
If does choose to run, he also told me he won’t need to campaign.
OK then.
David Shiner, who’s represented Ward 24 for 19 years, is still tight-lipped about whether he’ll take another stab at council.
He did not respond to requests for an interview last week.
Etobicoke’s Mark Grimes in Ward 6 also has not filed his papers yet to run.
Then there’s the Howard Moscoe-sauarus, a 30-year council fossil, who’s presided over Ward 15 for 30 years. The scuttlebutt is his name will not be on the ballot come Oct. 25.
But whether his daughter (with the same last name) will jump in to replace him, or he’ll throw his support behind another candidate, remains to be seen.
Those three unknowns aside, there are another seven seats up for grabs with the candidacies of Rob Ford and Joe Pantalone for mayor — and the departure from Socialist Silly Hall of Adam Giambrone, Michael Walker, Kyle Rae, Case Ootes and of course Ashton.
The races in each of these wards are wide open.
In Ward 27, Rae’s Toronto Centre-Rosedale ward, there are 14 candidates signed up to date. In Ward 19, Pantalone’s turf, there are 11 candidates. Giambrone’s ward also has 11 candidates vying for a council seat. Unless some of them drop off by the last date to register — Sept. 10 — any candidate could easily win with just 20% of the vote.
In others, like Ward 29 now occupied by Ootes, I’m told the NDP cabal is working overtime to try to re-claim another bit of turf. They’ll have to fend off workaholic and former right-of-centre councillor Jane Pitfield, however.
Ashton feels the other issue in this year’s campaign will be whether those representing suburban wards will hold more power on the next council.
Miller and his inner circle were seen to cater to the downtown dwellers — often leaving the suburbs and the councillors representing these wards out in the cold.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Hmm! What A Surprise...
Goar: Employment takes off — except in Toronto
Wed Jul 14 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Can Toronto Learn From Other Cities Experiences?
Council's dim bulbs thwart Hydro talks: Levy
Would-be mayor Joe Pantalone proved, yet again, he is Yesterday’s Man when he told council last week it was “foolish and silly” to sell off all or any part of Toronto Hydro.
Learn lesson from Winnipeg: Sell Toronto Hydro to cut debt
Toronto Hydro officials monitor power consumption at Hydro's control centre. City council has squeezed the utility for excessive "dividends."
Chris So/Toronto Star Thursday, July 01, 2010
What's The Point Sue-Ann...
...we will hear a lot of campaign promises, most them predicated on Queens Park and Ottawa opening their wallets, but unless there is a major change in the makeup of the next city council four years from now we will be rehashing today's news.
Candidates, read financial statements
The city’s consolidated financial statements for 2009 — to be discussed at audit committee Wednesday morning — should be required reading for all mayoralty candidates and would-be councillors.
Add To The List...No Lineups At Queens Quay Pay Toilet...
...but that's not surprising when you consider the major crap is emanating from Toronto Silly Hall.
Back to 'civilized' Toronto
Welcome back to civilization, Masai Mike — to riots, burning cop cars, Miller, McGuinty, the HST, the DVP, the TTC, the Leafs, the Raps, the Jays, bike lanes .Hey Mihevic And You Other Council Clowns...ARE YOU LISTENING!
Comrade Miller
Clown Coucilors & Beauracrats
Corso Italia businesses say they're hurting
While the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way is officially open for business, many shops along the route say the construction they endured may soon make theirs go bankrupt.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Gee Whiz Michele How Come No Touching Profiles Of The Pros...
...who travel to a multitudes of protests and are reluctant and secretive about the sources of their funding. You have to wonder how the backgrounds of Henrik, Brad, Paul, Sandra, et al match those of suicide bombers in the middle east? And the OCRAP lackeys contend they have a right to march, confront police, disrupt traffic and trample on the rights of the other 99.07% of the Toronto citizenry.
G20 protesters — The good, the mad and the cuddly
Last Updated: June 25, 2010 6:48pm
Such is the G20 arsenal of Sandra Smith, a 57-year-old protest veteran who spent four days in jail the last time demonstrators and Toronto Police clashed at the infamous Queen’s Park riot 10 years ago.
“No, I’m not scared,” she shrugs on this hot sunny day in Allan Gardens. “I’ve already got myself beat up so I know what it’s about. I was beaten from head to toe and 2 1/2 years later, they dropped the charges against me.”
Anti-poverty activists, gay and women’s rights crusaders, social action warriors, anarchist rabble-rousers — a volatile cocktail of demonstrators gathers in the leafy park to begin their weekend-long demonstrations against the G20.
At the helm is John Clarke, the ever-incendiary leader of OCAP, who is obviously itching for a violent showdown.
But what about these other people?
Estranged from her family, Smith is a sweet, middle-aged woman who has been at the forefront of many a demonstration. She’s especially proud of taking over a Don Jail guardhouse in an unsuccessful bid to get it turned over to the homeless.
“We have to stand up,” she explains. “Why are children going to bed hungry? Why are people homeless? I want things to really change and I want the people to win.”
Well-meaning, she’s your mother earth kind of protester. “I don’t believe in government. I believe in people taking care of each other.”
One of the people she’s trying to take care of is Paul Smith — no relation — who is of the more frightening activist variety.
The 31-year-old part-time landscaper is feeling light-headed in the summer sun and gratefully takes her water bottle.
He’s wearing a white T-shirt that he’s emblazoned with the eye-catching slogan: F--- the G20. Stop New World Order 666.”
He also has a video camera so he can capture the mayhem he’s sure will ensue.
“I’m scared,” he concedes, as his eyes dart nervously at the hundreds of police officers who have encircled the crowd.
“I don’t want the police to treat us like they did (at the G20 summit) in Pittsburgh where riot police were throwing people on the ground. It was all over YouTube.”
Yet he’s determined to challenge the downtown security wall. And why? Because, he explains, G20 leaders are planning a single world government to control us and implant us with computer chips.
“It’s scary stuff and it’s true,” Smith insists.
On a more rational plain nearby, Brad Drake is handing out postcards about a youth group he runs to engage teens in labour issues.
The 43-year-old is a protest veteran, and a labour agitator who helped organize newspaper carriers years ago.
By day, he’s a produce clerk who must depend on the generosity of his parents because he can’t make enough to raise his daughter. “For a working person, that’s wrong,” Drake argues. “I should be able to make a living.”
So he harbours a simmering anger at being shut out of this city’s prosperity — a mestastasizing bitterness that he believes is shared by many demonstrators.
“More and more people are feeling desperate,” he warns. “Pushing it to the next level seems to be their only option. I don’t know how we’re going to avoid confrontation.”
Henrik Vierula knows how — by offering his free hugs.
On a rainbow blanket, the 22-year-old aspiring massage therapist is strumming his guitar and offering cherries and healing love to passersby.
“Rather than throwing themselves at a line of cops, they can just come and hug each other,” explains the Ottawa man, his head wrapped in a blue scarf.
“To protest aggression with aggression is futile in my opinion. I know some people coming here won’t be satisfied until they get their bruises; they’ve bought their gas masks and they won’t be happy unless they get to use them.
“But,” he says with a beatific smile, “I’m not looking for a fight.”
Read Mandel Wednesday through Saturday. michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca or 416-947-2231.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Lorne We Live With This On A Daily Basis...
...thanks to the leftists at Toronto Silly Hall And Queen's Park
Lorne Gunter: Toronto faces a nuisance of biblical proportions
June 22, 2010 – 2:28 pm
SAMUEL ARANDA/AFP/Getty Images)
The only plague that hasn't landed on Toronto yet this week is locusts, but they're coming
Normally I have very little sympathy for Torontonians. Most of the smug, half-informed, lefty thinking that infects our nation’s policy has its origins there. And any city that would elect David Miller mayor — twice — deserves what it gets.
Still, this weekend, my heart is with them. The city’s residents, businesses and financial workers are going to have inflicted on them a nuisance of biblical proportions. Read More
Jeffrey Simpson
Pity Toronto. It’s stuck with an unnecessary, bloated summit
Canadians instinctively do not pity Toronto, but charitable ones should search their hearts this week. The country’s largest city is in for a big downer.Monday, June 21, 2010
G20?? Been There Done That...
Dear Toronto: Good luck with that
David Shribman
A veteran of Pittsburgh's G20 offers his tips for surviving the summitWhat? They cancelled Roy
We in Pittsburgh were hosts last year, and it had its moments of amusement. There were parties and banquets and some very serious talk about some very serious issues, a fraction of which actually was comprehensible to normal people. Nicolas Sarkozy was here, and so was Barack Obama. Gordon Brown was here, too, but don’t look for him in Toronto.
The G20 prompted a lot of things we seldom experience, and each provided a lesson. One of our Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters got arrested for doing her job, which is to report the news even if it includes a near riot. The lesson was that even in an era where the newspaper business is in peril, it is still perilous to be a newspaper reporter. A lot of businesses were shut down. The lesson was just a warm-up for the deepening recession. (I also slept at the office twice. The lesson was that if you are going to sleep in the office, choose a profession where presses don’t start rumbling under your cot at 2 in the morning.)
Pittsburgh’s town fathers and mothers ardently and unanimously proclaimed the G20 a big boon, although not one of them could name the previous host city. They said there would be loads of great publicity and a great reminder of the lessons of Pittsburgh’s own renaissance – that if you substitute education and medicine for heavy manufacturing, and win a Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup in the
But here is one incontrovertible truth: No amount of naysaying, no number of anarchist marches down Yonge Street, no volume of arrests, is going to convince the planners and sponsors of this event ever to concede in public – even a teeny, weeny bit – that this was anything but the greatest idea since the construction of Maple Leaf Gardens. In private, however, they may tell you how much it cost the city and its businesses, and the figure will make your eyes bug out.
So as you prepare the barricades, bicker about whether work can productively be done at home, fight about paying overtime to employees who have to overnight at the office, order up your cots, check whether your masks match the police’s tear gas, figure out how you’re going to find food when so many restaurants are closed, debate whether having soldiers on your roofs might make you targets for protesters, add costly new anti-terrorism measures at your workplace, and worry about what you’ll do if your car is in the security zone and you are not, here is a viewers’ guide to the G20:
Don’t expect much to happen. Sure, there will be protests by anarchists (wearing easily the best outfits you’ll see the entire week), people holding signs and a few people with bullhorns, but not very much is going to be decided in Toronto. At best, the 20 guests of honour will sign a document that’s already being drafted. It will sound very important, but not a soul in Toronto will be able to tell you a thing about that document a month afterward, or even a week afterward. Not even the G20’s biggest boosters. Count on this.
Don’t believe anyone who tells you life will go on as usual.
It will go on as usual only if your life usually involves security checks, not being able to go where you want for coffee, being told that you can’t go to work even if you want to (and maybe that you won’t be paid, either) and watching a Blue Jays home series being played in Philadelphia.
Don’t think you’re going to run into a world leader at Swiss Chalet. They won’t be going there, not even for the special sauce or a $9.99 double drumstick offer. It’s true that Michelle Obama did create a minor sensation by sneaking out to
Don’t expect the inconvenience to end when the summit ends.
In Pittsburgh’s case, there were multiple arrests after the world leaders departed. That said, the gargantuan protests promised by activists never materialized. Police far outnumbered protesters. Think of this as an employment program for police officers. Or as an economic stimulus for people in the security business, although maybe no one else. (Unless you sell barbed wire, in which case this is the month you’ve been waiting for.)
Don’t expect you’ll want to play host to the G20 again. Once is enough. For most of us in Pittsburgh, the best thing about the 2010 G20 is that the dateline on all the stories will read “TORONTO, CANADA.” For us, those will be the two prettiest words in the English language.
David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of U.S. politics.
We in Pittsburgh were hosts last year, and it had its moments of amusement. There were parties and banquets and some very serious talk about some very serious issues, a fraction of which actually was comprehensible to normal people. Nicolas Sarkozy was here, and so was Barack Obama. Gordon Brown was here, too, but don’t look for him in Toronto.
The G20 prompted a lot of things we seldom experience, and each provided a lesson. One of our Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters got arrested for doing her job, which is to report the news even if it includes a near riot. The lesson was that even in an era where the newspaper business is in peril, it is still perilous to be a newspaper reporter. A lot of businesses were shut down. The lesson was just a warm-up for the deepening recession. (I also slept at the office twice. The lesson was that if you are going to sleep in the office, choose a profession where presses don’t start rumbling under your cot at 2 in the morning.)
Pittsburgh’s town fathers and mothers ardently and unanimously proclaimed the G20 a big boon, although not one of them could name the previous host city. They said there would be loads of great publicity and a great reminder of the lessons of Pittsburgh’s own renaissance – that if you substitute education and medicine for heavy manufacturing, and win a Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup in the
But here is one incontrovertible truth: No amount of naysaying, no number of anarchist marches down Yonge Street, no volume of arrests, is going to convince the planners and sponsors of this event ever to concede in public – even a teeny, weeny bit – that this was anything but the greatest idea since the construction of Maple Leaf Gardens. In private, however, they may tell you how much it cost the city and its businesses, and the figure will make your eyes bug out.
So as you prepare the barricades, bicker about whether work can productively be done at home, fight about paying overtime to employees who have to overnight at the office, order up your cots, check whether your masks match the police’s tear gas, figure out how you’re going to find food when so many restaurants are closed, debate whether having soldiers on your roofs might make you targets for protesters, add costly new anti-terrorism measures at your workplace, and worry about what you’ll do if your car is in the security zone and you are not, here is a viewers’ guide to the G20:
Don’t expect much to happen. Sure, there will be protests by anarchists (wearing easily the best outfits you’ll see the entire week), people holding signs and a few people with bullhorns, but not very much is going to be decided in Toronto. At best, the 20 guests of honour will sign a document that’s already being drafted. It will sound very important, but not a soul in Toronto will be able to tell you a thing about that document a month afterward, or even a week afterward. Not even the G20’s biggest boosters. Count on this.
Don’t believe anyone who tells you life will go on as usual.
It will go on as usual only if your life usually involves security checks, not being able to go where you want for coffee, being told that you can’t go to work even if you want to (and maybe that you won’t be paid, either) and watching a Blue Jays home series being played in Philadelphia.
Don’t think you’re going to run into a world leader at Swiss Chalet. They won’t be going there, not even for the special sauce or a $9.99 double drumstick offer. It’s true that Michelle Obama did create a minor sensation by sneaking out to
Don’t expect the inconvenience to end when the summit ends.
In Pittsburgh’s case, there were multiple arrests after the world leaders departed. That said, the gargantuan protests promised by activists never materialized. Police far outnumbered protesters. Think of this as an employment program for police officers. Or as an economic stimulus for people in the security business, although maybe no one else. (Unless you sell barbed wire, in which case this is the month you’ve been waiting for.)
Don’t expect you’ll want to play host to the G20 again. Once is enough. For most of us in Pittsburgh, the best thing about the 2010 G20 is that the dateline on all the stories will read “TORONTO, CANADA.” For us, those will be the two prettiest words in the English language.
David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of U.S. politics.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Comrade Miller And His Council Of Clowns Will Rename The Area...
G20 blockades rising in downtown Toronto
(1)...although the city politicians and bureaucrats might want to get the name of the person responsible for the installation of these "security" barriers and find out how they manage to get projects complete quickly and on time.
Monday, June 07, 2010
Reprehensibile? True! Public Outrage? False!
...a story about the shortcomings of a Toronto councilor drew over 190 comments but the Sa's story about the debacle in Mississauga hasn't drawn a single comment.
How Mississauga’s reputation got thrown under the bus: Sa
It took a media storm and public outrage for the City of Mississauga to take incidents of employee hazing seriously.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Is Picking Up Garbage Different In New Westminister...
...than it is in Toronto. If anything probably in New Westminister it is more labour intensive therefore the logical thing to do would be to (1) reduce the "living wage" of workers collecting garbage in Toronto; (2) look at bringing all municipal wages in line with the "living wage" mantra.
Goar: Living wage becomes a reality — but not here
Mon May 10 2010 (63)
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About Me
- Unhypentated Canadian
- I lean to the right but I still have a heart and if I have a mission it is to respond to attacks on people not available to protect themselves and to point out the hypocrisy of the left at every opportunity.MY MAJOR GOAL IS HIGHLIGHT THE HYPOCRISY AND STUPIDITY OF THE LEFTISTS ON TORONTO CITY COUNCIL. Last word: In the final analysis this blog is a relief valve for my rants/raves.