Less Time On How They Get The Job.......

...and more time on their failure to keep promises and perform. Possibly recall legislation, term limits, etc.?

Move quickly on election reforms

Thu Oct 29 2009 (9)

Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government this week tabled important legislation regarding municipal election reform.

In Mississauga Citizens Get Things Done. In Toronto........

Vibrant waterfront' plan approved

Mississauga council nixes new power plant

Feb 28, 2008 04:30 AM

Phinjo Gombu
Staff Reporter

Mississauga council has unanimously endorsed a unique citizen-driven plan for the sprawling Lakeview lands that could transform the area around a former coal-fired power plant into a thriving $2 billion waterfront community.

Yesterday's vote was witnessed by hundreds of residents, who jammed council chambers and applauded repeatedly.

The council resolution calls on the province to ensure that a gas-powered plant won't replace the coal-powered one that once thrust four smokestacks high into the sky south of Lakeshore Rd. between Cawthra and Dixie Rds. The stacks came down in June 2006, the rest of the hulking plant a year later.

The industrial area the citizen plan envisions redeveloping totals about 200 hectares, nearly 80 of which the province owns through Ontario Power Generation.

The plan by the 800-member Lakeview Ratepayers Association extends existing waterfront trails and parklands and adds a major feature such as an aquarium or pier. It also envisions doubling the area's population by adding new medium-rise towers – enough people to support extending the TTC streetcar line into Mississauga, from the current Long Branch terminus all the way to Hurontario St.

"This is a historic day for the City of Mississauga," said Jim Tovey, president of the residents' association and a driving force behind the project, along with University of Toronto landscape professor and architect John Danahy.

The crowd cheered as Danahy showed his computer-modelled Lakeview Legacy Plan, and as councillors proclaimed one after another that they would do all they could to make it a reality.

Tovey and Danahy used Google Earth and mapping data from the University of Toronto to come up with the plan, which they said involved thousands of hours of work and input from residents.

"This is our last opportunity to create a vibrant waterfront," said Councillor Carmen Corbasson. "It belongs to us and we must take advantage of it."

Some of the warmest cheers came near the start of the meeting, when Mayor Hazel McCallion buoyed hopes with a letter she'd just received from Energy Minister Gerry Phillips.

Phillips wrote that while Lakeview remains a potential site, OPG's estimate for energy needed in the southwest GTA until 2013 was an extra 850 megawatts.

McCallion interpreted that to mean that another gas-fired power plant in Mississauga proposed by Sithe Global – which has received regulatory approval for a site east of Winston Churchill Blvd., between Royal Windsor Dr. and Lakeshore Rd. – could easily handle the demand. The estimate, she suggested, could also eliminate the need for Eastern Power's gas-fired plant near Dundas St. E. and Dixie Rd.

It Was Wrong In Opposition It Should Be Wrong In Power

Com'on Stephen. We blasted the liberals for excessive polling but you have surpassed them since you were elected to power.......

Record-spending Tories review polling contracts
Public Works Minister Michael Fortier said yesterday the government has put a freeze on all polling... office later backs off comments

Electoral Reform Manipulation By McGinty

Grits 'ramming’ through Ont. electoral changes, critics claim
April Lindgren
CanWest News Service
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

TORONTO - Ontario’s opposition parties are crying foul over the Liberal government’s decision to limit debate on legislation authorizing this fall’s referendum on the province’s electoral system.
“It’s just unbelievable that we’re talking about democratic renewal and they’re choosing to ram something through when there seems to be lots of time to continue with the debate,” Conservative Leader John Tory said Tuesday just before the Liberals used their majority to push through final reading of the Electoral System Referendum Act.
The act authorizes the holding of a referendum this fall on an alternative electoral system recently endorsed by a citizen’s assembly. The legislation requires that for the proposed new system of mixed proportional representation to be adopted, it would have to win support from 60 per cent of all votes cast provincewide plus a simple majority of more than 50 per cent of votes case in at least 64 provincial ridings.
The act also allows for the establishment of regulations governing referendum campaign finances.
NDP house leader Peter Kormos accused the Liberals of trying to “clear the legislative slate” so if they run into political trouble they can cut short a legislative session now scheduled to last until the end of June.
“To time allocate (this bill), which is the cornerstone of the government’s democratic reform proposal, is uber irony,” he said.
“There have only been two days of third reading debate. There have only been 11 hours as I recall of second reading debate. That’s not very substantial for a bill that is so significant.”
Democratic Renewal Minister Marie Bountrogianni said the government wanted to ensure the bill is passed before the current session ends.
“We need (it) to be passed in order to do some of the public education campaign,” said Bountrogianni, who rejected suggestions Tuesday’s rushed passage of Bill 155 is bad optics.
“I think people want us to get things done.”
In addition to voting in the provincial election on Oct. 10, Ontarians will be asked to choose between retaining the current first-past-the-post system or adopting mixed proportional representation similar to what is now in place in countries such as Germany and New Zealand.
Under the proposed new system, voters will select 90 legislature members from ridings in the same way they now choose their representatives. These elected officials would make up 70 per cent of the seats in the legislature. The remaining 30 per cent - 29 seats - would be awarded to candidates selected from lists assembled by the eligible parties.
These legislature members would be used to adjust the number of seats each party has in the legislature to reflect each party’s share of the popular vote.
CanWest News Service

Speaking Out On Electoral "Reform"

Voters have hard questions to ask
April 18, 2007

Fall ballot on vote reform
April 16.

Most Ontarians would surely agree that changes are needed to the electoral system. However, the proposed changes seem to be even less democratic, since 39 representatives would be appointed, not directly elected by voters.

Voters should question who compiles the list of eligible appointees and who selects the winners. Voters should also question the increase of seats from 107 to 129. Do we really need the increased costs of more government?

The proposed changes seem designed more to appease political contenders than to give voters the representation of their choice. A more democratic system would have representatives elected by the process of elimination in somewhat the same way that parties elect their leaders. Voters could be given a first and second choice on the ballot, or the party with the fewest votes could be compelled to give their support to another party until one party has a clear majority of more that 50 per cent. To whom a losing party would give its support could be made an involuntary condition of the pre-election campaign.

Let's not rush to change simply for the sake of change. The main objective should be to give voters a clear majority of their choice, not to create a perpetual minority government whereby no one benefits except those who would have been eliminated had they not been appointed.

Eileen Hutcheson, Acton, Ont.

A defective proposal
April 18, 2007

Fall ballot on vote reform

April 16.

A panel of "normal" folks has been meeting for the past year to look at alternatives to the current "winner-takes-all" election formula in Ontario. They have come up with "mixed-member proportional" representation, which is used in Germany and Ireland. A large majority of the panel has recommended this system.

I can see a couple of flaws:

1) We are going to get 22 more politicians, 22 more salaries, 22 more benefits packages and 22 more support staff with salaries and benefits.

2) Thirty-nine of our representatives are going to be appointed by their parties. That means they are not responsible to the electorate. What if they are terrible representatives? Will this be a reward by the party for good service? What can be done if a poor appointee is selected year after year by their party? How can we get rid of them?

3) We will probably be faced with endless minority governments and coalitions. I know many people think this is a good thing, but if the government falls, are we going to be having election after election? Will we be like Italy?

I will not be voting for this new option. I do not want appointees running the government. Elected officials may not be smarter or better, but they are the ones we elected and they answer to their constituents.

Jack Hughes, Oakville