By Pepper Parr

February 11th, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

Revision were made to this story after its initial publication.  Some of the quotes were attributed to the wrong person.

We got a note from James Schofield, who tells us that he reads the Gazette and added that there was “a line in your piece on the code of contact that caught my eye.

“Lancaster said that the incidences of harassment and intimidation have occurred both internally and externally and appear to be linked with the insurgence of social media, media, increased communication and participation with the public.

“It may be worth some reflection on the role the Gazette plays in relation to this.

“I’ve largely stopped commenting on your site. I won’t go as far as to say I’ve been harassed or intimidated, but I’ve certainly had my character and motives called into question and been the target of juvenile name-calling. Far from being a place for respectful dialog and an intellectual debate on issues and ideas, I find the Gazette’s comments are often replete with ad hominem arguments and those with entrenched ideas spewing vitriol at anyone who dares express an alternative point of view.

“So I just don’t bother trying anymore. And I suspect I’m not alone. I think that’s a problem, because as the moderate voices keep their heads down we lose out on a diversity of opinion, and the comment section increasingly becomes an echo chamber for those with a particular way of thinking.

“For example – how many commentators have written anything critical of ECoB? Or in support of council’s efforts to pass the Official Plan before the election? Even on something as banal as trying to make it easier to ride a bike around this city, few are willing to stick their necks out. Why poke the bear? Yet when I listen and talk to people in the community — many of them Gazette readers — I find a broad diversity of opinion on these matters. You’d never know it from reading the comments.

“I’m thankful you’re at least moderating comments — I can’t imagine how much junk you must filter out as it is. A real name (and ideally, validation of that name against a social media account) would be a good step. But I think the recognition that commenting on your site is a privilege, not a right, and certainly not a “free speech” right, is also important.”

We consistently have to tell people that we will not approve their comment.

In the back and forth email with Schofield we asked: Are we part of the problem? We wanted to be part of the solution.

An angry old man or an unhappy transit customer?

Schofield said “I don’t know if you’re part of the problem or not. You’re at least serving a helpful role in providing some form of media coverage in a city otherwise devoid of it. But I feel there is a strong echo chamber effect, both in the comments, and in the editorial content you feature. “Aldershot resident thinks…” and the like tend to pull from the same streams of consciousness as your most frequent commentators. Can you do more to foster some diversity — both in ideology and in demographics? Can you find some female voices and some young people to complement your “angry old man has something to say” content?

Schofield makes an exceptionally good point – one that has bothered us for some time. There are some very very good comments – and boy is there ever a lot of crap that doesn’t see the light of day.  Our objective was to give people a place where their comments and ideas can be published and shared.

In the the past few days the comments on the cycling survey the city is running are a case in point. There are people on both sides who go at it day in and day out and make the same argument.

The New Street Road diet idea was a disaster in the way it was executed and I think that the views of those opposed it were part of what brought the city the point where they realized it had to be cancelled.

The idea never got a chance to have a true trial run – mostly because the city found that the road was continually under some form of construction.

The New Street Road Diet never got a chance to be fully tested. Poor execution on the part of the city and the Region and vociferous opposition from the car set doomed the idea.

Schofield said he did not want to “dwell on New Street but I largely agree with you. As one of the instigators of the whole saga I’ve learned a lot from the entire experience. I still think it was a sound idea, but poor execution, and a 2 km stretch that didn’t connect to anything useful on either end didn’t set it up for success. Lessons learned and we’re moving on.”

Part of the purpose of the comments section in the Gazette is for new information to come to the surface, a place where sound, rational ideas can be voiced and a place where a citizen can hold the politicians they elected to account and ensure that the bureaucrats actually serve the interests of public.

Related content:

Lancaster asks for an anti-bullying – harassment Task Force.

By Ray Rivers

February 9th, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

“In the “old days,” when good news was reported, the Stock Market would go up. Today, when good news is reported, the Stock Market goes down. Big mistake, and we have so much good (great) news about the economy!” (Donald Trump Twitter Feb 7, 2018 – 9:59 AM).

But it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire, sir.  The US was already near full employment when Trump came into office.  So when Trump’s tax reform bill cut corporate taxes bigly, the US stock market players scrambled over one another to buy up those corporate shares.  And that drove up the market to historic levels, that is, until somebody whispered the word…. inflation.

Some inflation is normal in an economy, though it can get seriously out of hand as it did in the 80’s and 90’s.   And the instrument of choice to slow it down has been the interest rate.  It’s a draconian solution and tough medicine, jacking up the cost of borrowing to the point where the economy borders on recession.  We’ve seen this movie before and it ain’t pretty.

While corporate tax cuts may have spurred market volatility, Trump’s middle class tax cuts are also of concern when it comes to inflation.  More money in the pockets of the folks who spend almost every penny of it will lead to greater demand for goods and services which in a tight labour economy means inflation.

Mr. Trudeau, in his first budget, in 2016, also cut taxes for the middle class.  But Canada’s economy back then was hovering around recession with little danger of inflation.  And it worked because today Canada has the fastest growing economy in the G7 with near full employment numbers, especially in Ontario.

A hiccup there means an upset stomach here.

Still when Wall St. hickups, it is felt around the world.  So it’s now officially a correction (10% reduction in share values) and the hissy fit is over, but the volatility is still there.  And it’ll take more than Valium to chill out those traders who can smell what is coming, even if the US president doesn’t.

Expansionist policies in good times are as wrong-headed as austerity measures during recessions.  Instead of adding more money to the US economy as it steams into a wall, Trump should be cooling his jets – election promises not withstanding.  Either he does that or the US Federal Reserve will do it for him by raising the interest rates in due course.  And Canada will necessarily follow suit.

Rising interest rates will be painful for all us common folk holding serious debt or wanting to remortgage our homes.   But it also drives up the cost of borrowing for governments which have let their debt pile up over the years.   Canada’s federal government is already more than $700 billion in the red and we pay out about $25 billion annually in interest payments, about a third of that to foreign interests.

The Fraser Institute estimates that debt by all levels of government in Canada now exceeds a trillion dollars and the cost of interest alone is in in excess of $60 billion – roughly what is spent on all primary and secondary education in the country.

Here in Ontario the Wynne government balanced its budget last year, the first time since the 2008 recession, and is now forecasting surpluses and paying down the debt going into the future.  Of course that does not include the recent mortgaging of the electrical sector by crown corporation Ontario Power Generation, but that is another story.  Still, Ontario’s debt level now exceeds $300 billion with annual interest payments around $12 billion a year.

Caroline Mulroney flips on her carbon policy – decides to go with the party line.

There is a provincial election coming and the currently leaderless Progressive Conservatives are still leading in the polls, despite the fact that their last leader had been forced to resign in disgrace. The party’s election platform had been approved by the membership policy conference late last year and it includes taking Ontario back into deficit territory for at least the first year, should they become government.

This platform has essentially adopted most of the current Liberal programs.  But it also includes a notional 22% cut in income taxes that was to be balanced, in part, by a $4 billion carbon tax.   The carbon tax, an alternative to Ontario’s current efficient and business friendly ‘cap-and-trade’ program would be modeled on the one implemented in B.C.

Doug Ford was the first PC leadership candidate out of the gate – a significant threat to the Ontario we now have.

Doug Ford was the first leadership contender out of the gate, and his first campaign promise was to not impose the carbon tax.  The other two declared candidates at first indicated they’d stick with the platform as it was.  But they have now flip-flopped on the carbon tax, taking their lead from Ford and sidling up to his position.

So the questions are what else these wannabe leaders are prepared to rip out of their official election platform?  Do they even have a platform anymore?  Are they going to ask Ontario voters to put them into office with a whacking on-going $4 billion deficit?

And what will that mean for Ontario’s future budgets when interest rates climb making that debt even more expensive?  Will that mean the end of some hard-won health and social programs, such as the pharmaceutical-care plan for our children?  Or will we just be plunged back into never ending deficit spending?

Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.     Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

US Unemployment Rate –   Deficit by Country –     Business and Stock –

Inflation by Year –     Market Panic –    More Market –      Even More –

Republican Deficit –     More markets Canada –     Government Debt –

Even More –     Ontario Balanced Budget–    PC Candidates –

By Tony Schafer

February 8th, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

Having attended meetings of the ECOB, the mayor’s reverse Town Hall and the January 23, 2018 committee meeting, I get an overall sense that this Council has betrayed the citizens of Burlington.

You seek our support to get elected. We elect you because we believe you will represent our interests. We work with you to develop a vision of what we want our city to become in the future and this is reflected in the Official Plan (OP). You then embark on a history of deal-making with developers that ignores this plan and what was at one time our collective vision of the future.

The introduction by staff at the January 23 committee meeting included a detailed history of many meetings held to engage the citizens of Burlington in the development of a new OP. It seems you wanted to convince us that staff and Council had done everything it could to get our input. Unfortunately for us citizens, your feedback of the way this was playing out was poorly communicated and whether this was by accident or design we will never know.

Approval of the 23-storey building across from City Hall was a wakeup call that you had your own agenda, and that a new OP would have no more integrity with this Council than the last OP. That was the first time it became crystal clear to me that the vision of the future was being formed by a small cadre (with one exception) of omnipotent demigods we call Council.

Debby Morrison

Lisa Kierns – delegating.

Citizens – waiting to delegate.

The people of Burlington who have come forward in the debate on the new OP overwhelmingly oppose what you are doing. While this may not be a large enough sample to extrapolate this opposition to the entire population of Burlington, it should provoke you to give pause in this process and seek a new vote of confidence from the people to proceed.

In a February 1 article in the Burlington Post, the deputy City Manager is quoted as saying “by delaying the approval, Burlington would lose an opportunity to shape how growth and change in the city and downtown is going to occur”. Since we are talking about an OP that looks decades into the future, it is a huge stretch of credibility to believe that a delay of several months until after the municipal election will make any difference in how this plan unfolds.

If you truly believe that the majority of our citizens support your plan then you should have no concern with putting your belief to a test with an election.

On the other hand if you persist in ramming this unwanted OP down our throats, we can only hope that there will be a sufficient slate of new candidates in the fall election so that this Council, will be removed from office in a free and democratic vote, and replaced by elected officials who will work with the citizens of this community to develop an OP that truly represents a vision of the future that we can all buy into.

By Jim Barnett

February 7th, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

City staff did a lot of hard work putting together Grow Bold, a draft of the new Operating Plan for the city. It now appears that they did most of their work without very much in the way of asking the citizens what they wanted in the city going forward before it was published. After it was published, they then began a number of initiatives to engage with the public to introduce the Mobility Hub concepts.

The presentations were primarily used to sell what was in the Plan, give outside pressure from other layers of government as justification for a number of the conclusions reached and to keep the time line for passage as short as possible.

Jim Barnett at Mayor Rick Goldring’s Reverse Town Hall.

With each passing week the citizenry became more concerned . While there were a number of meetings, there was almost no dialogue. Even in the Reverse Town Hall, a new term, dialogue was discouraged. The essence of Town Hall Meetings is to encourage dialogue!

Then the bombshell. 421 Brant went from 12 to 17 to 23 stories!

The 421 Brant project was a surprise to many – they weren’t aware of the development and stunned at the height approved.

At the last committee meeting on the subject there were over 30 delegations, more than 90 percent against the plan and its current amendments,

Why?

I suggest the following.

1. The bombshell woke people up to what was happening to their city and they did not like it.

2. The Plan has four Mobility Hubs. Yet the downtown is very different from the others on the Go Train line. The downtown should have its own set of criteria, its own set of restrictions in the precincts and its own name such as Historic District.

3. A Transportation plan in general and Transit in particular are not in the proposal. People realize that you have to get people in and out and around the area efficiently and needs to be part of the plan, not something that is done sometime in the future.

4. Parking in the downtown area is insufficient now. What will it be like with all the planned new construction. Increased parking ratios for residences, visitors and commercial units in this area need to be increased now.

5. Affordable housing in the area keeps being mentioned as a necessity by some yet they do not come forward with a method to accomplished this. This needs to be corrected.

6. The Plan will and its iterations will affect Burlington for a long time , 25 to 40 years. There is no reason to not take whatever time is necessary to get it right and get the majority of the citizens on side. The timing of the municipal election should not be the issue.

Planning department expects to bring an updated Official Plan to council for adoption.

7. A plan has numbers so one can measures progress and if necessary take corrective action suggested by actual results not meeting the plan. The current proposal is almost devoid of actionable numbers. This a major shortfall in the proposed “plan”. The current draft is more of an essay than a plan.

8. There has been a suggestion that a meeting be called, under the chair of a moderator, where say 10 representatives of council and staff and 10 from those who have delegated spend a day to try and find common ground. This appears to have great merit. Lets hope the Mayor encourages the dialogue.

9. Past practice is for the Planning Department to grant deviations on property if in their opinion ” community benefits” are derived. This practice should be greatly curtailed.

10. There needs to be a large dedicated food shopping area in the plan. Otherwise, a walk able downtown plan is not complete.

Councillor Rick Craven – represents ward 1

11. The Councillor for ward one, at the council meeting on January 29, expressed his concern that there had been little feed back from the BIA or the Chamber of Commerce. I would think the planning department has an obligation to get submissions from both of these groups before proceeding. It should be noted that individual business delegations to council presented a number of short comings in the plan.

12. Joan Little, our columnist emeritus suggests that when the citizens and the developers are equally unhappy then council has it right. A better conclusion would be if everybody is annoyed, then there is a lot of work to be done.

In my opinion the process has been flawed. It is up to the council to take the time to get it right.

Jim Barnett is an east end Burlington resident who recalls the time when there was a strong citizens association.