It is unacceptable to be rushing this Official Plan through Development and Committee tonight to head to Council for a vote when the public has been given 14 days to comment on such major and drastic changes to the future of this City. Defer the approval of the Official Plan to June, 2018. Defer approval of the Downtown Mobility Hub precinct plan and Official Plan policies until June, 2018.
The Official Plan was released November 9, 2017 to the public, an email went out Nov 13/17 and the public was given 14 days to Nov 27/17 to comment. After only 14 days, why is this plan being considered today, November 30, 2017, at a Planning & Development committee meeting to be sent to Council for a vote? Noted, there were three public open house presentations of this plan from November 16 to 20th, 2017, 4 days, during which time I was out of the Country; I am sure that I am not alone in this situation. Many Burlington residents are still unaware that the Official Plan has been released.
This Plan is recommending drastic changes to the City and is going to forever change the landscape and culture of Burlington and our Downtown. This should not be rushed to Council prior to a specific, detailed design of the Downtown Core has been established and further public consultation and discussion. I haven’t had time to review the entire report, but I do not agree with raising heights to 17 to 25 storeys from 4 to 8 storeys in entire precincts and changing precinct borders without a more refined, detailed design of the Downtown Core.
The fight is for what kind of growth there will be on Brant Street – the spine of the Downtown core.
I am pro development, but I am NOT pro development of a canyon of 25 storey condo buildings up the entire length of Brant Street. What a sure way to kill the Downtown core for people and entrepreneurial business and encourage car traffic. What is being proposed would create a most unfriendly environment for people and create a congested traffic mess. This City is going to end up with what King Street in Toronto has become.
Toronto is spending millions trying to figure out how to end the daily traffic gridlock and bring people back to King Street at night. We have history and lessons close by to draw from, why would we do this to our Downtown Core? Who is benefiting from this type of Development and why are we in such a rush to move forward in this manner?
I attended many of the public sessions on developing the new official plan and the grow bold initiatives and was left with the impression that the majority of residents did not support this level of increased height and density in the core. The City is on target to meet their intensification targets of 200 people/jobs per hectare as we are already at 174 jobs/hectare, without this level of intensification in the Core.
It would be irresponsible to change these zoning laws without having a Downtown Design, Transit, Traffic and Infrastructure Plans in place. The traffic and construction time and effect of these buildings will gridlock the downtown in the near term and forever be a detriment to the appeal and draw to our downtown core. Any successful City needs a successful Downtown.
Proposed Downtown Core precinct
Making zoning law changes for Developers over these past years has led Developers to overpay for downtown properties as they gambled on whether or not they would be able to build 23 storeys vs. the zoned 4 to 8 storeys. These Developers have allowed the Downtown Core to become somewhat shoddy as they have not kept their properties in good repair nor have they allowed entrepreneurial business owners to sign long term leases. Developers wanted to be ready to go when “the height was right”. Should Developers be rewarded for these actions; driving up property prices and encouraging decaying property conditions. Why should the residents of the City have to pay the price because Developers are lamenting that they can’t make a profit on 4 to 8 storeys as a direct result of their own decision to overpay for property. Should Developers be driving the design and future of our Downtown Core? Or should the citizens of Burlington be the driving force behind the design of our Downtown?
A wonderful Downtown ‘culture’ has been emerging the past few years with interesting entrepreneurial businesses bringing residents and tourists alike to our Downtown Core. Kellys, a major draw for residents & young people from far and wide, Centro Garden Store & their Sunday Farmer’s market & Maker’s Markets, Tamp Coffee, a major meeting hub for business & residents, the Burro, draws a younger crowd from far and wide, just to name a few and none of these businesses will survive the higher rents these new high rise condos bring.
In fact, Kellys has been given their walking papers by a Developer, Centro is slated for a 17 storey development and we won’t get these businesses back. We should be nurturing and encouraging these business owners, as against all odds, they were building a culture and environment that was drawing young people, residents and tourists to the core. If there’s any doubt about that just look at the current businesses at ground level in the current high rise condo towers: real estate, bank, mortgage, franchise, medical, empty; absolutely no draw or culture to be found.
Sometimes what’s in the buildings is more important than the buildings and we have an opportunity to foster and create that environment in our City. Part of the Downtown Core should be developed into an area where these businesses can flourish, perhaps a Pedestrian Promenade. This should be designed prior to any change in the Official Plan. We only have one Downtown Core, there is no where else in our City for these businesses to relocate or this type of Pedestrian friendly area to be developed. I’m sure if this type of project was tendered to Developers, we’d see some wonderful plans.
We have a gem on the Lake, let’s be careful going forward and foster a thriving “Niagara-on-the-Lake” destination, not a “Toronto Queen’s Quay Nightmare” on the Lake.
I am pro development downtown, however, I am for reasonable, responsible development with a defined design plan prior to pushing forward.
Deby Morrison is a member of the Core Residents Association.
We appear to have attributed a comment made by Liz Benneian to John Was in the copy of the material from the Facebook page. Mr. Was is offended and has asked that we remove the comment attributed to him. He has asked for an apology – Sorry John – we certainly would not have you on the side of those who want to do something for the Trumpeter Swans
There are almost as many opinions on the usefulness of Facebook as there are people using the site. As a society we are still struggling with how to use it effectively, fairly and legally – without doing any harm. The Americans are still grappling with how the Russians intruded on their most recent presidential election.
Burlington is finding that its citizens have taken to Facebook to get their story out. The current story is the dis-satisfaction with the way city hall is rolling out an Official Plan and determining where growth can take place and what kind of growth can take place in various parts of the city.
The approval of a 23 storey tower opposite city hall was what set things off. Ward 2 city Councillor Marianne Meed Ward putt her views on what is known as the 421 Brant development on Facebook. Liz Benneian a well known and respected environmental advocate commented on the Meed Ward posting – and then things took off.
Liz Benneian
November 29 at 9:26am
All the people commenting on this thread, if you want to have any power over these decisions, you need to organize. Share your emails with each other. Organize a community meeting. Support each other in getting your views heard and delegating at Committee and then Council. Be prepared to be in it for the long-term. Organization and persistence are the key to having an impact.
Comments flowed in. If there was ever any doubt in your mind that social media works read on, and on – and on.
Phillip Wooster I don’t agree with this intensification by adding numerous tall buildings in the downtown core which will destroy the character of Burlington as we know it. But the question must be asked, “Why are the politicians, special interests/developers, bureaucrats supporting this type of development when as Marianne has noted we get NOTHING in return.”
Pam Casey I would like to register to speak at the meeting but before I do register, I want assurance that I will not be booed at. I would like to express my view. Can you make that happen Marianne?
Deborah Jukes I have lived in Burlington ALL of my life in the core as a child, then to north and four years ago, right sized back to the core! Hearing about this plan makes me want to leave Burlington…. this plan angers and saddens me! It shows no respect for our history or the life style we aspired to when we talk about a walking community! Be careful City Council- you about to pave paradise!!!
Candice Carson
There have been a few posts like this providing a bit of an “FYI” to residents but as our ward representative can you please share with us what actions you have taken to advocate on our behalf? From what I can…See More
MizTracy Ann
Some of the buildings that will be replaced by this plan look like they should have heritage designations. Do they? If there are appropriate places for higher rise buildings in the downtown, couldn’t a requirement be that they be designed with retail space at ground level?
MizTracy Ann If we were to distribute and place small signs on our property stating our opposition to the intensification. What do residents feel would be a good message to put on the signs? One clear statement we could all display. Thoughts?
Liz Benneian
Sorry for butting in again. Lawn signs are nice but the very best way to advocate for what you want is to contact your Council members. Phone them, write them, email them. Sign up to have your say at the relevant Council or committee meeting. Show up a…See More
Larissa Fenn
Participants on this thread may also be interested in the relevant background: https://www.burlington.ca/…/ser…/Official-Plan-Review.asp
Lisa Kane
Do we need to register to attend the meeting, or it is just for speaking?
Mark Sheehan
This video is disturbing to say the least. So in essence, the City planners and the “Rogue 5” Councillors are basically planning to tear down every one of the city’s historic/character buildings that make up Burlington’s charm and heritage and replace …See More
Lisa Quondamatteo Is there any kind of petition I can sign Marianne?
Liz Benneian
My two cents again. Usually petitions mean very little to politicians. Call, write, email, show up at Council. Organize your community. Make this an election issue.
Phil Garner
Awful
Thomas C. Riddell
Burlington fine the way it we don’t want to be Toronto lakeshore
David G. Denis
I want to register my disapproval of these plans. What is going on with the City of Burlington? I planned to retire here after living here for 30 years but the gridlock and lack of a downtown is going to make me leave. Is this a high density property t…See More
Michelle Sallows Preyde
Every city NEEDS to maintain a quaint, downtown core if the want to attract tourists, both local folks who shop and eat downtown for the experience and out of town folks who want to experience Burlington.
Leslie Clanachan
Burlington was one of the few cities that voted in favour of keeping the OMB so that should tell you where there priorities are. For shame councillors. I can’t imagine any resident in Burlington thinking this is positive and responsible growth plan. Li…See More
Geraldine Armitage
I think the Council has gone absolutely MAD. I would like to speak but will have trouble keeping civil.
Enid Donaldson
What a terrible idea. I thought what they allowed up at upper middle and Appleby was bad enough.
Ron Dennis
Back in the 1960s, when I covered Toronto Township, (Now Mississauga) for The South Peel Weekly, they had a tall building-loving planner known as Highrise Harry (Petschar). Looks like his ghost is lurking in Burlington city hall.
Iain Stubley Someone must be getting something in return some nice brown envelopes full of $$$$ and trips overseas … very sad how can those in power be so detached?
Linda Yvonne Johnson
How many historical buildings are going to be knocked over for this?? People from Oakville, Mississauga, Hamilton, Stoney Creek, Grimsby and beyond come to Burlington for our waterfront and the ambiance that exists in the downtown core. All of this w…See More
Frances C Iuticone
BIG NO. I live in the core. Traffic is unbearable now. I had no idea. Thanks for the info. I’m sharing to everyone
Barbara Hitsman
This is just terrible! I sure hope the city doesn’t let this plan go ahead! These are some lovely charming buildings!!😩😩😩👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼
Marie Grenier Davis
The same is happening in Aldershot, concrete and more concrete tall buildings are part of the plan.
Citizens will gather at city hall this afternoon and this evening to listen to the Planner defend the plans for the Downtown Mobility Hub and then listen to the council debate.
Burlington released it’s “official plan” recently; a 500 plus paged tome with a plan to pass it as quickly as possible. They may as well have called it “Hi-rises and traffic jams.” Believers in this plan have two precepts. 1) That they have found “good” and efficient ways for people to live. 2) It’s the government’s job to enforce it on the unwilling. The result will be a cost free infinite growth utopia. Here is the net effect of Burlington’s official plan:
Greg Woodruff
First it’s designed to make it difficult for future councils or citizens to limit the construction of high buildings almost anywhere. High-rises are encouraged in the “down town” in the “up town” (Appleby and Highway 5) around the Aldershot GO, Appleby GO, Burlington GO, Walkers GO (if province builds) and any “intensification zone” which is basically along any major road.
If you want to build higher then specified – don’t worry plenty of underlying “denser is better” principles are sprinkled through to allow you to win a OMB or tribunal at the provincial level. Placing new heights into the official plan this way effectively overwhelms the original zoning on thousands of properties by writ.
Walking is going to be one of the options in the forthcoming Master Transportation Plan.
Second it’s designed to create city wide grid lock. You can stay tuned for the “master transit plan”, but I can pretty much tell you what it says, “don’t drive anywhere.” Because if you do stupefying city wide gridlock will take place. The city’s solution will then mainly be to hector the population into busing, walking, biking or abandoning travel. Secondarily will be a push to remove parking around stores and GO stations (yes GO stations) with heroic investments into park benches, speed bumps, stop signs and traffic signaling. The theory being the faster the road system is unworkable the faster people will “come to their senses” and be hostages for city provided alternatives.
Third it bakes in the idea of “infinite sustainable growth”. Burlington is set on a vision to first looking like Vancouver, then Manhattan, then eventually like that episode of Star Trek where people were trying to escape population density via fatal disease. No limits or systems on when over building has occurred in an area. The formula for infinite cost free population growth has been found; people will just have to ration.
Even if this all seems great to you the manner in which this is going on should trouble us all deeply. You would think a city which represents it’s citizens should would want a long serious debate on all these plans.
Instead they are trying to rush this massive change through lest it become a long serious debate during the 2018 election. I remember this answer in 2014 when I ran; “The official plan is done” becomes the response when you question the judgement of those involved. That’s the purpose of the rush; to limit the scrutiny of the less involved citizen that might tune in for the 2018 election.
East side of Brant Street weeks days before Christmas 2013. Not a lot of vibrancy here – not much height either. This city does not yet know what it wants.
This is not an attempt to make Copenhagen or any other livable European city. Those places have mainly strict 6 floor limits and specific building specifications. The problem from a city planning overlord perspective is that those places can’t “grow forever.” At a certain density – that’s it. They don’t let you come back and bulldoze down the 6 floor buildings cut down all the trees put up high-rises, because that affects the livability of the city.
This official plan in not an attempt to create some higher form of density that enriches the lives of the population with choices. It not about creating sustainable green transportation options or there would be some concrete proposals to do that. It’s a just magic voodoo to allow infinite sustainable “cost free” growth to be the operational policy of the government. And we will be left with the problems when the snake oil salesmen have moved on to the next town.
Greg Woodruff is an Aldershot resident who comments frequently on city wide issues. He ran for the office of Regional Chair in 2014 and suggests aqt times that he will run for Mayor of Burlington in 2018
2017 – The year harassment dominated our news! In an epidemic of outings, victims of harassment seemed to be popping out from the woodwork determined to slay their dragons – some of the very people we once respected. The truth is many of us, at one time or another, have been victims or perpetrators of this socially destructive wrong. There is that bully at school, the overzealous landlord or tenant, a supervisor at work or a subordinate or maybe even even a disgruntled life partner.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission defines harassment as “engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought to be known to be unwelcome.” Harassment is often related to the exercise of power where an unequal relationship exists, such as an employer threatening employees with job loss or demotion for something unrelated to their job descriptions. And of course harassment is often associated with racism, sexism and ageism. It’s the ugly side of human social interaction.
Former Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi leaves court with his attorney Marie Henein (R), after an Ontario judge found him not guilty on four sexual assault charges and one count of choking in Toronto, March 24, 2016. Jenna Marie Wakani/Reuters
Assault may be involved though not necessarily. We recall CBC personality, Jian Ghomeshi, who stunned his national radio audience when allegations of sexual harassment and assault filled the papers back a few years ago. It was hard to believe that such a mild mannered on-air persona, a Dr. Jekyll by day, could also be such a Mr. Hyde by night. His punishment was losing his job and watching his promising career vaporize as the complaints of sexual misconduct piled up around him.
And assault is at the heart of the allegations against Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump and Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore. They have crossed a line which they either didn’t see or didn’t care was there. So they have met their comeuppance, except for Trump who despite something like 16 sexual accusations against him won the last federal election. He just denies everything and everybody as fake news and liars, with even more confidence than former president Bill Clinton.
President Donald Trump in a video that captured his views on how a celebrity could relate to women. It should have cost him the election but America ignored it.
Trump’s unwavering political support for religiously pious Alabama child predator Roy Moore is unconscionable. The irony of sexual predator Trump promoting another sexual predictor, Moore, while attacking former comedian Al Franken for his sexual harassment has obviously escaped him. One can only hope the voting public will place ethics and their own morality ahead of partisanship – but this is Alabama and this is an America in flux.
There is a cultural revolution taking place in our society. But the challenge, as with any revolution, is how to rein-in the overzealous and avoid over-reaction. Wilfred Laurier University (WLU) has hit the news over the matter of gender based personal pronouns and how they affect identity. The binary system of gender identification seems to be inadequate for some who cross over from one discrete gender to another.
One should always respect the wishes of how people want to be called, but it is difficult to understand why the terms ‘she’ and ‘her’ would be offensive to a person who has transgendered from a male body type to that of a female, for example. There is now a demand for the use of the gender-neutral terms like ‘they’ and ‘them’, or one of the new batch of pronouns, ‘ze, sie, hir, co, and ey’ and ‘Mx’ for Mr., Miss, Ms or Mrs.
Students at Laurie r University supporting the rights of a Teaching Assistant.
Of course the conflict at WLU is also about freedom of speech and the responsibility of educators to challenge their students to fully explore a subject’s matter. And that subject warns that the deliberate mis-use of an appropriate pronoun applied to someone could be seen as harassment. But looming in the distance is the concern that using the wrong pronoun might also be construed as discrimination under Canada’s recent law C-16. And that might lead to criminal penalties.
Country/pop singer Taylor Swift had been groped while doing a photo shoot with a radio personality back in 2013. After she complained to the station’s managers the creep lost his job and since he was out of work decided to sue her for damages. She’s the biggest star in music today, sings almost as well as me, and could afford the best lawyers money could buy, which I can’t. So Swift counter-sued and won as the judge threw his claim out the window.
Not everyone wants to end up in court on matters this personal, staring down aggressive legal beagles and exposing your innermost self to some fickle judge who might just deliver a bizarre judgement. Sexual harassment is a serious offence, was even before Canada’s government formalized its illegality, but so is libel and slander. And that puts more of the spot light on accusers to get it right – to be objective and fair.
Is the offense just a bad attempt at a joke or is someone genuinely out to hurt? As each new generation replaces the previous one, what was acceptable human behaviour continues to evolve. So jokes depicting racial or sexual topics and situations, once tolerated back in the day, are simply no longer acceptable. Still, the child is father of the man – people are captive to old habits and beliefs, even if those customs are no longer in fashion.
Tolerance cannot be a one way street. Some folks don’t understand that the world has moved on – they need help and education to wake up to reality. And education and conciliation may be a better pathway to peace than confrontation and litigation. That is true in cases of harassment, as in all things, despite the more recent trend to outing the culprits.
And sometimes actions and words can be ambiguous. A victim needs to be sure that harassment is what it seems before crying out, in case that cry turns out to be ‘wolf’ and the situation between them becomes intolerable. To that end the Ontario’s Human Rights Commission cautions that harassment needs to be seen in the context of a process – when it comes to words a single vexatious comment is insufficient. Because in the end nobody wants to be victimized twice.
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 a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Tweet @rayzrivers
Tony Brecknock, a parent with children who graduated from Pearson high school, the school he once attended came out of the gate swinging at the Administrative Review meeting held to hear the views of parents on a school board vote that closed the high school. He didn’t choose to thank the chair for allowing him to speak – he went straight to his main point.
“The HDSB policy clearly states that “There must be no fewer than ten (10) business days between the public delegations and the final decision of the Board of Trustees” , this simply did not happen on June 7, 2017.
Tony Brecknock, male figure in the centre, attended the PARC meetings and delegated the evening the vote to close the schools was taken
“I was notified of my delegation on June 6th, the day before I was expected to present and it was received and presented on the same day of the vote, June 7th, which means there was a failure of the board’s own policy, namely to provide the Trustees with the sufficient time needed to fully process any and all information before voting.
“This lack of due process, negatively and directly impacted the final decision to close two schools in Burlington.
“My delegation was to be a strictly timed, one shot presentation – I had submitted over 13 pages full of data – so I made sure to include the documents as attachments in my submission, of which a receipt was confirmed by the Board – at noon on the day of the vote.
“There is simply no way that all of my information was clearly ingested.
It became painfully clear that Chair Amos, on the left and the vice chair, Kim Graves did not know how to manage the confusing flow of motions that were before the meeting.
“On the night of the vote it was also apparent there was a lack of understanding of how to proceed.
“It seemed that the possibility of not being done, prior to a summer break, pressured decisions to be made ad hoc – not because of clear judicial thinking, but because of the clock ticking,
“During the meeting, the Trustees constantly bounced back and forth amongst specialists in the room, trying desperately to decipher the rules of engagement that they should have studied in advance.
“From that chaos, random recess’ started to happen – one of which was conducted, strategically prior to the final vote.
“The meeting should have been stopped right there, with everyone regrouping.
The vote was taken to close two of the city’s seven high schools so late in the evening (after midnight) that the electronic vote software had shut down. The trustees voted by a show of hands.
“This decision was made during the very late evening hours, after listening to an overabundance of information – it was a vote made under mental, emotional and physical duress, that in the end was pushed through.
“The prudent course of action would have been to wait 10 business days, as policy dictates, to allow for a period of reflection before a final vote.
“It needs to be mandated at a higher level, that the Boards are fulfilling their due diligence. They need to ensure they are delivering the best educational experience to ALL students.
“A Provincial moratorium on school closures, was put into effect, just two weeks after the vote for a reason – the realization of a flawed process.
“Had the Board adhered to their own policy, this vote would have been deferred to a time of better and calm understanding.
“This committee and by extension the Board, needs to take this review and adhere to the many key components within their own guidelines.
“They need to listen to those that continue to express dissatisfaction with the result, and re-vote to pause the closures – until they have fixed the process.”
It has taken decades for Canadians to begin to come to terms with our Indigenous community.
The federal government took us through the Truth and Reconciliation process and the Halton District School Board (HDSB) has been very proactive in getting the subject of recognizing and respecting the people who walked this land long before white people first sailed up the St Lawrence River.
Burlington doesn’t have an Indigenous population – we don’t have any direct issues to deal with. Thunder Bay is in a very different situation – something they struggle with.
The HDSB now makes a practice of having the Chair reads out a statement at the beginning of each public meeting.
Statement read at the beginning of every public session of the Halton District School Board.
There was a time when that Board may have had everyone stand up and Sing God Save the Queen or O’Canada
Most of us knew the words or at least some of them.
The Chair of the Board read the Honouring the Land and Territory – she shouldn’t have, at least not until she has taken the time to learn the correct pronunciation and is able to get her tongue around the more difficult ones.
To read the statement so badly is an insult to the Indigenous people.
There are Indigenous people on staff that can help the Chair get the pronunciation right. Some of the words are not easy – practicing and getting it right is what we owe these people. If HDSB Chair Kelly Amos cannot do it right – better not to do it at all.
Our ancestors took their land, do we have to mangle their culture?
How can citizens have some control over the changes that are made to their city?
The current crop of politicians on city council take the view that they were elected to lead and so they bring their values and approaches to leadership – failing to connect in a meaningful way with what their constituents think.
That just might be changing in Burlington.
There are currently three community groups protesting against decisions that city council has made or might be making in the months ahead.
The 421 Brant development is a done deal. The best the citizens were able to do was put together a petition and pack the city hall chamber with unhappy people. City council paid even less than lip service to their concerns and approved the project. There is a rumbling going on about a possible appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) that doesn’t look as if it has any traction.
Approved by city Council November 13th, 2017
While the 421 Brant decision is truly trans formative for the city – there wasn’t a deep understanding as to just what it is going to mean longer term. And while there were some strong points made during the delegations at the council meeting where the development was approved – there wasn’t a focused group behind the protests.
And, not everyone was against the development.
Brant street is a bit of a mess – it is a location badly in need of some of that “vitality” many think it already has. There are those who want things to be the way they were 40 years ago. The decision to grow the population and the geographical boundaries the city has to work within meant growing “up” and not out. The Burlington we had 40 years ago is no more.
There are two other projects that have people upset: The plans Meridian Brick has to begin mining for shale in the eastern sector of their property off the upper part of King Road and the Tyendaga Environmental Coalition (TEC) group that wants to bring that to a halt.
West Have residents don’t want the third shale quarry site to get into production. Saving their homes and 9000 trees is seen as critical to a planet that is staring climate change in the face.
Then there is the Plan B group that wants to ensure that the city doesn’t screw up the re-development of the Waterfront Hotel site.
What a group of well funded citizens want the re-development of the Waterfront Hotel site to look like.
The TEC and the Plan B people are taking a much more focused and well-funded approach to their issues.
The best that the people opposed to the height of the 421 development could do was get the support of the ward Councillor and deliver a petition to city council.
The Plan B and the TEC group have gone to their community and raised funds and then retained professional help to take on city hall.
There is talk amongst the movers and shakers about creating a slate of candidates for public office in Burlington and electing a council that represents the interests of everyone and not just the limited understanding that most members of the current city council have.
City Council: Three of the seven were first elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. One of the other four has been around for as long as 24 years.
To be fair to this city council – they were all re-elected in 2014 after being elected in 2010 – they felt they had a mandate. The people that are complaining now are the people that voted them all back into office in 2014. Surely there was enough evidence at the end of their 2010 term of office to know what they were going to deliver.
Are they politically adroit enough to change course and get ahead of the parade of protest that is taking place?
Or will enough of them give it up and move on to retirement. Councillors Dennison and Taylor have been in office for more than 20 years, the Mayor and Councillor Craven have close to 15 years as public servants behind them.
The big question is going to be – where will the new blood come from? Are there any prospective candidates out there that show at least some promise?
Salt with Pepper is the publisher’s opinion column.
A reader recently suggested that we might have to leave this planet should the consequences of climate change become overbearing. Fortunately for him astronomers have been working on that very solution.
They have located a planet which just might do the job as our next residence – a new earth for us after we have filled-up all the proverbial ashtrays here. It is an unfortunate human condition for too many of us – move on rather than clean up the teenager’s bedroom we live in.
The Planet Ross B
The planet Ross 128 b has a temperature not unlike ours, today. And it is only 11 light-years away – too far for the daily commute but, at only 65 trillion or so miles, it might be close enough for the hardiest and youngest among us to relocate. And the really good news is that, being about a third larger than our earth, it will be that much longer before we’d need to move again.
To expedite this kind of travel, scientists are working hard to invent a functional working particle transport mechanism, like the one used to ‘beam them up Scotty’. That would allow space cadets to avoid those deep-sleep chambers which Stanley Kubrick imagined in his travels with HAL back in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of course I am expecting any day to hear that the amazing Elon Musk has developed a new Tesla which can reach warp speed.
The Starship Enterprise – many of us were raised on the story of that adventure. Was it just a peak of what is to come?
Kubrick’s flick dates back to the late sixties, well before most of us had even heard of global warming. But now it is over two decades since the global science community came together in Rio (1992) to really ring the alarm bell. Brian Mulroney should always be remembered for the leadership he showed in bringing his minsters on-side, back then, with all things environmental including the changing climate.
In fact most of Canada’s political leaders have done more than just pay lip service to the environment. Pierre Trudeau led the fight against acid rain, Mulroney expedited the clean-up of the Great Lakes, and Chretien signed onto the Kyoto climate agreement, though he did little about actually implementing it. But Stephen Harper was the odd man out, pulling the country out of Kyoto and eroding other environmental protection safeguards.
GW Bush must have been Harper’s mentor, for they were in lock-step on tax cuts for the rich and the war in Iraq, as well as global warming. In the end Bush was so reviled by his peers and party that he wasn’t even invited to attend the GOP leadership conventions. Who would have thought America could have had a worse president, at least until Mr. Trump showed up?
Andrew Scheer, leader of the federal opposition
And now Harper’s protégé, the thirty-something Saskatchewan. MP Andrew Scheer has taken over the reins of Canada’s second party. Scheer is not yet a household name so has embarked on an advertising campaign to that end. But the early ad I watched was just fluff, the safe stuff all politicians are guided to spout – where’s the beef? He has been labelled a social conservative and today that tag represents some of the most divisive aspects of social policy, particularly when it comes to gender politics, a woman’s right to choose and the environment.
Coming from the prairies it is unsurprising that this young Diefenbaker mostly echoes the tired ideology of Brad Wall, the province’s outgoing Premier – oil is king and never say yes to a carbon tax. But Saskatchewan is yesterday’s Alberta, at least when it comes to energy and climate change. How ironic that this home of Canada’s socialist party, the NDP, is being led by the neo-con Wall.
Scheer might want to mimic the approach his former colleague and once fellow Harper-era MP Patrick Brown has employed since he became leader of Ontario’s PC party. Brown has seen the light, is a changed man, and from what he has been saying about policy these days almost sounds like a Liberal – a far cry from that last extremist Tory leader. Brown has done a one-eighty degree turn on classroom sex education and a woman’s right to choose. Of course that is not how he campaigned to the party faithful back when he was running for the job.
Something about the climate, and I don’t mean the weather report, is on the front page almost every day now. So Canadians cannot help but think about what is happening to our world. Hopefully the security of our planet will be among the highest priorities of the next Prime Minister to be elected in 2019. And that would mean a real carbon reduction strategy, including a conservative policy on population.
Even back in my day most folks who cared about the environment restricted themselves to simple replacement, a two child family. That wasn’t because we didn’t love children – but because we did – and cared what kind of world we were leaving them. It is estimated that a third child for a family in America would add almost ten thousand tonnes of extra carbon into the environment, almost twenty times more than could ever be saved by any of us turning down the thermostat, adding more insulation and driving hybrid-electric cars.
Tesla SpaceX recoverable rocket. No longer will vehicles go into space and disintegrate when the re-enter earth’s environment – they can now be brought back to earth. The grandchildren cam visit at Christmas.
Indeed the single most effective way for any of us, of child bearing age, to reduce our carbon footprint would be to restrict ourselves to having only one or two children. The consequences to this planet of having as many as five children would be literally astronomical – and would indeed force astronomy and all things related to astronomy to become our highest priority.
Ray Rivers writes reguloarly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Tweet @rayzrivers
In November of 2016 Jim Young said to city council during a debate on the amount of time a citizen would have to delegate that: “Sometimes it may seem as if we delegates are the enemy of the process. That we somehow stand in the way of the great works and plans you all have in mind for the city.
“The democratic processes of our city demand that qualified, talented professionals like the city staffs and managers, we are fortunate to have in Burlington, apply themselves to a certain vision of the city.
“That they nurse that vision through the often tortuous process to council for approval and implementation, only to have someone like me, a citizens delegate, put a flea in council’s ear, a spoke in staff’s well-oiled wheel and force a review all of their efforts and the inevitable delay that brings.”
Jim comments on the most recent meeting of city council.
On Monday night Burlington City Council, ignoring the more than 1400 signatures on a petition and the 13 delegations opposed to it, voted to break their own rules governing downtown development and allow the development of a 23 story building in contravention of their own 12 Story bylaw. (Only one delegate, the developer, spoke in favour of the project.)
This was a sad display of council voting against the vast majority of citizen opinion, a rejection of local voices made even sadder by the fact that compromise may have been possible. Instead entrenched positions and a degree of “Not in My Wardism” were allowed to carry the day.
Jim Young delegating before city council.
We all know and understand that council cannot be swayed by every nuance of public opinion, we elect them to lead and expect them to do so, but in this instance the opposition was so overwhelming and the possibility of compromise so obvious that the wisdom of the five Councillors who voted for the amendment, in a the year before an election, must be seriously questioned.
Why, for instance, could the developer not have settled on 15 or 17 floors, there would still be ample profit in this, it would still meet intensification targets and be much less intrusive on the character of the area?
Why was there no offsetting land allocation for park or green space? Why does council not hold the developer responsible for affordability units in the development? (Only vague and non-binding considerations on affordability are embodied in the proposal)
While sensible intensification and increased density are supported by all of council, city staff and the majority of citizen opinion, last night’s decision to allow a development so far removed from the official plan, existing bylaws and any sense of building proportion, may well prove to be a tipping point in the eventual destruction of Brant street as we know it. Other developers have already snapped up adjoining properties and now have the green light on non-complying developments.
Ironically, the idea of downtown walk-ability and community vibrancy that the downtown plan seeks are the very things that will be destroyed by developments like this as the floodgates open and they become the new downtown.
On Monday night, there was palpable feeling that there may have been a settling of old scores between some members of council and ward 2’s Councillor Meed Ward. It would be a sad day indeed if decisions of this importance are based on past enmities. Hopefully, electors will such behaviour accountable in next year’s civic election.
Jim Young as he thinks through a point he is making at a transit meeting.
On the subject of elections, if I may be so bold as to offer Councillor Dennison some advice: Questioning the integrity of a well-intended citizen petition is just not smart politics. Even if a few of the more than 1400 signatures were not fully vetted, disparaging the integrity of the signatories as well as insulting a lot of citizens, ward constituents and voters, is hardly the way to encourage civic engagement by well-meaning citizens. If a few signatures were disqualified would 1399 have swayed you?
Mayor Goldring had to remind the gallery of the rules of decorum at the groans which accompanied one Councillor’s suggestion that this would not set a precedent for future downtown development, (by Wednesday, one more developer had requested approval to add two more stories to a proposed building at Locust and Elgin Streets) or that council’s rejection of citizen input is a template for future engagement.
While he insisted, we will listen in future and staff will listen in future. The groans from the gallery suggested: “Then why are you not listening now?”
Burlington City Council loves to parade their national and international honours and laurels for civic engagement. They now have to learn that when you talk the self-congratulatory talk you must also walk that walk!
When you ask citizens to come together, ask for their input, then, when they do, you overwhelmingly reject them, you can no longer claim that high ground on civic engagement.
You either listen to your voters and compromise or they will assume their voices are only heard at election time with all the future electoral consequences that entails.
The condominium that is to be built on the corner of Brant and James Street is to rise up to 23 storeys.
How many parking spaces, the number of elevators, how many, if any, affordable units – all that will get worked out in the months and weeks ahead.
We now know that the land assembly of the block to the south is all but complete – just the jewellery store to be acquired.
What we heard however is that the block to the south – the one that was once the Elizabeth Interiors operation – is going to be limited to 17 stories – a limit that is set out in the Downtown Core Mobility Hub that isn’t cast in stone yet.
That could be both a mistake and a missed opportunity.
We have yet to hear much in the way of negative comment on city hall as a structure. It gets referred to as “iconic” and the city planner likes the building.
Given that we are going to have high rise buildings can we not make the best of it. If the city hall is really “iconic” (I’ve yet to be convinced) then feature it.
While Burlingtonians hate Toronto being made a reference point – bear with me.
When you drive up University Avenue from Front Street and approach Adelaide there are two towers (Toronto type towers) on either side of the street. Both are Sun Life Assurance buildings meant to frame University as you go north.
Set aside that the two buildings on either side of University Avenue in Toronto loom over the street – it’s Toronto. Note the way they frame the street.
The photograph we have dropped in isn’t all that good but it makes the point. It is possible to have buildings in place that serve as a frame to what lies beyond.
Now come back to Burlington and place yourself on James Street a block or two along the street and look towards city hall.
James Street looking west to Brant Street.
The current Carriage Gate building, on the right in the photograph, which is going to be turned into a 23 story tower. That is a done deal.
The property on the left, now the vacated Elizabeth Interiors store will fall within the rules that are going to govern the development limits for the Downtown Mobility Hub.
There is an opportunity here.
Someone with initiative and a desire to see something significant come out of the decision that has been made could pick up an idea like this and make a difference.
Why not work with Carriage Gate and Revenue Properties (the people who are assembling the block south of Brant and James) and build a better city.
Look for a design that is as close as possible to identical in design and have them rise to the same height. Same set back from the side walk; same trees, same patio set up, same sidewalk furniture.
The public art set outside each building would complement each other.
That is something that people could be proud of and perhaps change the way downtowners look upon their city. For those who need the quaint and historical the Queen’s Head and the old Russel Hotel will still be there.
Can the 421 project be more than just the first high rise tower in the downtown core?
Look at the Sun life building on University.
All this assumes that those opposed to the Carriage Gate building don’t take their beef to the OMB.
The 421 Brant development, approved by a city council Standing Committee, goes before city council for approval this evening.
Are they an accurate barometer of what the public in general is thinking or are they an opportunity for people who are opposed to something to show their opposition?
Do the politicians pay attention to petitions?
In many cases a petition is the only voice people have when they want to oppose something their government.
The current petition asking the city to stick to the current zoning for the northeast corner of Brant and James streets was put forward by Joanne and Kevin Arnold who said they created the petition to change something they cared about. 1384 people have added their name so far.
The people who are opposed to the New Street Road Diet have collected 2641 signatures as of January – that is the most recent number – appear to have signatures from the ward the bike lanes are in.
UPDATE: As of Nov 13th there are 3262 signatures, plus 500 signatures on a hard copy of the petition.
A number of years ago Councillor Marianne Meed Ward created a petition to oppose the sale of lake front property the city owned between Market and St. Paul Street – she got more than 2000 names on that petition. The property was still sold.
Those opposed to the now recommended development at Brant and James have the right to delegate before city council.
The city is faced with a serious problem – they are required to add significantly to the population of the city and there isn’t very much land on which to build new homes. They can’t build out – so they are going to build up. And they chose to recommend to council that a project that would have 23 storeys be approved. The 5-2 vote was pretty emphatic.
Are those opposed to the development – they say they are not opposed to height they just don’t want it built on property so close to the waterfront – wanting a Burlington that cannot be sustained?
Gary Scobie delegating before city council – he was one of the few that had anything to say about the development at a city Standing Committee early in November.
There were not very many public delegations speaking against the development when it was at the Standing Committee stage. The city manager spoke more forcefully for the project than any city manager has spoken in this reporter’s memory.
City councils are elected – put in office to serve the people. If the public is really, really, really opposed to this project have several hundred of the 1380 who signed the petition get off their couches and head for city hall and use their five minutes to demand that city council respect their wishes.
Something like THAT would have an impact.
The Gazette has published the delegationTom Muir, an Aldershot resident will make to city Council this evening. A review of the comments about his delegation is worth a read – it gives a sense as to how the public feels about this issue.
An Open Letter from former Mayor Mary Munro to the current Mayor is also a solid insight on how this development proposal has been managed.
Salt with Pepper is an opinion column written by the publisher and sole share holder of the Burlington Gazette.
What does a former Mayor say to the current Mayor on issues they disagree on?
Mary Munro – Burlington Mayor 1997 and 1998
Mary Munro, Burlington’s Mayor in 1977 and 1998 has said to Walter Mulkewich Mayor from 1992 to 1997 that she didn’t ever vote for a high rise on Lakeshore Road.
The Bridgewater project was approved during Mulkewich’s term as Mayor.
Now Munro wants our current Mayor to know that she isn’t particularly impressed with what he is doing either.
In a Letter Munro said:
Dear Mayor Goldring:
First of all, I was bemused the City Manager, James Ridge, led off @ what was a Planning Committee discussion of a proposed project. Also bemused by his statement of the desirable merits of the project, leaving no doubts about his support. I wonder about Ridge’s history and his planning experience, let alone the propriety of his intervening @ the outset of discussion — would it be he wanted to forestall the usual agenda, i.e. Planning Dept.’s introduction and explanations of the effects of the project? or to discourage interveners’ arguments or presentations ?
Burlington city manager James Ridge
I believe Ridge’s statements were prejudicial to the aim of the public meeting, i.e to hear from Burlington citizens their views, and to let City Councillors debate the issues without the bias, possibly formed by Ridge’s remarks.
On the merits of the project , as an active and involved Burlington resident since 1959, I somehow “blew it” by long before now, not being aware of the changes to the Official Plan and Zoning By-Laws that allow dense development on Burlington’s “Main Street “. I thought , obviously wrong, we all had a vision of Burlington following the wise moves of our sister communities on the shores of Lake Ontario to stand against density in their downtown and to promote historical and profitable enterprises in their town centres.
It seems to me, B has little likely hood of becoming more than a city of tall towers, not treasuring it’s history and wonderful attractions. More than that, it might be possible to affect change, so late in the game, by looking carefully at candidates in our next City election.
Ask yourself, do we really want reps who say “The future is in tall buildings.” Or one who called “the project fantastic”. Or one who said ” Councillors have to view everything from a high level'”.
This is your city evolved by truly dedicated people — so why not take ownership of your own interests in how we live?
It’s not a compliment. Calling our federal environment minister ‘climate barbie’ is a sexist trick intended to demean her and distract the public from the serious work she is doing. But The Rebel, Canada’s alt-right publication, is using this ad hominem because they don’t have a single shred of evidence to disprove the climate science she supports.
Why is it that The Rebel and its co-conspirators on this topic, the shrinking but determined pool of climate deniers, see this the earth’s climate as a partisan issue? And how can survival of life as we know it on this planet be even an ideological issue? This is a good question to ask as we learn that CO2 levels are now the highest they have been in a million years.
Of course climate change is happening and of course we humans are almost entirely responsible. Denying reality won’t make the problem go away or allow us to hide in an alternate universe, in the right wing. And calling an environment minister names will not change public policy in this country. At the end of the day even Mr. Harper realized that he had to take global warming seriously.
Perhaps in time his replacement, Mr. Scheer, will as well.
Andrew Scheer, Leader of the Opposition, House of Commons
Andrew Scheer has some history with The Rebel, at least through his campaign manager from the Tory leadership race. So when somebody in Catherine McKenna’s office sent a congratulatory note to two of the remaining nations to sign on to the Paris Climate Agreement, Scheer, he couldn’t help himself and fired a volley at the minister. But rather than get embroiled in squabbling over this nonsense McKenna elected to apologize and let the matter die.
It wasn’t like she was congratulating the despotic Mr. Assad on his human rights record – just that Syria was joining the rest of the world in agreeing to subscribe to global climate change targets. That by the way leaves only one significant polluter and rogue nation out of the global movement to combat this serious problem. And given what we understand about the changing climate, that is more scary for us than what’s happening in Syria.
The Rebel represents the worst in right wing extremist journalism. Their correspondents have even been banned by the Alberta government for their obnoxious behaviour. Not just a sexist rag, it has also cast itself as racist, given its response to the Quebec mosque shooting last year and its reporting of the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville Virginia. Its coverage of that white supremacist event, which culminated in street violence earlier this year, led to mass resignations among the less extreme supporters of this particular medium.
But The Rebel and its publisher are not relenting, even as Post Media, the other Canadian right wing standard, is trying its best to steal some of the almost million Rebel followers to boost its own ratings. So this week veteran Post journalist, Rex Murphy, tore into Canada’s new governor general (GG) for stating the obvious, telling us what we already know about science and the challenges scientists faces in an ever skeptical world of alternate facts and social media.
Governor General Julie Payette
Her Excellency Julie Payette, Canada’s former astronaut has exceptional qualifications in science and was addressing a science policy conference. Along with puzzling at the wherefore of climate change denying, she moved on to question people’s faith in horoscopes before shifting to that other faith – the wording Moses supposedly wrote into the book of Genesis – the one about creation. And seriously, nearly two centuries after Darwin there are still folks out there who deny that humans are an evolved species.
And this is important since while Ontario’s separate (Catholic) schools are required to teach evolution, that doesn’t necessarily mean they need to teach human evolution. But it wasn’t just Rex ranting. Andrew Sheer also leveled both barrels at the new GG.
Then outgoing Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall jumped in, actually sending the GG a personal letter scolding her and lecturing her to better behave if she ever plans to visit his province.
But earth to Brad, the GG is head of state (Queens representative) and doesn’t need your invitation to visit Canadians anywhere. Given that the the province’s police force, the RCMP is also Canada’s national police force, it’s not clear how he would stop her anyway. And she can speak on almost any topic she chooses, after all her position is non-partisan though hardly non-political.
Human evolution is a touchy subject since it does touch on the Bible and some other belief systems, such as those held by our indigenous folk. But Scheer and Wall are likely more bothered by her comments on climate science than her observations on our acceptance, or not, of evolution. Perhaps it is the other faith – faith in the future of fossil fuels – which is most threatening them. That would account for their over-reaction to a scientist speaking science at a science conference.
Many years ago, then newly appointed governor general (GG) Ed Schreyer was guest speaker at the University of Ottawa where I received my Masters degree. A former MP and Manitoba Premier, an environmental leader and a social progressive, there was just so many topics he could have explored before the crowd of eager young graduates. Instead he plunged right into discussing the eternal struggle between the arts and the sciences.
Give me Julie Payette any day.
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 a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Tweet @rayzrivers
The Draft of the Official Plan will be public on Friday – it runs close to 1000 pages. Those with a major interest in the contents of that document are going to have less than 20 days to respond to it.
Suzanne Mammel, the Halton Hamilton Home Builders Association (HHHBA) Executive Officer explains that Official Plans usually go through at least half a dozen versions. The current document is in its second version.
Burlingtonians complain loudly and frequently about how city council fails to uphold there Official Plan.
There are four Mobility Hub studies taking place. The city wants to get the Downtown Core Mobility Hub approved before the end of the year.
There are the plans for the redevelopment of the Waterfront Hotel property that the city is pushing with their Emerging Preferred Concept. There are citizens who don’t like what they are seeing.
What’s the rush?
The word is that James Ridge the city manager wants as much of this as possible approved by city council before they all move into major election mode.
There are citizens who want to suggest to the city manager that he lighten up and let these issues become election issues.
Lots of talk at last night’s council meeting on developing Brant street.
The thing that horrifies me is that people in support of the 23 story building or against it seem to have no idea why. Developer wants 27 stores, staff want 23 and the mayor wants 17. Average is 22.3 should we go with that? Here is how you should actually decide these things – with math.
The typical Paris apartment building – six floors – “people love them”claims Woodruff.
You never need to build buildings more than 6 floors high – ever. Skip the math if you like – down town Paris, France has a density of 210 per hectare and the buildings are limited to 6 floors – people love that place. The province requires 200 per hectare in down town Burlington. So in practice you can see an actual functional example of the density not needing to be high at all.
However for the skeptics lets go through the math and see why that is. I’m going to round these numbers for readability.
1 Hectare = 107,639 square feet 8% loss for roads/sidewalk 100,000 square feet (107,639/0.92) 50% lot coverage 50,000 square feet (100,000/2) 4/6 floors of living 200,000 square feet (50,000*4) 10% Hallway and amenity loss 180,000 square feet (200,000*0.9) Density of 200 people or jobs per hectare 900 square feet living a person. (180,000/2)
I support large flexible large family apartments so my sizes are 1 bedroom 800 and 2 bedroom 1,200 and 3 bedroom 1,600. This is 6 floor buildings with a floor of commercial at ground floor and a floor of office space and left 50% of the ground open and provided very generous apartment sizes. I still have 5,000 square feet of feet space left over assuming all 1 bed room apartments with 1 person each which is not true in practice. This means lots and lots of space to add back to open space, road/sidewalks or reduce the building to 3 floors along the street which is preferred by pedestrians.
For reference the current density of Burlington is 10 people per hectare possibly 20 per hectare in the non-green belt area. Taking the already build on area to 200 per hectare would mean 2 million people would live here. Even if Copenhagen like ‘alternative’ transportation rates – which there is no evidence at all we could get anywhere close to and have done nothing to produce – road congestion and pollution alone will have reduced this area to a terrible slum long before we get anywhere close to that. The 183 cars proposed in this development alone would stretch out more that 1km in bumper to bumper traffic. That’s half the distance from the lake to Fairview street – from one development. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Which gets back to the decision. We can have high buildings – if the local community gets so much for the building – they want it. Seems the only people who want this building are the developers, city staff and councilors that do not represent Ward 2.
So would I approve it – no. It can be limited to 6 floors (yes I know the zoning is 12 at present) or the developers can come back with a better offer that gets people who live down town on board. The principle is: We live here – we decide.
Buildings larger than 6 floors are not required by any provincial planning document. Target density numbers of 200 people per hectare (down town) and 150 (mobility hub) do not require sky scrapers.
People who tell you large buildings are needed to hit density numbers are either mis-informed or spouting gibberish.
Greg Woodruff
Greg Woodruff is an Aldershot resident who has a propensity for numbers and mathematics. He ran as a candidate for Chair of the Region of Halton in the 2014 election. He appears to be setting himself up for a run in the Mayoralty race in 2018. His views are his own and are published as part of a civic debate.
First we take Alberta then we take B.C. But not likely so in Ontario, even with all the animosity being heaped on current Premier Wynne from all sides. Still, who would have thought Alberta. And now B.C., where questions about the Site C and Kinder Morgan projects are making residents wonder whether their new leader, like the one next door, will be taking no prisoners.
Rachel Notley, Premier of Alberta
Not everyone welcomes the changes Rachel Notley is delivering in that free-spirited cowboy-centric land, though most concede that after four decades of the Progressive Conservatives (PC) it was time for a change. Peter Lougheed ended almost half a century of rule by those unconventional, depression-era, and once anti-Semitic Funny Money Social Credit people in 1971. He ran such a good show over his years that a review by a panel of powerful and prominent political hacks had voted Lougheed the best Canadian provincial premier ever.
Peter Lougheed, one of the best Premier’s the province ever had.
Lougheed eventually was followed by Ralph Klein, a man loved by his electors despite his own love for the bottle and an occasional outrage. He lasted over a decade despite being ranked near the bottom of the barrel in that review of premiers, tied with his ole’ drinking buddy Mike Harris. But Klein, a former Liberal, had come into office a reformed man, determined to out-right the right wing of the Alberta PC party. He was the darling of the Fraser Institute, which cheered him on as he eliminated deficits and debt, cutting spending like a novice butcher, inadvertently removing a lot of the beef with all that fat.
His cuts to health care were massive, such that the province was faced with never before seen waiting lists for surgeries, and with the gurneys lining up on the corridors. It was a legacy of neglect on almost all fronts which would come to haunt his successors and eventually the NDP’s Notley, as she struggles to diversify the provincial economy after the last oil price shock.
Ralph Klein
King Ralph was the first Canadian premier to introduce a flat income tax, which together with reduced corporate taxes and oil royalties forced him to raid Lougheed’s cherished Alberta Heritage Trust just to pay the bills. So today, unlike other oil money endowments established in Norway and Alaska, Alberta’s trust fund is almost empty. And when that proverbial rainy day came there was almost nothing left in the kitty to help keep the lights on.
Notley has done some pretty dumb things too, reportedly dispatching civil servants to teach Albertans how to change their light bulbs and conserve energy. But her success in cooperating with the federal government landed her approvals for the pipelines the province so-badly needs to keep its oil sands extractions busy. Setting a limit on climate change emissions from the oil industry, phasing-out coal fired electricity, and introducing a carbon tax more generous that what the feds had been demanding have made her a kind of maverick in a province too often known to be a donkey on the environment.
Evacuation of Fort McMurray during fire storm
But people will remember her for her passionate response to the wildfire that ravaged Fort McMurray, the oil sands capital. Eighty thousand people were forced to flee their homes as more than 6000 square kilometres were destroyed, including half a million hectares of woodland. Costs, always suspect in something of this magnitude range into the billions, with almost $4 billion just in insurance claims. Some will call this an act of nature, but others will say I told you so. They will point to the irony of the devastating fire happening smack on the footsteps of Alberta’s immensely carbon-intensive oil sands operations, saying this is but a prime example of being hoisted with our own petard – wait for the second shoe.
Notley has also pushed infrastructure development to create much needed jobs, in the process necessarily expanding the deficit beyond what her immediate predecessor, former Harper minister Jim Prentice, had been forced to reinstate. She’s been getting flack over her $15 minimum wage for 2018, not unlike the flack Ontario’s premier has been earning on that file. And her plan for farm workers’ accident compensation has got the agricultural folks all riled up, regardless that it is there to protect them from tedious and costly injury law suits.
Jason Kenney
Enter Jason Kenny and his recent accomplishment merging the PCs and Wild Rose parties under a new United Conservative banner. Kenny is much like Stephen Harper, another ex-Ontarian whom he worked for as Minister of Defence. His resume shows that, like his former boss, he is a professional politician who once headed a taxpayer lobby group. He is a social conservative, having voted in favour of limiting a woman’s right to choose and was one of those Harperites who voted against same-sex marriage – before he too saw the light. Those perspectives should do him well out on the prairie farmland, though he may need to moderate his views when he campaigns in the cities.
Although Notley had won a majority of seats in Alberta’s first past the post (FPP) system last election (54 of 79 seats) she only obtained a little over 40% of the total vote. That is still a respectable mandate for a multi-party FPP election, but it will be an uphill battle to repeat that victory. There was unusual voter anger in the last election – a sense of betrayal over an empty Heritage Fund, a tumbling economy, corruption and a stale government in disarray without any answers or vision once the price of oil went into the dumpster.
The way Alberta’s cowboy culture likes to be seen.
Memories in politics tend to be short and many of these voters have spent decades only voting PC. Like any addiction that can be a little hard to kick. So the NDP would do well to take the threat posed by new Conservative leader Kenny seriously. Winning the next election won’t be nearly as easy for Notley as the last time despite the fact that Alberta is coming back. In fact the province is on the road to restoring its position as one of Canada’s leading economic powerhouses – in part thanks to Notley’s management.
Background links: Notley After 2 years – https://globalnews.ca/news/3427870/timeline-a-look-at-rachel-notleys-2-years-as-alberta-premier/
Lougheed the Best – https://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Alberta+Peter+Lougheed+easily+tops+list+Canada+best+premiers/6562534/story.html
Klein a More Positive Obit – https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ralph-klein-70-the-man-who-ruled-alberta/article10569210/?ref=https://www.theglobeandmail.com&
More Klein – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Klein
Heritage Fund – https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/what-happened-to-albertas-cash-stash/article24191018/?ref=https://www.theglobeandmail.com&
Jason Kenny – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Kenney
Resident expresses an opinion that appears to be held by many – when 194 of 213 parents in a school sign a petition – the numbers have to tell you something. Might be something the ward trustee would make a note of.
In 2009 Lester B. Pearson high school didn’t appear to be targeted – or did it? The sudden rush to build Frank D. Hayden Secondary School, and the need to fill it too, without a doubt led to the sacrifice of Lester B Pearson high school. The following are the actual utilization (UTZ) numbers for 2008/9, along with projections.
In the 2009 Application numbers, Pearson was at 120.2% UTZ and fell to 90.3% UTZ in 18/19 – neither a radical change, nor a tip-off to later. Lester B Pearson enrollment went from 768 to 577. This is more than sustainable.
M.M. Robinson band – popular and energetic. Their school was spared serious consideration for closure when the data suggests they should have been looked at.
It would appear that MM Robinson high school wasn’t even considered for closure, why? MM Robinson high school (MMR) was at 93.7% and fell to 53.4%. Enrollment went from 1262 to 719. Why was MMR spared?
All the others are as noted in the 2009 records, and Robert Bateman high school is given the lowest UTZ at 43.9%, projected in 18/19. and seems targeted, as it is bolded in red in the application numbers, but still has 588 students, down from 1327. Perhaps with its’ regional programs the Halton District School Board (HDSB) feels it is an easier target with moveable student sections. This would indicate that the HDSB did not look at the school population as a whole, but rather at the school/students as segments to be moved at will.
Note that in the 2009 Application numbers, the UTZ projections are more muted than in the PAR numbers, with Central, MMR, and Bateman all below Board targets of 65%.
Pearson is again at 90%, and Nelson is at almost 96%.
In the recent 2016/17 PAR data, things change to Pearson parent’s alarm. From the sudden removal of Kilbride students and their redirection to Hayden, to what was just the beginning of the intentional depletion of Pearson’s student body – what happened here between the application projections, and the PAR numbers?
What else except the building of Frank J. Hayden Secondary School and the HDSB planned draining of students to fill it? Choices were made on who got hit, and that changed the numbers. Why then, were school trustee Peggy Russell’s warnings ignored that Hayden’s build would create the exact situation we found ourselves in?
These planning choices were made by the HDSB in advance, and were not really on the agenda for the parents.
This raised the issue that these choices should have been on the table if the PAR for Frank J. Hayden secondary school was done when, and as it should have been, prior to the decision to proceed with the build of Hayden was made, sometime before 2008/09.
Absent the performance of this PAR, it appears to me, that no one wants to be held accountable for this decision, and for erroneous or short-term planning which causes long-term ramifications. So it is reasonable that parents and members of the community are arguing for the need for transparency and accountability for this.
Parents from Central, Pearson and Bateman high schools were active observers in the PAR process.
Parent engagement on these choices could have been enabled by not structuring the PAR process the way it was by the HDSB. This structure mostly consisted of various closing scenarios and this pitted parents against parents. Only one option was about no closures, but this was overshadowed by 19 plus options in total, mostly about closures.
At outside PAR meetings, consensus said it should have been done differently, to avoid the conflicts that were built in. It was felt that something like opening it up to the PARC and parents, describing the problem as a whole, and asking for options and possible solutions to solve the problem, would make sense and that kind of process would work for parents.
Instead, the HDSB predetermined ahead of time what the problem was – low utilization and surplus seats – but would never acknowledge that this was caused by them in their deliberate plans and concealing of the facts. In fact, the PARC members were presented with the problem of which school(s) to close as their starting point, not as one of their potential outcomes.
Hayden high school is part of a complex that includes a library and a recreation centre plus a dozen portable classrooms. Many believe that the opening of Hayden resulted in the need to close Pearson.
So, the HDSB’s “solution” was to close schools in the south to eliminate the surplus seats and overcrowding they created by building a new school in the north without a Pupil Accommodation Review (PAR) to analyze and determine current and future needs in an open and transparent way. This did not work for parents, created crisis and conflict, and as such, the evidence of this presented by Lester B. Pearson and Robert Bateman high school parents was successful in convincing the Ontario Ministry of Education to conduct an Administrative Review.
This confirms that the appeal for an Administrative Review has merit, the PAR conducted late was inadequate, and the process followed did not accord with the PAR policies. This was a main effect of not having the PAR before the build of Hayden.
The HDSB made the decisions on allocating the enrollment before the PAR. In these PAR-based numbers, Lester B. Pearson high school goes from 112% UTZ in 2010 (actuals) to 61% in 2016, and to 50% in 2025. Big swing here from 90.3%. MM Robinson goes from 87% to 53% to 46% over the same time. Robert Bateman continues to fare the worst on UTZ – all the numbers are available.
So, Robert Bateman high school was chosen as well, and it appears that having had Central high school as the focus early on in the PAR process, was simply in an effort to create a distraction from the real agenda. What were the UTZ numbers, and arguments, that changed the initial closure of Central to Bateman?
I also wish to note, that somewhere between the 2008/09 application, and the PAR data presented in 2016/17 to justify two Burlington high school closures, Lester B. Pearson’s numbers were slashed in UTZ from 90.3% by 18/19 in the 2009 application, to 55% in 2020, then 50% by 2025 in the PAR numbers. Student numbers went from 577 to 319.
In addition, there is no explanation – it was a subjective HDSB decision. As you know, with the changes made in boundaries, feeders and programs, Lester B. Pearson was chosen to close, with premeditation…..as was Robert Bateman.
These policy changes were recognized as a key finding of our meeting as possible solutions that existed if partial reversals were undertaken. However, these changes were never seriously considered, as the HDSB was fixated on the empty seats and low utilization that they had themselves created. The HDSB never considered the actual board’s own data put forward by a community and the PARC members, looking at enrollment, and how the student experience and program offerings, depended on optimal allocation of enrollment, not maximizing utilization.
This fixation was apparent right to the final discussion and debate by Trustees at a Board meeting near the end. Options put forward, or questioned about, were dismissed by HDSB staff as not getting rid of all the surplus seats.
Incidentally, this dismissal was made by the same staff member that had supported, back in 2009, the building of these very same surplus seats through the build of Frank J. Hayden secondary school without a PAR analysis. It was suggested that since this enrollment focused option was factual, and based on the actual data from the Halton District School Board, it thus needed to be explored before a decision was made. But written delegations to support this analysis were ignored.
Remarkably, some Trustees had already written a school closing speech, and read it aloud, expressing their support of the decision to close our schools, prior to the final decision vote.
The night the school board voted to close two of its seven Burlington high schools the meeting went so late that the vote recording software had gone off line and the votes were done by the raising of hands.
The final deciding vote was was made on the same night as more delegations were presented (against HDSB’s own 10 day procedural rule). Written delegation statements read that night had been prepared, submitted, and approved to present by Chairman Amos. So how much input did the final delegates even have?
This violation of HDSB policy, should without a doubt negate the final vote as they did not comply with their own rules.
The Pupil Accommodation Review Committee (PARC) really didn’t have much say in solving the real problem, as a member of the community put it, of optimally allocating the enrollment, and having that as a key discussion option on the PAR table. They did not get to communicate directly with the school trustees or vice-versa. All conversations or information was filtered through the board. Some PARC members certainly were hindered in sharing information with the community, all of which were PAR requirements.
It seems that the chief characteristic of this 2016/17 PAR is the planned sacrifice of two Burlington high schools, for a school planned and built without any PAR, in the north.
This was guaranteed to breed crisis and conflict, as it did.
So you see…..“There Is Merit To The Administrative Review”
Tony Brecknock is a Burlington resident who is passionate about the school in his neighborhood that his School Board has decided to close. Mr Brecknock believes the Board is being less than candid with the people it is in place to serve and has set out his opinion on the Administrative Review that is now taking place.
If Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals are not re-elected come the provincial election next year, it will partly be because of how the Liberals have managed and mismanaged the energy file. True enough there has never been a power blackout or even a brownout over their period of governance – as there had been regularly during the previous Harris/Eves government. But the price of electricity had been dramatically rising, at least until this past summer when it tumbled by a whopping 25%.
There are a number of reasons that account for why our hydro bills had been rising:
1. Neglected maintenance – During the Rae and Harris years electricity infrastructure, transmission in particular, had been sacrificed resulting in brown and black outs;
2. Privatization – New generation, whether renewable or conventional energy required long term contracts with fixed prices and guaranteed purchases;
3. Labour Costs – The utilities’ employees are among the best paid in the province, senior executives with Ontario Power Generator (OPG) and Hydro One in particular; and
4. Waste – Most memorable is the billion or so spent to cancel new gas plants still under construction, allegedly to save electoral seats in the GTA.
Maintaining the system has not always been the top priority – we end up paying for it eventually.
For a generation Ontario Hydro had typically debt-financed its operations, even before the Davis government. In fact when Mike Harris dissolved Ontario Hydro at the turn of the millennium he discovered an accumulated debt load of almost $40 billion, some $20 billion greater than the value of all of the utilities’ then current assets.
This stranded debt had been placed on our utility bills until more recently when the Liberal government eliminated it.
As rates started rising over the McGuinty/Wynne years, lower income families complained about how they couldn’t afford to pay their hydro bills, some businesses threatened to move out of the province, and even the left wing media were doing an almost daily grind on electricity prices. So early this spring the Premier responded to the criticism by taking out a mortgage, the way someone looking to renovate their house might do. She is using the borrowed money to cut electricity bills for small business and residential customers by 25%.
In a way it’s just turning the clock back. And it’s fair game for opposition politicians to call this a political pre-election move. It sure looks that way – trying to win votes by lowering hydro bills today and paying the piper tomorrow. It’s OK for the political parties to do that – call her out – but not Ontario’s Auditor General, Bonnie Lysyk who is supposed to be an independent officer of the legislative assembly. Instead she is acting like the king-maker James Comey did in the last US election.
The nub of her report is that it would have been less costly to finance the 25% rate cut by adding to the provincial debt rather than piling it onto OPG and its financing agency, because Ontario’s credit rating is better than OPG’s and the interest rate is lower. She is right to point that out but not to assign motive on behalf of the government – that is my job and the job of the opposition parties. And the government would likely respond that the debt should go to the rate payers rather than the general public – something she fails to note.
Former Premier Mike Harris was no friend of a “Best in the Business” hydro system.
The Ontario AG delivered another scathing report almost two years ago in which she decried the use of long-term fixed-price electricity supply contracts, but failed to offer any alternative as to how the system would work otherwise. It has been the provincial policy since the time of Mike Harris to bring on new energy sources through the private sector using long term supply contracts. And the private sector needs the security of a contract to ensure that it receives a fair return on its investments.
Again, she was right in pointing out that privatization had been a costly exercise. But somebody on her staff needed to take a course in micro-economics 101. She presented an imaginary $37 billion number, a purely hypothetical figure which might as well have been pulled from the air. But it is a complicated file, her strength is accounting not economics, and so her report then, as now, was only partly helpful.
Over the last decade Ontario’s energy costs climbed to be the highest in Canada – though still much lower than those in the major North American centres in California and New York. With the 25% reduction Ontario has fallen more in line with the other provinces. But of course it will never be able to compete with Quebec, Manitoba or BC. These jurisdictions have a tremendous advantage with their low cost water power endowment, and they have also retained their provincial monopolies to generate and distribute electricity reliably and cheaply.
Leader of the Opposition at Queen’s Ark – Patrick Brown
New Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown claims he’d tear up the province’s long term supply contracts, much as Dalton McGuinty promised to tear up the 407 lease Harris had signed years before him. It was simply not possible, the lawyers had sealed it well. And even if Brown were legally able to do that, how would he replace these contracts – how would he keep the electrons flowing and the lights on? I am one of the hundreds of Ontario residents who operate a small solar energy project under Ontario’s MicroFIT energy program. Without a reasonable assurance of market access and price no reasonable business entity is going to take a gamble investing in a public sector electricity system.
Brown is not someone to be underestimated. Over the relatively short period of time he has been provincial Tory leader, the former Harper disciple and MP, has moderated and adapted. In fact he has boldly reversed his view and position on abortion, same sex marriage and sex education in schools. And it has worked for him, he is now leading in provincial popularity with almost half those polled saying they would vote for him. He has been a strong and vocal critic of the Liberal government at Queens Park and on the electricity file in particular.
But if he is to become our next Premier he has to do more than just criticize – to tell us what he wouldn’t do. Brown, who had been promising to release his party’s long term energy plan several months ago, almost immediately pulled back from that promise until next year and the election. Indeed it would be very helpful for Mr. Brown to present a coherent alternative. After all it was his party who created this chaos in the first place by dissolving our relatively stable and low cost provincial electricity monopoly. He might want to look to Quebec, Manitoba or B.C. for inspiration.
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 a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Tweet @rayzrivers
Except for the provincial Liberal government nobody seems to like Quebec’s new law Bill 62, banning face coverings for those seeking or providing public services. The rest of the country is either muted, reserved or pointedly critical. Most people think the law is racist since it will largely target one group of Quebec residents – Muslim women who wear some kind of veil to cover their faces. And that certainly fits at least one of the definitions of racism.
Is it a fashion statement or a religious statement? Is a deeper understanding what will remove the fear?
The burka, or more generally the niqab, is not properly a part of Islam and not even mentioned in the Quran. It is a cultural artifact at best. And not all Muslims wear the face veil, even among those within the same Islamic religious order. It is ironic, though, that while women in Quebec are being legislated to leave their face veils at home, females in Iran are beaten and imprisoned for doing exactly that.
The two opposition parties in Quebec’s legislative assembly think the law hasn’t gone far enough. They’d ban all religious paraphernalia, like crosses, the Jewish yarmulke , and even turbans, including one like the newly elected leader of the NDP, Mr. Singh wears. Of course that would make campaigning a bit of a problem for him in the very province where the NDP did so well only a few years ago. Though if all religions are equally affected by the law, one could argue it is less racist.
In God We Trust is printed on all American currency.
The Americans have it in their constitution so Canadians think we do as well – the separation of church and state. But if so, why then is ‘In God We Trust” on their money and why do we have God in our national anthem? Indeed religion has always played a role in our political history, even before the Europeans migrated here. But how far should the state venture in managing how people carry out their faith?
There is an argument that someone applying for a drivers license or passport needs to show her face – to ensure she is who she says she is. Mr. Harper felt that principle extended to citizenship services, to be sure the new Canadian is actually saying her oath to the country. And one can only wonder at how effective a veiled woman might be trying to teach a class of young children. But to deny someone wearing a mask to board a bus, seems to be going too far, unless that someone is planning a token robbery.
Was the niqab decision made by the government of Quebec a reflection of social values or was it a crass political move to shore up support for the provincial government?
Still, Canada is not officially a religious nation despite the vestiges of the past, like that big cross which hangs in Quebec’s national assembly. Social researchers were speculating barely thirty years ago that houses of worship might one day be relegated to the history books. But that obviously was an inaccurate prognosis. Religion is actually making a come back thanks to immigration.
Back in the day, Pierre Trudeau believed that the best way to deflate Quebec nationalism, and the demand for sovereignty, was to encourage multiculturalism though immigration. But most Quebecers were never big on that policy as one can imagine. Having emerged from literally centuries of being controlled by that other religion, Catholicism, they had been enjoying their liberation until the niqab seemed to threaten the preservation of their own just society – one based on gender equality, aesthetics notwithstanding.
A group of women in their religious clothing.
Nuns in the province of Quebec in their religious clothing.
There will certainly be a challenge through the courts including the Supreme Court, and if the Liberals are still in power in that province by the time this law is declared to violate human rights, Premier Couillard may have to use the notwithstanding clause – or he may fix it in some way. But this issue is not going away and it is unhelpful for other provinces like Alberta and Ontario to chip in from the sidelines, fomenting potential inter-provincial animosity.
It is worth noting that since 2011 France has executed an even more extensive law, banning the wearing of face coverings in all public places, including streets and parks. The new law, Bill 62, may be racist, but Quebecers are not – they are just trying to conserve their own culture from something they don’t fully understand. Despite our PM’s more recent comments on this file, he’d be well advised to leave it alone. This is a matter that needs to be resolved in Quebec by all Quebecers, including those impacted by the law.
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 a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Tweet @rayzrivers
By Deby Morrison,
The Official Plan was released November 9, 2017 to the public, an email went out Nov 13/17 and the public was given 14 days to Nov 27/17 to comment. After only 14 days, why is this plan being considered today, November 30, 2017, at a Planning & Development committee meeting to be sent to Council for a vote? Noted, there were three public open house presentations of this plan from November 16 to 20th, 2017, 4 days, during which time I was out of the Country; I am sure that I am not alone in this situation. Many Burlington residents are still unaware that the Official Plan has been released.
And sometimes actions and words can be ambiguous. A victim needs to be sure that harassment is what it seems before crying out, in case that cry turns out to be ‘wolf’ and the situation between them becomes intolerable. To that end the Ontario’s Human Rights Commission cautions that harassment needs to be seen in the context of a process – when it comes to words a single vexatious comment is insufficient. Because in the end nobody wants to be victimized twice.
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 a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Tweet @rayzrivers
There are two other projects that have people upset: The plans Meridian Brick has to begin mining for shale in the eastern sector of their property off the upper part of King Road and the Tyendaga Environmental Coalition (TEC) group that wants to bring that to a halt.
Ray Rivers writes reguloarly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Tweet @rayzrivers
Dave Barry used art to talk about what war at a presentation he made at the Teresa Seaton Gallery on NAME Saturday afternoon.
Why is it that The Rebel and its co-conspirators on this topic, the shrinking but determined pool of climate deniers, see this the earth’s climate as a partisan issue? And how can survival of life as we know it on this planet be even an ideological issue? This is a good question to ask as we learn that CO2 levels are now the highest they have been in a million years.
There are the plans for the redevelopment of the Waterfront Hotel property that the city is pushing with their Emerging Preferred Concept. There are citizens who don’t like what they are seeing.
Instead, the HDSB predetermined ahead of time what the problem was – low utilization and surplus seats – but would never acknowledge that this was caused by them in their deliberate plans and concealing of the facts. In fact, the PARC members were presented with the problem of which school(s) to close as their starting point, not as one of their potential outcomes.
So, Robert Bateman high school was chosen as well, and it appears that having had Central high school as the focus early on in the PAR process, was simply in an effort to create a distraction from the real agenda. What were the UTZ numbers, and arguments, that changed the initial closure of Central to Bateman?
In addition, there is no explanation – it was a subjective HDSB decision. As you know, with the changes made in boundaries, feeders and programs, Lester B. Pearson was chosen to close, with premeditation…..as was Robert Bateman.
Tony Brecknock is a Burlington resident who is passionate about the school in his neighborhood that his School Board has decided to close. Mr Brecknock believes the Board is being less than candid with the people it is in place to serve and has set out his opinion on the Administrative Review that is now taking place.
