Platform

My platform is based on the following seven principles:

1.  Identify the Priorities We need a full, honest public debate regarding how much Toronto needs to spend in order to ensure a sustainable budget and infrastructure, what the priorities should be, and the fairest way to raise the necessary funds. Social justice considerations have to be part of this equation.

2. Reduce Costs The city can’t move forward because major new projects – and even basic maintenance – are too expensive. It’s time to propose a new deal with city unions to reduce the costs of TTC and other infrastructure enhancements. It’s not even a matter of wage rates, we need more productivity.

3. Community Engagement The City doesn’t have the resources to micromange all aspects of civil life. We need to give the active, engaged citizenry in our neighbourhoods the tools to improve our parks and other public spaces. Additionally, meaningful public consultation on new projects, big and small, should not be an afterthought. It is an essential part of good decision-making and maintaining the faith of the voters in the democratic process. 

4. Protect the Vulnerable Controlling costs is also necessary to maintain and expand the wide range of services that help the disadvantaged in this city. I am an advocate of programs for children, youth and seniors, licensed day-care and housing – that’s what being a community is all about. In the budget debate to come, we must strike the right balance to ensure that no-one is left behind.

5. Local Business Development We need to bring business and jobs in to the area. That means more smaller scale mixed-use developments to ensure an adequate supply of commercial space, lowering business taxes down to reasonable levels, and helping young entrepreneurs through micro-finance programs with a zero net cost.

6. Enhanced Community Policing and Youth Strategies Toronto desperately needs an integrated crime prevention strategy – one that invests in programs that ensure public safety. Neighbourhood policing, gun control, closing down crack houses and providing youth with practical options are all part of my plan, which includes using our schools as after-hours community hubs.

7. Environmental Strategy Climate change, and how we respond to it, will probably end up being the defining issue of our times. At the City level, we must require developers to comply with the new Challenge 2030 standard, encourage retro-fitting of office and residential spaces, and demand more intensification of developments along major transit routes to make them self-sustaining.

Here are my views on specific policy points:

Transit The City must encourage commuters across Toronto and the GTA to leave their cars at home and take transit to work. That requires that the TTC be expanded and improved to ensure that it offers fast, clean, reliable, and affordable service. Here’s how this could happen:

1. Immediately adopt the province’s Presto! smartcard to ensure better linkage with 905 transit systems, including GO. A smartcard would also give TTC planners the ridership information necessary to make good strategic decisions. Holding on to the token for too long is why we’re still debating subways vs. streetcars in an information vacuum. Only smartcards, and not the bank card payment process the TTC proposes, can tell us what works.

2. Push for strong cost control procedures with the union, allowing for more productivity and less overtime. I’m not in favour of contracting out, yet.

3. A huge part of the sustainability puzzle is densification. Every other major transit system around the world benefits from apartment buildings along the major routes. Instead this city is concentrating its new residential development down by the lake, where there currently is no transit and won’t be for over half a decade. That doesn’t make sense. “Density” doesn’t have to mean 30-storey apartment buildings. The European model is 6-8 storey developments that actually add character to our neighbourhoods, not ruin them.

4. I would not declare the TTC an essential service. That would put labour disputes immediately into arbitration, which invariably end up costing the taxpayer more. In order to bring in the necessary cost controls, we have to be willing to tough out a strike. I hope that won’t be necessary.

Bike Lanes Encouraging commuters to cycle is an essential element in any strategy to reduce road and transit congestion.  As it is, it’s faster to bikes downtown from most point in Ward 30 than to use a streetcar. I therefore commit to pushing for connected and expanded bike lanes throughout the city.

Unfortunately, Toronto’s current bike lane approach would indicate that the decision-makers don’t actually cycle.

• It’s impossible to cycle downtown from anywhere in this Ward (which is very close to the downtown core) on connected paths.
• Golden opportunities to put in separately curbed bike paths were missed on the Bloor Street and Queen’s Quay redevelopments.
• The Eastern Avenue lane goes for a couple a blocks, causing a huge bottleneck in rush hour traffic, then peters out.
• The much ballyhooed new lanes on Jarvis have to be considered failure, because only the bravest cyclists are willing go up along cars travelling so fast.

Once again, we see a council that says the right things, but can’t seem to follow through in its vision. My commitment is to make it a priority to connect the bike lanes, and eventually move toward separate curbing.

Youth Toronto’s economic advantage won’t be built on the traditional resource model. To be a world leader in new technologies, we have to harness the energy and creativity of our young people. My involvement with microfinance initiatives through the Rotary Club and the ACCESS Community and Capital fund has made me aware of the possibilities for empowering young entrepreneurs through a broader city program which would be run at no net cost to the taxpayers.

The City would also have a role to play in offering opportunities to our youth. We can encourage them to bid on small projects for less than what the Fair Wage Policy requires, and offer proper supervision. If that’s considered contracting out, then so be it.

Another issue is that there’s not enough for our teenagers to do on Friday and Saturday nights. One proposal is to work with the school boards to allow schools to be used as after-hours community hubs.  Supervised by youth workers, teenagers can have an opportunity to engage in athletic, educational (e.g. library) or purely social activities in our schools until midnight or so on weekend nights. Of course, drinking, drugs, verbal abuse or violence will not be tolerated on public property. Clean-ups will be issue, but the kids will be encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility for ensuring that they do not create any additional work for the janitorial staff.

Police and Crime The numbers aren’t yet available, but subjective evidence indicates an uptick in the level of crime in various Ward 30 neighbourhoods. A comprehensive approach to combating crime has to address two issues: enforcement and prevention. With respect to enforcement, I believe that the community policing model re-instituted by Chief Blair should be enhanced, so that certain high-risk neighbourhoods receive a higher police presence. We lack the density for foot patrols to be practical, but there’s no reason why police can’t do patrols on bicycle most months of the year.

There are many common sense strategies for crime prevention. One is to ensure that the density of social housing projects does not exceed the city guidelines. Everybody seems to be recognize the mistake of the original Regent Park model, but we still must be vigilant against it recurring elsewhere.

Preventing youth crime is a special interest of mine since my involvement in the East York Strategy (www.eastyorkstrategy.com). For East York Strategy, a group of local churches and community leaders who collaborated to encourage at-risk youth in positive directions in the wake of several shootings involving young people a few years ago. The approach is based on the Boston Strategy to Prevent Youth Violence (http://www.sasnet.com/bostonstrategy/default.html). As your local councillor, I would be pro-active in helping to launch and co-ordinate this type of effort. I have already discussed the possibility with local pastors.

Traffic Flow and Safety Residential streets are not highways. Volume and speed must both be controlled. As your councillor, I would ensure that the community will be involved in coming up with solutions to problems of high traffic through our neighbourhoods. For example, in Ashdale Village, the current councillor has not been helpful or responsive to local concerns regarding the routing of cars in rush hour.

According to recent media reports, Toronto has more radar traps than anywhere else in North America, including Los Angeles. But our police seem more concerned about collecting maximum revenue for the city on the Bloor Viaduct and on Richmond Street coming off the DVP ramp, where public safety isn’t so much of an issue. I would require that our police pay attention to residential streets.

I would empower the neighbourhoods to have greater power to determine what form of speed control they prefer. Photo radar should at least be considered as one of the options. It definitely works in other cities, and doesn’t require the use of an expensive police force. Speed bumps have their pros and cons. They do slow traffic, but also damage cars and make it more difficult for emergency vehicles. If speed bumps are the preferred solution by the community, then, it should be easier to have them voted in without involving the residents of other streets.

If an effective speed control strategy such as photo-radar on through streets gains popular acceptance throughout the city, then I would propose to synchronize Toronto traffic lights to minimize the amount of stop and go and to reduce carbon emissions.

Parking Parking is a major problem in the neighbourhood, and badly-planned developments can make it even worse. Residents adjacent to major employers or parks where sports leagues operate can’t find parking on their streets much of the time. On some streets, hosting dinner parties or having overnight guests is virtually impossible.

The current councillor takes the attitude that everybody should be using transit rather than owning cars. As she reportedly drives an SUV, this attitude is hypocritical to say the least.

Instead, I would again work with the affected neighbourhood to determine what solution makes the most sense. Sometimes, it may be a matter of allowing permit parking only on the street. This is already done on some streets. We may have to consider allowing new parking pads in the area, where two cars can be taken off the street with a single curb cut. There may be creative ways to allow temporary or even overnight parking alongside parks, without impeding emergency vehicles.

Community engagement The amalgamation of Toronto into the current megacity took city hall farther away from the residents. The overall number of councillors was sharply reduced, and local concerns are now getting lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. What the current council has utterly failed to do is to bring government back down to the people. There are only four Community Councils for the entire city, each made up entirely of councillors who have every motivation to politicize the issues before them.

There are many models around the world we could learn from. Royson James recently reported that New York City makes use of Neighbourhood Liaison Councils comprised of local experts, professionals, business people and community experts in the area.  Applied to Toronto, there would be 18 of these councils across the city, and all local concerns including new public and private developments would first be directed to them.

One of the attractive features of this approach is that it would allow us to pay attention to independent experts. City staff makes recommendations to council based on what’s easiest for staff to implement, not on what is best for the community. And councillors lack the technical competence to challenge such recommendations.

Voting reform – Minimizing the Incumbent Advantage I don’t see the need for term limits if elections were actually conducted on a level playing field. But there is a huge advantage to incumbency, some of which is fair (e.g. name recognition, track record) and some of which is unfair (e.g. using city money and resources to trumpet your accomplishments). Here’s how I would make elections involving incumbents more equitable:

1. The incumbent should not allowed to send out city-paid literature or e-mail to residents except for clear purposes of providing useful public information. The Integrity Commissioner would oversee whether a proposed mail-out was within the bounds or not.

2. The councillor should not use city funds for supporting baseball teams or the like. They may go ahead and do so on their own dime.

3. Local groups should apply for funding for meritorious community projects from the City, not from their individual councillor. Relying on the whim of the councillor means that the group feels obliged to be onside with him or her at all times.

4. Voting should be by preferential ballot, allowing the voter to rank their preferences. If their first choice loses, then their vote is transferred to their second choice, and so one. That way candidates challenging an incumbent don’t have to worry about “splitting the vote”, and good candidates don’t feel pressure to drop out, thereby denying residents the opportunity to vote for them.

End unfair or counter-productive taxes The city’s land transfer tax is anti-green, by providing a disincentive to homeowners seeking to move closer to work. The vehicle registration tax does nothing to restrict car use, and is not geared to income or even size of vehicle. I would eliminate both taxes as part of a general overhaul of revenue and spending priorities. Road tolls on the Gardiner and 401, to reflect the use 905ers are making of Toronto’s infrastructure, cannot be ruled out as a replacement source of revenue.

Bring vitality to our parks Parks can be better utilized to help promote a vibrant and more liveable community. I support the idea of adopt-a-park programs and other forms of community involvement to , along a process to make sure that the needs of all local taxpayers – including parents AND dog-owners, sports leagues AND nearby residents who are sacrificing their street parking – are properly balanced. But the city right now, including or especially the Parks department that Paula chairs, is an obstacle. Local groups trying to make a difference are encountering bureaucratic resistance and non-responsiveness. We clearly need to bring government and community involvement down to the local level to make this happen.