I would be happy to see an alternative bloc in city politics that can articulate a positive vision for the city and its place in a rapidly changing global economy. I agree that civic parties are an effective vehicle to present voters with clear choices.

I agree with others that there are four pillars of vibrant, resilient and sustainable communities: economic, social, environmental and cultural. If The Toronto Party, or any other emerging political bloc, can articulate a vision for the city that is comprehensive and aspiring that hits all these dimensions it has the potential to engage the broad electorate in the project of building a great world city.

However, any bloc that gives the appearance of putting property rate-payers or business interests at odds with the rest of the community or that comes across as a reactionary anti-party, a party of protest, will not be successful. City-building is not a zero-sum game, and I believe our challenge as a community is to transcend this mentality.

There is an attempt to create a counter to the NDP bloc at City Hall, named the Toronto Party. There is a good article about it, and about the general question of whether party politics are good or bad at the municipal level, in the National Post.

I wish it weren’t necessary to resort to creating a new party. The Post story says that Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act “does not permit the formation of parties to field candidates in municipal elections”, but that’s misleading. As far as I can tell from searching the Act for the words “party” and “parties”, the Act says that federal and provincial parties can’t contribute to a municipal election campaign, and other than that simply ignores the notion of parties, presuming that all candidates are free agents. The NDP exploits this by doing everything “unofficially”: their candidates may not be on the ballot as NDP, but they’re chosen in the standard party manner, all use orange lawn signs just like federal and provincial NDP candidates, federal NDP leader Jack Layton campaigns for them, etc. My preferred solution to the problem would be for the Act to be revised to actively prohibit party politics, including applying the traditional penalties of fines and incarceration. This might be impossible to achieve in practice, however, given that the right of free association etc. cannot be interfered with and the NDP could be expected to come up with additional creative ways to flout the spirit of the law without violating the letter.

As for the representation issue, Ontario gets screwed by the application of the Senate clause and the Grandfather clause in the Representation Act, 1985. Here’s a good explanation.

Maybe we should put reform of the Representation Act in the platform of a nascent Toronto party?

Provincial status would be great (I am so sick of getting something like 1/3 of the federal representation that a PEI resident gets) but will only happen once Torontonians start throwing their weight around politically the way that Montrealers do. The Toronto Board of Trade’s “Enough of Not Enough” campaign was a good step and now things need to be taken much further.

But Mayor Miller is not the right leader for this. Anyone who decides to sole-source a contract for subway trains so that jobs stay in Thunder Bay is just another “nice” Torontonian. We could likely have obtained a better deal with competitive bidding, and Thunder Bay could well have still got the contract, with subsidization by the provincial and/or federal governments in the traditional manner. But he was a good socialist, looking out for the common good etc. I suspect that until there is an effective counter to the NDP at City Hall (the non-NDP councillors are fragmented and include such yahoos as Rob Ford) we cannot look to our municipal politicians to help Toronto. Maybe the Board of Trade is our best hope.

Far from bashing Toronto I said it had legitmate beefs but the way Miller is going about it isn’t going to win him any friends.

Sometimes the mind is likened to a parachute; it has to open up to be effective.

I understand the optics to people outside the 416 may not be optimal, but to be honest Torontonians are really getting fed up with playing nice and we demand that our leaders speak up for our interests on the national stage. I have had several conversations with community leaders with more than half-serious talk of a Toronto separatist movement to gain provincial status. In Germany, the largest cities like Berlin have state status within the federal system.

It is a fact that Toronto’s citizens and businesses generate far more tax revenue to support programs and services throughout the rest of the province and country than they get back in services. To use the bridge cancellation issue as a wedge to say “look how Toronto is wasting our money” is disingenuous. Who’s money is it, exactly? If we’re going to be petty about it, Toronto should rightly be sending invoices to the small towns and families whose homeless, addicted and mentally ill youth settle in Toronto because there was nothing for them at home, no hope and no support systems to help them.

For the record, it is the feds who are responsible for the bridge cancellation fiasco. The Toronto Port Authority is a federally appointed agency with no accountability to local citizens which foisted the Island bridge project onto an unwilling community. The costs of canceling it belong with the people that continue to prop up this unaccountable body. The whole thing reeks of corruption. The city plays host to many such senior government encroachments on community self-determination.

Mayor Miller has a mandate from the people of Toronto and their support to say that we’re not going to take this kind of habitual abuse any longer. Toronto needs to be let out of its straitjacket. While the municipal government will no doubt need some maturing into its new powers and would benefit from internal reforms, the fiscal relationship with the rest of the country is far too important to ignore. Recalibrating that relationship is the very foundation of our current challenges and future opportunities.

And let’s be clear about what is being proposed: 1% of the sales tax COLLECTED IN TORONTO. Giving Torontonians back 1% of the 14% sales tax collected from OUR pockets will enable us to build a world-class city the entire country can be proud of.

If this very modest proposal fails to go through because of myopic politics appealing to an anti-Toronto sentiment, the alternative is to fuel a Toronto separatist movement to keep our tax revenues at home. That’s one way to address the fiscal imbalance.

All you see in print and media these days is David Miller giving the same old veiled threats to both federal and provincial governemnts stating that their elections are fast approaching and they had better loosen their pursestrings if they want to win the hearts of the voters in Toronto.

Does Miller really think he can deliver these votes? Or is his strategy to divert blame away from him in the event he doesn’t get the funding.

Toronto has some legitimate beefs but when Miller made true on his campaign promise to cancel the bridge construction to the island and then gets the rest of the province to pay for it he really doesn’t engender himself to the non 416ers.

I understand the optics to people outside the 416 may not be optimal, but to be honest Torontonians are really getting fed up with playing nice and we demand that our leaders speak up for our interests on the national stage. I have had several conversations with community leaders with more than half-serious talk of a Toronto separatist movement to gain provincial status. In Germany, the largest cities like Berlin have state status within the federal system.

It is a fact that Toronto’s citizens and businesses generate far more tax revenue to support programs and services throughout the rest of the province and country than they get back in services. To use the bridge cancellation issue as a wedge to say “look how Toronto is wasting our money” is disingenuous. Who’s money is it, exactly? If we’re going to be petty about it, Toronto should rightly be sending invoices to the small towns and families whose homeless, addicted and mentally ill youth settle in Toronto because there was nothing for them at home, no hope and no support systems to help them.

For the record, it is the feds who are responsible for the bridge cancellation fiasco. The Toronto Port Authority is a federally appointed agency with no accountability to local citizens which foisted the Island bridge project onto an unwilling community. The costs of canceling it belong with the people that continue to prop up this unaccountable body. The whole thing reeks of corruption. The city plays host to many such senior government encroachments on community self-determination.

Mayor Miller has a mandate from the people of Toronto and their support to say that we’re not going to take this kind of habitual abuse any longer. Toronto needs to be let out of its straitjacket. While the municipal government will no doubt need some maturing into its new powers and would benefit from internal reforms, the fiscal relationship with the rest of the country is far too important to ignore. Recalibrating that relationship is the very foundation of our current challenges and future opportunities.

And let’s be clear about what is being proposed: 1% of the sales tax COLLECTED IN TORONTO. Giving Torontonians back 1% of the 14% sales tax collected from OUR pockets will enable us to build a world-class city the entire country can be proud of.

If this very modest proposal fails to go through because of myopic politics appealing to an anti-Toronto sentiment, the alternative is to fuel a Toronto separatist movement to keep our tax revenues at home. That’s one way to address the fiscal imbalance.