The Ontario Municipal Board: Villain or Scapegoat?
I wrote (quoting liberally from Moore) for my Law Class paper last year. Personally i think the media sensationalizes and the public react. We as planners should focus more on the facts behind the cover stories.
-rudhro
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December 13, 2011
Written by Isidoros Kyrlan
Aaron A. Moore Ph.D. explores the question ‘Is the OMB a problem to Toronto’s development or just the scapegoat?’ Moore presented his research at the University of Toronto’s Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance last week. The presentation “Villain or Scapegoat?: The OMB and land use planning in Ontario” was a lead up to his upcoming book “Planning Institutions and Politics – The Ontario Municipal Board and Toronto” due out the summer of 2012. It was a timely presentation given City Council’s upcomingFebruary vote on whether to ask the Province to abolish the OMB for Toronto.
Moore’s research spans the past 10 years and he finds that the OMB is indeed masking the real issue. That issue is one of a flawed planning system that is arbitrary, and constantly challenged. He cites Section 37 of The Planning Act ’Density Bonusing’ as an example of how a well intentioned intensification initiative may lead to poor city zoning decisions. Density Bonusing is when a developer requests to surpass the maximum density allowed by zoning. The City of Toronto can ask for compensation to allow for the increased density, usually a monetary amount. The idea is that the city will use the money to accommodate the area for the increased density. In the last 3 years there were 261 zoning changes and 118 times Section 37 was implemented to compensate the city. The problem is that the city has an incentive to leave zoning densities low and request developers to compensate for exceeding the zoning. In the case for the City of Toronto, Density Bonusing funds are not accurately tracked to ensure they are invested back in the neighbourhood.
The OMB comes into play when developers exceed zoning density and neighbourhood associations feel they have justification for challenging the development. Neighbourhood associations rally their City Councillors to oppose the development, even if the City Planning Committee favours the proposal. The development is voted down at City Council and then appealed to the OMB. The OMB puts weight on professional planning expertise such as that of the Planning Committee recommendations instead of City Council’s. A development with planning support, but not council support will likely be approved. A Councillor can side with the voters of the neighbourhood association and blame the OMB as to why the development went through without risking growth and development in their ward. Moore cites that the number of OMB decisions favouring developers over city council has increased in correlation to the number of increased neighbourhood associations in the city. The OMB has become a relief valve for local politics.
With the Section 37 incentive and the councillors having the option to blame the OMB, a contentious environment is created of developer versus city planning versus city council versus the OMB. An outsider would view it as a chaotic system where there is no point to planning and zoning if it can all be challenged and changed at the OMB. Moore notes it is not like this in other jurisdictions; the State of Oregon was presented as an example of having institutions similar to the OMB, but with better planning that reduced appeals to those bodies. Moore noted that in Oregon planning is not just done at the local level, but at the state level as well. The state sets a land-use plan and approaches each city for a comprehensive plan of how their zoning will compliment the overall plan. Ontario has a growth plan often referenced in intensification challenges, but the province does not approach every city and ask for how their zoning will meet the growth plan targets. Instead, zoning has to be challenged, often at the OMB level, to meet the intensification objectives on a case by case basis. For comprehensive planning to take place in Ontario more resources would be required. Even in Toronto, Moore notes that city planning staff are evenly distributed among all wards, even though development is usually concentrated in a few wards.
Moore did raise a concern about the Toronto’s recent proposal to abolish the OMB in the city. Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam and Councillor Josh Matlow recommend that the OMB be replaced by the Committee of Adjustments, and any challenge to City Council decisions would be made in a court of law. In Moore’s research he found the courts to be expensive, time consuming, and possibly more in favour of developer arguments of fairness, rather than planning expertise. Where neighbourhood associations today feel powerless against the OMB due to a lack of planning expertise, in the proposed system they could be shut out due to legal costs and endless litigation. The current City proposal does not address Moore’s areas of improvement: comprehensive and transparent planning involving not just local but regional jurisdictions. Moore would like to see the Province and cities agree on growth objectives and have in place the zoning to accommodate those objectives, then developers, residents, and municipalities could stop wasting resources challenging each proposal. Moore has the research and numbers to show the OMB does not have to be a scapegoat. The only concern is that with comprehensive planning, Toronto could lose some of its current dynamism. Twenty years ago who could have planned for Maple Leaf Gardens to become a grocery store or Etobicoke’s motel strip to become a skyline?
Written by Isidoros Kyrlan
The $15-billion ambition to reshape Manhattan’s skyline: ”The last time the city saw such a transformation was more than 100 years ago, when Park Avenue and Grand Central Station were covered with the platform that is now crossed by millions of people a year without a second thought. If all goes according to plan, the hidden tracks below Hudson Yards will also be forgotten by the time the first residents move in.”
STEVE LADURANTAYE
Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011
The High Line park comes to an abrupt end on the west side of Manhattan, as a chain link fence keeps anyone from stumbling into a massive train yard that handles much of the island’s commuter rail traffic.
Within a few years, that fence be will gone and an entire city block will have been built atop the 26-acre rail yard. Literally on top – the trains will continue to run on the same tracks they are on today, but a $1.5-billion platform will keep them out of sight.
Five thousand apartments will sprout from the newly-built artificial land mass, along with a million square feet of retail space and six million square feet of office space – the same amount that can be found in all of Saskatchewan. That’s three office towers, nine residential buildings and dozens of stores. There are also plans for a school, a cultural centre and 12 acres of open park space.
The $15-billion project is ambitious even by New York standards, and will result in an entirely new neighbourhood on what had been considered a fully built-out island. But in the meantime, much of the site is surrounded by wooden hoarding bearing the name of Canada’s largest real estate developer – Oxford Properties.
The project is the company’s bold step into the United States. And for the hundreds of thousands of pensioners and workers who rely on the company to generate solid returns to fund their retirement – Oxford is the real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and owns and manages $17-billion of buildings – the stakes couldn’t be any higher.
This sliver of Manhattan is about to become a proving ground for some of the biggest players in Canadian real estate. Just across the street, Brookfield Office Properties, which is controlled by Toronto’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc., has its own project that will add millions more feet of office space.
That all of this is going ahead, despite the threat of another recession, illustrates the health of the Canadian property sector. Developers and landlords here came through the recession in far better shape than their American counterparts, due to tighter banking regulations and a healthier leasing market in Canada. They have the money, and are counting on better economic times in America’s largest city to make their bets pay out. (more…)
““If you’re a typical North American, at the end of a long, stressful day at work, you’re not saying, ‘I can’t wait to get in my car. I would just love to go for a drive.’ It’s much more likely you’ll say, ‘I wish I could go for a walk,’ ” That’s the point at which people run up against what’s called the Marchetti Wall – the psychological barrier against spending more than about an hour getting to work or coming home. The concept is named for a Venetian physicist named Cesare Marchetti, who posited not only that human beings instinctively adjust their lives to avoid travelling more than that amount every day, but that we’ve been doing so since the Neolithic era…”
Cars have ruined our cities, our societies and are relationships–not to mention the more obvious environmental issues. I used to LOVE them…dream about them, yearn for them and have them define my concept of freedom, adulthood and status. I grew up in Edmonton though. Having since driven my last car from Vancouver to Toronto and sold it while it sat unused, cost me parking, insurance and other sundry charges–as I rode my bike or walked in the downtown splendour that is superurban downtown Toronto..I now just view them as moving chambers of internal combustion explosions–whether super new or an old beater: the technology is 150 years old. They are a hassle downtown, and I love that. ”Where do I park?” ”Where’s the gas station?” ”Shit! Another ticket??!!” ”My car’s broken down, I have to repair it for $2500…” “I still can’t find parking!?”
No more for me. And as an Urban Planning Grad Student in 2011, I relish the opportunities awakening in the cities of the world, to go back in time and redesign neighbourhoods and streets for human beings…
To rediscover what Jane Jacobs had referred to as the Ballet of the Streets of her beloved Manhattan. The death of the love affair with the car, is like how smoking is so frowned upon now…a paradigmatic shift is in the works, and as a soon to be professional Urban Planner, I can’t think of a better, practical, more necessary vocation.
Let the War on the Car begin. Let’s rediscover the joys of having Main Streets, not malls, and Eyes on the Street, not eyes in the rearview, and the strengthened Social Capital of familiar faces on the stroll home everyone.
-rudhro
Are we reaching ‘peak car’?
ANITA ELASH
Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011
Anyone who has been stuck in big-city gridlock lately may find this hard to believe, but millions of Westerners are giving up their cars.
Experts say our love affair with the automobile is ending, and that could change much more than how we get around – it presents both an opportunity and an imperative to rethink how we build cities, how governments budget and even the contours of the political landscape.
The most detailed picture of the trend comes from the United States, where the distance driven by Americans per capita each year flatlined at the turn of the century and has been dropping for six years. By last spring, Americans were driving the same distance as they had in 1998. (more…)
“If everybody who hyperlinked to a defamatory site also committed defamation, the courts would be jammed with libel suits. From a practical point of view, their ruling is a no-brainer.”
The hyperlink case: freedom vs. the floodgates
JOHN BARBER
Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011
Like the legendary King Canute, who wisely resisted his courtiers’ advice to command the tides, the Supreme Court of Canada bowed to the inevitable this week by exempting the Internet from legal restrictions that have often been used to repress speech in traditional media.
In ruling that online writers can post hyperlinks to defamatory content without themselves becoming liable for defamation, the court nodded its approval to a flood that already seems beyond legal control.
The decision comes in the midst of a number of online events suggesting just that. In the Seattle area last week, a waitress destroyed the reputation of the wrong person when she inspired an Internet “flame war” against someone she mistakenly thought had failed to tip her. More seriously, Palestinian diplomat Linda Sobeh Ali was forced to leave her post in Ottawa after retweeting a link to a video, which she hadn’t watched, but which reportedly called for war “to destroy the Jews.”
Libels float so freely on Twitter that they have become their own species of communication: “twibels.” (more…)
[AUDIO] “The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says Buckcherry’s Crazy Bitch is okay for the airwaves. It’s not an issue of free speech or anything like that that led the panel to determine that the lyrics aren’t abusive or discriminatory toward women. It’s that there was only one “crazy bitch.”"
THE RATIONALITY OF CANADIAN REGULATORS AMUSES AND PLEASES ME.
-rudhro
Panel okays Buckcherry song as not ‘aimed at womanhood’
Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011
“The panel reviewed some of the CBSC’s previous decisions involving the word ‘bitch’ and concluded that the use of the word in the song ‘Crazy Bitch’ did not reach the level of abusive or unduly discriminatory comment as the song only referred to one particular woman rather than generalizing all women as ‘crazy bitches,’” the CBSC said in a statement today.
The case stems from a complaint by a listener, who said it was offensive to women, after it was broadcast on CKQB-FM in Ottawa, so the panel looked at the issue under the human rights sections of the Canadian Association of Broadcaster code of ethics.
The panel said it’s troubled by the “lowering of the bar for coarse language,” but in this case it’s not a breach.
“The panel recognizes, however, that the complainant was also concerned about the context in which the term was employed in this particular song. She asserted that the message of the song was an objectification of women, in her words, that ‘a crazy bitch remains useful as long as she is good in bed.’ The panel does not agree with that interpretation; it does not consider that the expression ‘crazy bitch,’ as used in the song, is aimed at womanhood in general.”
How Toronto Lost Its Groove: “As many of the world’s other megacities, including regional rivals like Boston and Chicago, prepare for an era of breakneck global urban expansion, Toronto persists in thinking small and acting cheap. Should the rest of Canada care?”
And why the rest of Canada should resist the temptation to cheer
BY JOHN LORINC
November, 2011
THE CITY OF TORONTO is stumbling toward the end of 2011 mired in a deep civic funk. Mayor Rob Ford, a renegade small-c conservative from the suburban ward of Etobicoke North, bulldozed his way to victory a year ago on a simplistic pledge to slash municipal waste. His mantra: “Stop the gravy train.” While he has yet to identify instances of reckless spending, he has ordered city officials to extract almost $800 million from Toronto’s $9-billion operating budget, the sixth-largest public purse in Canada. This punishing and potentially ruinous process may entail shuttering libraries, firing police officers, and scaling back everything from snow removal to grass cutting to transit. Municipal services — such as public housing, environmental advocacy, and even zoos — that don’t conform to the mayor’s narrow vision of local government may be eliminated, privatized, or significantly reduced.
Toronto’s woes, however, go well beyond the mayor’s fiscal populism. The Greater Toronto Area — a 7,100-square-kilometre expanse of 5.5 million residents who live in a band of municipalities extending from Burlington to Oshawa to Newmarket — finds itself increasingly crippled by some of North America’s nastiest gridlock, congestion so bad it costs the region at least $6 billion a year in lost productivity. Sprawl, gridlock’s malign twin, continues virtually unchecked, consuming farmland, stressing commuters, and ratcheting up the cost of municipal services. Without reliable funding, transit agencies can barely afford to modernize, much less expand, straining the GTA’s roads and highways to the bursting point.
READ THE REST OF THE STORY @ THE WALRUS…
[VIDEO] CBC’s Kevin O’Leary to NYT’s Chris Hedges: “You sound like a left wing nutbar”
Kevin O’Leary of CBC’s Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank cultivates the persona of a ruthless truth-teller.
But he came across as a shallow blowhard during an interview on his Lange & O’Leary Exchange show with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges in New York about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Hedges, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and prolific author on social issues, sympathizes with the protesters camped on Wall Street. But he might have been forgiven for thinking an interview on Canada’s public TV network would be a little more high-toned.
Instead, O’Leary tore into Hedges, whom he misidentified as a protest organizer, and denigrated the protesters with oft-repeated criticism that they’re unfocused and leaderless.
“They want to reverse the corporate coup that’s taken place in the United States, that’s rendered the citizenry impotent,” Hedges replied.
“You sound like a left-wing nutbar,” O’Leary said.
“I don’t usually appear on shows who descend to character assassination,” said Hedges, clearly surprised by the personal attack but refusing to be baited. “You sound like Fox News.”
He went on to praise the ideas of Canadian thinkers such as John Ralston Saul, and the prudent banking system that helped Canada avoid the 2008 financial crisis that’s one of the motivating forces behind the Wall Street protest.
The “interview” ended civilly and O’Leary’s co-host thanked Hedges “for joining us.”
“It’ll be the last last time,” the former war correspondent replied.
–Yahoo News
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After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck With Nietzsche — By Chris Hedges
CHRIS HEDGES: This Time We’re Taking the Whole Planet With Us
"nothing-burger...very weak, low-budget"
O’Leary’s ‘nutbar’ remark breach of policy, CBC ombudsman says
[VIDEO] TORONTO NUIT BLANCHE 2008 – CITY HALL BLINKENLIGHTS INSTALLATION– “STEREOSCOPE”
MY FAVOURITE ART FESTIVAL IN TORONTO
MUSIC: EVIL 9 – WE HAVE THE ENERGY
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WITH SOME BENNY BENASSI ACCOMPANIMENT:
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BLINKENLIGHTS PREMIERE – BERLIN:
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BLINKENLIGHTS STEREOSCOPE – BEHIND THE SCENES
Nuit Blanche (All-Nighter, literally White Night, in French) is an annual all-night or night-time arts festival. A Nuit Blanche will typically have museums, private and public art galleries, and other cultural institutions open and free of charge, with the centre of the city itself being turned into a de facto art gallery, providing space for art installations, performances (music, film, dance, performance art), themed social gatherings, and other activities.
Jack Layton 1950 – 2011
Messages left in chalk to commemorate the passing of Jack Layton, in front of Toronto City Hall.
I appreciate it more for the artistic aspect. I don’t understand mourning…who are they all writing to? And if someone handed me a piece of chalk, what the heck would I write? It’s like a visible prayer, perhaps. If you were the last person on earth, would you write things to all the missing people?
Or are they writing it for each other? Like tatoos…
How are mourning memes created? This is how religions are created perhaps–like the Easter Island heads.
I like how the rain keeps washing it away. Very metaphoric. I may think too much in terms of multiple generations than others…or something. No wonder others are enjoying this life so much. They are in the moment?
[VIDEO] BETWEEN GANDHI AND HITLER –> NETAJI SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE
This guy experienced more global intrigue than James Bond.
Sunday , June 5 , 2011
Excerpted with the permission of Penguin Books India from His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire by Sugata Bose
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To Emilie, with love
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| That Subhas Chandra Bose met and fell in love with Austrian Emilie Schenkl in Vienna in the 1930s is well documented. But in a new book on his granduncle, historian Sugata Bose explains why they chose to keep their relationship and marriage a closely guarded secret. Despite the ‘enormous, intense’ love that Bose felt for Schenkl, his ‘first love’ was his country. An extract | |
 WIFE AND DAUGHTER: Emilie and Anita, November 1948. Courtesy: Netaji Research Bureau From the second week of June 1934, [Subhas Chandra] Bose settled down in Vienna, since he had a contract from the publishing company Wishart to write a book on the Indian struggle since 1920. In the course of looking for clerical help with preparing the manuscript Subhas met a woman who would bring about a dramatic change in his personal life… It was June 24, 1934. A petite and pretty young woman named Emilie Schenkl arrived to be interviewed for the clerical job. Born on December 26, 1910, to an Austrian Catholic family, she knew English, could take dictation in shorthand and had competent typing skills. Jobs were scarce during the Depression. Her father, a veterinarian, was initially somewhat reluctant to let his daughter work for a strange Indian man, but in time her whole family — father, mother and sister — developed a warm relationship with Subhas. Emilie had a gentle, cheerful, straightforward and unselfish nature, which Su-bhas found appealing. He came to respect her strength of will and affectionately called her “Baghini” meaning “Tigress” in Bengali. “He started it,” Emilie states categorically about the romantic turn in their relationship. Their intimacy grew as they spent time together in Austria and Czechoslovakia from mid-1934 to March 1936… Subhas Chandra Bose, according to his close friend and political associate A.C.N. Nambiar, was a “one-idea man: singly for the independence of India.” “I think the only departure,” he adds, “if one might use the word ‘departure’, was his love for Miss Schenkl; otherwise he was completely absorbed. He was deeply in love with her, you see. In fact, it was an enormous, intense love.” … (more…) |
HIMANI BANNERJI: “On the Dark Side of the Nation: Politics of Multiculturalism and the State of “Canada”" AKA “RUDHRO, DON’T FORGET TO BRING SAMOSAS TO THE ‘WE LOVE MULTICULTURALISM’ PARTY!”
Copyright Trent University Fall 1996
On the Dark Side of the Nation: Politics of Multiculturalism and the State of “Canada”
HIMANI BANNERJI
This paper is primarily concerned with the construction of “Canada” as a social and cultural form of national identity, and various challenges and interruptions offered to this identity by literature produced by writers from non – white communities. The first part of the paper examines both literary and political – theoretical formulations of a “two – nation,” “two solitudes” thesis and their implications for various cultural accommodations offered to “others,” especially through the mechanism of “multiculturalism.” The second part concentrates on the experiences and standpoint of people of colour, or non – white people, especially since the 1960s, and the cultural and political formulating derivable from them.
I am from the country Columbus dreamt of. You, the country Columbus conquered. Now in your land My words are circling blue Oka sky they come back to us alight on tongue.
Protect me with your brazen passion for history is my truth, Earth, my witness my home, this native land.
OKA NADA”: A New Remembrance, Kaushalya Bannerji
The Personal and the Political: A Chorus and a Problematic
When the women’s movement came along and we were coming to our political consciousness, one of its slogans took us by surprise and thrilled and activated us: “the personal is political!” Since then years have gone by, and in the meanwhile I have found myself in Canada, swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen of England, giving up the passport of a long – fought – for independence, and being assigned into the category of “visible minority.” These years have produced their own consciousness in me, and I have learnt that also the reverse is true: the political is personal. (more…)
“While set firmly in St. John’s, it’s set in a Canada of the mind. The violence is very limited, more shenanigans than murderous mayhem. The humour is low-key but sharp, the people are essentially decent and most of the criminals are closer to being rogues than they are the violent serial killers who populate U.S. network crime shows. Instead of the grim forensics scenes of those shows, we get the sunlight of St. John’s and sudden leaps into absurdist humour.”
JOHN DOYLE: TELEVISION
It’s our Republic – and we like it
The other day I was interviewed for BBC Radio. (more…)
The ‘Manhattanization’ of downtown Toronto
MARCUS GEE | Monday, Apr. 11, 2011
One of the best things that has happened in Toronto of late has been the surge of office construction downtown. After more than a decade of stagnation in the wake of the 1990s recession, developers have returned to the downtown core all in a rush. (more…)
Bumblebees, so it’s said, cannot fly. Their wings are too short and stubby. Yet they in fact buzz about entirely efficiently, even can hover motionless while sucking out pollen. The reason is that bees don’t know that they cannot fly. Gwyn: Welcome to Canada, the bumblebee nation
By Richard Gwyn
Recently, after taking part in a literary festival, I asked an organizer how to fill in the expense claim. She answered: “Our mileage rate is 50 cents a kilometre.”
Only if she had said “kilometrage rate” would I, or any Canadian, have had any difficult understanding what she meant. To us, it’s perfectly natural to mix and muddle two quite different systems of measurement.
This is my entry point into a theory about Canadian identity I’ve been developing and make public here in the hope it will earn me a Canada Council grant.
This is that Canada can only be understood as a bumblebee nation. (more…)
For both Ford and McGuinty, an Ontario-run TTC has its perks
ADAM RADWANSKI
Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011
Rob Ford is willing to surrender control of his city’s subways.
Representatives of the Toronto mayor, including members of his transition team and more recently his senior staff, have been raising the idea of uploading the Toronto Transit Commission – or at least large chunks of it – during meetings with provincial officials.
That Mr. Ford is open to the idea, let alone supportive of it, marks a major shift from his predecessor David Miller. It could have a profound impact on future transit planning, providing the TTC with a more stable funding model and allowing for a more integrated system across the Greater Toronto Area. (more…)
Paradise saved? GTA growth plans aim to rein in sprawl
Checking sprawl is the fundamental idea behind the province's Places to Grow plan. But planning decisions being made now in cities like Mississauga will determine whether the uprecedented project succeeds.
Phinjo GombuUrban Affairs ReporterFri Jan 14 2011
Smart growth — or outsmarted?
Ontario won international kudos four years ago for Places to Grow, a revolutionary scheme to curb urban sprawl. But it’s the nitty-gritty decisions made in places like Brampton and Markham, often reluctantly, that will show over the next 20 years whether the plan succeeded.
The two communities have taken very different paths toward meeting the goals set out in Places to Grow, a master strategy for managing population growth intelligently and preserving as much green space as possible. (more…)
“Preserving heritage buildings is actually more about ensuring a vibrant future than just treasuring the past.”
Sam The Record Man is shown in this June 25, 2007 photo. The Toronto landmark music store closed permanently on June 30 of that year.
Kenneth KiddJanuary 8, 2011“First we shape our buildings, then they shape us, then we shape them again.”
Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn
On the northeast corner of Yonge and Gould Streets, just across from the former and now fire-gutted Empress Hotel, sits a vacant lot strewn with rubble.
This is where Sam the Record Man used to be, where generations passed under those spinning neon records to pick up the latest hits — in LPs, 45s, eight tracks, cassettes and, finally, CDs
Ryerson University plans to build a student centre there, but the most striking thing about the lot right now is where it meets the sidewalk.
In the fashion of archeological digs, it’s easy to make out the original stone foundations of a half-dozen 19th-century buildings, gradually subsumed by the expanding Sam’s, which, to the untrained eye, came to look as if it were just one or two structures. (more…)
The Treaty of Westphalia, 1648 — And the meme of the ‘Nation State’ arose…
In the name of the most holy and individual Trinity: Be it known to all, and every one whom it may concern, or to whom in any manner it may belong, That for many Years past, Discords and Civil Divisions being stir’d up in the Roman Empire, which increas’d to such a degree, that not only all Germany, but also the neighbouring Kingdoms, and France particularly, have been involv’d in the Disorders of a long and cruel War: (more…)
Why didn’t Indigenous N&S Americans develop technology at the same rates as Indigenous Europeans and Indigenous Asians did?
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–written by Kanien:kaha’ka
“compare natives pre contact with europeans at the same period in history, the 15th century.
europeans got the wheel from the persian culture just as they got gunpowder from the chinese, glass from the sumerians and many other things. north america did not have these other cultures on the same land mass and so was more isolated. (more…)
Victims should not rule our courtrooms
Five year old Iraqi girl whose parents were killed by American soldiers
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
Saturday, Oct. 23, 2010
I woke up early one morning this week in my Belleville hotel room to an absolutely terrifying vision, and no, it wasn’t a nightmare about the killer Russ Williams.
The TV was blaring, of course, television being my version of the sleeping pill. It was tuned to CTV News Channel and the Toronto lawyer Tim Danson was being interviewed by my friend Paula Todd.
Mr. Danson famously represented the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, two of the three young women raped and killed by Paul Bernardo (egged on and joined by his then-wife Karla Homolka), and it was his motion that led to the key evidence at Mr. Bernardo’s trial (critically, the videotapes the pair had made of their attacks but also autopsy and crime-scene pictures, the trunk to which Ms. French had been tied, etc.) being secretly burned in 2001.
This burning ceremony, blessed by then Ontario attorney-general David Young and attended by police, Mr. Danson and the families, would have remained a secret had it not been for Donna French, Kristen’s mother, who felt that the Canadians who had supported the families throughout deserved to know they had found a measure of peace.
I thought it was outrageous – a grotesque betrayal of the notion that the best evidence should be preserved wherever possible, of the open court principle (defence lawyers weren’t invited to the torching) and of the idea that the role of the victim in criminal proceedings is a narrow one and should stay that way.
Anyway, so there I was, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes long before the sun was up, listening to Mr. Danson say that he believed the evidence in the Williams case should be burned too.
“I would think if they [the families of Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd] have all the facts,” Mr. Danson said, “they would want those videotapes [that Williams made of the attacks on the two women] destroyed.” A few minutes later he said it again: “In order to guarantee the victims they’ll never be violated again, these videotapes should be destroyed.”
Now, of the many troubling reasons this shouldn’t happen, the one that may be most germane at the moment is that it would further entrench the growing role of the victim.
I was an unofficial early victim-rights advocate, back in the day where they were ignored and ill-considered in the proceedings.
But that changed years ago, and now the victims of crime, or their surviving relatives, are not only accorded the respect they properly deserve, but also are treated with exquisite delicacy and empowered.
Probably I can live with the delicacy – the court-appointed pit bulls who accompany a victim’s every move, Kleenex at the ready; the reserved front-row seats – but the empowerment is alarming.
One thing that happened three times in Belleville this week illustrates it.
During the reading out of victim-impact statements – these are meant to describe the harm done to or loss suffered by a victim, not to vilify the already convicted – the packed courtroom twice broke into loud and sustained applause. It happened when Ms. Lloyd’s brother, Andy, and her mother, Roxanne. finished their statements.
Of course, these were moving and powerful, as their losses are the worst.
But it isn’t a moment for applause, and while I’ve seen a ripple of cheers go through other courtrooms, the judge usually smartly steps in and warns people to stop, if he didn’t warn them not to do it in the first place.
This time, Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Scott didn’t say a word. Nor did he ever attempt to rein in the prosecutors, who were sometimes openly contemptuous of Mr. Williams. Who isn’t? Yet it isn’t the Crown’s role to treat any accused, least of all one who has pleaded guilty and already been convicted, to a public shaming, as a colleague once put it.
And when lead prosecutor Lee Burgess offered a brief closing statement, his remarks were also similarly greeted with cheers and applause.
In all the victim-impact statements – including those that weren’t read but are on the public record, most from those whose homes were broken into, their underwear stolen by Mr. Williams – there was a good deal of “I never hated anyone before but I hate Russell Williams.”
Again, these statements, as the instructions that accompany them specifically say, are supposed to be “about you, not the accused” and aren’t to “include vengeful comments.”
All of this feeds into the idea that the courts and trials are about “justice for Annie” or “justice for Bill’s family.” They aren’t.
If all our society wanted was justice for victims, we could mete it out ourselves, as they do in places like Afghanistan. Instead, we have collectively decided, as one of my friends once put it, that if you burn down my house, I don’t need to burn down yours – the system will investigate, prosecute and a judge or a judge and jury will figure out what’s fair. That’s the rule of law.
Finally, let me say one other thing: While there were of course victims in the Williams case, they are pretty easy to identify. If one did a little triage, it would go like this: First, the actual victims were Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd and the two women Mr. Williams assaulted, photographed and terrorized; next, the women whose homes he invaded and whose lingerie he stole (though these bizarre break-ins weren’t noticed or reported to police by fully 31 of the 48 homeowners involved).
You don’t get to claim victim status by merely reading or hearing about the case, or by seeing Mr. Williams’ picture, or from the periphery.
Canadians can do with a little toughening up. If Ms. Comeau could fight off Mr. Williams with her hands bound behind her back, her eyes covered, her body battered, to her last breath – and she did, a finer and more valiant soldier than her killer ever could have hoped to be – surely the rest of us can suck up this week of extraordinary sadness without collapsing.
