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
[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
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?
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…)
TORONTO: He’s the Mayor, He’s the Boss — Meet Doug Ford, the guy who makes Rob look good
MAY 26, 2011
Written by Edward Keenan
Mr. Personality
Late in the morning on Wednesday, May 18, Councillor Shelley Carroll was working the floor of the council chamber, trying to drum up votes to save the Fort York bridge, which had been scheduled to begin construction this summer. As public projects go, the bridge was significant in that it represents everything former Mayor David Miller was passionate about: a $23-million proposed oasis strictly for pedestrians and cyclists that would connect downtown to the waterfront and serve as a “vision thing” for a confident, growing city.
It’s the antithesis, then, of everything the current mayor thinks is appropriate. Still, it came as a surprise to virtually everyone when, at the end of an epic Public Works Committee meeting a few days earlier, a sudden motion to delay construction passed by a slim majority. It was a move that, for several technical reasons, would effectively kill the project. “This is a plain and simple ‘fuck you’ to those of us who think we can build a better city,” one lefty councillor said to me. “That’s all it is.”
So, last Wednesday, armed with reams of letters in support of building the Fort York bridge from residents, architects and prominent developers, council’s left was trying to muster up the two-thirds majority needed to bring the matter to debate in time to save the project. As the vote to keep the bridge project alive drew near, Carroll approached Councillor Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother, who represents Ward 2 in Etobicoke. “I don’t find the mayor’s staff particularly receptive to having any kind of conversation with me at all,” Carroll told me later. “When I need to make an appeal to that leadership office, I go to Doug. He’s approachable.”
But it’s more than simply his approachability that makes him the go-to guy on the mayor’s team. Already, the press generally cites Doug’s opinions as though they are official pronouncements from the mayor’s office, and refers to the administration casually as “The Fords.” “He’s the shadow mayor, there’s no doubt about it,” says Councillor Janet Davis, who has been among the Fords’ most vocal critics. “It’s quite striking, really, that Doug has assumed the role of mayor so easily, and people have now come to accept that he has some greater authority around here.” Political gadfly (and former mayoral candidate) Himy Syed recently joked on Twitter that Doug Ford needs more security protection than Rob since, if anything were to happen to Doug, Rob would become mayor. (more…)
[VIDEO] REX MURPHY: Rae gives generously to the party that rejected him
Rex Murphy May 27, 2011
Politics is not a generous game. Ambition almost, by definition, demands selfishness.
The career of Bob Rae, at least the latter day portion of it, inclines me to think neither of these observations apply to him. (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…)
What’s up with Toronto’s official plan?
JOHN LORINC
Saturday, Feb. 5, 2011
A key piece of David Miller’s green roofs strategy may cave in next week when city council debates a motion from the planning and growth management committee to exempt industrial buildings.
Will it be a sign of what’s to come?
Mayor Rob Ford’s hand-picked chair, Peter Milczyn (Etobicoke Lakeshore), has signalled that he intends to shake up the city’s planning rules. (more…)
[ZIZEK] Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit? The western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism
An Egyptian demonstrator uses his shoe to hit a picture of President Hosni Mubarak during a protest in Cairo. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Slavoj Žižek Tuesday 1 February 2011
What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong. The big question is what will happen next? Who will emerge as the political winner? (more…)
[VIDEO] Think politics is the reasoned and rational practice of policy and ideas? Guess again. Politics is an emotional minefield.
Think politics is the reasoned and rational practice of policy and ideas? Guess again. Politics is an emotional minefield.
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…)
[VIDEO] CANADA versus AMERICA
AMERICA:
CANADA:
Drive-through naturist challenges nudity laws (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…)
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.
“If you do not want a political statement you should not be giving honorary degrees to controversial politicians,”
Valedictorian takes swipe at Toews’ degree
Monday, October 18, 2010
Protesters hold signs outside the University of Winnipeg graduation ceremony on Sunday. (James Turner/CBC)
Valedictorian Erin Larson used her speech at the fall convocation on Sunday to say the choice compromised the university’s integrity, although she didn’t name Toews directly. (more…)
The trouble with immigrants to Toronto——-Irish immigrants, “old world politics here”, street violence, and ‘ethnic political influence’ around a hundred years ago
Recent protests by Tamil-Canadians in the streets of Toronto resulted in many publicly critical statements being aired with regard to “Newcomers to Canada bringing old-world politics” where they don’t belong, where no one cares, etc.
Tamils protesting Sri Lanka's war in their homeland in 2009. The demonstration was in front of the US Embassy. Police forced them off University Avenue after 4 days.
By not learning your history, it is easy to have perhaps an Irish Catholic surname, or an Irish Protestant surname, and be ignorant of the immigrant experience of your own forbears. Celebrating being a Canadian means understanding our shared journey. Personally I couldn’t give a damn about who is killing who back in Ireland–but I’d respect either tribal faction’s right to air their grievances in the streets of Toronto. This is why Canada is special. –rudhro
Orange walks are a series of parades held annually by members of the Orange Order during the summer in Northern Ireland, to a lesser extent in Scotland, and occasionally in England, the Republic of Ireland, and throughout the Commonwealth. These typically build up to the 12 July celebrations which mark Prince William of Orange's victory over King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Although the term 'march' or 'parade' is widely used in the media, the Order prefers terms such as 'walk' or 'demonstration'.
