News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 9K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
EarthCam Time-Lapse Documents Rafael Viñoly-Designed New Stanford Hospital Construction
 40K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
Resort Town
 5.2K     0 

kEiThZ said:
Not too many of you have lived in Scarborough I guess. There's a reason politicians are backing away from the LRT and that's the multi-year closure of the SRT during construction. Won't fly with most residents. And if it does happen, every councillor, MPP, MP is likely to suffer at the polls. I suspect this was the reason for the sudden flip flop from the provincial Liberals. The subway can be built while the SRT is running and I still think this will be the end result.
Click to expand...
Very good point. And part of the reason that though the LRT might be a better solution, I'm not particularly bent out of shape by the subway. It will get better ridership than the existing Sheppard line, the extension of the Spadina line north of Steeles, and much more ridership than extending the Sheppard West line east of Victoria Park. Is it the best use of an extra $billion or so? No. Is it the worst use? No.
 
kEiThZ said:
As far as the campaign, all their transit plans are being paid for by the province. Nothing happens without Queen's Park. This is why i find all these debates between candidates about spending billions on transit odd. Even the accusations about Tory's funding plan are odd. Province could pivot tomorrow to fund the whole thing if they wanted. The candidates are essentially pitching top up funding for certain aspects of provincial plans. And they are choosing which aspects to highlight in their platform. Chow chose the DRL. Tory chose the RER.
Click to expand...

Odd is a nice way of putting it. Everyone is focused on how unlikely TIFs are to generate sufficient $, and they have a point. But, really, 2/3 of the funding is supposed to come from the province and feds and that's a far bigger issue. And if it does come from the province, it's unlikely to be from general revenues. They're going to have to pull the trigger on revenue tools of some kind sooner or later.

Basically, all the candidates act like Metrolinx and The Big Move don't exist and if you find a supporter of any of the 3 candidates, I doubt many would be able to tell you what relation (if any) that candidate's transit plan has to do with those existing frameworks.

The DRL and RER are both going to happen in the fullness of time. Whether the "SmartTrack" iteration happens as Tory describes it is another matter but Olivia's attacks, focusing primarily on one intersection, miss the big picture. And missing the big picture is the entire problem with planning transit in this region (well, that and totally unqualified people like mayors and mayoral candidates making up their own plans to impress voters).
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
I think you were being glib/ironic, tossing around things like "John Tory is a sociopath." I think that's hysterical and factually inaccurate and irrational. Doug Ford is a charming guy who seems to have no grasp on the truth and no ability to actually see people as anything but objects, that's true. But most sociopaths don't do fundraising for United Way. Mostly, it substantiates my feeling that these last few weeks Chow supporters have totally lost their perspective on all this
Click to expand...

To be fair as well, the United Way is a networking thing for corporate bigwigs. Nothing in itself wrong with it, but where John Tory was involved (as Chair, not as manager) it meant black-tie dinners, charity golf tournaments, social functions with CEOs and other business people (his circle of friends and aquaintances) who ran companies and organizations that donated to the United Way, often through employee pay-stub deductions and other fundraisers that the companies themselves would take a lot of the credit for. The United Way is one of the best charities around. But being involved in the top of the fundraising circuit of the United Way isn't necessarily something one does merely out of the goodness of one's heart.
 
ShonTron said:
To be fair as well, the United Way is a networking thing for corporate bigwigs. Nothing in itself wrong with it, but where John Tory was involved (as Chair, not as manager) it meant black-tie dinners, charity golf tournaments, social functions with CEOs and other business people (his circle of friends and aquaintances) who ran companies and organizations that donated to the United Way, often through employee pay-stub deductions and other fundraisers that the companies themselves would take a lot of the credit for. The United Way is one of the best charities around. But being involved in the top of the fundraising circuit of the United Way isn't necessarily something one does merely out of the goodness of one's heart.
Click to expand...

I get that. But I've heard him speak about what United Way enough to say that, in my opinion, he understands the importance of what they do. The Fords don't.

On a lighter note, I wasn't going to read NOW's endorsement of Olivia Chow since it was such a foregone conclusion but some of its stupidity bears mentioning. Their history is very selective, for example. Like, I hate Mike Harris as much as the next guy but...

Now the Fords’ fellow traveller John Tory – who courted that family’s approval for his failed 2003 mayoral run and proudly led the PC party of Mike Harris that Rob and Doug grew up worshipping – is somehow being posited as an antidote to the Ford poison.
Click to expand...

First of all, Mike Harris didn't become premier until 1995. The Ford Bros. were not "growing up" by that point. More to the point, the selection of Tory was an attempt to move away from Harris' extreme positions and Tory has always said his PC role model was Bill Davis which brings us to...

Tory is an enigma tightly wrapped in a sweater vest who will do anything to hide his true colours. And those colours are full-on PC blue, the same party that in 1995 filled in a subway, subway, subway on Eglinton that would have been functioning by now had the party of Tory and Ford not jammed dirt back down into that hole.
Click to expand...

Right. And the PCs are also the ones who built the subways subways subways Ontarians ride every day. So John Tory isn't just a Slick Rob Ford, he's also Mike Harris. Stupid and untrue.

Like the Fords, this silver-tongued and silver-spooned pol makes unfounded, unfunded transit promises.
Click to expand...

And, finally, we get to the point where Olivia Chow's people pick up Doug Ford's talking points. They even talk about "backtracking" Smart Track.
They EVEN mention the Rosedale Golf Club thing.
Sad, sad, sad.
 
kEiThZ said:
Not too many of you have lived in Scarborough I guess. There's a reason politicians are backing away from the LRT and that's the multi-year closure of the SRT during construction. Won't fly with most residents. And if it does happen, every councillor, MPP, MP is likely to suffer at the polls. I suspect this was the reason for the sudden flip flop from the provincial Liberals. The subway can be built while the SRT is running and I still think this will be the end result.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but the subway thing has everything to do with grabbing votes. Karen Stintz started it to help her failed mayoral bid. Then the liberals supported it because they saw it as an opportunity to win a by-election. Lets not forget that the libs were pushing for the subway to go in the SRT corridor, not underground, which invalidates your claim that their flip flop was to prevent the SRT shutdown (also doesn't explain their Sheppard LRT hatred). Which btw, the SRT will still have to shut down anyway to perform work that will extend it's life for a few more years until the subway is up and running.

Aside: I really hate the idea that transit planning should be dictated by the short term construction inconvenience, rather than the best alignment that would serve the most people. People need to learn to put up with some inconvenience for a few years, because ultimately the benefits of new transit will last for many more years. Does anyone care what happened to Yonge street when the subway was being build 60 years ago? Should we move the Finch LRT to the hydro corridor so that Finch is untouched? Should we also build the DRL in the Don Valley instead?
 
Last edited:
freshcutgrass said:
Stupid would be saying he was one of those reptilian aliens covertly taking over the planet.

Truth is, we don't really know who John Tory is, because he's just a big facade.
Click to expand...

Well, I guess there's more than one kind of stupid. The Bernardo/Gacy comparisons are reprehensible. C'mon, you're better than that. Right?
 
freshcutgrass said:
Stupid would be saying he was one of those reptilian aliens covertly taking over the planet.

Truth is, we don't really know who John Tory is, because he's just a big facade.
Click to expand...

And you know that for certain! He is in the same mould as ex premier Bill Davis, who was very bland. The only difference is Tory has a knack of saying things that made him unelectable in the past
 
freshcutgrass said:
Stupid would be saying he was one of those reptilian aliens covertly taking over the planet.

Truth is, we don't really know who John Tory is, because he's just a big facade.
Click to expand...

Riiiight.
He was a prominent backroom guy for 20+ years. (So everyone knows about his involvement with the Kim Campbell campaign, Mel Lastman etc.)
He was a radio host for, what, about 5 years?
In between he was the leader of the opposition party in Ontario and chaired one of the biggest civic organizations in the region, has received awards and served with (in various capacities) many other major non-profits in the city and beyond.
The guy's a member of the Order of Ontario....I mean really.

If you can't figure out who he is, it may say more about your research skills than his alleged non-persona.
There are many legit criticisms of Tory but "I don't know who he is!" strikes me as the most pathetically ineffectual of them.

I'll go further and tell you what's even sadder when it comes to Chow-ites baffled by his success. What impresses me, is someone who doesn't prattle on about party pigeonholes: "I won't vote for Olivia because she's NDP!" etc. People who jump to conclusions based on labels; that bugs me.

And so here comes Tory who, as Chow reminds us, is a Conservative. And he is getting endorsed, all over the place, by prominent LIBERAL politicians, while she is reduced to strongly-worded endorsements from the star of Road to Avonlea. (I'm being a bit facetious as I totally respect Sarah Polley, btw.) But do we think it's GOOD that Tory is crossing partisan lines and that the Liberal premier seems to like him? No - we think that's BAD. We think it's SUSPICIOUS that a Conservative and a Liberal would collude. Voters should think hard about what this means, that people of different political stripes would even DARE to interact.

I expect better from the "progressives." Much better.
 
kEiThZ said:
I wonder if today's attack changes anything (like voter turnout).
Click to expand...
That would hinge on what happens next. 5 days is a long time. If that's it, and it's over ... then probably not.

The biggest question might be the impact on the choices people made in the next federal election. Remember how Maggie got re-elected in the 1983 election!
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top