Opinion
City Hall continues to provoke the bear. “They don’t give council options they don’t support.”
The debate over masking is exposing city hall administration’s narcissistic attitude.
The administration did not offer city council any options they did not support. The administration is now provoking the bear. I predict that many candidates, especially incumbents, will campaign in the next municipal election (Oct. 2021) on shaking up city hall.
Perhaps our city councilors will take back the reins, and take control of the agenda. They give direction to the Mayor and administration not the other way around.
Remember a past blog;
The recent debate over the Molly Banister could be seen as democracy at work and possibly an expose of city hall dysfunction.
At first reading of the bylaw to remove the road alignment it seemed supported by the Mayor, by the council and by the administration. Comments from some elected officials about campaign promises made it appear inevitable.
The public reacted and it appeared that city hall was out of sync with today’s reality.
The local newspaper did an editorial on September 29, declaring in bold headline that the “Road extension must be kept”. Writing ;”It’s surprising that public workers paid to plan for the city’s growth would do the opposite; not plan for the responsible development of the region.” “ What is portrayed as an environmental concern is really just an interest in keeping neighbourhood traffic down to a minimum,”
Former city manager, Craig Curtis, waded into the debate, questioning the recommendation and reminding us of past decisions that were essential to our development that were similar.
Legal opinions on historical commitments and legal obligations.
Knowledgeable residents debunked many of the environmental issues.
The local church came out in favour of the extension.
The Mayor who championed removal, declared herself in conflict, as she lives in the area, removed herself from voting before each reading.
Councillor Wong started off questioning, after the public hearing, why the administration would bring up a 250 foot bridge when an old man like himself could hop the creek?
Councillor Lee questioned why the city would emphasize the road would cause several instances of ecological damage when the other option of building houses on the creek would have the same effect? Councillor Lee admitted that the majority wanted the extension and voted against the removal.
Councillor Hendley, questioned the city about the future changes. How, when the city administration repeated that there is no current connection to Springfield Avenue, countered, that when the neighbourhood plan is presented it could then be connected, initiating another public hearing. She didn’t claim to know what the future would bring and wanted to leave all options opened.
Councillor Buchanan mentioned that in his non-councillor life he has witnessed the short-cutting of drivers that were of concern to neighbouring communities.
Councillor Higham, took note of the less than complete information on traffic. Bringing her own detailed analyses of traffic to the table.
Together they formed the majority that paralleled the wishes of the majority.
On the face of it, democracy won, a fragile democracy but still a democracy.
2 of the opposition councillors credited the support of the administration in buoying their determined support to remove the alignment, another one used the “Green” umbrella to support her opposition to keeping the alignment.
Poll after poll showed majority support for the extension, so why did we need to go through this stressful and expensive process? Why did the same traffic study get 2 extremely different interpretations?
City hall has been put on notice. Do their jobs, leave the politics and biases out of the equation. You get paid the big bucks to give your political masters the untarnished truth, so do it.
Someone said; “The bear has been poked, do not provoke”.
The next municipal election is on the horizon, provocation could mean great change. Not just at the ballot box.
Is it time for a shake-up and renewal at city hall? Just asking.
Will city administration heed the people duly elected to represent the people?
Will city hall administration be the ballot box question? Just asking.
From the Brownstone Institute
You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU.
I’m envious. The US has something the UK doesn’t have, namely a First Amendment. Yes I know there are those who wish the US didn’t have it either, including, I understand, John Kerry and that woman who still thinks she beat Trump the first time around. Kerry kind of wishes that the First Amendment wasn’t quite so obstructive to his plans. But from where I stand, you should be thankful for it.
Not only does the UK not have a First Amendment, it doesn’t have a constitution either, and that makes for worrying times right now. Free speech has little currency with Gen Z and the way it looks, even less with the new UK Labour government. Even Elon Musk, who takes a surprising interest in our little country, has recently declared the UK a police state.
It’s not surprising. Take for instance the case of Alison Pearson, who had the police knocking on her door this Remembrance Sunday. They had come to warn her they were investigating a tweet she had posted a whole year ago which someone had complained about. They were investigating whether it constituted a Non-Crime Hate Incident or NCHI. Yes, you heard me right, a ‘non-crime’ hate incident and no, this is not something out of Orwell, it’s straight out of the College of Policing’s playbook.
If you haven’t heard of them, you can thank your First Amendment. In the UK you can get a police record for something you posted on X that someone else didn’t like and you haven’t even committed a crime. NCHIs are a way they have of getting around the law in the same way John Kerry would like to get around the First Amendment, except it’s real where I live.
Alison Pearson is a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, but that doesn’t mean she can write what she likes. When she asked the police what the tweet was which was objected to, she was told they couldn’t tell her that. When she asked who the complainant was, they said they couldn’t tell her that either. They added, that she shouldn’t call them a complainant, they were officially the victim. That’s what due process is like when you don’t have a First Amendment or a constitution. Victims of NCHI in the UK are decided without a trial or a defense. They asked, very politely, if Pearson would like to come voluntarily to the police station for a friendly interview. If she didn’t want to come voluntarily, they would put her on a wanted list and she would eventually be arrested. Nice choice.
It’s true that there has been a public ruckus over this particular case, but the police are unapologetic and have doubled down. Stung into action by unwanted publicity, they are now saying they have raised the matter from an NCHI to an actual crime investigation. Which means they think she can be arrested and put in prison for expressing her opinion on X. And of course they are right. In the UK that’s where we are right now. Pearson tried to point out the irony of two police officers turning up on her door to complain about her free speech on Remembrance Day of all days, when we recall the thousands who died to keep this a free country, but irony is lost on those who have no memory of what totalitarianism means.
The way things are looking I would say things can only get worse. The new Labour government has made it clear that it wants to beef up the reporting of NCHIs and make them an effective tool for clamping down on hurtful speech. You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU. Germany in particular is keen to remove all misinformation from the internet, I understand.
Whenever I see the word ‘misinformation’ these days I automatically translate it in my head to what it really means, which is ‘dissent.’ Western countries, former champions of free speech, the bedrock of liberty and individual choice, en masse it seems, now want to outlaw dissent. What is coordinating this attack on free expression, I don’t know, but it’s real and it’s upon us. We are slowly being intellectually suffocated into not expressing any opinion that others might find objectionable or that might contradict what the government said. If you had told me that would happen in my lifetime, I would have called you a liar.
I live in the UK, the home of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta, and the mother of parliamentary democracy. I was proud that we produced men like John Milton, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Paine, that we understood the importance of the Areopagitica, the Rights of Man, and incorporated On Liberty into our social thinking. But those days seem long gone when police knock on your door to arrest you for an X post.
So I’m glad someone somewhere has a First Amendment even if we don’t. It may be your last defense in that republic of yours, if you can keep it.
Author
From the Fraser Institute
Recently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced several short-term initiatives related to tax policy. Most notably, the package includes a two-month GST holiday on certain items and a one-time $250 cheque that will be sent to all Canadians with incomes under $150,000.
Unfortunately, the Trudeau government’s package is a grab bag of bad ideas that will not do anything to get Canada out of the long-term growth rut in which our economy is mired. There are too many to list all in one place, but here are four of the biggest problems with Prime Minister Trudeau’s tax plan.
- It reduces the wrong taxes. When it comes to economic growth, not all taxes are created equal. Some cause far more economic harm per dollar of government revenue raised than others. The government’s package creates a holiday on the GST for some items (only for two months) which is a mistake given that the GST is one of the least economically harmful components of the tax mix. Canada’s recent growth record is abysmal, and boosting growth should be a primary goal of any changes to tax policy. A GST cut of any duration fails this test relative to other tax cuts.
- Temporary tax holidays shift consumption in time, they don’t boost growth. The government’s GST reduction is actually a short-term tax holiday on certain items that will last two months. There are decades worth of economic research showing that when governments create short-term tax breaks, they may change the timing of consumption, but they won’t contribute to actual economic growth. Shifting consumption from the future to the present won’t help get Canada out of the economic doldrums. This is particularly true of the Trudeau tax holiday since purchases that Canadians may have made after the two-month holiday period will simply be shifted forward to take advantage of the absence of the GST. As noted above, there are better taxes to cut than the GST, but no matter what taxes we are talking about permanent reductions are vastly superior to temporary tax cuts like short-term holidays.
- One-time tax rebates don’t improve economic incentives. Perhaps the worst element of the Trudeau government’s announcement was a plan to send $250 cheques to all Canadians earning under $150,000. One-time tax rebates are a terrible way to provide tax relief. When you cut income tax rates, you improve incentives for people to work and invest because they get to keep a larger share of their earnings. This helps the economy grow. One-time rebates that you get regardless of the economic choices you make has no similar effect. This means that the rebate with its $4.7 billion price tag won’t help Canada’s poor growth performance.
- It borrows from the future to give to the present. The federal government is currently running a large deficit. This raises the question of who will have to pay the $4.7 billion bill for the one-time payments announced today. The answer is that the government will have to borrow the money and therefore future taxpayers will have to either pay it off or service the extra debt indefinitely. The money the Trudeau government will send out won’t come out of thin air, it’ll have to be borrowed with the burden falling on future taxpayers.
The Trudeau government got one thing conceptually right, which is that there are advantages to reducing the tax burden on Canadians. Unfortunately, the policy package it has put forward to provide tax relief gets everything wrong. It reduces the wrong taxes, shifts taxes temporally rather than cutting them, does nothing to improve economic incentives, and burdens future taxpayers. With the holiday season around the corner, this attempt at a gift to Canadian taxpayers is the economic equivalent of a lump of coal in the stocking.
Authors:
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