The world according to cdlu -

Community service like no other

Here's my column in today's Mercury on the Guelph by-election.

We need a strong advocate for transit
London North Centre MP Glen Pearson was once described by Maclean's magazine as the last decent man in Ottawa.
His years of tireless work on issues he cares about, and his humble mission to accomplish rather than to take credit, looking for accomplishment rather than attention, has earned him this respect and reputation.
Frank Valeriote, the candidate for the Liberal party in Guelph's federal byelection, is another man cut from the same cloth.
Decades of community service, both at home and abroad, have earned him an enviable list of accomplishments and enormous respect. He has served the public in Guelph since the early 1980s.
With a budget comparable to the city government and equally difficult decisions, Valeriote sat on -- and for several years chaired --the local Catholic school board, forging unprecedented co-operation with the public school board. His list of volunteer commitments, overseas mission work, and unheralded contributions to Guelph is extensive enough to fill its own page of a paper.
Valeriote has never worried about his profile or his image in the city. He just does what needs doing without fanfare, and feels no need to brag about it outside of the context of an election.
He is not asking to go to Ottawa for himself. He is not looking for glory, and as a long-practising and successful lawyer, he is not going for job stability. He is asking to go to Ottawa very simply to represent Guelph, Guelph's needs, Guelph's issues, and Guelph's residents, not himself.
Valeriote is all about principle, not about power for the sake of power.
As I have made clear many times, my number 1 issue for the future of this region is transit.
When considering the land-use demands, energy requirements, tax-dollar strain, and general economics of cars and trucks as compared to buses and trains, it is hard to see how our current path is really sustainable. Shifting our way of thinking about our way of moving will take serious, long-term leadership and the placement of principle ahead of politics.
While none of the candidates is making a point of sending his or her sign crews out on city buses, all claim to support transit.
The NDP, the party whose provincial wing cancelled GO train service to Guelph 15 years ago, even brought Leader Jack Layton here specifically to tell us how they would fund city transit. Their solution is simple: tie transit funding to car use through gas-tax based funding.
If we drive bigger cars more, we will burn more gas, pay more gas tax, and fund transit better. If we drive enough to fund transit properly, we will no longer need to drive, and transit will lose its funding. It's not quite how I envision the future of transit.
The Conservative candidate here also made a point of saying she supports transit, but it does not take much digging to find evidence directly contradicting that. Apparently Gloria Kovach believes 40-minute bus service is preferable, as earlier this year she voted against instituting 20-minute service in the city as a member of city council.
So the question for me is pretty straightforward. If I want a candidate who will be in a position to support transit, who can I look to?
Valeriote fits that bill, too. As a candidate for the only party that has a serious and immediate plan for the environment, that recognizes that environmentalism is primarily an economic argument, Valeriote, who has stated his own support for the future of transit, will be in a position in Parliament to push, and push hard, for increased transit planning and funding.
If you are trying to decide who to vote for on Sept. 8, and like me you believe that the country needs to move forward with real, honest new policy and not power for the sake of power, Frank Valeriote is your man.
I want a member of Parliament who cares about Guelph, cares about the environment, and will be in a position to do something about both. Only one candidate fits that bill.
Why settle for anything less? I recommend a strong show of support for this man of character, accomplishment, principle, and vision on Sept. 8. We owe it to ourselves.

elections environment guelph politics transit 726 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 10:35 on August 23, 2008

What the ....

I just glanced out the window a few minutes ago in time to watch a long, loose-haired caucasian guy in his twenties pass my driveway, pick up my lawn sign, and nonchallantly walk on. By the time I got out to the road to see where he went he was gone, along with my sign, in broad daylight. Unbelievable.

elections guelph politics 62 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 12:29 on August 20, 2008

Remembering the blackout of August 14, 2003

As I have just been reminded, today marked the 5th anniversary of the blackout that darkened much of the US north-east and Ontario. I spent that evening, August 14th, 2003, watching a movie, browsing the Internet, listening to the radio, and otherwise performing electrical tasks thanks to a lucky series of coincidences.

In the spring of 2003, I bought myself a new laptop. Having used a 486 Dtk Computer laptop since 1998 for which I had paid just $50, I felt the time had come to upgrade. Somehow, using a computer with 8MB of RAM and a 325MB hard drive dual booting DOS and a 2.0-series Linux kernel no longer seemed entirely adequate. At the time, I also purchased a GPRS data card from then still independent Fido with a true unlimited data plan, a package essentially unmatched to this day by Canada's mobile phone companies.

I bought the laptop and the data card and plan so I could get on the Internet and do work while pursuing my then-new hobby of trainspotting. It worked marvellously well. I went to my favourite location, Guelph Junction, a railway junction just outside of Campbellville that connects Guelph's city-owned Guelph Junction Railway to the Canadian Pacific mainlines running between Toronto and London, and branching off to Hamilton. There were two radio towers at Guelph Junction. One of them was the railway's own communications tower so that dispatchers could talk to train crews. The other was a Fido cell tower, which guaranteed me excellent reception for my laptop as I sat at its base. The latter was taken down shortly after Rogers purchased Fido.

But I had a problem. My laptop's battery only lasted a couple of hours. I could not spend the whole day sitting there. By August of 2003, I had decided on a solution to that, and a sort-of related problem. Trainspotting, at least if you want to take photos of the trains as I do, is essentially limited to daylight hours. I wondered if I could get around this problem by using a pair of 500W halogen work lamps pointed at the train as it passed.

So early in August, I went to Canadian Tire and got as carried away as I could. I bought a 1200W 3-socket power inverter and a pair of 500W halogen work lamps, and booked an appointment at Powerline, a high-end electronics store at the north end of Guelph, to have the inverter installed in my 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser with its roughly 375,000 km. The appointment was for August 12th.

I purchased a 25-foot wind-up coil extension cable that would live with the inverter in the car, and headed off to Powerline with the car for its scheduled appointment. An hour later, I turned it on for the first time and admired the digital read-out of my car battery's voltage and the huge piece of equipment now on the floor between the driver and passenger seats. I had done it.

Two days later, I was at my desk in the afternoon when I noticed two very strange power surges in quick succession. Without really thinking about it, I started shutting down my computers as I had not seen that kind of surge before and did not know what it was. A few minutes later, all my computers were shut down and the power went out in the house on what appeared to be a perfectly clear, normal day.

I found this to be a little odd and decided to see if I could put my inverter to use. Within a few minutes, I had strung the 25-foot power cable from my inverter through my house to the kitchen, where I plugged another extension cord into it onto my back porch. I plugged my laptop in and booted it up, shortly getting on the 'net and connecting up to IRC, an internet chat protocol developed in the late 80s that I continue to use to this day (see the 'Bloggers' Chat' link on the right). Within minutes it was obvious from the others that I was talking to that the scale of this power outage was rather large, as it was making news around the world. As I recall, it was friends in Europe who told me that all my neighbours' power was out.

Figuring we were in for the long haul, I strung up some more wires from the car, and with the help of a couple of my house-mates, set up a DVD player, small television, radio, and some lights on the porch. It occured to me at that point that it would probably be more useful to plug the chest freezer into the inverter so that our food wouldn't spoil, and I refocused my efforts on trying to do that. Within a few minutes it was clear that my car's battery was not capable of providing enough power to the inverter to power the freezer and I gave up on that project, not realising until much later that my car would never be able to provide enough power to bring the 1200W inverter to its full potential. I took off with a friend to check out the various stores in the city to see if anyone still had any ice for sale to try and preserve the freezer that way. Needless to say, we missed that boat and we returned empty handed.

While I don't recall what we did for dinner, my neighbour on one side came up onto our porch and as the sun went down we put on the movie "Catch Me If You Can," with my computer merrily providing us access to the full force of the Internet through my unlimited data plan, and the radio softly keeping us up to date in the background. A compact fluorescent light efficiently illuminated the scene for us, as our neighbour on the other side started up a small fire in their yard. After the movie, we set up lights around the house that could be used off the car battery as needed for the night and went to sleep.

Epilogue

The power came back on at about 4 am and had no further issues. The car itself was retired on November 12th, 2003 with a bit over 378,000 km on it. Fido's GPRS data service became worthless (except, curiously, in Ottawa where it worked perfectly well) after Rogers took over the company and I eventually got rid of it. The halogen lights did not see photography service until the inverter was installed in my new car, a 1993 of the same model with only 147,000 km which remains in service to this day, in early 2004. On May 5th, 2004 I tried to use them to take a photo of a brand new locomotive bound for Alaska Railroad on its way through Guelph Junction. In the few seconds the lights were on for the photo, the car battery nearly died and the engine ran rough as it tried to keep up with the 1000W load. The photo didn't come out, either.

essays 1187 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 23:47 on August 14, 2008

Bush prepares his October Surprise

With three months left to influence who his successor is, President Bush is sending the US military on a "humanitarian" mission to Georgia, the former Soviet republic currently at war with Russia. Setting up American troops to be facing Russian troops in a hot war cannot end well.

foreign politics 53 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 12:10 on August 13, 2008

By-election thoughts

The by-election in Guelph is still in its early 'phony war' stage, where it seems only politicos are paying much attention, but there is enough happening to keep things interesting. Some of the Liberal signs are getting 'decorated' with swasticas, a rather lame way of protesting much of anything as it automatically invokes Godwin's law. Not only is it an ineffective means of protest, the people who did it painted the swasticas backward. Way to go.

There are a few interesting blogposts and stories out in the last few days.

Jason Cherniak weighs in with a pre-post-mortem on the Guelph by-election.

The Mercury has one of its best pieces to date on this by-election, poking some fun at all of the campaigns' for some of their actions to date. They've also done an interesting analysis of all the campaign signs from a graphic design/marketing point of view.

A fourth candidate has joined the race, which will make Mike Nagy the fifth one to register once he catches up with the "Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada" (h/t GuelphVotes).

After being on a negative offensive for nearly six months, the Tories, without a hint of irony, say the Liberals are being negative. Somehow the CPC candidate being unable to answer a question without PMO's help is the Liberals' fault, I suppose.

Also worth note is that both Ontario Young Liberals and the Young Greens of Canada are converging on Guelph this weekend, which should make for an interesting few days.

elections politics 252 words - permanent link - comments: 5. Posted at 12:12 on August 06, 2008

Jack Layton and Gloria Kovach pretend to have credibility on transit

The front page headline in yesterday's local paper is "Jack Layton promising transit cash". Interesting, considering he has no power to do so. It comes from an editorial board interview that the paper held on Tuesday with Jack Layton and Tom King (who the paper all but endorsed today), once a respected author, now Guelph's NDP candidate for the on-going by-election. The NDP's plan is simple: get people to drive more gas guzzlers farther, and use a tiny fraction of the increased gas tax revenue to placate transit.

For a party whose very survival depends on a healthy auto industry, their plan does a marvelous job of achieving their goals. The plan is to give one cent of the gas tax to transit. It's a paltry, essentially meaningless commitment, as its success depends on its failure. The more fuel people use in their cars, the more money we give to transit to get them out of their cars. If people switch to transit, that money goes away, transit becomes underfunded, and they return to their cars. Brilliant strategy from the NDP.

If the NDP were serious about transit and the environment, which they most assuredly are not, their push would be on endangered plants like the GM Oshawa truck plant to switch to the manufacture of light rail vehicles, busses, and that type of vehicle. The factory workers not needed to manufacture the smaller number of larger transit vehicles would certainly be needed to drive the vehicles in cities across the country.

If the market forces are not calling for that, then that is what the NDP and every other political party should be working to solve by ending the subsidising of cars and trucks through highway construction, and investing in our woefully inadequate transit infrastructure. Promising to spend one penny from each litre of gas used in cars on public transit, which doesn't even come close to matching the governments' collective subsidies for the cars burning the gas, is disingenuous and not a real transit solution. It is nothing more than politicking and solves absolutely nothing.

Not that Guelph CPC candidate Gloria Kovach has much more to offer on this score. Earlier this year, Kovach insulted Guelph, transit, and the environment by voting against public transit. But yesterday, she told the Guelph paper:

Investment in public transit is important to reducing our carbon footprint, Kovach said, adding the last budget from the Conservative government included $500 million for that purpose.
"That will be helping us here in the city of Guelph in our local transit, and also looking at interconnectivity between communities in the region, and also will help in bringing light rail to the city," she said.

On February 19th of this year, Kovach voted against the motion: "THAT 20 minute transit service be approved to commence July 7, 2008 from the start of service until the end of the PM rush." She voted in favour of leaving busses at the ridiculous 40-minute cycle they had at that time. Fortunately most of the rest of council does support public transit, and 20 minute service now runs. Fortunately for Guelph residents, she was in the minority. For her new position, I guess she had to ask Stephen Harper: "hey, what's my opinion today?"

elections politics 555 words - permanent link - comments: 4. Posted at 12:29 on July 31, 2008

Gloria Kovach's love-hate relationship with deficits

Monday night at City Council, Guelph Conservative party candidate Gloria Kovach went on and on about how the city using deficit funding for capital investment is a bad thing and should be stopped. I just about choked on the hypocrisy as this came within days of her party admitting to a $517 million federal deficit in just 2 months, after more than a decade of Liberal governance and balanced budgets. For a party that preaches fiscal responsibility, they wouldn't know a balanced budget if it hit them square in the face.

We know that the Conservatives have been selling government assets that they will have to pay to use after, likely in a vain effort to mask their deficit. The Canadian Wheat Board hopper fleet has been sold, though I have yet to see any official announcement about it. The government has also sold at least $1.41 billion of government buildings to lease them back. And that's just what I know about. Before the GST was cut another percent at the beginning of the year, we were already posting huge monthly deficits. Last October, for example, the monthly deficit was $2.7 billion.

The GST cuts since the tories have come to office are costing the federal treasury on the order of $1 billion per month, money that could be used to begin to fix the country's estimated $123 billion infrastructure deficit, something Kovach, as a city councillor, should be keenly aware of. If she were serious about helping Guelph, her press releases would be demanding more infrastructure money for cities, rather than criticising others for making those needed demands.

If she isn't willing to stand up for Guelph's interests while on City Council, how can we expect her to in Ottawa?

As she said to the Mercury about Truscott's settlement, "The issue of funding is not a local issue and those questions are best directed to the PMO press office." So, Mr. Harper, what's Ms. Kovach's opinion today?

guelph politics 334 words - permanent link - comments: 7. Posted at 09:22 on July 30, 2008

Transit issues gaining traction in Guelph

Last week, Light Rail Transit finally entered Guelph's radar screen. In an article in the Tribune and a couple of days later in the Mercury, the City of Guelph is exploring expanded transit options including Bus Rapid Transit and Light Rail Transit.

I am quoted in the latter article noting that the Guelph Junction Railway tracks can eventually provide us LRT service to Milton and Hamilton (and beyond), but more to the point, Guelph and Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge can be deeply integrated with the use of Light Rail Transit on relatively quiet existing tracks. I discussed this at some length in my first two presentations about transit to council on February 4th and March 3rd. Light Rail Transit is important to our future and I am happy to see Guelph exploring it.

Another item in the same vein is the ever-controversial Wilson St. lot. Apparently, the city has identified this lot as the future home of GO transit parking, as noted by the Mercury's City Hall blog. This is, to say the least, strange, as such a lot would be hopelessly inadequate. I would like to take this opportunity to applaud councilors Findlay and Laidlaw for explicitly identfying the Lafarge property as the right place for GO train service, with downtown being a secondary stop during tonight's council meeting -- the 4th this month (don't councillors take days off?).

I am very happy to see transit becoming an important issue to our city leadership. It was discussed at length at tonight's council meeting, which I unfortunately did not see most of. I look forward to seeing some real results to go with the 20 minute bus service we now have.

transit 287 words - permanent link - comments: 3. Posted at 22:56 on July 28, 2008

Guelph by-election called

I'm in Ottawa atten ding a conference, far from the action in federal politics. How ironic. At any rate, the Guelph by-election is on. I wish Ms. Kovach a long and continued career on Guelph City Council! More when I'm home in a few days.

guelph politics 47 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 11:05 on July 25, 2008

Guelph-Horizon Hydro merger debate

Tonight, Guelph City Council is holding a meeting mostly to discuss a proposed merger between Guelph Hydro and Horizon Hydro, the company formed out of the merger of Hamilton and St. Catharines Hydros. Below is my statement as a delegation to council this evening on the topic.

Madam mayor, members of council,

I come to you as a citizen concerned about some aspects of the proposed Hydro merger. Any time someone tries to sell me an amazing deal that expires if I don't act now, I get just a bit wary. So I have a few questions. Why the rush? Are the reasons for the rush substantiated? Is bigger always better? And what, exactly, are these economies of scale we keep hearing about?

There is an inherent contradiction in all we are being told. On the one hand, Hydro's board tells us that if we don't do this merger, we risk being merged against our wishes at a later date in less favourable circumstances. On the other hand, we are told that this merger needs to be approved before the tax holiday window slams shut in October. In between is the statement that the Ontario government is looking to reduce the number of local distribution companies to around 10 from the hundred-odd we have now, a claim for which there is not a shred of evidence.

If councillor Wetstein is right that Guelph Hydro will be merged eventually, and it is best to do it while we are in a position of strength, and if the Ontario government is serious about wanting mergers, then at some point, if we have a truly excellent merger proposition, and a sense as a community that it is the right thing to do, we can take it to the Ontario government and ask for this tax exemption at that time. If they are not willing to give it to us, then we can safely assume that the province is not, in fact, serious about promoting the merger of utilities. It is worth pointing out that Guelph Hydro achieved this position of strength on its own, not as part of any MegaHydro.

If councillor Laidlaw is right, and small local utilities are the way of the future, then we have to ask ourselves what we accomplish by even considering merging. Is it a business case or is it a community case? Is this proposal to help us save a few dollars in the short term, or is it to help us build a better community?

The BDR consultants last week asked us to give different values weights, and also suggested that we have to ask ourselves if we consider Guelph Hydro a business that can be sold or an essential service like our police or fire services. Those two points are inextricably connected. It goes without saying that both our police and fire services are inherently dependent on Guelph Hydro, as is every other aspect of our community.

What are these economies of scale we keep hearing about that a merged -- but not interconnected -- utility would provide? Will we need fewer power lines, transformers, and transfer stations, or will we get a bulk rate discount from Guelph Utility Pole? Surely the 30 or so employees that we would cut between the two utilities will not add up to the much touted and unproven 20% savings we are told of over the next few years. If they do, I wish I had one of those evidently very lucrative jobs.

While we are looking at numbers, what is the line between transactions that require shareholder approval, and ones that do not? Why is this threshold not public?

I believe that all of us have more questions than answers. Have we considered some kind of strategic partnership, something that we can get out of? Why would we merge with another city's utility when that city - Hamilton - would retain a 59% stake, able to buy and merge with as many small companies as it pleases without any input or veto from Guelph? I recommend we take BDR's advice and assess values to each consideration ourselves. We should value our utility as an essential service, not as a business, and consider it in terms of our community first.

Thank you for your continued leadership.

guelph 722 words - permanent link - comments: 2. Posted at 20:00 on July 21, 2008

NDP candidate takes socialism to a new level

A photo in the July 10th edition of "The Fitzhugh", a weekly paper in Jasper, AB credited to Yellowhead NDP candidate Ken Kuzminski was demonstrably taken by Brendan Frisina, a friend of mine who is living in Jasper for the summer, and is used in the paper without his permission. Updated

The photo in question is of a derailment that Brendan watched take place on June 29th.

At that time (Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:10:38, UTC-6/MDT), Brendan posted a photo of the derailment to popular trainspotting website railpictures.net and sent the following message, which included a copy of the photo, to the major mailing list for trainspotters watching CN operations in Canada. It reads, in whole:

Above: the photo from The Fitzhugh with credit enlarged.
Below: Brendan's original colour photo.

G82541 28 derailed at least four grain loads this evening as they were departing Jasper at 1933 MT. Power was 2222 and 2260.
The trailing truck of ITLX 44061 jumped the tracks while going over a switch leaving Track 8, and dragged for half a mile along the ballast and through a public crossing before finally reaching the crossovers at CN Home, where it and at least 3 other cars jumped the tracks. The ITLX and two other hoppers ripped open and were spilling grain, while at least one other car remained upright but off the rails.
The conductor reported to the RTC that the speed at the time of the derailment was 16 MPH, but I'd like to see what the event recorder download has to say...
Photo here: http://tinyurl.com/3ko5og
Brendan

Yesterday afternoon, he posted a note on facebook reading as follows, with a link to his photo and a scan of The Fitzhugh's July 10th edition -- some 11 days after Brendan witnessed and photographed this derailment:

Below is a note I wrote to the newspaper after discovering that a photo of mine had been stolen and printed without my permission, with someone else's name as the credit!
For comparison, check my photo versus the one in the newspaper...
Mine: http://tinyurl.com/4jzqur
Newspaper: http://tinyurl.com/6yv2dt
Good morning,
Much to my surprise, I found that one of my photos had been printed in the Fitzhugh. Not only had I not given the photo to the newspaper for publishing, but the photo credit went to somebody else! For what it's worth, the photo in question is the one of the CN derailment at Home (Mile 0.5 on CN's Albreda Subdivision).
I'm not sure where or how Mr Kuzminski got a hold of my photo, but I'm thankful that I only upload low-resolution copies (which are unsuitable for printing because of the drastic loss in quality, which is quite evident in the printed photo) to my password-protected Photobucket account. I suppose I'll have to start watermarking all of my photos to ensure such blatant thievery does not occur in the future.
I'm willing to bet that all the EXIF information is still intact too, which can be easily used to prove which camera took the photo (not to mention that I'm the only one with the full-resolution image) if there is any doubt.
It's unfortunate that the Fitzhugh has printed the photo, but I doubt that you had any idea the photo was not Mr Kuzminski's and were thus unaware of any copyright infringement. The real disappointment here is that Mr Kuzminski had the gall to pass off the photo as his own. I wonder how many people have made comments to him about the photo, and I wonder how many people he told the photo wasn't actually his own?
I sincerely hope you didn't pay Mr Kuzminski for the photo, since I would have given the Fitzhugh the full-sized image to print for free (since the Fitzhugh is distributed for free). All I'd have asked is that I be properly credited for the photo and retain copyright.
Respectfully,
Brendan Frisina

Ken Kuzminski, the name credited on Brendan's photo, is the NDP candidate for Yellowhead. He is clearly concerned about rail safety as an issue. This does not give him the right to use Brendan's photo as his own to push this agenda.

The email, facebook note, and photo, incidentally, are reprinted with Brendan's full permission.

Update 11:24: The Fitzhugh replied to Brendan, stating:

"brendan: the error is mine, not Mr. Kuzminski's. He forwarded the image to the Fitzhugh and I passed it on without noticing the copyright line at the bottom of the picture. If you send an invoice, we'll pay you $50 for use and acknowledge the error in a correction. again, my apology for the error. jack danylchuk"

The photo was still submitted to the paper without permission, but the paper claims responsibility for cropping the copyright notice off and posting it as the submitter's.

politics 802 words - permanent link - comments: 7. Posted at 11:28 on July 14, 2008

Dion comes to Guelph to discuss the Green Shift ahead of by-election

While meaningless platitudes from Guelph NDP candidate Tom King make the news, the presence of a lot of retired people at a Liberal event in the middle of a business day is about the best the local paper could say about Stéphane Dion's visit to Guelph yesterday. The reality is that a crowd of some 500 people came out at lunch time on Thursday to participate in a townhall meeting put on by Stéphane Dion to discuss the Green Shift, including myself and quite a few other people whose hair is quite a distance from grey. Jack Layton, incidently, needed to hand out free food and hold his event on a weekend to get a comparable crowd.

It was an excellent event, with Dion showing once again that he puts his principles above all other considerations, setting him apart from his strategy-over-substance rivals on both the left and right. He did not discuss a lot of issues other than the Green Shift, but he was there specifically to discuss the Green Shift. Nor was the event restricted to partisans, with party affiliation not a question on the sign-in sheet, and people who are not Liberals asking pointed questions. My only regret is it could not go longer.

The questions were wide-ranging, from the president of the Chamber of Commerce asking about early learning and childcare to a participant asking about federal jurisdictional defense. Concerns were raised about the Green Shift pushing investment off-shore and mental healthcare as well. There was even one person who stood up with the intent of making a 15 minute speech about everything from hydrogen to copyright law, though she was cut off after only a couple of pages.

Dion's answers were in all cases candid rather than practiced as the paper suggested. While I've always been a strong supporter of Dion as one of the very few politicians who is an idealist rather than a crass partisan, Dion-cynic and fellow blogger Steve V attended the event and has been shown Dion for who he is.

Rumours are flying in Guelph that a by-election will be called here on July 23rd. With that in mind, the Mercury -- the same, usually balanced, Mercury whose assessment of a workday lunchtime crowd is that they have grey hair -- has launched a blog specifically to address the by-election.

politics 402 words - permanent link - comments: 8. Posted at 12:43 on July 11, 2008

Municipal tax revenue issue has been very badly framed

If it were up to me, every politician in the country would be forced to read a copy of Warren Kinsella's book, "The War Room" before being allowed to seek office. Getting an accurate message out early and clearly is terribly important, lest your opponents define the issues for you. Locally, this is evidenced by a raging debate over a proposed 6.5% "tax increase" for 2009 in Guelph. As I argue in today's column, with ever rising propertly value and the end of MPAC's evaluation freeze, calling this a tax increase is at minimum a misnomer. Had it been phrased, far more accurately, as: "We anticipate that tax revenues will rise approximately 6.5% on rising property values, which is in line with our increased costs", the necessary rise in revenue would be logical rather than controversial.

I don't know my exact tax rate right now. My tax bill does not show my taxes as a percentage of property value, which is something that should be corrected. Based on my total tax bill (municipal + education) for this year, and my property evaluation, my effective tax rate for 2008 appears to be 1.36%. With MPAC's evaluation freeze gone, I can expect my house to rise as much in value on MPAC's rolls as it has on the open market. Based on that and a conservative estimate of what my house will be worth under this year's MPAC numbers, and a 6.5% increase in how much the municipality needs from me to provide me its services, my tax rate should drop to 1.21%.

You know what that is? It is a tax cut of 12% for 2009. And that's ignoring population (taxbase) growth, which would make that cut even more dramatic. If we had never had the evaluation freeze, our evaluations would have been rising at about the same speed as our tax revenue demands for the last few years, and that trend would be continuing. Is that not what sound fiscal management by our city leadership is?

There seems to be a feeling among some residents that tax revenue should never go up. Had we instituted such a policy, say, 30 years ago, what services could we still afford as a city? Our population was somewhere around half its current size and the city's tax revenue would be a fraction what it is today, but today's city would still have today's demands. Would we have a municipal water system, with our 30-year-old tax revenue freeze? Not likely, that's increasingly expensive as we overburden the water table that feeds us. How about a police force? Well, there's the provincial police nearby... Fire service? What's the point, we don't have any water. Trash collection? Forget it! Potholes? Leave them there, they're the best part of the roads that have not been upgraded since 1978! City Library? Well, we'd need to keep that so people could read about what the City was like before people got the idea that it could function without any tax revenue.

It seems to me that the people demanding no tax revenue increases whatsoever are the same people who complain bitterly when their city parks are not maintained, potholes are not filled, or community-damaging developments are not approved. There is this disconnect prevalent where people fail to understand that the purpose of a tax is to allow our city, and our society, to function. It is how we pool our ever increasing shared costs. Taxes are not a sinkhole into which our money falls, never to be seen again. Taxes, as unpleasant as they are to pay, are the grease that keeps our society moving. I pay my taxes with the same pride with which I use the services they provide me.

When people demand that the city "sharpen their pencils" and look for numerous small cuts to the budget, what they are really asking is for services to be cut. But ask which ones should be cut, and suddenly they go very very quiet. More importantly, even if we were to cut our services by, say, 10% this year, the cost for the remaining services will still rise by however many percent next year and we will be in the same place we are today, with fewer services to show for it.

The proposal from staff is to raise revenues by 6.5% to keep up with expenses rising at the same rate, they are not proposing to raise our tax rates.

Anyway, today's column.

Municipal tax a function of value
Are city staff proposing to raise taxes by 6.5 per cent, or are they proposing to raise revenue by 6.5 per cent? There is an important distinction.
As our property values continue to rise throughout Guelph, our taxes as a percentage of our property value may in fact be dropping. Federal and provincial tax revenues rise as the economy grows, yet no one claims that those taxes went up. Tax rates on income and spending remain the same, but the value of the economy rises, and so do the revenues and costs associated with providing tax-supported services.
Outside my home in south-end Guelph I have a passable road. It was kept clear of snow through the winter. It is equipped with a sewer system. My trash was collected last week and will be again tomorrow. Potable water flows into my home. Police patrol and firefighters respond to my neighbourhood.
There is a well-maintained public park across the street from me. City buses now pass three times per hour.
What do all these things have in common?
They all require the use of motor vehicles. All of those vehicles require fuel. All that fuel has to be paid for. And, of course, the cost of fuel has gone up as much for the municipal government as for the rest of us. Why, then, are some citizens upset at the city for proposing to increase tax revenue by 6.5 per cent for 2009 to keep up these services?
Have our personal expenses gone up any less? The price of fuel has more than doubled over the last few years while the price of crude has quadrupled. Food prices are flying. The cost of a home in Guelph has shot up dramatically, my own rising approximately 50 per cent in value since I bought it in 2002. Our expenses are rising faster than our income. We know this. It is the precursor of what may be a serious recession.
The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC)'s 2006 property evaluation freeze is now over. Our homes will be reassessed by MPAC and our 2009 taxes will be based on these new assessments. The assessed value of many of our homes will skyrocket. That may allow our tax rate to drop as a percentage of the value of our property. If expenses go up but our tax rate drops it could be argued that our council is actually remarkably fiscally responsible.
The newspapers illustrate annual tax numbers by showing a hypothetical dollar value rise for each resident, rather than showing those same numbers as a percentage of our ever-rising property values. Our federal and provincial tax revenues also rise in dollars, but their rates do not.
We should be measuring our municipal taxes on that same basis -- as a tax rate rather than as a dollar value.
If, after considering this real measure of our increased wealth and obligations, we still wish to lower our taxes, then we each have to do our own part. We cannot expect the municipal government do it all.
Rather than complain, we can do lots of little things to lower taxes by the honest measure of municipal taxes as a percentage of our city's value. Here are a few ideas:
For one, drive less. As a car owner, I am as tempted to use my car as anyone else, but have been disciplining myself to make more frequent use of city buses, VIA Rail, and my bicycle. Roads are the single biggest expense we have, a free service that costs a lot. Road and boulevard maintenance and construction alone amounts to around half of this year's budget increase, and accounts for some $40 million per year of the city's budget.
Use less water. This could reduce the number of new wells the city needs to drill, and the amount of water that needs to be treated on the way into and out of our homes.
Organize trash so that the trucks don't have to stop every 15 metres, saving time and fuel. We could perhaps have our recycling and compost collected only every second week, as our clear bags are.
Get involved constructively. Identify where you feel the city is spending too much and suggest alternatives.
If you do not want your property taxes to increase as fast as your other expenses, identify which city services and what city infrastructure you would rather do without, and see if others agree. This is something we can do together as citizens of Guelph.
Consider the true ramifications of tax revenues not keeping up with the services the City of Guelph provides.
The city's expenses are going up as fast as our own, and we need only look to ourselves for the solutions.
To paraphrase former U.S. president John F. Kennedy's inaugural address: ask not what your city can do for you -- ask what you can do for your city.

guelph leadership money 1580 words - permanent link - comments: 4. Posted at 09:32 on July 09, 2008

Conservative government selling out wheat farmers?

A staple in any trainspotter's life in Canada is the ubiquitous Canadian Wheat Board grain car. Recently, though, I have been seeing a change in them -- they no longer appear to be owned by the Wheat Board. They seem to have been sold -- and not to the farmers as the Canadian Wheat Board had demanded.

In the last few years, I have photographed just shy of 400 Wheat Board-owned railway cars, a small fraction of their total fleet. Some of them are lettered -- the railway equivalent of a license plate -- "CPWX", for Canadian Pacific Railway handled Wheat Board cars, and the others are lettered "CNWX", for Canadian National handled Wheat Board cars. The ones I have been seeing recently are lettered simply "CP" and "CN" with the "WX" painted out, suggesting the cars are now owned by Canadian Pacific and Canadian National, not just handled by them.

It may not mean much, but I have not found any news stories or press releases about this change. With the Conservative government's pinching of the Wheat Board over the past couple of years, one has to wonder if they are being forced to sell off assets like their large railway car fleet against their wishes. It is worth noting that the Alberta and Saskatchewan government owned freight cars for carrying wheat, lettered ALNX/ALPX and SKNX/SKPX respectively, do not appear to be suffering this same fate.

The CWB's apparent sell-off of their wheat-carrying fleet is made doubly curious by the fact that the Wheat Board was complaining about being gouged by the railways for maintenance costs on these same government-owned cars just a few months ago. It seems a bit strange to me to turn around and sell the cars to the operators you just accused of gouging you.

Especially, that is, when you consider that the Wheat Board told a Commons committee 4 years ago that "[o]ther [grain car fleet] divestment options presented or discussed would significantly increase farmers' costs with no commensurate benefit. In essence, farmers would be paying for an asset owned by another entity." At the time, the Wheat Board was endorsing a proposal by a group called the "Farmer Rail Car Coalition" to purchase the fleet from the Government, with the "other divestment options" that they warned about appearing to be what has now happened. Two years ago, the Conservative government refused to sell the Wheat Board's 12,000-odd grain cars to the Wheat Board-endorsed Farmer Rail Car Coalition.

So what's going on? The Conservatives seem to have blocked the sale of the Canadian Wheat Board rail car fleet to the country's wheat farmers, only to turn aroudn and sell it off to the railways themselves. Is the Conservative government simply selling the Canadian Wheat Board rail car fleet to the highest bidder because it has run out of other assets to sell to balance the federal budget, or is this yet another attempt by the Conservatives to hurt Canadian wheat farmers and act against their wishes?

politics 508 words - permanent link - comments: 2. Posted at 06:29 on July 07, 2008