It’s times like this that I wish I wrote a column about provincial politics because this has been a baller week under the category of “$h!t My Premier Says.”
From tunnels under the 401 to the war on bike lanes to the belief that the only impediment to economic prosperity is one’s ability to fill out a job application, Doug Ford’s stand-up routine might be funny if the issues weren’t so dire.
I’ve observed Ford for a long time now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two reasons he’s so ineffectual as a political leader: A lack of lived experience as someone economically disadvantaged, and a lack of imagination to even pretend what that would be like.
The premier’s failing on this is not unique, and this space has been a recital lately of how our political class in Ontario – from the local to the federal levels and all points in between – don’t know how hard it is out there. They don’t know, or perhaps they don’t appreciate, how the safety net built in bygones days just can’t cope anymore with the weight and breadth of the need today.
It was nearly one year ago that council approved a motion to call on the provincial and federal governments to work together to implement a national guaranteed livable income. Excuse me, I should say 10 out of 13 members of council approved the motion, councillors Dan Gibson and Michele Richardson plus Mayor Cam Guthrie all felt that writing a letter to get the ball rolling was a bridge too far lest people lose faith in their bootstraps.
I was thinking about this motion on Monday when Ford said that if unhoused people want to get housed then they should “get an application and drop it off at one of these companies and start working” because if you’re healthy you should “get off your ass and start working like everyone else is.”
Interestingly, the firm of Guthrie, Gibson and Richardson were at it again this week with a council motion to oppose the Ontario government’s plan to tell cities where they can layout bike lanes, the latest in a long line of municipal micromanaging that has pockmarked Ford’s premiership since the very beginning when he re-wrote the rules of Toronto city council mid-election.
Guthrie said he voted against the motion because he didn’t like the idea of opposing legislation before seeing it, which is weird because he was very eager to support the end of CTS sites before knowing the specs of the HART Hubs, or if Guelph would be able to get one. Like with the overriding of independent decisions at the Ontario Energy Board, the concerns of the Accessibility Advisory Committee or universal basic income, if Guthrie doesn’t get it, he doesn’t have time for it.
But the mayor is hardly alone in the area of not getting things. At this month’s planning meeting, council heard about a project to build a residential tower downtown that will take advantage of provincial legislation that let’s such a project get away with having no off-street parking. As a supposed environmentally friendly city were told to celebrate this, but then there’s reality.
If you live in just about any neighbourhood in this town you know that the theoretical limitation of two parking spots – one in the garage and one in the driveway – is not a real limitation. So I will ask the question that no one on council asked at the meeting: Are we really supposed to believe that no one who moves into that building when it’s done is going to own a vehicle?
Of course they will! And it’s because of the reality that no one across the road at city hall has the courage to say out loud.
You see, you can’t manage in Guelph without a car. City transit services are so poor that they fall apart with a little stress, even the predictable stress like the beginning of the school year. And if you want to leave town, you’re even more out of luck without a car, especially on the weekend when your only two options are the slowest possible bus routes to Toronto.
This is what makes Wednesday’s announcement by the premier about his delusional vision of a tunnel under the 401 so infuriating. That 55-kilometre route will cost about $1 billion per kilometre to build, and meanwhile, we’re still waiting for funding to build a single stretch of track between Georgetown and Brampton that will make two-way, all-day GO on the Kitchener Line possible. Why doesn’t Ford just propose to build a Stargate at this point?
One more example where realities and possibilities collide was at the Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee this month, where the topic of tiny homes and a structured encampment was broached again.
The councillors from the Wellington side were notably frustrated because they thought this discussion was done, they had put their foot down. Councillor Matthew Bulmer said that if the City of Guelph wants to do something, the County’s not standing in their way. Why don’t we just do it already?
Funny that because the City of Guelph doesn’t have a housing department. That’s what we depend on the County of Wellington to do! In fact, we pay them to do it. Why would the city create its own housing department when we pay the county nearly $25 million per year to provide that service, and why does the county act like we’re not allowed to ask questions and get answers about how that money is spent?
Yes, the county does well administering social services as prescribed, but the point that’s increasingly being made clear is that the prescription isn’t working anymore. Like Ford, who thinks that the will power to work is the only antidote to unprecedented unaffordability, we’re surrounded by the limitations of the way things used to be, or the way we want things to work, and the result is that nothing changes.
Meanwhile, our community is being buried under the inability of our governments to appreciate that the game has changed, and that the rules of the game have failed to keep up. If only someone was as interested in helping us tunnel out of this mess as they are in tunneling under the 401.
