Category Archives: toronto

My Mini-Controversy

democracy and good government, ontario referendum on mmp, toronto

Thought you might want to know about something that’s been keeping me busy and occupying more than its fair share of my mind space these past few days.

Last week, I made a post to Torontoist explaining the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly’s proposal to change how we vote in Ontario, and outlining their reasons for making that decision. As you know, I tend to agree with them, if for no other reason than the fact that now that we’ve conducted this lengthy, democratic, and open consultation process to find out what Ontarians want, it would be pretty unwise to ignore, well, what Ontarians said they want.

I was going to let you know about that post anyway, but what followed was a combination of frustrating and amusing, and seems worth sharing as well. You should check out the chain of comments to my post yourself, but in summary:

  1. I was accused of being in a conflict of interest, because, not only do I support MMP, I also belong to organizations that support MMP. (Scandal!)
  2. The editors explained that I’m not in violation of the site’s conflict of interest policy, since I disclosed my interests in the post. Also, the policy actually only deals directly with people writing about their “professional” lives, which is a bit of a stretch since I’ve never been paid so much as a dime by any Green Party or Fair Vote organization.
  3. Andrew Potter (an author and MacLean’s contributor who once described MMP as an “electoral system for losers”) argued that Torontoist was obligated to let a guest contributer represent the “no” side.
  4. Other commenters pointed out that not only does MacLean’s not follow that standard, Torontoist is a blog (a blog!) with a clearly stated editorial point of view policy. Also, any Torontoist contributers who want to write in support of the “no” side are free to do so, but none have expressed interest.
  5. Other commenters briefly attempt to actually discuss the merits of MMP itself (including people who oppose MMP), but have to fight for space with this other meta-discussion.
  6. I’m accused of spreading “green party talking points” (as is later pointed out by someone else, all I’ve actually done is communicated the thinking of the Citizens’ Assembly) and participating in “political interference.”
  7. I’m accused of “hijacking” Torontoist, and using it as a “puppet” to spread “propaganda.”
  8. The same commenter (who isn’t using his or her real name) complains that there is “no room for dissent,” marking their third post to a page which is now more full of “dissent” than my original post.
  9. The same commenter calls for Torontoist to “give this site back to the people!” A friend of mine following the discussion IMs me: “When did you stop being a person?”
  10. I’m accused of being an “operative,” whatever that means.
  11. I’m again accused of being a “parrot…in the employ of the Green Party.”
  12. Andrew Potter complains about the whole thing on his MacLean’s blog. Demonstrating a brilliant understanding of irony, he frets that we’re not allowing for divergent viewpoints while writing on his own blog which doesn’t allow comments.

The important lesson I take out of the whole thing is that when people don’t know how to argue about the actual issues, they attack the person instead. Also, for some reason, the lower the stakes (again, we’re talking about a blog), the nastier things get.

Tonight I’m off to Midland to represent Fair Vote Canada at a referendum choice meeting there. The more we all talk about this the better. As the Citizens’ Assembly process proves, a randomly selected group of Ontarians that understands the issues will always choose MMP over our current system by a wide margin.

Nomination Crashers

liberal party, toronto

Claire and I crashed the Toronto Centre Liberal nomination meeting tonight. (How amused was I to see at least four or five other people at the meeting who I know are supporting my campaign? We exchanged knowing glances and Sting-style nose-taps. I guess it was just the place to be.) As of right now neither the blogosphere nor Google News are reporting the results of the vote between Bob Rae and Meredith Cartwright.

In conversation with Rob Oliphant and Mathieu Chantelois (a former nomination contestant and once rumoured nomination contestant, respectively) I heard a funny story. First though, some background.

A few weeks back I was sitting outside of Starbucks on Church Street with some friends, people watching. One man walked by wearing a Michael Ignatieff scarf. “Hey look,” we said. “That guy’s wearing a Michael Ignatieff scarf.” Then, two minutes later, Bob Rae walked by. “Hey look,” we said. “There’s Bob Rae.” So I got up and introduced myself as the Green candidate, we chatted for a bit, and then he continued on his walk.

Now, back to the nomination meeting. When Rob introduced me to Mathieu as the nominated Green candidate, Mathieu said, “oh, so you work at Starbucks.” Not having the above story fresh in my mind, I thought he was making some strange joke. (“Because the Starbucks sign is green?,” I thought.) But yes, as it turns out there’s a story going around in the Rae campaign (Mathieu hadn’t heard this directly from Bob) that Bob met me when I sold him a coffee.

No? Ok, well, it was funny to me.

Video of Climate Change Rally

climate crisis, green party, toronto

I’m still going to create a version of this video that also includes footage of the crowd and is a bit more polished, but for the raw record of what went down last Sunday, here’s my speech to the “Canadians for Kyoto” climate change rally that took place in Nathan Phillips Square outside Toronto City Hall. Special thanks go to Garfield Lindsay Miller for the videography.

A Negative, Times a Positive, Equals…

climate crisis, conservative party, green party, liberal party, ndp, toronto

Yesterday’s climate change rally (“Canadians for Kyoto”) in Toronto (part of a series that happened across Canada) was a lot of fun, and served the purpose of making it clear that environmental issues are important to Torontonians and Canadians. There were musicians, comedians, climate change experts, and (just when you thought it was safe) politicians. I spoke on behalf of the Green Party, while Maria Minna and Jack Layton spoke for the Liberals and NDP, respectively. (The Conservatives were invited, but didn’t show. Maybe they forgot to change their clocks.)

I also learned an interesting lesson about image. (Though, now that I think about it, it’s the same lesson I learned in elementary school math class.) For our three speeches, we were asked by the organizers not to attack any other political party, and instead keep to a positive message of what we wanted to see done. I respected that request (I’ll have video evidence of this fact up within a few days), while Maria and Jack, well, didn’t. The result is that the National Post reported on the rally with the headline “Tories knocked at Kyoto rally,” and the following opening paragraph:

Politicians from the NDP, Liberal and Green parties used a rally in support of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to press political attacks against the Conservative government.

That’s just not true — I didn’t do anything of the sort. What’s interesting though, is that as far as the National Post reporter was concerned, we’d all taken the same low-road. All politicians are the same, you see. All we do is attack each other and resort to mud slinging.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the reporter. In fact, I suspect he has accurately reported the event the way most people will remember it. That’s the problem. What was supposed to be (and for the most part was) a positive, uplifting, and inspiring event got reported as if it was simply an opportunistic partisan attack-fest. The point is, politicians have that power; if we choose to, we can bring everything down to the lowest common denominator.

It’s something to keep in mind the next time you’re listening to a group of us speak. Who’s raising the level of debate? Who’s lowering it? And what’s the net result? Don’t fall into the trap of thinking we’re all the same; we’re really not.