Category Archives: City states
Toronto Mayor Miller
(November 17, 2006) David Miller, get off your knees! What a spectacle you made of yourself on election eve. No sooner did you win re-election as Toronto’s Mayor than you began begging senior levels of government for money. “Tonight you have given me a strong mandate to tell the Premier and the Prime Minister that Toronto needs a 1 cents share of the existing sales taxes, and we will not take no for an answer,” you said in your victory speech, and then you said it again, in case the Premier and the Prime Minister weren’t listening. Continue reading
Ontario must rescue Toronto from itself
(October 20, 2006) Montreal was once Canada’s great financial centre. Then politics made Montreal unwelcoming to business and, over time, Toronto took over. Now Toronto has become hostile to business and companies are relocating outside the city and to more business-friendly Calgary. If Toronto remains hostile, Calgary will continue to outpace Toronto and could replace Toronto as the country’s business and financial capital. Continue reading
Join the parade
(January 27, 2006) Pundits are blaming Stephen Harper’s failure to win seats in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver on fears that Harper has a broad social conservative agenda. Or on a distaste that urban residents have for free enterprise. Or on his reluctance to fix the city’s fiscal imbalance. Continue reading
Beggars’ summit
(September 18, 2004) Canada’s cities must ,”work together to make sure we all have the tools and resources we need to thrive,” an inspired Toronto Mayor David Miller said earlier this week, in anticipation of this weekend’s City Summit of mayors in Toronto. Uninspiringly, the resources the cities crave are more tax revenues; the tools they wave a tin cup and a begging bowl. Continue reading
Invest your vote
(June 5, 2004) Voting in federal elections will never be the same again, not once it sinks in to voters that the new voting rules let our votes count twice – once at the ballot box, in determining the immediate contest for member of parliament, and once as an investment in our favourite party, to financially strengthen it between elections and ready it for the next. The biggest potential winners under the new rules in the election campaign underway: the Conservative Party and the Green Party. The biggest potential loser: the New Democratic Party. Continue reading
Urban Renaissance Institute 