Join the parade

Posted on January 27, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
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.

That’s far too broad and complex an assessment.

It’s really all about sex.

People vote their sexual preferences, and their ability to pursue them without undue risk, much more than they vote any left-right ideology or pocketbook issue. A vote for the Conservatives, to very large numbers of urbanites, would be a vote against their self-interest.
CREDIT: Peter Redman, National Post
Gay pride parade, Toronto

No one knows how many gays Canada has – they haven’t all come out of the closet – but estimates vary from about 1% to 10%. At the high end (10% is the figure used by some marketers to the gay community), Canada has more than three million gays; at the low end (from a suspect Statistics Canada study that reports an unusually high rate of people who didn’t want to respond), there are 1%, a mere 300,000-plus.

Let’s assume the actual figure is about one million, and that the great majority of them live in cities, especially Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, since gays gravitate to big cities to find mates and a community to belong to. Let’s look at Toronto, which has Canada’s largest gay population and, along with San Francisco and Amsterdam, the world’s highest proportion of gays. Many credit Toronto with 300,000 to 400,000 gays but, even assuming that number is inflated, Toronto could well have 10,000 gays per Toronto riding on average. But that doesn’t begin to describe the gay-friendly vote.

At Toronto’s gay concentration, virtually every Torontonian knows gays. They have gay friends and gay co-workers. They have gay relatives. They see gay tendencies in the young children of their friends and, as they become older, speculation turns to confirmation. They have bonds with all these people and often a strong loyalty toward them, too. They don’t want to see them disparaged, even implicitly. They don’t want their vote to be read as an insult to gays. For many, a vote for Conservatives, knowing it would deeply offend a friend, a relative, a co-worker, would show disloyalty.

The abortion issue produces more visceral sex-based opposition to the Conservatives. Canadian women have more than 100,000 abortions a year. Put another way, for every 100 babies born, 32 are aborted. Among women in their twenties, about 2.5% will have an abortion this year. Among those who don’t, many fear that, but for fortune, they might face the same choice.

Most women do not slough off their past abortions easily, and they certainly do not want societal reprimands for their past misfortunes. Neither do they want others to suffer any such stigma, or limit on their freedoms. These women’s mates do not want any of the stigma to rub off on them, or to be limited themselves by unwanted obligations.

The numbers of voters here are massive, and not just in cities. And because the votes are often tied to visceral existential experiences, they can trump a distaste for other parties, even as scandal-tainted a party as the Liberal party. Urban voters do not oppose the Conservatives’ free enterprise policies; they tend to favour free markets more than rural voters. Urban voters also are not hostile to social conservative policies that don’t interfere with their choices in life. They don’t hyperventilate over church-going, even if it’s not their preference, or family friendly policies such as child-care allowances. They positively favour social conservatives’ tough policies on crime.

Only the strict sex-related votes – thousands of them per urban riding – keep Harper from breakthroughs in Canada’s big cities. If he can neutralize his image as a sexual throwback, and if only a few thousand urban voters per riding switch to the Conservatives, urban ridings – and majority government – are his.

In truth, Harper has shown no antipathy to gays – his pro-civil union, anti-gay marriage position is comparable to that of Labour’s Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, and left-leaning U.S. Democrats such as Howard Dean and John Kerry. And Harper has pledged not to reopen the abortion debate. But he needs to dispel the public’s perception that he is a closet bigot by laying down the law on intolerance and then slapping down anyone, including anyone in his caucus, who steps out of line, akin to the Sister Souljah moment in 1992, when Bill Clinton publicly repudiated the extremist rap singer, demonstrated his credentials to centrist voters and won the presidency.

To convince urban voters – gay or otherwise – that he can be trusted to keep his word on sexually charged issues, and not unveil a hidden agenda once in power, Harper could not do better than to march in a gay pride parade. There will be no shortage of opportunities in the next year or two before an election – Canada has more than 20 gay-pride events from May to September – but the best photo-op would come this August in Toronto. Toronto Pride is Canada’s most-attended single-day event, with more than a million participants, bigger than any sporting event this country has to offer. The organizers would welcome him with open arms, as would the country.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org.

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Harper, patriot

Posted on January 20, 2006 by urbanrenaissanceinst

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
January 20, 2006

Stephen Harper is a separatist. Stephen Harper is unpatriotic. Stephen Harper can’t even bring himself to say he loves his country.

These charges, long lurking in the shadows and implied in the Liberals’ recent ad campaign, came centre stage following Buzz Hargrove’s denunciation of Harper’s credentials as a Canadian. Though Hargrove and Paul Martin now distance themselves from such statements, with many the charges will stick. Yet the charges are not only baseless, they have it backwards. No politician in Canada is doing more to keep this country together, whether by pricking the inflated support seen of late for separatism or by building up the case for Canada.

Quebec separatist leader Gilles Duceppe was talking of a sweep before Christmas, so completely had the Liberal government tarnished the image of federalism. Harper’s essential message inside and outside Quebec – that Quebecers would rightly see a vote for the Liberals as pooh-poohing the scandal that had outraged them – trumped the Liberal claim to be federalism’s champion. Quebec federalists rallied to Harper, so much so that polls show him attracting 30% of Quebec’s popular vote, and Quebec’s non-separatist elite – including Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest, Action Democratique leader Mario Dumont, and Montreal’s La Presse – endorse Harper. Duceppe now talks of holding on to his party’s existing seats.

Rather than having two solitudes on the perception of corruption – an inevitable consequence of another Liberal victory – Quebecers will instead make common cause with anglophones. The great resentment in Quebec that a Liberal re-election would have created has now evaporated, eliminating a large impetus for a vote for separatism. At the same time, a Harper government would abruptly end that other threat to Canadian unity: Western alienation. With its favorite son at the helm, the West would no longer need to say “We want in.” And without Kyoto or another federal grab of Western resources, Western alienation would not be reviving any time soon.

Canada does have a problem with patriotism, however – one born of our having abandoned our traditions and our history. Our schools teach trivia rather than knowledge of our nation’s military exploits, of our unabashed heritage of capitalism, of our 19th and 20th century desire for reciprocity with the United States, of our embrace of property rights traditions and our rejection of welfare. These are abhorrent to a new political class that despises Canada’s core values and wants to remake this country in its own politically correct image. Little wonder that citizenship tests quiz immigrants on the importance of recycling household waste. Or that young Canadians know more about the United States than about their own country. Or that Canadian athletes think nothing of forgoing the opportunity to carry the Canadian flag at the opening ceremonies of international competitions.

Stephen Harper, patriot, would reverse the slide into irrelevancy that has caused us to lose our way, in the process diminishing us at home and abroad. To give us a voice in foreign policy, he would restore our Armed Forces so that we can uphold our military alliances and defend our own borders, rather than rely on the protection of the United States. He would promote the most basic of human rights by enshrining property rights in the constitution and limiting the growth of government. He would treat the United States as an ally and trading partner, rather than an easy target for scoring cheap political points. In short, he would return Canada to the ranks of a self-respecting nation.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org.

Posted in Nation states, Political reforms | Leave a comment

Put armed forces close to Canadians

Posted on January 13, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
January 13, 2006

The Liberal ad attacking Canada’s military was off the mark in many ways, and not just in being a political gaffe. The Conservative plan to re-equip the military and base some armed forces near cities makes great good sense. Men and materiel will often be best deployed from urban areas, whether at home or abroad. The Armed Forces themselves would benefit in a move from country to city and, most of all, the cause of Canadian confederation would strengthen.

Vancouver could be devastated if the long-feared great earthquake ever hits. We have seen great floods inundate cities such as Winnipeg and great ice-storms paralyze cities such as Montreal. Edmonton has had its tornado and Toronto its hurricane. Natural disasters can hit anywhere but when they hit cities – as we saw when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans – the potential for mayhem and great loss of life surges.

Cities are also uniquely vulnerable to immense man-made disaster: Toronto could require a full evacuation if a great meltdown strikes its nearby nuclear reactors. Any of our cities could be laid low by a major terrorist attack. Placing military responders and their equipment where they are likeliest to be able to do much good in little time makes evident sense – if the Conservatives’ approach can be faulted, it should be for a too-modest redeployment to cities.

The benefits of basing armed forces in or near cities extends beyond an ability to meet emergency needs. Canada has been diminished by political decisions to deny our traditions as a muscular military nation – at the end of the Second World War, we boasted the world’s second-largest navy – and to strip ourselves of any ability to defend ourselves, making us a de facto U.S. dependent. The Liberal ad men could countenance an ad demeaning our Armed Forces because the military is, in truth, held in low esteem by many Canadians, its role not understood, its presence not wanted.

This low esteem is no accident. Our military leaders, cowed by their political leaders, do not take their case to the public, let alone present honest appraisals of their needs to Parliament (south of the border, U.S. law requires senior military commanders to be candid with Congress). And with military bases out of sight, the problem is out of mind. The broad Canadian public is kept in ignorance.

Place many new bases near cities and the needs of the military community become better known, as tradesmen and other non-military personnel visit the bases to work and as military personnel visit cities to play. Soldiers will seem less apart from the rest of us, let alone as sinister influences, as the attack ad would have it. More importantly, civilians will begin to identify positively with the military, seeing its benefits and able to see themselves in uniform.

The military has a looming personnel crisis, as the Auditor-General and others have repeatedly warned. Many are leaving the military in search of a better quality of life. Much of the force is nearing retirement age. So few applicants present themselves that the military now accepts almost everyone who applies.

The military has become severely understaffed and is likely to stay so as long as it is held in low-public esteem, despite boosted advertising budgets for recruitment.

The best reason of all to site military bases near or within cities is precisely what the Liberal ad abhorred – to have a military presence in cities, one substantial enough to change the culture. Canada is all but bereft of authentic federal symbols and truly needed federal institutions. Former flagships that were created or endured for partisan political reasons – the post office, Air Canada, Petro-Canada – have melted away with advances in trade and technologies, and the same will occur with other politically driven federal institutions such as medicare and the CRTC.

The military is different. It is not a concoction of one political party or another, existing primarily to justify its re-election prospects. The military is a fundament of any nation that wants to remain one.

The military is a truly authentic Canadian institution that has an unquestionable right and a duty to fly the Canadian flag. Soldiers should be seen in our cities, to remind us of the service they perform and the price of remaining sovereign, and as a selfless federal symbol of our nationhood, as an enduring force that binds a far-flung nation together.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org.

Posted in Agriculture (Urban) | Leave a comment

Crackdowns work

Posted on January 6, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
January 6, 2006

To combat rising gun crime in Toronto, Mayor David Miller believes young hoodlums need positive role models. Good idea. To set an example, the Mayor should choose a good role model for himself: Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani is well-known as the man who cleaned up New York, a city once synonymous with crime and dereliction. Upon assuming the mayoralty in 1994, he adopted the zero-tolerance crime-fighting approach known as Broken Windows, so called on the theory that “if the first broken window in a building is not repaired, then people who like breaking windows will assume that no one cares about the building and more windows will be broken. Soon the building will have no windows.”

When Giuliani directed New York’s finest to crack down on people who jaywalked or jumped subway turnstiles, they found one in seven had a concealed weapon or a felony warrant. The criminals were incarcerated and the streets cleaned up. New York’s overall crime fell by 44% and its murder rate by 61%. New York, once a mugger’s preserve, became the safest big city in America. By cracking down on petty criminals, the city simultaneously rid itself of those willing to break big laws.
CREDIT: Mario Tama, Getty Images
New York City, once synonymous with crime,
is now the safest big U.S. city.

But Giuliani’s genius involved more than getting rid of the criminal rot. When he took office, more than one million New Yorkers collected welfare, making them role models for no one. Giuliani attacked welfare dependency, a breeding ground for criminals and a cause of neighbourhood dissolution, to complement his attack on those making a life of crime. In the country’s largest welfare-to-work initiative, he cut welfare rolls in half, putting hundreds of thousands of people back to work, restoring their self-worth and giving them a stake in their community.

Just as important, Giuliani took steps to prevent city districts from becoming derelict and inviting to criminals. To keep businesses and residents from fleeing the city, and to keep the city alive at night, he cut the commercial rent tax, the hotel occupancy tax and the unincorporated business tax, as well as taxes that hit households – all told more than US$2.5-billion in tax reductions. He also cut the city’s payroll by 20,000. The effect: He converted the US$2.2-billion dollar budget deficit he inherited into a multi-billion-dollar surplus, spurred the creation of 450,000 new private sector jobs, and made the city a magnet for tourists and a haven for householders. Safe, secure and solvent, New York’s population boomed past the eight million mark for the first time in its history.

Toronto Mayor Miller, in contrast, is the anti-Giuliani, raising taxes to record levels, inviting ever more people to join the welfare ranks through new social spending and staying soft on crime. As with Giuliani’s well-meaning, big-spending predecessors, gun-related homicides have soared on Miller’s watch while many in the middle class head for the suburbs. Miller takes token measures – a few extra cops here, a few extra pleas for stricter-still gun laws there – but unlike Giuliani, he hasn’t been dealing with the root causes of crime. Instead, he rewards those who prefer welfare to work that they consider beneath themselves, he backs a tax system that makes chumps of those who play by the rules and a penal system in which the costs of crime are small relative to the benefits.

Miller should be calling for bigger prisons, and more of them – the provincial government’s expectation that welfare payments would cost less than prison meals has been dashed. He should be calling for mandatory sentences for anyone caught with illicit weapons – gun-control laws can’t work without penalties for flouting them. And, armed with these tools, he should direct his police force to see that those prisons are fully occupied, by targeting gang members and other criminals.

New York’s approach to law enforcement has become a model for other cities around the world. The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University acknowledged New York’s crime-busting approach by giving it the prize for Inventiveness in Government. Miller, a Harvard graduate, should look to his alma mater for guidance.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org.

Posted in Cities, Regulation | Leave a comment

Splendid design seizes the right to be different

Posted on December 13, 2005 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
December 13, 2005

The conservative-minded in gated communities across the continent don’t like change. They regulate, to an obsessive degree, the size and style of buildings and their uses, typically in suburban settings. The result: an appalling mediocrity.

The conservative-minded in Toronto communities also don’t like change. They agitate, to an oppressive degree, to restrict the size and style of buildings and their uses, including in downtown Toronto. The result: an appalling mediocrity.

Those in small-gated communities are entitled to their mediocrity. They voluntarily, and unanimously, opted into these communities. They chose absolute predictability in their living environment.

The conservative-minded in big cities – ironically, they tend to call themselves left-leaning and progressive – have no such entitlement. These agitators are a minority among an open-minded majority that chose the parade of city life. The minority succeeds in imposing its mediocrity on the Toronto majority only because of Toronto’s dysfunctional political system, which creates private alliances between local agitators and local councillors at the expense of the broader majority.

Toronto’s dysfunctional rule-making may soon change, thanks to a report from the Governing Toronto Advisory Panel and a mayor who dislikes the drab that comes of community activism. Under new rules that the panel proposed last month to Mayor David Miller’s approval, a professional design committee would decide what’s nice or not. Yesterday, proposed provincial legislation endorsed this approach. If Toronto’s Mayor and the province have their way, councillors and their status-quo constituents will soon lose much of their power to squelch splendid design.

City design and city vitality had their heyday before the era of regulation. Property owners would please themselves in building their homes or business establishments, or real estate developers would take the initiative, divining what future customers might desire. Without zoning, without community approval, without political meddling and with the exercise of property rights, elegant neighbourhoods and tight-knit communities emerged. In almost every city on the continent, the most prized communities, the most beautiful buildings, came of a property rights regime in which property owners held the right to be different, and often seized it. The product of their daring form the heritage districts we so cherish today.

With the erosion of property rights came the erosion of design. Politicians and planning departments increasingly dictated how property would be used; architects turned their skill to second-guessing what neighbours would tolerate. Toronto, whose governance system tilts more than most to poky politics, became especially drab – its design and architecture is perhaps the dullest on the continent among cities of any size. Great architects produce their poorest works in Toronto, their lively designs deadened by the need to conform to community norms. This was even the case with Frank Gehry, the most celebrated architect on Earth. Neighbours shamelessly pronounced on his design for the Art Gallery of Ontario, in the end, gutting its brilliance.

Toronto’s government isn’t about to respect the property rights of its residents, but after a rash of activist trashing of smart downtown designs, the city seems set to trash the activists. If Mayor Miller gets his way, Toronto will replace the self-appointed local design committees with a professional design review panel.

“As a city, we must learn to despise mediocrity,” Mayor Miller stated earlier this year at a forum on architecture and design. “We can’t accept what we’ve accepted in the past. Good enough is no longer good enough.”

The professional design review panel will not be as good as the government-lite system of old. But for now, it will be “good enough.”

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org.

Posted in Culture | Leave a comment