Lastman: Toronto’s Trudeau
TheStar.com - GTA - City service cuts stupid, Lastman says
Reading this article, it struck me that, just like during the Mulroney regime, um, government, when all the media went cantering over to Trudeau to get his take on the Constitutional talks, the media are now galloping over to Lastman to get his take on Miller’s handling of Toronto’s fiscal crisis. The only difference is that Trudeau was a Liberal pontificating on a Conservative, and Lastman is a Conservative venting on a Liberal or NDPer or something like that. I can’t figure out what Mayor David Miller really is anymore. Petulant lawyer is the best description that comes to mind.
Anyway, one of my big beefs about this whole cutback fear-mongering exercise is that there’s no creativity at all. It’s the same old, same old. Take, for example, the threatened closure of the Sheppard line. This is not the first time. What is it about the Sheppard subway that at the first excuse, the city wants to mothball it? Is it some sort of anti-Lastman backlash? Get over it, folks. The ones who’ll hurt the most are the 40,000 and growing daily commuters who use it. Not Lastman.
So it was a bit of a shock in reading this article to discover there are ways to cut spending without hurting the citizenry one bit. I’ve heard calls for Council to show leadership before by cutting their own spending and/or salaries first, but Lastman’s idea about curtailing police overtime, I hadn’t known about at all. Not one person, not a reporter, not a Police Board member, not a Councillor, had breathed one word of such an idea. Says a lot about their capability of learning from others and their critical thinking abilities. Unfortunately, because these good solutions are coming from Lastman, I bet you dollars to doughnuts that Shirley Hoy — who should’ve known about these — and Mayor Miller — who should’ve been looking at how other jurisdictions fixed their fiscal crises — won’t even consider them. It’s too bad because the police idea would not only help save dollars, it would ensure a more refreshed police force on the street (nothing is more tiring than waiting during one’s off hours), and the garbage idea would not only save money, it would save our sanity. No wonder people are calling for Lastman to come back, but even if he would, we’d still have to wait 3 years and 3 months.
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Who does it better than Mel? K, don’t answer that! At least he has been heard and if any out there in the decision making world has any cents (oops I meant sense, lol!) left please listen to the man. Don’t give the your buddies raises and cut our services. Now that does not make any cents at all!
You’re too funny!!! LOL!!!
There used to be a saying that TO was like NY - not as ‘run by the Swiss’ but rather - roughly ‘40 years ago’. New York, then as I can only assume, was in a blissfully imaged late 60s and yet running towards its dark days of the cash-strapped and crime-ridden mid 70s.
We could argue endlessly about Lastman’s megacity record, i.e.; his poorly selected Stubway route over the Elginton plan - and those by-committee approved ‘option choices’ including a short-sighted Sherway Gardens turn as compared to say … a Dupont-Summerhill-Malvern diagonal rail line [plug] with traffic reducing commuter park n’ rides at the DVP & 401.
However, keeping with the 40 year axiom, I think this city’s downfall (if that’s true) can be calendar’d with the uncooperatively timed Summer Garbage Strike shortly before the 2002 World Youth Day event. That was a pinpoint moment, in seeing ‘Woodstock sized’ masses of int’l visitors juxataposed to our own localized 416/905 inertia.
I’m not a fan of Miller’s, or of his two main mayoral competitors either, but I don’t place all the blame by-half on his shoulders anymore than Lastman.
The police idea would likely be unconstitutional. It’s old school: everybody has the right to face their accusers in court.
I believe people fought a revolution about that in 1776.
In civil suits, people are represented by lawyers and insurance companies and don’t have to show up. So it seems to me that a qualified representative for the police can also do the same job. Besides which the legal system is so f*, I don’t think a rep is going to damage anyone’s rights anyway. The system has already damaged them beyond repair long before anyone gets to court.
Civil suits are completely different from criminal trials. And the argument that the system is screwed up enough that it can stand to be screwed up some more is not really much of an argument. Certainly, it’s not one that would be accepted in a case that gets appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Here’s some food for thought: http://ianism.com/?p=823
Well, I don’t think police reps will screw up the criminal legal system, which is also in a downward spiral. They’re used in other jurisdictions already, and I assume the US Supreme Court has not yet struck them down. What’s needed is a complete rethink of the system, but that’s not going to happen.
Also, the police are the arresting officers not the accusers. In most criminal cases, the victims, are the accusers, not the police. The police merely witness the aftermath of the murder or the assault or the burgled person. It’s those people who are assaulted or burgled or whatever who are the accusers. The police are the ones who take their statements, secure the crime scene, collect evidence. In a murder case, the victim is the silent accuser — it’s the forensic services, not the police, that will collect evidence the body can provide. Those experts would still show up in court. Actual eyewitnesses are rarely the police, and those witnesses will be dragged in or agree to show up since they are the ones accusing the person on trial of the crime. Only for parking tickets or suchlike traffic offences or for domestic violence where the victim refuses to testify are the police directly the accusers. And BTW, unless a witness to a traffic accident shows up, even if the police are there in court, the case will be tossed, proving the police are not the most important person in a trial. You could make a case that where the police are direct eyewitnesses or direct accusers, that they should show up instead of reps.