How not to end up up with the mayor we least want
Perhaps Halifax should adopt a kinder, gentler version of the American cage match, survival-of-the-sleaziest primary system to winnow our choices for mayor. Or maybe we need to consider some variation of the NDP’s upcoming advance preferential leadership balloting system to determine who we most—and least—want as next super mayor of our supercity.
Consider. Four candidates have already declared, and at least four others are teetering on the edge. The election doesn’t take place until October.
David Boyd—cab driver, perennial political also-ran—was first out of the blocks, vowing to make Halifax “the Vegas of the east” with strip clubs and casinos. In 2008, he received 1,791 votes for mayor.
Tom Martin—celebrated former cop, manager of Sheila Fougere’s 2008 mayoralty campaign—blames “the lack of accountability, the lack of transparency, the lack of consultation with councillors and the lack of public consultation” at city hall on a mayor “without the ability to lead.”
Fred Connors—hairstylist, entrepreneur, urban chicken farmer—threw his hat in the ring earlier this month, saying he wanted to get “some real change happening in Halifax.”
Matthew Wornona—Toronto native, Dalhousie student—is running because he disagrees with Mayor Peter Kelly’s handling of the eviction of Occupy Nova Scotia protestors.
Meanwhile, restaurateur Lil MacPherson said in December she was “considering it for real,” but hasn’t formally announced. Neither has environmentalist, current MLA and former city councillor Howard Epstein, who would be a formidable candidate.
The race’s certain-to-be front-runners—former MP Mike Savage and current mayor Kelly—haven’t officially declared, but both have campaign teams and money in place.
So many candidates—all but Peter Kelly running against Peter Kelly.
Under our current first-past-the-post system, the unintended consequence of so many wannabes may be four more leaderless, wished-we-hadn’t years.
While we can’t change the system before October’s election, we can ask our preferred alternatives-to-he-who-should-not-be-re-elected to give it their best shot between now and official nomination day—Sept. 11, 2012—and then realistically reassess their chances for success.
Not to forget the chance that they may be responsible for four more years of…
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
Why can’t we have Viola Desmond day and…?
As Canada Post prepares issue a new stamp next month to celebrate the life of Viola Desmond, our own government seems about to quietly take a pass on the opportunity to honour the Halifax woman whose personal courage remains a symbolic inspiration in the fight for human rights in Canada.
Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged
In 1946—nine years before Rosa Parks’ refusal to get off a Montgomery, Alabama, bus helped trigger the U.S. civil rights movement—Desmond refused to give up her seat in the “whites-only” section of New Glasgow’s Roseland Theatre. She was hauled out of the theatre, thrown in jail, charged, convicted and fined $20. She fought her conviction and lost, but the embarrassing publicity helped galvanize the fight against Nova Scotia’s state-sanctioned segregation and led to changes in the law.
Nova Scotians have only recently begun to acknowledge Desmond’s significance—and suffering. Two years ago, Premier Darrell Dexter publicly apologized for the “injustice” she’d suffered and his government issued a rare posthumous pardon.
In 2010, Tory MLA Alfie MacLeod introduced a resolution in the House of Assembly calling on the province to declare Nov. 8—the day of her arrest—Viola Desmond Day.
Some in the black community argued that date was inappropriate; others complained they hadn’t been consulted.
Fair enough.
The Dexter government consulted, but the question it asked— “how to establish a lasting form of recognition that would honour the contributions and experiences of African Nova Scotians”—seemed blandly beside the point of Macleod’s original motion.
No surprise its final report doesn’t even mention Desmond. Or that the idea for the Day now seems dead. “People,” explains a government spokesperson, “have been saying they want something that recognizes the broad scope of African-Nova Scotian accomplishments.”
Is there some reason we can’t have both?
As Desmond’s sister Wanda wrote in a recent letter to the government: “Naming a day after a popular and iconic figure does not lessen the larger ambitions of creating such a day… In fact they give the day an identity and create an entry point into an issue that otherwise may be ignored with a more generic title.”
It’s time we celebrated Viola Desmond Day.
Related links:
- Viola Desmond Will Not Be Budged Facebook page
- Sister to Courage: Stories from the World of Viola Desmond, Canada's Rosa Parks
- "Past Time for Nova Scotians to Honour Viola Desmond"
- "Community Consultations Report," Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
City council stumbles… again, always
The lesson from last week’s reversal of council’s decision to sell the former St. Patrick’s-Alexandra school to a private developer? Even when our councillors finally, belatedly get it right, they bungle the process so badly everyone walks away more than slightly soiled and embarrassed by the whole exercise.
In December, over angry objections of north-end residents—who already believed they were being squeezed out of their own community by urban redevelopment and gentrification—council voted to peddle a local community school site to a private developer.
The problem—as quickly became apparent and should have been clear before the vote—was that council hadn’t followed city policy for disposing of surplus property. They were supposed to consult the community first.
Not that it mattered. City staff had stacked the evaluation process to make it virtually impossible for proposals from non-profit community groups to compete with those from private developers.
There were rallies. Hundreds protested. There was a petition. Close to a thousand people signed.
Last week, the issue made its way back to council. After four-and-a-half hours of “other business”—before a packed gallery present only for the school issue—councillors finally got around to debating a motion to rescind.
Coun. Jennifer Watts had barely moved her motion when city manager Richard Butts advised councillors to go into secret session to talk the motion over with city legal staff. Another secret meeting to discuss public business? Where was this city manager when Occupy Nova Scotia protestors got turfed? Oh, right. He was home in Toronto.
Council voted down the secret meeting, then voted down a motion to adjourn, then met in secret anyway, then—it’s now closing in on one in the morning—finally voted 17-5 to rescind their original decision. And they asked city staff, who, of course, had devised the flawed process in the first place, to report back on whether the process had been correctly followed.
As usual, nothing is settled.
Once again, Council has managed to alienate the community, the developers who submitted bids in good faith and average citizens who expect better.
Let’s hope there’s a lesson in that too.
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
The Occupy Movement for business… in 15 minutes, more or less
My assignment: “Explain the Occupy Wherever Movement in 15 Minutes.”
The occasion was a recent luncheon at the Halifax Club to mark Global Ivey Day, an annual opportunity for alumni of the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business to come together to celebrate their Iveyness. I’d been invited as the post-lunch speaker, even though I’m neither an Ivey graduate nor a business person. (I did once pile-drive a business into the ground, but I’m sure that’s not why they invited me. Besides, that’s a story for another day.)
My guess is the organizer, a thoughtful Windsor, N.S., lawyer-politician-businessman named Jim White, had been reading about the Occupy movement, fretting those Wall Street tenters were on to something important and wanted someone else—me—to jolt his fellow Iveys into confronting the question too.
I was happy to oblige. But I wasn’t sure I would require 15 minutes.
Just as Bill Clinton had used his it’s-the-economy-stupid mantra to become U.S. President in 1992, the essence of Occupy boils down to four words: It’s the Inequality, Stupid.
Thanks to the three g’s—go-go globalization, government de-regulation and corporate greed—the traditional gulf between rich and poor is becoming an unbridgeable chasm.
Consider. The Conference Board of Canada—hardly a hotbed of socialist radicalism—reports the top 10 per cent of the world’s population now gobble up 42 per cent of its income, leaving the bottom 10 per cent with one per cent of their crumbs. That gap has widened dramatically since the mid-1980s. In Canada, the divide is growing even faster than in the United States.
If you made $3 million in 2005—lucky you!—you paid, on average, 25 per cent less in taxes than you did in 1990. Luckier you! The poorest 20 per cent of Canadians, by contrast, paid a higher percentage of their income in tax in 2005 than they did in 1990. Unlucky them.
Luck, in fact, has little to do with it. Capital gains, the mother’s milk of the better-off, is taxed at just 50-cents on the dollar. Why is a dollar earned speculating on the stock market taxed less than income earned educating children or caring for the sick? A hint. Child care workers and nurses don’t have powerful lobbyists to write tax rules for them.
Governments tell us we’re in a fiscal mess. We can no longer afford basic, opportunity-leveling services like health and education.
Meanwhile, those same governments slashed corporate taxes from 28 per cent to 15 per cent between 2000 and 2012, and promise more to come.
No wonder we can’t afford public services. The rich can pay for their own health and education, thanks. And their legacies.
A few days before I spoke at Ivey Day—the business school is named for Richard Ivey, who was rich enough to give enough to get the place named after him—Nova Scotia businessman Ken Rowe donated $15 million to Dalhousie University’s business school.
I respect Rowe. He’s a business builder and signifcant employment generator. But let’s look at his generosity through other lenses.
How many years would it take the average Nova Scotia worker to earn what Ken Rowe chose to give away in an instant?
Three-hundred-and-nineteen plus!
How much of that $15 million—thanks to tax benefits the giver gets—will ultimately be paid by the rest of us?
More than you’d probably guess.
So why does Rowe alone get to choose which good is greater? There are 59, mostly generously endowed business schools in Canada. Why a Ken Rowe School of Management, but no Ken Rowe School of Social Work, or Education, or Child Care?
No wonder people are frustrated and angry—and not just the Occupy tenters. Look around. At the race to the bottom that only benefits those at the top. At skyrocketing education debts and youth unemployment that is robbing the next generation of a future...
Even if the Occupy Movement’s tents get flattened, the issue they raise will not go away. And the consequences of not righting that balance will only get worse.
It really is the inequality, stupid.
(From the January-February 2012 issue of Atlantic Business Magazine.)
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
Progress? Who’s whining now?
On Wednesday, local radio personality Bobby Mac launched a new Facebook group “for those of us who are tired of those whining people who don't want any progress in this great city of Halifax.” Its name? SCREW THE VIEW!!
By Saturday morning, STV had 163 members.
“We are tired of the groups that stop progress in this great city of Halifax,” he explained. “We want new buildings. No one goes up Citadel hill for the view. They go for the fort, and for sex at night.”
Acknowledging Bobby Mac probably knows more about sex on Citadel Hill than I do, and even accepting his dubious proposition no one goes there for the view, let’s analyze his most serious argument: whining, save-the-view-of-the-harbour-flotables crazies are preventing “progress”—by which I assume he means a forest of high rise office towers on the slopes of the Citadel.
Really?
Last year, Dalhousie’s Planning and Design Centre released a map showing 23 major downtown development projects, all of them approved, but almost none built or under construction. Who’s to blame for that? Heritage groups? Developers? Or perhaps the economy, stupid?
The convention centre? Despite the whinging from the all-things-ancient lovers, the city and province eagerly approved the proposed project and shoveled buckets of our cash in its direction. The first real delay came because Ottawa took its time to say yes.
By the time it did, the economy had gone to hell in a handcart. The developer is still scrambling to find financing and tenants to make the project viable.
Speaking of which, the whiners—who also raised Economics 101 questions about the convention centre—appear to have been right about that.
Consider this from the Dec. 31 Wall Street Journal, hardly a preserve of loony preservationists. There’s “a nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention halls and vacant hotel rooms,” the paper notes. “How have governments responded to this glut? By building more convention centers, of course, financed by debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers.”
Uh… Perhaps Bobby Mac’s next Facebook group will be to whinge about how all our tax dollars are being wasted on a white elephant.
Now that would be progress.
Copyright 2012 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and seven non-fiction books.