January 2010 Archives

When Ellen and I went to Waterloo city council to talk about the whole ghetto thing, we were suprised to find ourselves in the middle of a two-hour debate on amalgamation.

Amalgamation debates are something you get used to in this town. Frankly, I’m amazed we managed to avoid the amalgamation fever of the 90s. Everybody knows about the Toronto megacity, but the fever also led to such strange political entities as The “City” of Kawartha Lakes.

Tim Jackson of Tech Capital Partners and Iain Klugman of Communitech went to city council to propose, not the amalgamation of the whole Region of Waterloo this time, but the amalgamation of the cities of Kitchener and Waterloo.

Except what they proposed wasn’t actually amalgamation, but a plebiscite on the next municipal ballot asking voters whether they were in favour of the two cities talking about amalgamation.

And here’s where it gets a little dicey. Who has a problem with the cities talking about amalgamation?

I remember, however, a referendum in Québec a few years ago, where the question wasn’t “Should Québec be a sovereign nation independent of Canada?” The question was “Do you agree that Québec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership?” Which is why we have the Clarity Act.

I missed Tim Jackson’s presentation, but when pressed, Iain Klugman made it clear that he felt that a “Yes” vote on this plebiscite was mandate to amalgamate the cities and no follow-up referendum was needed after the cities were finished “talking”.

Furthermore, the province gets to dictate the question after the city votes to have one on the ballot. Waterloo doesn’t get to make its own Clarity Act. And, except for the general distaste for the idea in the Region, there’s nothing stopping the province from forcing amalgamation at any time. Although I fear I might be drifting into conspiracy theories, a “yes” vote on a wishy-washy “talk about amalgamation” vote might be all the political clout they’d need to just amalgamate, regardless of what comes out of talking.

And finally, as far as I can tell (and I could be wrong here—like I said, I missed Tim Jackson’s presentation), the only reason TCP and Communitech are pushing for amalgamation is they think it makes their job marketing the region to the world a bit easier.

I don’t think I need to say I have some problems with this proposal. There was significant resistance from people at the meeting. And an unfortunately anonymous and confusingly named group called One Waterloo has popped up online to oppose it.

On idea of amalgamating cities, I’m a bit more on the fence. Kitchener and Waterloo are one community in a sense that, say, Kitchener and Cambridge aren’t. But the history of amalgamation in this province has created more losers than winners, and I think in general, smaller, decentralized organizations are easier to manage and therefore more efficient than bigger ones.

I don’t see a problem with the current set-up, except that it would make sense to upload more services (like fire or water) to the Region. I don’t think democracy or neighbourhood concerns would be better served by a huge municipal council in downtown Kitchener. I don’t think Communitech’s marketing problems are a good enough reason to tear down and rebuild a system that seems to be working. And most of all, I would like to see amalgamation come about because it’s clearly what citizens want, and not because some group managed to hoodwink them into giving the province an excuse to go ahead and make it happen.

And I hate that I probably come off as crazy by writing that, but that’s the only way I could interpret Mr Klugman’s statements to council a couple weeks ago.

Waterloo city council will debate and put the ballot question to a vote tonight.

Kitchener-Waterloo

• Bow, James Bow: Make Perogies, Not Prorogation
• Right of Center Ice: “A crowd of 350+ citizens (the majority of whom were over the age of 30) gathered at Waterloo Town Square to celebrate democracy and protest the proroguing of our 40th parliament of Canada.”
• Mr. Sinister: “Everyone was in a great mood and the weather was perfect”
• Canadian Cynic: “And Now its Huether Time”.
• A contrary view from Christian Conservative
• More Pictures….

Guelph

• Far and Wide: Off to the Rally (reported a turnout of around 300).

More responses? Please let us know in the comments.

(Crossposted to Bow. James Bow)

As impressive as it is for a Facebook group to gather over 200,000 Canadians united in opposition to Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament (especially compared to the 127,000 Canadians who joined the Facebook group against last year’s coalition proposal), a question has to be asked: where do we go from here? Because, as impressive as that number is, it doesn’t take much effort to express one’s opinions on Facebook. Although you have heard some people signing up to Facebook specifically to join this group, for most participants the task was as simple as clicking a link. Democracy requires more than just that.

Which is why some people are paying attention to the rallies planned across Canada this Saturday (the Saturday before parliamentarians would have returned to work, if Stephen Harper hadn’t intervened). A grassroots effort has sprung up and a lot of people have worked very hard to get venues scheduled in dozens of cities across Canada, but how many bodies will show up? Blogger Shireen of Talk Talk Talk worries that there won’t be as many as organizers would like. Previous Facebook activism hasn’t been so successful in generating a large response in the physical world.

If the people who joined the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group want to keep the momentum of their efforts going, they need to make the effort. They have to show up on Saturday. If they don’t, and this protest fizzles, they will only have themselves to blame. There is little I can do about this, except to make the effort myself.

So, I have promised myself that I will be attending Waterloo Region’s rally this Saturday (at Waterloo Public Square at the corner of King Street and Willis Way at 11 a.m.), and not just because I care strongly about the issue of prorogation. I think it’s time that I stand up and march alongside my fellow Canadians because Canadians everywhere need to be reminded that this is how democracy is done. It isn’t enough to sit behind your desk and click on Facebook links. If you want change, you have to make change yourself, through campaigning, through writing letters to your MP, through voting the bastards out when feasible, and even getting up and marching along our public streets and making our voice heard.

There will be people out there, including Conservative supporters and government MPs, who will dismiss our activities as frippery, and our activists as frivolous, but they forget that this is how we’ve won most of our hard fought-for rights in this country, even the right to speak. As valuable as the right to speak is, simply speaking behind the walls of your home isn’t enough. Sometimes, to be heard, we have to speak loud, and in public.

So, I will be attending the local rally against prorogation this Saturday, and I’ll be taking Vivian with me. Will my presence there may a difference? Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not the important reason why I’m going. I’m going because I think it’s important for Vivian to see what a peaceful demonstration looks like and what it sounds like. I’m going because I think it’s important for Vivian to learn the benefits and responsibilities of living in a democracy. I’m going because I think it’s important that she understand that she has a right to speak and, more importantly, she has a right to speak loudly, and sometimes that right is an obligation if she wants to make change.

I think it’s important to remember that all democracy is exercise, and without exercise, our democracy, like our muscles, will atrophy.

Time to shape up.

The rumours started back around 2001 when a senior VIA Rail manager attended a public meeting in Guelph Ontario. The meeting was to protest the elimination of the new Flexliner train. It was extremely rare for VIA Rail to even agree to show up at a public meeting. The senior manager mentioned his dream that Budd Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs) would run up and down this line like they used to.

The senior manager disappeared back into the VIA Rail dark hole and his dream of RDCs running from London, Stratford, Kitchener, Guelph into Toronto went with him. Periodically over the last eight years various passenger rail fantatics, and VIA Rail insiders say it is going to happen. Just maybe this time it will happen.

What is a RDC? The Budd Company in Philadelphia, PA designed and built RDCs starting in 1949. This light-weight, air-conditioned, stainless-steel, twin engined (280 h.p) car. The four standard models available were: RDC-1 - 90 passengers, 2 toilets, RDC-2 - 71 passengers,1 toilet, 17ft. baggage section, RDC-3 - 49 passengers, 1 toilet,15ft. mail section, 17ft. baggage section, RDC-4 - 30ft. mail section and a 31ft. baggage section. They were built to an 85 ft. coupled length.

Operating costs (compared to conventional trains) are reduced due to inherent design features and use of a two man crew for single car operation.

The RDCs began service in 1953 in Canada and were built in Montreal starting in 1957. They used to run on the Canadian National North Main Line from 1953 til the federal government cuts in 1990. As well RDCs ran on the Canadian Pacific rail line from the 1950s til the 1970s through what is now Cambridge. The CP RDCs were called “Dayliners”. I have loaded a short video clip showing the Dayliner RDCs passing by the Galt CPR Station in 1956 to give you and example of what they look like. This is a three car consist, but they could run individually or linked to up to 10 other RDCs.

A Moncton NB rail firm Industrial Rail Services Inc. , which currently does work for VIA Rail, owns a larg number of RDCs and the above picture is an example of an RDC they have completely refurbished after stripping it down to the stainless steel shell. Passenger rail fans say a contract is pending with Industrial Rail to refurbish the RDCS for the NML and the Niagara Falls VIA service.

Why has it taken so long for the RDCs to return? There are the usual excuses. VIA Rail is running on tracks owned by a freight rail operator whose main business is not to promote the pasenger rail service on the line. In this case Goderich-Exeter Railway is a short line that leases tracks from CN. It is unclear why after two years, no agreement as been reached between the two parties. The federal government has made available for improvements along the line.

VIA Rails adds to the problem with no clear vision for passenger rail plan for the future. VIA keeps their plans secretive for reasons unknown. (Compare this to Amtrak in the USA, where Amtraks plans for the future and expansion are publicized and aggressively promoted).

Another excuse given for the delays is that Canadian National has found that the RDCs do not trip the signal switches along the line. This is interesting point since they ran in Ontario for decades and also still run on remote Northern Ontario lines flawlessly.

Will the RDCs be popular if they run on the line? Frequent passenger rail service to and from London into Toronto on the NML will be hughly successful if VIA Rail can solve two fundamental problems they have. 1. The cost to take a VIA Rail train is prohibitive to the average Canadian. and 2. VIA Rail historically does not know how to promote increases in rail service. They typically have an opening day ceremony and then leave it up luck for the public to find out about the new service.

The ultimate solution for the problem is for the government to buy the NML line like GO Transit did on the Toronto-Barrie rail line recently. Consider this fact. If VIA Rail and Go Transit follow through with suggested schedule improvments for the NML there will be a total of approximately 20 passenger trains going to and from Kitchener to Toronto and only 8 freight trains. The primary user, the passenger trains should own the line.

I am hopeful the problems will be solved and I will be among the first on board the RDC at the station.

Image courtesy ArcX.

A quick note today, but before I post, I’d like to mention that we’ve been having problems with commenting here on the Waterloo Wellington Bloggers Association blog. This has been mostly due to the changeover of the backend software to Movable Type 5.0, and issues with handling legacy blogging code. I have to say that I’ve found trying to update the templates here, especially those that I’ve custom-made, to be a bit of a fraught process. The problems with the comments here at the WWBA was just one symptom, but hopefully now it’s one less.

In other news, I have to report on the loss of a neighbourhood chain restaurant. The Pizza Hut sit down restaurant at the corner of Victoria and Westmount has closed down. The windows are dark, the signs are gone, and the place is up for lease. I hadn’t been in the restaurant for a little while (which is probably one reason why it’s now gone), but I had made use of it earlier in 2009 for my family pizza cravings. It was the one pizza joint within walking distance of my home. Now, if we need a quick bite to eat, the corner can only boast a Taco Bell and a Wendy’s.

I’ve always found the Victoria/Westmount intersection to be a rather odd duck. It’s not quite commercial, and it’s not quite residential. On one corner, you have a gas station and a convenience store. Behind it are a series of high rise apartments that, theoretically should provide some much needed foot traffic for the intersection — although in my experience, they’re more aligned away from that intersection and towards the Victoria Hills neighbourhood, which has its own little mall.

Stand on the corner of the gas station, facing the intersection and look to the corner on your right and you will see the beginnings of a shopping plaza, with a much needed urgent care clinic and associated pharmacy, the previously mentioned Taco Bell and shuttered Pizza Hut and an assortment of small scale commercial establishments, including a laundromat. Kitty-corner from the gas station is a Jewish cemetary, and on the corner to your left, you have a too-big parking lot and the aforementioned Wendy’s. This corner used to boast a gas station of its own, but this was demolished and, for the longest while, a sign promised the construction of a new William’s Coffee Pub — something we eagerly anticipated as a nearby place to retire to and write, and which we were bitterly disappointed about when it didn’t materialize.

This corner is struggling to define itself as a commercial draw for the residents around it. One block to the south, along Highland Road, there are many places to eat and shop. All of the big fast food joints, Tim Hortons, Swiss Chalet, East Side Marios and Angels Diner draw people in. People from around the Victoria/Westmount intersection can easily walk there and more easily drive there, and I think do so. I can’t help but wonder if the corner of Victoria and Westmount is caught in a catch-22: it doesn’t have the critical mass required to draw enough business in from the surrounding neighbourhood, and when a place like Pizza Hut shutters, and William’s never materializes, the chances of reaching that critical mass dim.

I don’t know what to suggest for the corner in order to turn things around, but I’m saddened here that there is potential for the corner to be a resource for the community around it, and that potential remains unrealized for the foreseeable future. Maybe if a business or a service could be encouraged to take up the empty space by the Wendy’s, things will improve, but I don’t know what we could do to encourage this, or even what business or service would be of best use to the surrounding community.

Those wanting Pizza Hut pizza still have sit-down locations at University and Weber in Waterloo, at Fairway and Manitou in Kitchener and (I believe) on Hespelar Road and Bishop in Cambridge. There are also take-out-only locations, such as the one I used last night at Fischer-Hallman and Ottawa.

The ghetto people are back! Articles popped up in the Record and Chronicle again this week about those horrible students and how nothing’s being done.

Old news, and I think I adequately covered my distaste for the local media being irresponsible and deliberately misleading in order to sell newspapers by validating readers’ fears and offering lurid visions young couples having sex on local sidewalks when I first wrote about this stuff a year ago. Ellen, who lives in the area, has written her response to the “ghetto” thing. Hint: the picture on the right featured in this week’s Record article is of a house recently bought by a young, professional couple who actually wants to live there.

(Full disclosure: you could probably call Ellen my “significant other”).

What’s changed this time is there’s been a plan put forward by a few Northdale residents called “Help Urbanize the Ghetto” or HUG Waterloo.

We missed November’s neighbourhood meeting where this was all presented, but I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while now. HUG Waterloo irritates me for reasons it’s taken a while for me to figure out how to articulate without flying into a vitriolic rant.

The whole HUG Waterloo plan is riding on premises that I think are demonstrably false. Namely, that Northdale is an irredeemable ghetto; that the city somehow doesn’t like high density urban neighbourhoods and isn’t doing enough to foster them; that high tech people are clamouring for more and more condos; and, most importantly, that the real estate bubble we’re sitting on right now is going to keep growing and growing forever.

That last one scares me. A lot.

Minister John Baird called it like it was when he branded Greyhound’s strategy of demanding money for continuing northern bus routes a “shake down and heavy handed.” Greyhound has long been known to put down any attempts by companies trying to provide competition to them.

In 2000, they went to the Ontario Highway Transport Board and won their case to have carpooling company Allo-Stop cease their services. In November 2006, Greyhound went again to the the OHTB and they ruled that Student Transportation of Canada (nicknamed Fed Bus) could not offer what they believed to be a charter service and reasonably priced fares for students.

Ironically Greyhound and other bus company’s route monopolies are supported and promoted in Ontario by the prehistoric Ontario Highway Transport Board Act and equally antiquated Public Vehicles Act.

The application process to the OHTB to obtain a route licence is clearly biased against having competition and for conserving route monopolies. It is ridiculous that only one bus company, Greyhound, is allowed exclusive access to Highway 401 westbound into Toronto to run commuter bus service into downtown Toronto. Why does the public not have a choice of what bus company they want to take on our public highways? Why are other bus companies not allowed to run competitively against each other?.

This bus monopoly transit nightmare reminds me all too much of the Bell Canada fiasco. For decades Bell controlled the phone industry in Ontario and no competition was allowed. Some journalists have suggested no regulation or deregulation of the passenger bus industry.That would be wrong and the public’s safety could be at risk. However it is long overdue to revise, update and renew the Ontario Highway Transport Board Act and Public Vehicles Act.

Immediate changes can be made to the criteria the Ontario Highway Transport Board uses to determine “public necessity and convenience” when issuing bus route licences.

A win recently happened when the Ontario Liberal provincial government changed the definition of carpooling in the Public Vehicles Act by passing Bill118. This was the result of the public lobbying to save PickUpPal, a ride sharing group. Their lobbying showed how outdated the current Public Vehicles Act is. Read Background Document. Thankfully the provincial Liberals ignored the Ontario Highway Transportation Board ruling and changed the legislation. Further substantial change is needed.

On January 17th, 2010, Greyhound will further reduce/eliminate services to small town Ontario, yet still maintain their monoply bus service on the HighWay#401. It is time for change. It is time Greyhound ask their multinational owner Scotland based FirstGroup for the money not the taxpayers of Canada.