David Miller at Humber

Mayor David Miller opened his press conference at my college today by reinforcing an often forgotten fact: Toronto is only eight years old.

At least, it has been only about eight years since the Megacity formed and Mike Harris dumped a tonne of new responsibilities on the municipal government. Miller also criticized the 135 year old legislation that still binds the hands of the city, and talked about the importance of the new City of Toronto Act.

From these problems he draws his highest mayoral goal: to fix both the financial and legal problems that limit Toronto's potential.

He then went on to discuss his two major concerns and projects in the city.

Safety

This is the obvious topic, of course, but Miller spoke to it well. He made a point of reminding us that, though gun violence has gone up, crime has gone down 7% since last year--and later criticized the news media for paying these two trends such unbalanced attention. He noted that fighting crime is about "balancing enforcement with prevention", and then made a very important statement: that you can't prevent crime when there is poverty and discrimination, because some people will inevitably feel that the best opportunities for them lie in gangs and drugs.

Of course, such a basic level of decency and understanding should be prevalent in our society, but it isn't. I would be interested to see how (and if) Miller expresses these sentiments to a more conservative crowd, and I intend to keep my eyes open for a chance. As I said to my friend after the conference, anyone who tried to actively convince a group of hard-liners to be more understanding would win my vote for a long time.

When it comes to guns, though, Miller seems somewhat out of character. He put a lot of emphasis on the idea that cutting off the supply of handguns would solve the problem--a sentiment I have difficulty sharing. After just talking about the city's various initiatives to help youth in various neighbourhoods (their carpentry apprenticeship program [.pdf link], for example), I was surprised to hear him take such a short-sightedly pragmatic stance.

He talked about the two main ways guns end up on Toronto streets: being stolen from legal owners (and Miller does agree with a Liberal-style national handgun ban that decreases the number of loopholes), and coming across the border. "You're exporting murder to the streets of our city," he said of America, "and it's time you stopped."

His point that, for any handgun strategy to be truly effective in Canada, the U.S. must at least begin to be sensible about their own gun problem, was well taken. I simply wish he had continued to put emphasis on prevention and positive programs, instead of switching to a "no guns, no problem" stance.

Modesty

Next, the mayor talked about the importance of making Toronto a city its residents can be proud of. He says he dislikes constantly hearing Toronto described as a derivative of another city (New York run by the Swiss, or the University of Toronto as the Harvard of the North), and plans to help carve out Toronto's identity in various ways through the Beautiful City initiative.

First, he dealt with environmental issues, where the main topic is the fleet of hybrid buses, garbage trucks and park vehicles being introduced, which will supposedly be the largest in North America. I was personally impressed by his stance on pesticides: he payed no heed to the notion that people have a "right" to use poison on their lawns, and clearly stated that, in a city of 2.6 million people, it just can't happen. I believe we need a level of Draconian environmentalism to begin dispelling the entitled attitudes of so many people--many of whom sound as if they believe driving an SUV is a fundamental human right.

He summed it up with a simple analogy: "You should always leave your campsite with less of a human footprint than there was when you got there."

He took an equally admirable stance against building a new power plant in Toronto--something so many seem completely resigned to--calling it "out of date thinking" and "embarassing". He offered a list of alternatives, beginning with an emphasis on comsumption and demand management. Toronto Hydro, for example, offers a program for houses with central air conditioning, under which they can help avoid the need for rolling blackouts by agreeing to a slight drop in their airflow on peak days. He also asserted that a "green roof" project, covering 20% of buildings, would decrease the whole city's temperature by about two degrees on the hottest days.

Questions

Several Humber students asked questions of the mayor, but one (asked by friend and colleague Alistair Tennant) garnered a very pleasing response. Alistair asked about Toronto's garbage crisis, and Miller was quick to mention one of my own personal sore spots: provincial packaging laws.

"I just got a razor, and there was more packaging by about a factor of six than the razor," he joked--and it is funny, really, in an absurd kind of way. With all the garbage and environmental problems in this province, you would think a reduction in product packaging would be a natural step. Unfortunately, a lot of the ridiculous and unnecessary packaging you see on so many products is not only allowed, but actually required by the provincial government.

In terms of raw numbers, he brought up the plan to divert 60% of waste from landfills by 2007--and admitted that it wasn't going to happen outside of single-family homes. Always optimistic, though, he said the next goal will be 80%, with the dream of ending the city's disposal contract with Michigan by 2010.

All in all, an excellent conference. David Miller was concise and well spoken, and seemed to know which issues were of special importance to college students. I'm not sure if he knew there were reporters from Planet Oz (Humber's environment magazine, for which I was Editor-in-Chief last year) present--or my own still-critical ear, for that matter--but he payed us a good turn nonetheless.

I look forward to the Mayoral elections with a renewed optimism about municipal politics.