17 September 2014 – Five East End Against Line 9 supporters handed out “Ban toxic oil” leaflets and gathered signatures for a petition to City Council for no toxic oil in Toronto, at a mayoralty debate. It was held Sunday at the Evergreen Brickworks under sponsorship of an environmental NGO. Attendance was 500+: a youngish and well-educated crowd.
The most outstanding feature of the Evergreen Brickworks debate was on the the effects of climate change. The facilitator said that costs of extreme weather events in Toronto, driven by climate change, are now ten times higher than a few decades ago.
Tackling climate change is new to Toronto politics and acknowledges the problems residents faced with the ice storms, the power outages, sewer back-ups. It’s a big opening for us to discuss the reasons for climate change.
Doug Ford did not show, so the debate was between Olivia Chow, John Tory, and a lesser-known candidate named Ari Goldkind. The latter is notable mainly for his advocacy of a higher municipal tax rate to fund infrastructure and transit investments.
Of the other two, Chow clearly leaned to concern with working people’s needs; Tory to “partnership” with business. But neither of them feels able to project significant new expenditure (a legacy of the Ford era), so the difference in their proposals is not so great. Tory got the most applause.
No questions from the audience were permitted. Nonetheless, we who were leafleting had an opportunity to talk to many of those who attended. Our leaflets on the pipelines and rail transport of the tar sands were well received on the whole, including by many Tory supporters.
The sponsors also gave time to three of the youngest mayoralty candidates, all in their twenties. Their comments were spirited but did not seem much different in thrust from those of Chow and Tory.
The candidates each spoke on the TTC controversy but with no clear suggestions on how transportation could be made qualitatively more available and efficient for residents. In our opinion, the city’s debate on the TTC and mass transportation should be considered part of greening the earth and addressing the climate change issue.
First published Toronto East End Against Line 9