Have you ever walked a picket line? If you have, then you know the camaraderie that can emerge, the rare sense of standing for a common principle. You also know the tedium that develops after days or weeks, broken occasionally by violence or news from the bargaining table. If you've walked a picket line you're also familiar with the costs: physical and emotional exhaustion, the often irrecoverable hit to your income, the impact on labour relations, and perhaps above all, the costs to the people affected by the strike -- coworkers, the public, and all the other institutions and individuals whose activities are derailed as the result of a strike.

If the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), representing nine thousand TTC workers, acts on the strike mandate given to it by its members, then tomorrow morning at 4:00 am the TTC will cease to operate. No subways or buses will run. The stations will be shuttered. The 1.5 million people who rely on the TTC to get to work or school will be forced to find other ways of commuting on roads choked with cars, bicycles and pedestrians.

Media reports have focused on the inconvenience a strike will cause for commuters. This morning's Toronto Star headline blares, provocatively, "Is TTC an Essential Service?" Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has muttered obliquely that the Province may introduce legislation to make it so, and indicated more coherently that back-to-work legislation would likely bring a quick end -- although perhaps not within a week or two -- to any strike action. Mayor David Miller, being feted all week in China, is staying -- at least publicly -- out of the fray. That's not a surprise: in the coming months he's got even bigger negotiations looming with the two huge CUPE locals representing tens of thousands of city staff, and isn't likely to show his hand unless forced to do so.

I don't buy any of these claims. I don't find "inconvenience" a legitimate reason to oppose a strike, nor do I consider it adequate justification have a service declared essential. I find the Mayor's self-imposed absence from the bargaining table reprehensible, especially at a time when he should be doing everything possible to broker a settlement. I am ambivalent about back-to-work legislation, but acknowledge its value if (and only if) a strike or lockout goes on so long that the public interest becomes genuinely compromised.

The right to strike is one of the most fundamental labour rights. It is -- like the right to join a union and bargain collectively -- enshrined in the Ontario Labour Relations Act. A strike is a legally protected course of action when, after the term of a collective agreement has expired, properly conducted negotiations do not produce a new one. Unions may go on strike only if a strike vote is held and only if the majority of those voting support a strike.

In the case of the TTC workers represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, the collective agreement (...read more...)

Back when I first moved to the Junction -- 20 years ago -- no one ever called it that. None had heard of any Junction. And even if they had, residents would never have called it that. Not for love nor for money.

Back then, reference had to be roundabout. Indirect. Oblique. This was Bloor-West -- North. Or High-Park -- West. In events of direst emergency, it became Annette Village. Dire emergencies as when clients confronted real-estate agents with: “You mean it’s (gasp) north of Annette?”

Like some geographic sore spot or socio-economic canker, it was way too unmentionable to rate its own designation. Blemishes seldom get personalized nameplates.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. Everything that mattered. First, the City finally repealed its prohibition against alcohol in the Junction. The economically devastating prohibition lingering in the Junction until 1997. Which meant that instead of lurching along Dundas West, guzzling from paper bags, I could actually sit myself down at excellent neighbourhood pubs. Like Axis, for instance -- where nobody knows my name but they’re damn friendly anyway.


Axis: among first and best post-prohibition Junction watering-holes.

Second thing that really changed in the Junction was when the City installed spectacular-looking, historically relevant light posts all along Dundas West. All the way from Keele to Runnymede. Reminding everyone how great the Junction used to be -- late in the 19th century.


One light to remember the Junction’s better days by.

Now, the Junction has become almost idyllic. People boast living here -- despite what traces of old economic sores remain. Despite how, in the Junction, all sides used to be wrong of the tracks.

Tough either quantifying or qualifying such transformation. Once, Dundas West was considered fraught and hazardous. Now, biking back from downtown during rush-hour, one feels nothing but relieved crossing Keele. Motor vehicles make some room. Instead of swerving around parked-car doors opening in one’s face, smiles are exchanged with motorists waiting until one’s safely passed by. And it’s been quite a while since I’ve heard the fear of walking Dundas West after sundown expressed. Day or night, people seem to flock this way.

That’s what really struck me a couple days back. How flocking to Dundas West might be getting a bit ridiculous. See, this building got knocked down between Keele and Pacific. Then, instead of new building, there was this sort-of stage erected on that lot.


Some sort of stage.

The other day, on this sort-of stage, there were people in top-hats and bonnets. Also, a crowd gathered round watching. A rather large crowd. So large that I roller-bladed the periphery of it spilling into the street.


Spilling in the streets.

Turned out to be guided-tourism. No doubt by the Junction Historical Society. Got me curious enough to rush home, dump roller-blades, grab camera, hop on bicycle and rush back. What I wanted to know was this: would tourism-guides point out sores and cankers remaining from the Junction’s bad old days? Or would focus get restricted to the Junction’s more (...read more...)

Note: This story was first published in http://www.corporateknightsforum.com. It is an international story that does have ramifications for all Canadians. So-called world class cities don't fit well in countries that allow this:

Canadian Fisheries has once again proven that it thinks bad politics beats good policy. Last weekend’s seizure of the Farley Mowat—a Sea Shepherd Foundation protest vessel—proves the point. After an abysmal week for the Canadian government agency where four fisherman drowned as a result of a towing accident involving a Canadian icebreaker, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn decided to deflect the generation-old criticism of Canada’s sealing industry by arresting environmentalists.

Leader of the Sea Shepherd organization Paul Watson made it easy for Hearn to take this step when he stated, “The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of four sealers is a tragedy but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.” According to the CBC, Watson also described sealers as “sadistic baby killers” and “vicious killers who are now pleading for sympathy because some of their own died while engaged in a viciously brutal activity.” With eastern Canada enraged over Watson’s comments, Minister Hearn saw an opportunity to act and he did. He ordered the Mowat seized in international waters.

Of course, this was Watson’s purpose all along: provoke a disproportionate government response to get headlines and reach an international audience. Read this quote from the Sea Shepherd’s web site:

In seizing the Farley Mowat and arresting the Sea Shepherd crew Loyola Hearn has done something that Sea Shepherd hoped he would do but we did not believe he was stupid enough to do – an unlawful boarding of foreign registered vessel in international waters. With the European Parliament on the brink of voting to ban seal products into the European market, Loyola Hearn decides to arrest Europeans for the “crime” of documenting incidents of cruelty on the ice.

Given the provocation, it is hard for Canadians to support Watson’s efforts to ban sealing. That’s why Green Party leader Elizabeth May decided that it was time to distance herself from the group. She resigned from her role as an advisor to the Sea Shepherd society.

“There’s a point at which someone’s comments are just so completely repugnant,” May told CBC News Friday.

“We’re just reeling from the loss of these men at sea, and whether you support the seal hunt or not, you want all the seal hunters to get home to their families safely.”

Watson said Friday he is not apologetic about his comments.

“I don’t pretend to not be controversial. I’m here to rock the boat, to make waves, to make people think, you know, to provoke. That’s what I do."

Canada’s bad policy on sealing makes Watson’s job easier. The story is already in the world’s news cycle, and Canada’s image abroad is eroded first and foremost by the primitive spring blood ritual, and then by the making of laws meant to prevent (...read more...)

Hey -- what’s with the partial nudity?

That’s just how Robert Nadeau regards economists. Because, according to his recent article in Scientific American, economists are scientifically ignorant. That’s why, on his view,

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.

Essentially, Nadeau’s argument isn’t that economic theories are inconsistent. Only absurdly incomplete. As if mainstream economists were describing nothing but straight narrow portions of spectacularly long winding roads. Thus, particularly when it comes to ecological impacting, economists mislead us. Their theories can’t lead us anywhere we need to go.

Economic theories are misleading rather than explanatory due to how absurdly incomplete they are. Nadeau is calling for economic upgrades:

Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet. It is imperative that economists devise new theories that will take all the realities of our global system into account.

Some economists might not take Nadeau’s threat to tinker economics lying down, though. “Bender”, for instance, commented that,

In an article purportedly discussing economic analysis and environmental policy neither externality nor externalities ever appeared! I don’t know which is more depressing, that someone could be stupid and ignorant enough to produce this tripe or that the Scientific American has sunk so low as to publish it.

How pedantic. That's exactly what Nadeau's talking about -- how overwhelming economic externalities like ecology are getting. But Nadeau not utilising the specific terms “Bender” recognizes resulted in “Bender” utterly missing Nadeau’s point. Standard economic theories mislead us precisely because environmental crisis constitutes such overwhelming externality.

Nadeau’s right, of course. We are rushing full steam and toxic waste to being overwhelmed. Not just economically.

But should economists seek to internalize theoretically and factually overwhelming externalities like environmental crisis? No. By no means. Absolutely not. There is no economic solution to our problems. Rather, let’s better appreciate how limited and incomplete economic theories are -– and let’s start looking way past economics for what it means to be more natural. What it means to be at all natural.

Can we do that? Toronto living is just about the most economically affluent anywhere –- ever. We expect some economic turbulence ahead. Will we be willing to look past it –- for what it means to be more natural? Or do we remain forever fixated on economic maximizing -- regardless how affluent we get? Regardless the cost to everything natural so precariously remaining?

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Screenshot from here.