The Sandor Report

With the Ontario municipal elections behind us, I would now like to make a request to all of the Councillor Elects, Mayor Elects and citizens everywhere.  For the next four years, would it be too much to ask to keep party politics out of municipal affairs? To set the record straight, there are no parties in local government.  You did not vote for a Liberal councillor or a Conservative mayor.  Likewise, to all of you newly elected officials, you do not represent a provincial or federal party.  Nevertheless, over the last 10 months of campaigning, I have heard countless times refrains such as "I'm not voting for a filthy Conservative for Mayor" or "Those scheming Liberals have taken over City Hall".  What's worse, candidates not only propagated this misconception by declaring that they would be a Conservative or Liberal politician, but in fact told citizens to vote along provincial or federal party lines. For higher levels of government, it may be easy ...

Olivia Chow – the Federal NDP transportation critic – plans to introduce a motion in parliament this Tuesday asking the government to design and implement a strategy for funding municipal infrastructure and transit systems. On the surface this proposal seems to be a good one; after all, anyone who spends any amount of time driving or taking public transit in Canada is bound to have a least one example of crumbling roads, overfilled busses leaving riders at the curb, or long commute times.  Not only does investment into infrastructure and transit seem like a ‘no-brainer’ to the average Canadian, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) has also made requests to the government to increase infrastructure spending by $2.5 billion.  According to the CBC , the preliminary version of the motion reads as follows: That this House call on the government to commit in Budget 2013 to a long-term, predictable and accountable federal infrastructure plan in partnership wi...