Tag: Municipal Politics

2019, Books, Non-Fiction

Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up (2019, Dave Meslin)

Full disclosure: I live in Toronto. I have met the author, Dave Meslin, at least once and possibly up to three times. Moreover, I used to volunteer for a group he founded (but no longer ran when I was a volunteer). So that both makes me likely biased in favour of his ideas and part …

2012, Movies

El Alcalde [The Mayor] (2012, Emiliano Altuna, Diego Enrique Osorno, Carlos Rossini)

This a challenging but confused film that begs the question, ‘what is more important to you, peace and security or freedom, transparency and accountability?’ This is an especially poignant question in Mexico, which experiences its share of violence.

1984, Movies

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984 Rob Epstein)

So unfortunately the filmmakers made a strange – but perhaps understandable – decision when telling Milk’s story: they assumed they were speaking to a very particular audience. This assumption led to another: that therefore everybody knows everything they need to know about the backstory already.

2010, Politics, Society

2010 G20 in Toronto

Disclaimer: I didn’t know how to go about doing this. Maybe I’m paranoid (I certainly felt paranoid on Sunday…), but I worry that posting this will in someway have a negative affect on my career. I think there are many people in the governance and corporate worlds who – implicitly if not explicitly – feel …

2010, Politics, Society

An Open Letter, I guess

Dear Mr. Crimmins I read your editorial in June 7th’s Hamilton Spectator with great interest. Your idea of dispensing with elections is compelling: it would save huge amounts of money, it would shorten campaigns and make them completely unpredictable (hopefully saving us from a situation like that of the US, where each campaign begins after …

2009, Politics, Society

The Hamilton City Councilors are at it again

I guess it’s because municipal politics attracts the dregs, the people who can’t make it at any other level of politics, that we regularly get the most insane and ignorant suggestions from Hamilton city councilors. The previous highlight was an idea to ban swearing in the downtown core. Councilors were apparently wholly unaware of the …