How the Sausage Gets Stuffed

This blog is kind of a strange thing. It's not a charity and it's not political. In fact, it's a business. But I believe it serves a very important function in our community. What it is trying to do is create a space in the "body politic" where people can learn important, but rarely expressed facts about our society. Moreover, the editorial stance that I have taken on fits into the old model idea that the job of media is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable".

This stand is in direct competition to two other models that are pretty much dominant nowadays. One of them could be characterized as "be totally objective to the point of refusing to take a stance on anything". Elizabeth May mentioned this in her announcement of her resignation as leader of the Green Party:

Photo from official GPC website.

I hold the media to account for failure to deal with the science in the course of this campaign. For continuing to talk about climate change as if people understood it. It's as if we were having a debate about the economy where no one in the room understood inflation.  

Elizabeth May, as quoted by Canadaland Short Cuts

                                  

This is a fundamentally ridiculous editorial stance to take, as the science has been proved, the results are already in front of our eyes in the form of floods and wild fires, and, the threat is objectively more dire than anything else that has faced human civilization. Yet, it is arguably the way most of the legacy media---including the CBC---still follows the story. (If you want to see how a large media organization that does take the climate emergency seriously would cover the file, I'd suggest taking a look at the National Observer.) 

The other model, of course, is the one taken by propaganda outlets that are actively trying to deceive readers as a way of supporting increasingly reactionary conservative political ideologies.

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I suspect that most readers don't have a clue about how much work goes into creating my weekly editorials plus the "deep digs" that I've been putting out at the rate of about one a month. 

The thing to understand is that in order to write anything worth reading, a journalist has to be somewhat obsessive. In my case that means that I pretty much spend all day thinking about the stories that I'm writing.

Moreover, it means that I have to devote a huge amount of time exposing myself to many different things in order to "develop" stories. Most days this starts when I wake up, as I usually start reading news stories and listening to podcasts on my cell phone while still in bed. This continues after I get up with listening to podcasts while cooking breakfast. I generally listen to the Rachel Maddow Show, the Ezra Klein Show, Today Explained, Front Burner, bits of The Current, Guelph Politico, Open Sources Radio, and, The Weeds---as well as others that don't come out on a regular basis.  I usually also spend an hour or so watching the previous night's CBC national news on YouTube (this has the advantage of allowing me to fast-forward through bits of "fluff" and avoid most of the commercials). In addition, I try to read five different news sources every day: The National Observer, The Toronto Star, Guelph Today, The Guelph Mercury/Tribune, and, Adam Donaldson's Guelph Politico.

The value of this insane amount of news exposure is that it feeds my conveyor belt of ideas that I need to keep running in order to produce enough content to build a readership.

In addition I spend a lot of time going to events in order to "develop" community stories. This includes attending most of the Thursday "Breezy Breakfasts" organized by James Gordon and Phil Ault, as well as special events like James Gordon's Climate Emergency Show, the Green New Deal meetings, the Guelph screening of Election Day in Canada, Emerge Guelph's Talk as if Climate Change Mattered event, and so on. I find these events tremendously useful as they introduce me to people that I can interview at a later date so I can do my "deep dig" stories. 

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This raises the next issue. When I do interview someone, I have a process where I record them. If they don't want to "be the story", I use this information to go do future research. Unlike many mainstream reporters, I am generally not content to simply come up with a quote, attribute it to someone, and, then write the story. I try to go the one step further and double check what they are saying to see if it is actually true or not. Moreover, I also try to expand upon a statement to explain in greater detail---if necessary---so the reader can understand the context. 

If someone is a big part of the story---like a politician or local community leader---I try to create transcripts. Most reporters are increasingly content to just edit the sound file and put it up as a podcast. It is my opinion, however, that there is something about the written word that is superior to the spoken. One key part of this is the fact that if someone says something that is obscure or complex, if you are just hearing it, you generally don't have the option of going back to carefully parse out what they just said. In contrast, if you are reading a statement, the person transcribing the interview will have forced themselves to make sure that they understand what was said. Moreover, the reader is able to reread any sentence, or, stop and do a Google search to explain a new word or concept that they don't understand. This dramatically improves comprehension. 

Transcribing interviews is tremendously slow and tedious. A one hour interview can take weeks to transcribe into notes through an hour or two of work every day. To understand this point, consider that only about 40 seconds of an interview creates a page of writing in my reporter's news pads.  (Incidentally, I use news pads for the same reason any other journalist does, to create a permanent record that could protect me if I am ever sued for libel.)  

When I am actually writing a story I try to check everything I write to find out if I'm mistaken or not. In this particular Op Ed I had a specific example from the mainstream media of a national newspaper spouting anti-climate change propaganda. I spent a fair amount of time on the Web looking for confirmation and ended up with an article from the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the subject. It was quite long and went into some very specific scientific detail. After I'd invested the half hour or so in reading it, I came to the conclusion that the situation was a bit more ambiguous than I thought, so I removed the sentence because I thought it wouldn't be fair to leave it in. 

Even if I do keep an idea in the article, I still often have to put a lot of effort into making sure that it is correct. 

For example, in this particular Op Ed, it took me about a couple hours to come up with the quote from Elizabeth May. First I had to listen to the podcast from Canadaland. That gave the knowledge that it was actually there. Then I spend about a half hour rooting around on line to see if I could find the original source for the clip used by Jesse Brown. (Best practice involves using the original source if possible---this protects people from being quoted out of context.) I wasn't able to find it, and I tend to trust Canadaland anyway, so I gave up and decided to find it on the podcast. This took some time futzing around with the streaming feed until I found it. Then I had to transcribe her words. That took another 15 minutes or so. Then it was time to dig up a photo of Elizabeth May on line, which was easy as politicians are usually happy to let you use pictures from their websites. 

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I suspect that some readers are now saying to themselves "Why in God's name would anyone put so much effort into writing something that only a small number of people read?"

When I started this project I had two ideas in mind.

First, when the Guelph Mercury finally shut down after decades of agonizing decline it occurred to me that an opportunity presented itself to come up with a new model of creating local news. 

Secondly, I was aware that one of the few parts of the news industry that was actually thriving were specialist background journals that were aimed at experts in particular fields. These set out to inform Executive Officers about specific political, economic, scientific, etc, stories that are critical to the decisions they make as part of their jobs. These publications generally have very low circulation, charge very high fees, and, are behind very zealously-protected paywalls. My thought was "what if someone created a similar type of publication for the citizens of a community?" 

Finally, I knew that my years of slaving away at my "day job" were finally coming to an end. In addition, after years of work in Green politics and various activist projects, it occurred to me that I was pretty much free of all other entanglements. Moreover, this activity---plus my various literary projects over my life---gave me a pretty good background that I could use to build up this experiment. 

It would like to have a large number of paid subscribers plus a much larger pool of readers. But I know that I am already having a positive impact on the community. One example comes from a fellow who is relatively high up on the Wellington Water Watchers who told me that a significant fraction of people concerned about their work have been reading up my article about gravel pits and the DoLime Quarry. If memory serves, he said people say it is the best introduction they've found to the subject.

I've also gotten a lot of positive feedback from Guelph city staff. As one person I met at a party told me "I'm a head of a department and I like to read the blog because I learn stuff from it that I didn't know." These are people in a position to use the information I dig up to do a better job for the city. I can't think of a better audience. 

One last point. This isn't about me doing this. I'm trying to do a "proof of concept" for a new and better type of journalism in this city. This is why I make the effort to get financial support instead of just doing this as a "labour of love". I do have financial costs---both personal and with regard to the blog. But it's also important that I show that I can create a business that could potentially become a paid job. I'm not going to be able to do this for that many more years---I am getting old and I already have arthritis that causes some pain while writing these articles. The reason why no young people are doing this sort of journalism isn't because it is inherently impossible to make a living doing this, it's because people have become socialized to expect their news for "free". I'm trying to educate an entire community in the necessity of paying for real news.

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This gets me to the cost of putting out this blog. I mentioned that I have have five different news sources I try to read every day. I subscribe to two on-line news sources plus two podcasts. Together these add up to considerable amounts of money:

• The Toronto Star, $203.40/year
• The National Observer, $158.20/year
• Guelph Politico, $120/year
• Canadaland, $120/year

A little over $600 is nothing for me to sniff at, especially as my income dropped by about 40% in May when I retired. Moreover, there are other expenses. I don't get many "freebies" because most groups and individuals refuse to see me as a "legitimate" journalist. That means if I review a new book, go to an event, etc, I'm usually expected to pay the full cost instead of getting a press pass or review copy. 

A while back a friend asked me how much I make off paid subscriptions in a month. He was surprised when I told him that it only came to about $89 from Patreon and $7.50 from PayPal, or $96.50/month.  

Don't get me wrong, this is pretty good for the indie media scene. It takes years to build up a brand, and I've only been doing this for about two and a half years. But it's far from enough support to entice a young person into taking over the business. That's why I keep asking people to support the blog, either through subscriptions or by buying advertising. (I have yet to get a single advertiser.) 

But still, the money helps. Recently I decided that I need to start using the telephone, so I'm investing in a VOIP land line ($10/month) and an on-line recording device so I can do phone interviews. This might not seem like a lot, but it comes down to more than 10% of my gross income---. In addition, there are other costs that any small business incurs: business cards, stationary, reporter's pads, computer equipment, etc.

Moreover, I think it's time to think about advertising outside of social media, which seems to be somewhat "tapped out". (Last month I got bounced from the Guelph sub-Reddit---for reasons none of the moderators wanted to explain to me.) 

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Well, there it is. I've laid out how much time and money I spend on putting this blog together. Consider this something of a "funding appeal" like you regularly get from TVO or the United Way. If you would like to help me, you can subscribe through Patreon or PayPal---even as little as a dollar a month really helps. But even if you can't afford that (I know a lot of you give substantive amounts of money to worthwhile charities), consider sharing my blog with your friends on social media---word of mouth is key to finding new subscribers.

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Public Education: Baby Steps Versus Playing the "Long Game"

Several years ago I was volunteering for a Green Party election campaign and I got "schooled" by a "hip youngster" with a degree in marketing about why it is important to not be what I'd call "punk and plain" about environmental issues during an election campaign. (I have a tendency to go on about unlimited economic growth being the ideology of cancer, among other things.) She told me that she had been taught that the key to effective advertising is to change people's behaviour and that that comes from appealing to them "where they are" instead of "where you'd like them to be".

She used the example of a fairly famous advert from my childhood, one that she said studies had shown did absolutely nothing to actually change people's behaviour. Here it is (ah, the wonders of YouTube!):

(Before we get too far, let me first admit that this video is somewhat racist. It plays to the "magic Indian" trope. This says that the First Nations peoples have some sort of inherent, genetic propensity to being environmentally groovy. While I think a case can be made that at least some of the tribal cultures are more "in tune" with nature, I don't want to give credit to the idea that this is something inherent in their genetic make up---which is clearly as racist as saying that all Chinese Canadians are good at math, and, all Black Canadians "have rhythm". Moreover, there is the whole point that the actor playing the role was actually an Italian-American who had adopted the persona and name of "Iron Eyes Cody". Having said that, I don't think that this invalidates anything I'm going to write after this disclaimer.)

Here's the other advert that her professor compared it to, one that actually is supposed to have made a real difference in how people act.

At the time I hadn't heard about this second ad, I was old, she was young, and I didn't want to get into an argument with someone who had studied marketing. But something about what she had said just didn't "sit right" with me. That was over 10 years ago, but I think I've finally figured out what I didn't like about what she said.

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Every time an organization creates and promotes a message it is going to have to decide whether it wants to "play the long game" or "seek out the low-hanging fruit". I would argue that our discussion wasn't about whether or not we were going to change people's behaviour, but actually about whether we were playing the long game or seeking after low-hanging fruit. Moreover, I'd suggest that just chasing low-hanging fruit is ultimately self-defeating in politics.

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On one level, this involves the message you are projecting to the audience. In the case of the "don't mess with Texas" ad, it is simply that you should put the trash in the can, period. The "crying Indian" ad is much more ambitious. It's trying to suggest that there is something inherently wrong with modern industrial society. That's why we have shots of him paddling through harbours with cranes, factories, oil refineries etc in the background. It's also why we have a zero-in on the huge traffic-filled highways before we see a bag of fast-food dumped at his feet. In short, the "crying Indian" ad was a critique of modern, capitalist, industrial society whereas the "don't mess with Texas" one was simply focused on litter.

Also, think about the people who were chosen in each different ad to represent the public viewpoint. In "Don't Mess with Texas", the heroes were two extremely well-paid NFL players. In "the Crying Indian" it was (I've already offered my disclaimers above) a First Nations member---certainly not a person of privilege. So it is a case of putting in the viewpoint of people who have the system working for them, and another who has probably seen nothing but exploitation from it.

The point I'd like readers to meditate upon is that it is always easier to do well in the short term if you have no problem with ignoring the long haul. For example, a government can almost always gin up the economy for a few years with tax cuts---if you don't care about the size of the deficit or the resulting wealth stratification in society. Executives can always increase the dividends they pay stock holders for a few years if they cut their research and development departments, and, avoid investing in new machinery---at the price of having the competition "eat their lunch" ten years down the road. Similarly, a political party can always do better in the short run by pandering to voter's pre-conceived notions than in trying to educate them about important issues---if they don't care about the long-term consequences for society.

And what exactly has been the trajectory of Texas since the "don't mess with Texas" ad first aired? Well, a quick Google search resulted in the following statistic:  Texas is 48th worst out of 50 states in terms of health risks from pollution.  (US News and World Report) (Obviously someone is messing with Texas after all---.)

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I suspect that at least some of my readers keep meaning to subscribe but never quite get around to doing so. It's not that hard. If you have a credit card (and I know that almost all of you do), all you have to do is sign up on Patreon or PayPal. But here's something new---why not have your community group buy a subscription? Unions, service clubs, charitable institutions---you all benefit from having local news. Why not subscribe? Or even buy an advertisement, for that matter. All sorts of groups used to buy ads in the old paper newspapers---what's stopping you from doing the same thing in the Back-Grounder? 

Drop me an email at thecloudwalkingowl@gmail.com if you want to find out more. 

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Both of these advertisements have become "icons" in the American psyche, so it might be useful to see how they have exerted their influence since they were first created.

Here's a clip from The Simpsons that plays on the "crying Indian" ad: 

And here's another advert from Texas that is an out-growth of the original "Don't Mess with Texas" ad: 

I've cherry picked somewhat, but I do think that there is some sort of rough generalization that can be discerned here. But the point I want to make is that almost all pieces of messaging can be divided into two different messages: the foreground and the background.

In the case of the clip from the Simpsons, the foreground message is clearly that there is something profoundly wrong with American society---hence the giant, rat-infested garbage dump. The background message is that native Americans have some deeper appreciation and respect for nature than the average citizen. In the case of the official Texas advert, the foreground message is "don't litter", but the background one is "have respect for the military" and even "we honour our Confederate traditions". (I suspect this last bit is unconscious and came about simply because an existing institution---the Texas Confederate Airforce---helped with the ad. Indeed, the organization realized this fact and in 2002 changed it's name to the "Commemorative Air Force".)

The original advert inspired a whole line of official ads aimed at the "don't mess with Texas" trope. Here is one that is more than a bit "loopy":

Here's one that is a bit more indicative of most of them:

And another official ad that plays on the usual tropes:

The real message of the "don't mess with Texas" ads is that "life is good, happy motoring is good, things are just fine in Texas---just don't toss your trash out the window of your car as you roar down the road on your way to destroying the planet!"

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In the recent election there were a lot of times that I thought the politicians were obviously pandering to public opinion polls without even attempting to make any sense. Two examples that immediately come to mind were the idiotic policies that the Conservatives and Liberals came up with to make housing more affordable. Scheer announced that he'd loosen the requirements that would allow more people to get a mortgage, and, he'd allow it to be paid off in a maximum 30 years instead of the current 25. Trudeau's offer was to expand the "First-Time Home Buyer Incentive".

Both of these suggestions are flat-out idiotic and would be immediately obvious as such to anyone who hadn't flunked first year economics. That's because they don't actually increase the number of houses being built, just make it easier for everyone to borrow money in order to buy one. If they were implemented, they'd just increase the cost of housing, and channel more money out of home-owner's pockets and into the banks.

Both the Conservatives and Liberals had to have known this fact. But the leaders looked at the polling numbers and decided that they had to say something that sounded like they were concerned about housing affordability. As such, both Scheer and Trudeau were deciding to "make baby steps" and "pander to people's preconceived notions" rather than try to educate voters about the real reasons why housing is so damned expensive. They were following the "don't mess with Texas" route instead of the "crying Indian" one.

They thought that they had to do this to win the election. But the problem is that by pandering to the ignorance of voters, they were making it that much harder to get them to accept a more reasonable policy later on down the road. If you keep telling people "there's no reason to make hard choices---it's all just peachy the way it is", it may be surprising, but it's true none-the-less, that a lot of them will actually believe it. And if you turn around and tell them something different at a later date---like "if you want affordable housing you are simply going to have to accept living in small homes in higher density neighbourhoods"---they are not going to be happy to hear it. In effect, every time parties do the "easy thing" and suggest that all people need to do is "make baby steps", they are dramatically limiting their ability to tell voters the hard truth at some time in the future.

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This problem has been identified a long time ago. Henry David Thoreau once opined

"There are a thousand people hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root."

Henry was no fool, he knew what was important.
Henry David Thoreau, Public Domain image by Geo. F. Parlow.
Public Domain Image c/o the Wiki Commons.

And that's the ultimate problem with taking "baby steps" in our messaging about important public policy issues: they only strike at the branch of problems while leaving their roots still strong and vigorous.

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Does News Need to be Topical?

I've built the brand of the Guelph-Back-Grounder around the idea that it is never meant to be "topical". By this I mean that I am specifically trying to not respond to the "news of the day". This is heresy to reporters, who's job it is to go out and get the story before the other guy. But I'm not that sort of beast, instead I'm a long form journalist. The difference boils down to the relative importance of getting the news out on time, versus making sure that the story is complete.

Both types of news gathering are important and ideally they help one another. Long form journalists rely upon reporters to dig up facts and publish them quickly so the former can then use this information to point them in the direction of other sources. And reporters (at least sometimes) should be reading long form journalism so they can understand the bigger picture when they are trying to understand the individual facts they are collecting.

One of the important differences between the two is the fact that reporting tends to have an extremely short shelf-life. This shouldn't be because the "facts" keep changing (although this sometimes happens because editors feel that they have to publish things before being able to do adequate research), but just because time marches on and what is news today is forgotten tomorrow. In fact, this was such a truism of newspaper reporting that I've had more than one friend "in the biz" tell me that no matter how good a story was she'd written, it all boiled down to not being much more than liner for a birdcage. An ancient television show even build its opening theme around this trope.

This isn't entirely true, as I have learned while grinding through spools of microfilm of old copies of various newspapers. Those articles (at least the ones that have survived the vagaries of time) are important windows into the historical issues that have long been forgotten. But in one point my reporter friends were right. They aren't easily accessible to the general public.

Long form journalism in the modern age is different. It costs very little to keep old articles on-line. And search engines make it easy to retrieve stories on any given subject. This means that anyone who writes in-depth stories about subjects that are of continuing interest can hope that people will continue to read a good article long, long past it has been published. (And long past the point where newsprint has been recycled and the most a glossy magazine can hope for is a twilight existence in a doctor's waiting room.)

I keep track of the hits on this blog and I can see that people are actually using the Guelph-Back-Grounder as an information source. That is to say, my readership is growing at a significant curve and a lot of that increase is driven by people reading past articles. This is exactly what I set out to do. I want to be something of a "news encyclopedia" for the community. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to be as focused on local stories as I'd originally hoped. That's because I need to get something out every week in order to build a loyal readership---and it's far too much effort to research a "deep dig" article every week. (Or at least far too much effort for an old man who, while retired, still has all the aches and pains associated with a life of hard physical labour.) I have been heartened by quite a few readers who have said that they like these editorials just as much as the other stories, though.

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I got started on this subject because I originally was interested in writing some comments about the Jeffrey Epstein case. But once I sat in front of the computer, I realized that I was about to break the rule I set down when I started the blog. Then I thought about the Lavalin issue and the ethics watchdog report that recently came out. I could write a story because I've been researching Parliamentary reform and there is an aspect of that that has direct bearing on the expulsion of Jody Wilson-Raybould from the Liberal caucus. But I decided that would be wasting a future deep dig on what I suspect will turn out to be a minor story.

But it did get me thinking about the tyranny of topicality and how it can damage the way people learn about the world around them. It's often said that "the average person has the attention span of a gnat". I don't agree. First, it simply is a fact that there is a market for long form journalism, or else it simply wouldn't be "a thing". Some journalists have developed extremely successful "franchises" based on long form journalism. The best example is VOX Media.

For those of you who haven't heard of this institution, VOX is something of a "media empire" that is based on getting into the "nitty gritty" of stories instead of just the latest headlines. It has a website with lots of stories like The day Philadelphia bombed its own people, Fracking may be doing more climate damage than we thought, and, The algorithms that detect hate speech online are biased against black people. It also has a series of very popular podcasts such as The Ezra Klein Show and The Weeds which are specifically meant to deal with complex issues in depth over a fairly long period of time (both shows routinely extend over an hour in length). There is also a YouTube channel, (here's an example of one of their shorter videos---I think that they are better than amusing cat videos.)

Netflix created a partnership with VOX to produce a series of documentaries on a variety of subjects, which is titled Explained. (I highly recommend the episode titled Weed, which explains in great detail many of the issues raised by cannabis legalization.) 

Secondly, if you look at people's behaviour you can tell that if someone is really interested in a subject, lots of people can be very focused towards it. To cite one example, I remember hearing Ralph Nader once opine that if the average sports enthusiast invested a fraction of the attention towards politics that they do to following their favourite team, there would be a revolution in American society. Even if someone can't recite baseball statistics back to the 19th century, there is generally something that he can and will focus on. We live in a world of shade-tree mechanics, master gardeners, quilters, home brewers, model train builders, and so on. All of these pursuits seem horribly tedious to anyone who hasn't "caught the bug"---yet we all know someone who devotes enormous amounts of their spare time to them. It's obvious to me that these folks have more than "the attention span of a gnat". If they don't want to pay much attention to the news, it's because it doesn't interest them---not that they are genetically incapable of focusing on it.

Some of these folks probably don't care about the news and there's nothing anyone can do to get them excited. But I suspect that at least a percentage of them just don't like the trivial way the mainstream media follows stories. It becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy when an editor constantly tells his reporters to "dumb down" the news. Eventually people who would be interested in something else get bored and look elsewhere. Many of the folks who do stick just expect that the vast majority of what they are watching is nonsense that they should only take with a grain of salt, so they only engage with it in a half-hearted way. That leaves the fraction of people who truly are incapable of "paying attention" as being the only folks who get listened to when it's time to design the latest main-stream media model. I suspect that this is at least part of why we've seen such a decline in real investigative news in favour of blowhards yelling at each other and quick "he-said, she-said" stories totally devoid of any context. (Of course the general decline in revenue for news is another part of this, but again, lack of loyalty to real news on the part of management is probably also another cause of declining support for news organizations.) 

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This whole editorial is something of an explanation of why I think this blog is important, so I'm not going to insert the standard blue-type plea for subscriptions. (But if you do want to subscribe through Patreon or PayPal feel free.) But I will leave you with this last idea. VOX has succeeded because it specifically deals with issues of interest to a huge market---the USA and the greater international audience. Insofar as a news site focuses on local stories (like my deep digs) I am not going to get readers outside of Guelph. That means that I am trying to dance with cement blocks tied to my feet, which suggests that the "smart money" is against what I'm trying to do here. So any support that "proves the business model" right now is going to pay big dividends down the road for creating a vibrant local news ecosystem. If you want to read news about where you live, the motto isn't "build it and they will come", but rather "support it and it will survive".

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

People in the Know: Karen Farbridge, Part One

I find that the most interesting interviews seem to happen after someone has walked away from their careers rather than when they are in the middle of them.  I think that this is because when you are actually in office you are constrained by it to always think about how your words could affect your ability to function there. It's only when you've finally walked away from it that you have both the time to think clearly and objectively about what you've done, and, the freedom to say what you really think about things. To that end, I was happy to do an in-depth interview with Guelph's past mayor, Karen Farbridge.

I think it's important to mention in passing that Karen and I go way, way back. I first met her in 1978 and she is probably my oldest friend in the Royal City. But I hope that that doesn't mean that I can't do a fact-based, objective interview with her. Ultimately, that's for the readers to judge, though.

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Karen Farbridge, our 40th and 42nd Mayor in Guelph.
Original image from U. of Guelph website, used under
Fair Use provision, cropped by Bill Hulet

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Bill Hulet: I heard that there was a talk you gave in London shortly after you lost the 2014 election to Cam Guthrie. Could you tell me something about that?

Karen Farbridge: There is a woman [Ashley Good] who has a business---I think it's called "Fail Forward"---she does work with---I think Doctors Without Border, but it might be Engineers Without Borders---one of those. In addition to their standard annual report, they also do an annual "Failure Report" where they highlight the year's projects that didn't work and why. The point of her work is help institutions and individuals have conversations about failure without triggering a bunch of negativity. Or criticism. And how to do this without making people feel threatened.

She was brought in to facilitate a conversation at the 2015 Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting about what I'd learned from what I hadn't been able to achieve as Mayor of Guelph.  

Bill Hulet: In business people often talk about the need to experiment, push the envelope, "break things", stuff like that. But in governance you aren't really supposed to take any risks at all.

Karen Farbridge: The problem with politics is that there's always somebody who will want to take advantage of somebody and sort of flog it. One example would be the SUBBOR [SUper Blue BOx Recycling] project. Remember that?

Bill Hulet: That was the idea that you grind up everything and ferment it and burn the gas to make electricity?

Karen Farbridge: Yeah. 

So the city had an opportunity and we took it. We provided some space for them to test their facility. And when they were not successful, and they were not able to demonstrate the effectiveness of their process---all of a sudden it became the city's failure. 

Right?

And it got caught up in the lawsuits and stuff like that. So they sued us. It turned out that that was pretty much how they made their money---through lawsuits. So it became somehow that the city had failed.

But we had taken a risk on an opportunity. At the end of the day we were whole. We didn't invest any of our own dollars into it. We didn't pay them to process our waste. It didn't work---but I'm sure we learned some things along the way. 

But we never were able to go back and learn from it---people just wanted to move on and forget about it.

Our administration did a really good job in the agreement of protecting the city, and we were left harm free. But it's an example of even when it wasn't a failure in any sort of measured way, it was used to be a negative story. And yet we'd taken advantage of an opportunity to see if it could have worked for the city. 

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The Saga of Eastern Power

SUBBOR is an interesting study all in it's own. It turns out that it was a project run by two brothers---Greg and Hubert Vogt---who are the owners of "Eastern Power Limited". And as Karen mentioned, this company has a history with governments and lawsuits---.

The earliest reference to Eastern Power Limited's legal issues is a throwaway reference in a story about Guelph's SUBBOR troubles in the magazine Solid Waste and Recycling:

(Interestingly, Eastern Power sued Italy’s largest municipal utility for $162 million in damages in the late 1990s over what Eastern called a breach of contract related to a deal to supply a plant to generate power from sewage in Rome. The Italian utility won and Eastern Power was ordered to pay $44,000 in costs.)

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any other reference to this lawsuit or the project in general.

In addition, Eastern Power has built two facilities that recover methane gas from landfills which were used to create electricity. The first one was at Brock West in Pickering which was installed in 1991. A second facility was installed at the Keele Valley landfill in Maple in 1995. (This was the largest landfill in Canada and the third largest in North America when it was in use.) Both of these facilities seem to have functioned according to specifications.

The Brock West methane collection facility in Pickering.  Image from the Keneidan Construction website,
used under the Fair Use Copyright provision.

In 1998 Guelph signed a contract with Eastern Power Limited to provide a space plus a source of garbage so they could display their SUBBOR technology.  The federal government had already ponied up $7 million to fund the project, and, the company had a proven track record because of their success running the Brock West and Keele Valley methane collection plants---the second and third largest landfills in North America. The idea was that the Vogt brothers had three years to show that their technology worked and at a price that would save Guelph money over the existing Wet/Dry system. Unfortunately they were unable to do so in the time allotted and the city decided to sever the connection. At this point Eastern Power sued the city of Guelph for the sum of $32 million because of "breach of contract". Eventually the Ontario Superior Court ruled in Guelph's favour on all points and awarded Guelph $4.5 million in court costs.   

Where the saga of Eastern Power really hits "over-drive" is the next project it took on. As part of the Ontario Liberal government's program to phase out coal-powered electricity generation, it was decided that the province needed to build "Peaker power plants" that would be able to harmonize electricity production and demand on days when sustainable electricity production (ie:  wind, solar, hydro-electricity, etc) couldn't keep up to demand.

Eastern Power had a background in producing electricity from methane gas collected from landfills, so it could be argued that they had some expertise in natural gas electricity plant technology. But on the other hand, they weren't experienced at building peaker plants---so some eyebrows were raised when the Liberals awarded them a contract to build two plants in the Mississauga area in 2005 instead of the experienced Albertan company TransCanada Energy (yeah, these are the same people behind the Keystone Pipeline.) These two plants were to be called "Greenfield North" and "Greenfield South". The Northern project was soon scrapped because Eastern Power couldn't find investors willing to loan them enough money to build the project. (Remember this last sentence---it will be important later!)

An election was called, and the two proposed generation stations were immensely unpopular with voters in Mississauga, so the Liberals cancelled their contracts. (They also cancelled a similar generating station in Oakville, but the contract for that plant had been awarded to Trans Canada Energy, so it isn't relevant to this story.) When Ontario Power Authority lawyers started the process of working out a settlement with Eastern Power they found that because the company didn't have any experience building peaker plants, they had found it extremely hard to find the money they needed to build the project. The only investor they could find, EIG Management Company, asked them to put in some extremely cautious controls over the way they used the money. In 2011 EIG agreed to loan Eastern Power $260 million, but only under what an ordinary person would consider quite onerous terms.

According to a Globe and Mail article published on the 7th of November in 2012,

Eastern could only withdraw money monthly and only for approved construction expenditures. In return, Eastern had to pay 14-per-cent interest on borrowed funds and pledge control of the company and virtually all of its assets as collateral.

Because of these tight controls, by the time their peaker plant was cancelled, Eastern Power had actually received only $61 million dollars. But when this happened, EIG sued the Ontario Government for $300 million in damages---and eventually received $149 million (eg: $61 plus $88 million) in an out-of-court settlement.

To understand what happened, I'll have to explain something called a "yield maintenance" amount. Basically, this is the idea that when someone loans another person some money at a specific rate of interest over a specified length of time, they expect to not only get their money back but also with a predicted amount of interest. When the peaker deal "went South" because of politics, the investors expected to get some compensation for the interest they expected to receive when they loaned Easter Power all that money. This isn't an outrageous idea, but the amount seemed out of proportion to the money actually lent. Again, to quote from the Globe and Mail article,

That provision shocked Rocco Sebastiano, a lawyer at Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP retained by the Ontario Power Authority, a provincial agency in charge of the negotiations. "I fell off my chair when I saw the yield maintenance amount being claimed by EIG," Mr. Sebastiano said in an e-mail dated Nov. 24 to officials at the Power Authority. "This sounds like a usury charge to me frankly."

The reporters said they couldn't find anything in the documents they looked at to explain either why EIG thought that they were entitled to such an enormous amount of money for lost interest on its loan to Eastern Power, or, why the Ontario Power Authority ended up paying $88 million. The authors of the Globe article had their own conclusions:

The controversy over the cancelled power plant serves as a cautionary tale for governments as they increasingly shift services from bureaucrats to the private sector. The risks associated with these projects are supposed to be borne by the private sector. But when deals unravel, it is taxpayers who are left on the hook.

The story of Eastern Power doesn't end with big cash payouts, though. As part of its settlement with Ontario Power Authority, it requested a contract to build a peaker plant somewhere else. This meant that they were contracted to build the "Green Electron" facility near Sarnia. The plant was finished in April of 2017, but during it's construction there were numerous complaints by people working on the facility about unsafe working conditions. And when it was finally finished, there doesn't really seem to be much need for it. According to a Toronto Star article on the 25th of January in 2018, the plant was only needed for 33 days in the previous year.

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I've gone on something of a tangent here talking about SUBBOR, but it's important to remember why it is that I'm producing this news blog. As I see it, at least part of the point of news is to inform the worldview of the readership. And this means that sometimes it's useful to go off on wild tangents when one story leads to another. It's easy to fall prey to the idea that things can be easily explained by concise narratives. But life's not really like that. Pull on a string and you never really know what the result is going to be. And how we view the world around us can often be dramatically changed by the unexpected results of seemingly random inquiries.

What I find interesting in looking at the SUBBOR story is something that I've found in other stories I've researched:  the really pernicious and deceitful way business tries and often does take advantage of both government and the ordinary citizenry. This has made me a lot more skeptical about government/business partnerships. Anyway, if you like the "deep digs" that I do on local Guelph stories---no matter where I end up with them---please consider subscribing through Patreon or making a one time purchase through the Tip Jar. Even as little as $1/month is appreciated. 

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Digital manipulation of images by GIMP

Hulet: Is part of the reason why politicians get blamed for taking risks because the media likes to do "gotcha" stories and reporters don't have time to do any meaningful research?

Farbridge: I think that's more of it. I was looking through paper clippings from all through the 90's about the various things we did. 

The paper then---because they had more resources, more reporters, who had more time. They were a huge contributor to helping see projects move forward---like the Wet/Dry, water conservation and efficiency.

We didn't have social media at that time. So I wonder what it would have been like trying to do those projects with social media. But the papers played this really important role of being a place where there was good reporting on the facts, there was good presenting of debates---criticisms but also the positives. There was a balance of that in the community conversation. 

But then when you get into the mid 2,000s with the rise of social media the paper's stories just continued to decline. At that point they only had time to go after the "gotchas"---at a very superficial level. And that would feed the social media stuff, and all of a sudden the negative stories had this platform and there was nothing counter-balance them. 

Put a positive story on FaceBook and it goes nowhere. Put a negative story on and it's shared---people put little crying icons, stuff like that. It's hysterical. There's lots of research on it---I've tested it myself. 

Hulet: And then there're examples like "Ontario Proud" that are specifically feeding that. If you have the analytics in front of you, can can tell what works and what doesn't.

Farbridge:  That's one of the reasons why I think it's gotten worse. Rob Fords and Doug Fords have always been on our councils---but there's always been a whole lot of other voices to put what they said into a context or perspective. Now it seems that those voices are amplified in a system that is driven digitally through social media and those analytics. Those voices are getting amplified out of proportion to what the larger population might believe. 

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Hulet: What have you learned about the difference between governing a city, and, being a politician and getting elected---so you have the opportunity to govern the city. I've always thought that these were two things that are very different, and are sort of at loggerheads with one another.

Farbridge: Yeah. No they are totally different. I'm much more comfortable in the governing role. I don't like the election role. I never did. How I managed that was to put together a good team who were able to work in that world and have them lead it. And where I haven't done well was when I haven't had that team. 

My second observation is it used to be that campaigns used to be six or eight weeks. Maybe a little bit of runway coming up. But not much because that would always be in the summer time. So things really just hit in September and October, you had the elections. They were over and you got to governing. 

Now the elections go everyday, the entire year, every year of the term. They just go constantly. It's not just at a municiipal level, it's at the federal level and the provincial level. The campaign is going all the time. 

Hulet: So you felt even in the middle of a term you had to be very careful about what you said, or, think about the election?

Farbridge: It's about time. There's only so much time. 

A woman who's doing her Master's---. I met her about a year ago now---. She asked the question "How do mayors in Canada express their influence and power?" We don't have a "weak mayor" system---that's a wrong use of the term. (That's where the mayor only has one vote on Council---as you know.) 

Anyway, this woman interviewed mayors across the country, and she defined things into three areas. And how she said it made a lot of sense to me. 

One is sort of bucket is executive execution, another bucket is community, and, the other bucket was politics. Her thesis is that with the resources that mayors are given in Canada that they can only operate in one effectively. Maybe a little bit in one of the others. And it depends on the context of the municipality. 

So, for example, John Tory [Mayor of Toronto] has to spend a lot of time in the political bucket because he has forty odd councilors. So he has to know who he has "lined up" on his votes before going into a Council meeting. 

Nenshi [Naheed Nenshi, Mayor of Calgary] is completely in the community bucket and has an abysmal political record in Council in terms of getting his stuff supported---because he spends his time connecting people with his lost cats over social media.

Hulet: So he's what they call "a retail politician"?

Farbridge: Yes

So when I reflected on that for my own various terms---.

My first term---because it was such a split Council---I spent a lot of time on the political side of it. A lot of time engaging Councilors. Making sure they had what they needed, making sure they were comfortable with the vote---to ensure we could move forward with decisions. 

In my second term as mayor I was able to put a lot of time and effort into execution---more fundamental governance stuff. So once Council had made a decision I put my focus on making sure Council's decision got implemented. Cause there's "no connect" between Council making policy and those policies actually getting implemented, right?  Unless you put attention to it. 

I was able to put a lot of time into the execution and I had a CAO [the Chief Administrative Officer---the person who runs the city and manages all the non-elected staff] at the time---Hans Loewig---who was very much into getting things done. So we were a great balance in terms of getting the Council's direction, and giving him the mandate, and getting things done. 

And then the third term. I should have switched to community, but I didn't. I stayed in execution and was up against an opponent who lives entirely in community: not very good politically, hasn't had a good political record, and doesn't govern. And so I lost for lots of reasons---but that was one of the contributing things. And I felt that pressure---and I was absolutely doing more in that space. But there's only so much time in the day. 

Campaigning takes a lot of time and energy. You know. Going to every event and tweeting it out and putting it on FaceBook, taking a picture wherever you go. If you watched Frank Valeriote and Lloyd Longfield now---Liz Sandals [past Guelph MPP] never did this---they are never present. They are never in the moment governing. They are running their election. 

[Karen breaks out laughing.]

They are constantly on their phones tweeting and just doing the social media stuff. So it's all about the attention span and band width. You can't be running an election and governing at the same time---and do them both well. 

Hulet: That's certainly what Mike Schreiner is doing. He's like the Ever-Ready Bunny---he's everywhere.

Farbridge: And I think that social media has raised this level of expectation---that somehow this is the job of the elected official. But they're actually supposed to do a job, and elected to govern, and sure there are community pieces to that, but the demands today on a Mayor to go to events compared to in the 2,000s---there is a night-and-day difference. And it's been exponential, its not about the growth of the city, it's about people have this expectation of accessibility that social media provides. 

So if you're not being seen to be doing it, somehow you're not doing your job. 

And Liz never got onto social media, she got criticised for not doing it. But she really made a decision---I don't know if she did it consciously or unconsciously---but she kept elections to elections, and once she was elected, she governed. 

She went to a lot of community events. But even there---I admired her---she wouldn't go to every event, every year. Take for example some fundraiser that happens every year, she'd go every other year. This set the precedent that she would not be at everything every year, every time. But the pressure was absolutely the other way. 

Hulet: It's not just politicians. I'm on five different social media accounts---flogging the blog, flogging the books. And the sad thing is that all this effort actually works. It's just part of being a writer now.

Farbridge: And artists, and musicians---same kind of thing. Right?

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I think that this is a good place to pause for now. I'll do some more work and get the next part out ASAP.

Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

What is News?

In the midst of the media frenzy over the Prime Minister, Ms. Wilson-Raybould, and, SNC-Lavalin I'd like readers to take the time to ask themselves the following question. Why is this news? Indeed, why is anything news?

Robert Jago, from his Twitter feed.

Wendigo?

This issue came home to me after reading an article in Canadaland by Robert Jago where he mentioned cruising a liquor store and finding a weirdly offensive brand of Gin named---of all things---"Wendigo". Jago took a picture and posted it on twitter with some witty remarks and bought a bottle of Bombay Sapphire instead (with, as he says, "the picture of the lady that stole our land on it".)

The odd thing is that after posting this "throw away" remark he found himself repeatedly asked to write a story about or be interviewed on the subject of how---as a First Nations person---he was outraged and angry about this attempt to appropriate his heritage (well, actually not his---he comes from the West Coast and the Wendigo is an Eastern woodland thing) in order to sell booze. Jago found this unexpected interest contrasted bizarrely with the total indifference he'd met when trying to get any editors interested in a story he wanted to write about the Federal government willingly dealing with undemocratic administrations who had managed to gain control of several reserves.

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I don't suppose many folks who read my blog have ever really thought about how editors decide which stories they want to put into the news---and which ones they won't. I did mention in a previous editorial how the Toronto Sun sent out memos to it's employees saying how upper management wanted its writers to attack the provincial Liberals, but that's a fairly rare and extreme case. Mostly, editors want journalists to write stories that engage their readers on an emotional level. They don't want to educate readers, because that is considered "boring". They also don't want long pieces, because they believe that the average reader no longer has a long enough attention span to spend more than about five minutes on anything. And they don't want to "waste" the time of readers explaining a context or facts that aren't already part of people's conventional understanding.

In Jago's case, the story of the big bad company insulting the heritage of our noble First Nation's people is something that easily fits into people's preconceived notions, excites emotions, and, doesn't require any deep understanding. It fits neatly into the controversies about sports teams using First Nation mascots and taps that deep, deep mother-lode of emotions that come from pitting "white guilt" against people outraged about "political correctness".

In contrast, articles about political skullduggery on reserves would require a lot of careful exposition both about the history of First Nation self-rule, and, how it collided with Indian Affairs. It would also require readers developing a bit of nuance regarding a people who still get tarred with the "Noble Savage" mythos. The outrage that sells papers and puts eyeballs on screens is a lot easier to manifest when it is Aboriginal versus greedy Gin producer rather than different factions fighting over power on a reservation.

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Jody Wilson-Raybould,
Photo by Erich Saide,
c/o Wiki Commons.

Now let's think about the SNC-Lavalin affair. We have a Prime Minister who has staked a large part of his reputation on the twin ideas that he is dedicated to redressing the way Canada has jerked around the First Nations. He has also made a big deal about creating the first gender-balanced cabinet in Canadian history. Jody Wilson-Raybould is something of a "poster girl" for both of these, as she is an aboriginal woman who was given one of the biggest jobs there is:  Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

Justin Trudeau---tarnished?
Photo by, Presidencia de la República Mexicana
c/o Wiki Commons

This is a great story for a editors because most readers already know who the principle players are (Raybould, Trudeau, and, Lavalin.) It excites emotions both with "progressives" and "conservatives" because it paints Trudeau as a hypocrite. And, it plays into old prejudices in English Canada: corruption in Quebec, and, Ottawa propping up failing Quebec corporations. As I suspect some editors have actually told their staff "Dang! The story writes itself."

And, of course, once a certain number of news venues start to carry a story, it begins to become important because it is important. This tendency for editors to assign stories based on what they read or hear from competitors even has it's own name "pack journalism".

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I think it should be pretty obvious to anyone who reads this blog that I have absolutely zero interest in covering the same stories that professional editors would find interesting. (And they would probably point out that my low readership and even lower income just show how right they are to choose stories the way they do.) Instead, my concern is based more on "how important is this story?" rather than "how much will this story engage with the emotions of readers?"

I would invite people to consider the Lavalin "scandal" from the point of view of importance. Did anyone try to make money off the government? Was anyone hurt? No one is alleging any of that. Instead, what happened was that there was a difference of opinion between various members of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) about whether justice would be better serviced by putting SNC-Lavalin on probation (and thereby possibly saving as many as 10,000 jobs in Quebec) or by prosecuting the company to the maximum and potentially forcing it into bankruptcy. The whole issue turns on whether the PMO put too much pressure on Raybould to over-ride a prosecutor who wanted to go after Lavalin to the full extent. That's it.

Let me contrast this story that has eaten up Dao-only-knows how much time and space in the news versus something that really is important: climate change. Climate change is not just another story. Truth be told, future generations will consider it THE ONLY STORY. 

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I go on about subscribing through Patreon or leaving something in the Tip Jar because I think it's important to remind readers that they need to pay for the news if they want to free themselves from the nonsense that professional editors feel they have to produce in order to get money from advertisers. (Thanks for being so awesome Stephanie!) I also have expenses. I try to keep everything down to the absolute bone---second hand computer, free blogging service, etc, but there are still things I spend money on. For example, I bought a case of reporter's notebooks a couple weeks ago. (This isn't just an affectation, taking notes and putting them in dated notepads that you keep is a way of protecting yourself from lawsuits---which is why all journalists and reporters use them.) I also sent off some Euros to people in Spain who wrote a version of Linux designed for old computers that I installed on a second-hand notebook I bought from Data Matrix so I can carry work around without risking my main computer. And then there's the money I sent to Wikipedia (where I get lots of the pictures I use), and, the Internet Archive (which backs up my articles and references so they doesn't just "disappear" over night.) I also send off subscriptions to various "muses" like Adam Donaldson, "Canadaland", and, "Contrapoints" who are doing the same thing as me---only for longer and better. Eventually, I'd like to have enough money coming in so I could join the Canadian Freelance Union.

So even beyond the time I spent on these articles, there are also financial costs. These are barriers for people getting into Indie media, and I'd suggest that if you can maybe you should help share the burden.

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I know the response that editors will make about the relative importance that they should be putting on stories. Even if they understand the disparity, they will say "We can't just run stories about climate change and nothing else---people would get bored and there's only so much you can say on the subject".

There is a historical example that I can bring to reader's attention, however. There was a Roman politician in the time of the Republic who is known by the name "Cato the Elder" who had fought against Carthage and who believed that it was an existential threat to the city---just as climate change currently is to all of humanity. He made it a practice of ending all his speeches on any subject at all with this saying: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam", or, "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed". This is often simplified as "Carthago delenda est" or "Carthage must be destroyed". This allowed him to continue working as a day-to-day politician in Rome while at the same time constantly reminding his fellow citizens what they should be prioritizing.

"Carthage must be destroyed"
Cato the Elder, image c/o Wiki Commons

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

People-in-the-Know: Liz Sandals, Part One

One of the advantages of developing a little bit of a profile in the community is that I've begun to find it easier to get time from busy people in order to do interviews. Not only does this allow me to develop better stories for my readers, it also gives me the ability to spend some time with some really interesting persons. In November I had the pleasure being able to interview our previous MPP, Liz Sandals. She represented Guelph for 15 years---from 2003 to 2018, and ended up as the Minister of Education.

I thought that Sandals would especially interesting to talk to because she is ostensibly retired from

Former Guelph MPP and Education Minister, Liz Sandals
Ontario Ministry of Housing Photo,
c/o Wiki Commons

politics. I've found that a lot of people in authority often only really say interesting stuff after they've walked away from their careers. Before that, they are something like actors on a stage. They are concerned about the impact of what they say to the point of not feeling free to speak their minds. She acknowledged the truth of my opinion, and suggested that yes she is a little freer to speak. But she also cautioned me that she still won't share the total truth. IMHO, that's a statement by someone with self-awareness. I came away with a feeling that Sandals is a pretty sharp cookie. I think we could have done far worse during the 15 years she represented us.

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I started off asking Ms. Sandals about climate change. The Conservatives under Doug Ford had just announced that they were ripping up the agreement that the previous Liberal government had undertaken to create a cap-and-trade carbon market in conjunction with California and Quebec. For those readers who didn't know much about this program, it was a mechanism designed to put a price on carbon that would encourage businesses to make reducing their carbon foot-print part of their design criteria. All the money raised in Ontario---by law---had to be spent on programs that was meant to help Ontario move towards a carbon-free economy. The first auction under the program was held on February 21rst of 2018 and the Ontario proceeds amounted to $471 million. Now that that program has been eliminated, the Financial Accountability Office says the government is forgoing future revenue of $3 billion over the next four years. It will also have to spend about $600 million to wind down programs that were to be funded by the cap-and-trade system, as well as an estimated $5 million to settle lawsuits with businesses that made decisions based on the assumption that Ontario was going to continue to be a member of this trading system.

My first question was background about how Sandals felt about the issue, so I asked her "What do you think about climate change? Do you see it as an existential threat to human civilization?"

I'm not sure that I would choose the world 'existential' because I don't use that word a lot, but that's one of the 'biggies'---we have to solve that. It isn't "Do I want to solve it?" It isn't like---because it's really important to me---that we have to teach math better. But it's not like the world is going to fall apart if we don't learn to teach math a bit better. Whereas, we have to solve climate change. It's not an option. 

If we don't find ways to at least reduce the impact, we're going to have terrible consequences. So the whole thing that we see---first in the US and now increasingly in Canada---and---God help us---in Ontario. Where climate change is treated as something that we can choose whether or not to address it. That's like turning off your brain. 

Doug Ford. Is he stupid? Or evil?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Image by Andre Forget, c/o Wiki Commons

This led to my second question, namely, if she believes climate change is something that we absolutely, positively, have to deal with, what did she think was going on in the head of Doug Ford? This is a dangerous thing to ask anyone, as people don't generally think it is fair to question the motives of people, just their actions. But that doesn't mean that motives aren't important, just that it can lead to very strong emotions if people suggest that there is a difference between why someone says they are doing something, and why they actually are doing it. In light of this, I decided to just put the issue as bluntly as possible to see how Sandals would react. I asked "Are the conservatives evil? or are they stupid?"

I don't think all conservatives are evil or stupid, and the fascinating thing is that Patrick Brown started off speaking the party line that "all taxes are bad, therefore no price on carbon" but had come around to "yeah, we have to have a price on carbon". So, you saw him going on this journey of maybe getting out from under Stephen Harper where he came to the view---which was probably a step too far for a lot of his colleagues---that there has to be some sort of price on carbon. 

I think that what you're seeing with Doug Ford is the personality of Doug Ford---who might be evil and stupid. As opposed to all conservatives. 

I believe what I am trying say is that I think there's still some of the old "Red Tory" conservatives around and then there's this new breed of God knows what they are. "Right wing populists", I guess is the best way to describe them. A lot of what they do are not even classic fiscal "conservative". 

But at any rate, it's like those that are the most negative have captured the leadership roles. Which is a bigger question than just climate change. What they've done with climate change in Ontario is just plain stupid.

The bigger point that Sandals was trying to make is that carbon pricing isn't something that traditional Conservatives would have a problem with---once they agreed on the need to deal with climate change. As she sees it, the real problem is that a new, more radical, anti-government attitude has taken hold of the leadership of the party.

I think he chose to go there because if there's two things that Doug Ford actually believes---I don't think that there's a lot that he actually believes in---the two things that I think he does believe, really strongly believes in, are "taxes are bad" and "government is bad". 

Because if you look at the things he's actually done---that aren't "undoing" (so we're just going to reverse this because the Liberals did it)---we're going to give you a tax break. I think if you were going to ask him why you are getting rid of cap-and-trade is because I think it looks like a tax, and taxes are bad. And if you look at what he did yesterday, and what he has chosen to do, is reduced income tax instead of raising the minimum wage---when all the evidence is that people would all be better off if you raise the minimum wage---and then they could pay a little bit of tax---which would be better for the people and for the government---(but government's bad.)  So you've got less tax and don't tell me what to pay my workers. It's all rolled up into that. 

At that point we slipped into a conversation about tactics. How was the Ford government selling their agenda to the public? I mentioned that I'd heard someone opine the night before that Ford had "thrown a shiny penny into the mix" and people were fixating on the shiny penny. I mentioned that I thought the "penny" in question was keeping liquor stores open later.

Hah! Yeah! Which is the same nonsense as the "buck a beer". What is something that he has seemed to slip by the public is that he's also reduced the surtax on the wealthy. Which nobody seems to have noticed.

What Ms. Sandals was referring to are two items of tax policy. First, the Conservatives substituted a tax cut for the increase in the minimum wage. Under the Liberals, the minimum wage was raised first to $14 in 2018, and was supposed to be increased to $15 early in 2019. Instead, Doug Ford's government decided to change the dollar an hour increase to only 25 cents per year which would only arrive at $15/hour in 2022. The tax cut for low income earners is called "the LIFT (Low-income Individuals and Families Tax) Credit". What this basically does is raise the gross income that an individual or family has to receive before it starts to pay taxes.

LIFT Credit, from Government of Ontario Web Site

Sandals is saying that someone on minimum wage is better off having the extra $1/year hour and continuing to pay the previous tax rate than if they are after the tax cut without the increase. Let's assume that someone works 40hrs/week at $14/hour. That would give them an annual income of $29,120. Previously, this person would have paid 5.05% income tax, or  $1470 in taxes. Now they pay nothing. But if they had had a $1/hour raise, they would have made $31,200 and paid $1,575 in taxes. So if you make $31,200 and subtract $1,575, you get $29,625. What this means is that the tax cut that the Conservatives brought in left minimum wage workers with about $500 less/year than if they'd just got the dollar an hour increase in pay. It had the added benefit of keeping the tax revenue that the government could then use to pay for the sorts of programs that lower income citizens tend to depend upon.

The second issue that Sandals is referring to is a proposed change to the tax rates in Ontario. This would have involved removing existing surtaxes on wealthy individuals and replacing them with two new tax brackets and slightly increasing their tax rates. According to a CBC story by Mike Crawley published at the time that this proposed budget was announced, 3/4s of Ontario citizens would not see any change in their income tax, while someone earning $95,000 would pay $168 more, similarly someone earning $130,000 would see an increase of $200. And according to this story from a tax advisory website, the top three tax brackets would have changed from 17.4096% to 17.5%, 18.9696% to 19%, and, 20.5296% to 20.53%.

This is the tax increase that Doug Ford described using the following language:

"Today's budget includes massive — I repeat, massive — tax hikes," Ford said. "I'm not going to go after 1.8 million people and increase their taxes, charge them $200 more when they're already struggling with the highest hydro rates in North America."

While it's important to understand that neither of these two tax policies are terribly important to the an economy and government the size of Ontario, they do both cut revenue at a time when we do have some pretty significant financial and infrastructure deficits that need attention. One cut about $500/year out of the income of the working poor, whereas the other handed back money to the wealthiest fraction of the population. They do seem to be ideologically driven instead of being based on the public interest. And, there does seem to have be an attempt to divert the attention of voters away from them by tossing out "shiny penny" programs like extended hours at LCBO stores out at the same time. 

No more Canadian pennies, so here's a shiny American one.
Public domain image from US Mint, c/o Wiki Commons

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In all of my other articles I've mentioned that people have to get used to paying for news if they want to get something that isn't tainted with "clickbait" or hidden agendas. This time I'd like to offer a slightly different suggestion. A lot of businesses, government services and NGOs used to buy subscriptions to the local newspaper and magazines of interest. These included things like consultants, the public library, elected official's constituency offices, and, public advocacy groups. I suspect that most of these folks haven't really thought about it much, but I'd like to suggest that they should consider purchasing a subscription to things like the "Guelph-Back-Grounder" (and Guelph Politico too) through Patreon. Just like individuals, if you want to support the community and keep a regular flow of local information going, you need to pay for the service.   

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At this point we moved on to social housing. I mentioned my five part series about housing and how it was one of those things where the more research I did, the more horrified I was about the situation.

If I was to say what was the thing that I found most frustrating as an MPP, it would be my inability to get any movement on housing in Guelph. What was particularly frustrating was that there was actually money coming in for housing and trying to get it to materialize in Guelph seemed well nigh impossible.

Hulet: You mean federal or provincial money?

Yeah! Yeah! Because when there's federal money then the province puts in so much, but there has to be a local share. And it comes because housing is managed by the "upper tier" and we do have this weird situation in Guelph where the county is the upper tier for housing and social services and child care, but it's a separated city so Guelph has no say. So you get weirdness there. My initial reaction---because that was in the day when the county and the city were suing each other---.

Hulet:  The thing about the medical centre funding?

Oh, well I think that there were about four different law suits going on about one thing or another at one time. Or if it never got to lawsuits, at least legal wrangling. If you've looked into housing, you will have figured it out that there's a horrendous wait list in the city---particular for bachelor and one bedroom---and if you were to move to the county, the wait list is a month or two. 

The only problem is that most of the people on the wait list need services, and the services are located in the city. So if you have a medical issue or a mental health issue, or a need for counselling, job training, or access to post-secondary education, re-entry into employment----go down the list. Most of what you need during the day is in Guelph. And the people who need social housing tend not to have transportation. And if you don't have transportation, you can't get to Guelph. Especially as there is no Greyhound going down the number six road anymore. (Most of the people who need social housing don't live on the number six corridor anyway.)  

And it's all administered by the county. 

Sandals went on to discuss how her thinking on the issue has changed over the years. At first, she

Conservative Premier Mike Harris
Image from the Manning Centre
c/o Wiki Commons

thought that this was a misallocation of resources, then she moved on to think that it was driven by people with "issues" migrating to Guelph---where the services they need are offered. Then she talked about the history and theory behind how social services are administered. The Conservative Mike Harris government decided to hand the responsibility for social services to the "upper tier" of government---in Guelph's case the county as opposed to the municipality. She also suggested that this makes sense if your municipality is the size of Fergus or Drayton. Where this breaks down, in her opinion, is where you have separated cities---like Guelph. Guelph isn't part of the county. Legally it's a "stand alone". So as a general rule, she thinks that Harris's structure is not a bad idea. But in the specific case where you have a separated city---like Guelph---in the middle of a larger county composed of rural areas and small villages and towns---like Wellington county---it doesn't work well.   

But the reason it breaks down here isn't because of misallocation, it turns out to be because of local share. Cause Guelph, when this stuff got uploaded sort of did this mental shift where they thought "we don't have to worry about social services anymore---cause they're doing it". 

At this point Sandals emphasized her point by acting-out Council rubbing the responsibility off it's hands---.

Now we can get back to the municipal stuff---like hockey rinks, and potholes, zoning, whatever. We don't have to worry about this messy social service stuff, the county will. 

Hulet:  You mean in terms of financial resources or political attention?

Both.

So now we get housing money. How does it arrive? Well, if it's tagged for "new builds" it's usually a third---not always---but generally it's a third, a third, a third. Some federal, some provincial, some local.  

Money arrives for "X" number of new units. The county says to the city "How much money do you have to put up for your share?" And the city hums and haws and says "We don't have any money. Cause we don't have a housing reserve. We're not in the housing business anymore. Why would we have a housing reserve?" They actually used to have a housing reserve and got rid of it when it got uploaded to the county. But the county says "But we have a housing reserve and we'll put it into the county."

Hulet: I have talked to Councillors about this and they have told me that the federal government just needs to kick more money in. But there's such an enormous backlog---.

But there's nothing that says the local share has to be just local government. It could be a mix of government and private.  The one bit of housing we got in while I was involved was the senior's housing at Saint Joes. That was the Saint Joe's Foundation---with some tax forgiveness from the city---but it was really the Saint Joseph's Foundation that was the local share on that deal. 

The Saint Joseph's Health Centre, Guelph
Image from its web page, used under "fair use" copyright provision.

The other thing it could be is just a private developer. And then we've got into the whole NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] thing that you've identified. So the flap over the housing that Tom Lammer would have built over at the Church of Our Lady. So when Council eventually turned that down---it was a couple weeks before the deadline---and the county said "No problem, we have a housing reserve" and those units that could have gone into Guelph went into Palmerston.

Hulet:  That's something I don't recall hearing from anybody.

No. You wouldn't. [Laughs out loud.] And I would say to people who come into the office and say "You have to support us. We can't have an apartment building on that corner. It would be horrible!"  [Laughs out loud again.] And I would say "If we don't get some affordable housing in there, it's not going to be built in Guelph." And the response would be "That won't happen. They can built it some place else." And I'd say "'Some place else' will be not Guelph."And I'd get this sort of "Oh no, you're wrong Liz" reaction. Anyway, it's in Palmerston.  (29:30) 

And we've done this over, and over, and over, and over, and over----. 

The other thing is that there's such a backlog that you're never going to build enough. So a lot of the money that comes from the province has been flex money so that the local municipality has had the option of either building new units or using it as rent subsidies. So when the county has chosen to use it as rent subsidy---which they've done a reasonably responsible job of doing---then that money would be distributed in an equitable way. 

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Hulet: Just to spin this off in a little different direction, you've talked about NIMBYism. I think that's pretty much at the core of housing problems in Guelph.

Yes. Yes. 

Leading by being just barely in front?
Trudeau the Elder, photo by Chiloa
public domain c/o Wiki Commons

Hulet: And it's very difficult as a politician to alienate voters. Someone once told me---it's probably apocryphal---that Trudeau the elder once said "The art of being a leader is staying exactly seven inches ahead of popular opinion."

That's probably true. 

One of the good things you could probably say about Kathleen [Wynne] is that she got farther ahead of the public than the public was willing to allow.  

The whole NIMBY thing was that we had to get rid of the bad, old OMB. Yeah, the OMB tended to be pro-developer, but the OMB has also tended to be the "logjam"---. One of the things you happened to see in Guelph---and other municipalities---but Guelph is pretty---. Has done it more than once, let's say. Is that when there's a decision that is going to be publicly unpopular, but is technically correct---and probably a social good point of view, reasonable---you will see Council dragging its heels on never quite getting all the information they need on making a decision. And then the timelines expire on how long you can have a development proposal sit without making a decision. So it automatically gets so the developer can appeal to the OMB---because the timeline has expired. They aren't appealing a decision, they're just going to the OMB saying that the timeline has expired, so the OMB can make the decision---because Council doesn't want to make the decision. Because they want to be able to say "we didn't make the decision---the OMB made the decision." When the real issue is that there is a decision to be made that isn't palatable to the local politicians. So we'll let the OMB be the fall guy. 

I've seen this happen with a number of proposals. And that's usually a case where I have nothing to do with it. It's totally private. I just sat back as the observer. I just said "Ah. Here they go again!" 

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This is getting to be a quite long post, even though I'm still less than half through my interview. I think what I'll do, therefore, is split it up into two parts.