Toronto’s throbbing millennial whatever

When I was a boy, old-stock Loyalists read Professor George Grant and groused that US corporate capitalism had so corrupted Canada’s politics that future rhetoric about an independent Canada would be just that. The first point of entry was, allegedly, post-war Toronto: once London’s, then Montreal’s, and, finally, the Big Apple’s dull, deferential middleman.

The deadly seduction Grant lamented was off by 50 years, which isn’t that long for a theologian. But with a twist: Instead of making their widgets Torontonians today, make music with Americans, shout out their street beats and grievances, and compete with them at their games.

You’d think, at first glance, that Toronto today is actually Canada’s un-American nation-builder. Didn’t the city market and elect my-way-or-elect Cité Libre’s Pierre Trudeau? Didn’t it resist all pro-American copycats from Alberta—and become Canada’s anti-American commentary and arts capital?  And, just last fall, didn’t it manage and elect Justin Trudeau, an untiring promoter of values we celebrate as Canadian originals?

It’s apparent now that Toronto (a) dominates Canada’s politics and (b) has become less not American in its thinking than Grant could have imaged.

First, never has so much power in Canada accrued to such an unassuming, jumpy place as the political ecosystem centered in Toronto.

Thanks to the last decade of massive immigration and rep-by-pop electoral reform, there are enough pensioners, workers, postsecondary students, teachers, homemakers, fans, performers and professionals of every kind residing within an hour’s drive of the CN Tower to elect 72 Members of Parliament. That’s nearly half of an absolute majority in Canada’s all-powerful House of Commons. That’s Harper’s Big Shift, certainly his most portentous and unruly legacy.

Just think of this region’s relative numerical weight: 72 votes is double the wattage of the entire Atlantic Region, just short of Quebec’s 78 and, together, British Columbia’s and Alberta’s 76. Further, except for Vancouver, they swing— and there’s no natural majority alliance that can exclude or count on them.  

Second, their flag-wavers are not Canadian like others. They can be won and as quickly lost, according to a plethora of trends and styles in the United State’s most powerful cosmopolitan centers.

Justin Trudeau expressed beautifully their city’s clean, postmodern, cerebral marketing brand when he boasted in Davos, Switzerland, that Canada’s “resourcefulness” not its “resources” drives its future. The anxiety and insecurity of commodity regions is so old Canada, and so not Toronto.

Toronto’s almost inexplicable, yet unrelenting success has been rewarded, cynics might argue, by a false consciousness: a talent-driven, endlessly adaptable, slightly more civil North American giant.

Toronto doesn’t add to, or account for, any of the mess in Washington. It counts, however, as one of the continent’s biggest sports and entertainment capitals, alongside New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago. As good friend and writer Norman Snider notes: "Torontonians don’t know or care to know the names of the city’s big bank CEOs or who exactly is Canada’s ceremonial head of state. But they know the names and compensation arrangements of a dozen Toronto international sports and music stars, from Chris Bosh, Andrew Wiggins to Drake."

Furthermore, immigrants have not been pulling Toronto away from that famously ugly American neighbor, as we might have supposed. In many respects, they come here to be as close to the US and its culture as is safe; and, as well for living in a global hub for quick flights home and back.

They’re transient globalists as much as mobile Canadians. They brought iPhones and designer jeans with them and shop in Buffalo, if the price is right.

As important, they came here to get away from extremes; they take their politics lite. Essentially, they’re living that materialistic American Dream that Grant so loathed and that Americans fear they’re losing.

Toronto’s sheer numbers dominate, not any local idea.

There are things Americans won’t do—feel free to call mandatory public health insurance a Canadian value, if you must. However, there’re no longer any better ways than American ways to win elections in Toronto.

Our quite old national border is anti-American and now anti-Toronto as well. "American" is the way we relax and talk to each other, and excel in the world.

Toronto’s extremely small ‘p’ politics

We believe in strong government everywhere except in Toronto. We favor strong executives and strong political parties to keep Canada united, democratic, and effectively led. We’re proud of the historic capacity of Canadian reformers — when in office in provincial capitals and in Ottawa — to get what we want done.

We look down on Washington gridlock. But when we compare the City of Toronto to Chicago and New York, we concentrate on demographics and cuisine.

In Toronto politics, the frontrunners campaign on platforms and on resumes that highlight their personal enthusiasm for endless meetings with other politicians and lobbying other governments for money.

Can you imagine Michael Bloomberg or Rahm Emanuel running for mayor of Toronto? Why not?

It’s bigger than Chicago and is growing faster than New York, and still maintains a handy northern European respect for those in authority.

(Of course, the gentleman’s school of old Ontario believes that Toronto’s big enough to be taken seriously in New York and Los Angeles but worries that it may be too divided to be one city. John Barber of the Toronto Star argues that Ford Nation is real and so alien that it must be excised from the body politic of Toronto’s delicate downtown. Surely, the city’s intelligentsia can do politics with commuters in Scarborough and single parents in Etobicoke. After all, they’re qualified to guide Canada and advise Iraq on federalism.)

Toronto is also a mecca for pragmatic, talented, and tolerant individuals. In every sphere, including national and provincial politics, they favor strong leaders over weak ones.

Nevertheless, Torontonians who excel at exercising power give generously to Toronto charities but leave its politics to "lifers."

The key problem is hardly the savagery of its unions, community groups, public intellectuals, and journalists, and the solution is not teaching Torontonians to be even nicer.

Power itself is what’s missing.

The prospect of wielding real power is what attracts individuals who are best at wielding it. And the prospect of electing individuals to powerful jobs invites voters to think carefully and then turn out to vote.

Happily, improving the odds of electing exceptional mayors, at least for exceptional times, doesn’t demand that we find a charismatic import or accept less accountability as citizens.

The first big step is changing a few of the 459 provisions of Ontario’s City of Toronto Act, 2006.

That statute created the terms and conditions of what political scientists and policy wonks call a "weak mayor system." Appropriately, the Globe and Mail invoked its feature in endorsing John Tory for mayor:

“Remember, Toronto has what is known as a weak mayor system. The mayor is not a prime minister. Not even close. A Toronto mayor is but one vote among 45 on council. He may have allies, but he doesn’t lead a party. He isn’t backed by a slate of councillors who ran on a common platform…. The mayor has to negotiate his way to better policies, better choices and better government. He has to be a networker-in-chief….”

Networkers will help you get out of a ditch. And they thrive in great cities. But networkers can’t crack their dire political challenges. They have democratic personalities and never go on binges. However, exceptional leaders won’t seek an executive office with terms of reference that give them limited carrots and no sticks.

Surely, there must be a better way for Torontonians to avoid being harmed by lousy mayors than by trivializing the job.

The Rob Ford Embarrassment doesn’t argue for keeping the status quo but for replacing it with a strong mayor system: a system in which credible candidates would be recruited, tested, nominated, and backed by registered political parties. If those parties didn’t take their responsibilities seriously, they’d pay. Those parties, as well as family reputations, would suffer for the failures of their mayoral and their council candidates to deliver.

Few Torontonians ever say they like partisan politics. But they show up in highly partisan provincial and federal elections. In far greater numbers, though, they leave it to their neighbors to vote for innocuous names and innocuous incumbents on city ballots.

Toronto isn’t an island; its mayor must have influence in Queens Park and Ottawa. That influence, however, will only be strong enough to secure significant wins for Toronto if the mayor of Toronto has won more votes in Toronto than the busy Premier of Ontario and the ever-embattled Prime Minister of Canada.

Widespread Stress: Signs of life in Toronto

Readers of Toronto’s Globe and Mail—citizens most easily embarrassed and most thoroughly informed about all that could go wrong—were treated to a scary headline yesterday and an editorial today about a massive Toronto school study on teenage stress. While most survey participants stoutly insisted that they felt good about themselves and were "reasonably happy," the survey discovered that 73% of the Toronto’s high school students “worried about their future.”

This high level of distress apparently came as a worrying surprise. A senior manager at the school board confessed he’d assumed that the students had a “happy-go-lucky existence.” The Globe’s editorial board urged parents and officials not to overreact.

It’s unseemly on Valentine’s Day to be unmoved by widespread anxiety or think of telling anyone today to "suck it up." Nevertheless, there is much that is good and reassuring about this stressful state of affairs.

The tough New York comedian Lily Tomlin put it perfectly:

               “Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.”

Toronto wants to be a tough, world-class city, like New York, really. Tomlin would likely be impressed by the study’s findings. She’d likely be flattering, if she heard about it.

Despite illusions about living in a more humane and gentle society and in a less hated country than that behemoth to the south, it’s striking to see how intensely young people in Toronto actually think about the future and their yet-uncertain place within it. Clearly, modern education’s concern for student morale has interfered with their worries.

History hasn’t skipped Toronto and moved west. Young Torontonians are worried because they’re still ambitious. They’re stressed because they could fail. And they could fail because they’re still free and tempted to do better.

Friday wrap-up: why Chicago isn’t Toronto’s twin

You don’t need a week to feel at home in Chicago.

Like home, Chicago sprawls along the flatlands of another cold lake. It has been a mecca ever since North America opened up for American and unauthorized adventurers. It has prospered within an extraordinarily productive agriculture and manufacturing region. The city finances and designs spectacular buildings and supports excellence in arts and higher education.

Chicago has been a great city for over a hundred years. Toronto was designated as such about 10 years ago.

Chicago has been forced to re-skill several times. Both cities now face the same challenge of creating wealth with fewer high income jobs in manufacturing and financial services. Both are rather utilitarian places; they both work by being useful.

Just as at home, people ask you whether you like the place.

A tour guide suggested carefully that we could be “twin cities.” Its theater audiences are as generous as they are in Toronto; its joggers, laptop entrepreneurs, panhandlers, noon strollers all look familiar. The traffic is actually quieter and no one looks like a master of the universe. Neither city has much of a leisure class. Everyone resents the approaching winter and measures their success against New York.  

However, a Torontonian can’t get inside its greatest drama: the political fate of their “sitting President” and his efforts to pull the economy out of recession. On that story a Canadian is a foreigner. People are actually careful about what they say.  

At first, this carefulness surprises you. After all, Canadians are unfailing Obama fans and are flooded by stories about America’s hyper-partisanship. You’d think they’d talk our heads off like they do on television.

Here’s a sample of the hysteric picture of America that has formed in the minds of many influential Canadians. JL Granatstein, senior fellow at the Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute, throws this out as fair comment:

“Maybe the idea of an American built wall along the Canada-U.S. border is not such a bad idea after all. Not to keep our 'terrorists' out of the Republic, but instead to keep the Americans and their dysfunctional governmental ideas, their wild-eyed politicians, their preachers, and their rabid Fox commentators out of Canada. Canadians have become used to the idea of believing that we are dull and boring and that everything exciting happens south of the 49th Parallel. It is certainly true that there is some excitement in watching a great nation flush its substance away, but I'll take dull and boring any day, thank you very much. “

Click on:

www.ottawacitizen.com/news/American+friends+trouble/5526694/story.html#ixzz1akzDOnHV

The reticence of individual Americans to say anything to further harm the good name of the United States, even to a friendly guest, may be nothing more than the other side of America’s deep uncertainty about the future.

The side of American politics we find entertaining in Canada is reckless and awkward: it is dominated by a handful of loudmouths, the rise and fall of want-to-be Republican presidential candidates, and volatile opinion polls. Laughing at that side of US political culture is enough for Granatstein to be cool with undergraduates and at home with his prejudices.

The political uncertainty in Chicago that sets you apart as a Canadian, however, is not necessarily defeatist. It is likely an expression of that foul born Nixon phase: “silent American.” It likely reflects resolution and a serious concern to not make matters worse, and to be good citizens in next year’s election.

Whether Obama wins as the “adult in the room” or dresses down as Harry Truman, the voters that decide whether he gets a second term will be thinking like adults next year.