Quality of Life - Stop the Cuts!

On Saturday I participated in the Stop the Cuts meeting at Dufferin Grove. About 600 people from many ridings, cultures, and income groups participated in this meeting to develop a position statement on cuts to city services, and to plan actions to protect our services and our city. In itself, the meeting was impressive - 600 people actually meeting and participating in decisions over four hours, outside, in a friendly drop-in atmosphere - through a remarkably well-organized series of breakout sessions, musical interludes, and report backs. The declaration is available on Stop the Cuts' website.


The big day of action is on September 26, the first day of council meetings to decide on cuts (and unfortunately, the same day as the Tar Sands action in Ottawa). The most important thing we can do leading up to that day is build awareness of what these cuts mean for people - write letters to the Editor, do the social media thing, and talk to your friends. Some of us live in ridings where the councillor can be counted on to vote to preserve services, and others the opposite. Those who live in the many ridings with a mighty middle councillor have a lot of potential power - phone calls, emails, and visits to these councillors can really make a difference.


Although I sometimes find Now Magazine's Rob Ford-related coverage antagonistic to the extreme, Adam Giambrone's recent article is a well-balanced and clear explanation of the current fiscal and political situation in Toronto, and what the city needs - namely, increase property taxes as previous administrations have done every year: Ford's Fake Fiscal Crisis.


I have been reading Richard Heinberg's brilliant but heavy The End of Growth, which argues essentially that economists have ignored for generations the environmental limits to growth - that ultimately we will simply have exhausted most of the resources on which economic growth depends - in fact, many resources have already peaked, and others will soon. Yet he argues that if we plan carefully, the end of growth doesn't have to mean the end of improvements to quality of life.


In this context, it's especially important to look at how city services help to build a city that is resilient and that supports quality of life for everyone,  especially the most vulnerable - that means environment and food programmes that promote local, affordable food (LiveGreen and the Toronto Environment Office); libraries where people can meet, talk, and learn, without having to buy anything!; parks for enjoyment, sanity, air quality, and much more; grants for art and community programmes; adequate childcare; and affordable housing.


Let's look also to people who work for the city - more than 17,000 of whom may be laid off or forced to take an buyout package that is unfair to anyone who has worked for less than 35 years. The fact is that there is no gravy; the secretary's secretary's secretary is a myth! People who work for the city are doing jobs that need to be done. And adding to the ranks of the unemployed will do nothing to help our quality of life.


Let's look to the suburbs - not to find a place to lay blame, but to make sure that the majority of Toronto's population enjoys the same services and quality of life as people living in the city centre.


Let's look to the province (and vote wisely on October 6, please!) and the federal government, to make sure that they are providing adequate transfer payments to cities like Toronto.


Let's look to each other, to our neighbours and friends and family, and let's get creative. Quality of life in the coming years will have more to do with healthy food, healthy spaces, and healthy communities than with high-tech gadgets, conspicuous consumption, or waterfront ferris wheels.