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One way or another electricity is going to play a big part in Ontario politics over the next four years.

The Liberal Government at Queen’s Park is ready to part-privatise Hydro One to help fund the huge spending on transit infrastructure. And York Region is now looking at the future of electricity supply over the next twenty years as demand is projected to increase dramatically.

Here in Newmarket, we are living with the terrible mistake of not burying the hydro lines in Davis Drive even as it is being endlessly dug up, filled in and dug up again. For all the millions spent, Davis Drive will, unfortunately, retain the frontier town look with heavy cables hanging from unsightly hydro poles. The cost of burying hydro in the future will run to tens of millions of dollars.

We get our electricity from Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution, the company that was formed in 2006 with the merger of Newmarket Hydro and Tay Hydro. It is wholly owned by both municipalities.

You can see the presentation Paul Ferguson, the President of Newmarket Hydro Holdings, gave to the Town’s councillors back in February 2015 here. It is at the top of the agenda.

Directors’ Remuneration

The presentation is curiously silent of the question of directors’ remuneration which, from time to time, is a subject for comment in the blogosphere and twitterverse.

Does Tony Van Bynen, for example, accept remuneration for sitting on the Hydro Board even though he is there only by virtue of his position as Mayor of Newmarket? Sitting on the Hydro Board goes with the day job, so to speak.

Directors of Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution Ltd receive an annual retainer of $8,000 plus a per diem of $200 for attending Board of Director or Board Committee meetings. I am told that on average there are six Board and four Committee meetings per year bringing the annual remuneration to $10,000 for a full record of attendance.

Van Bynen waives the extra cash

I suspect Van Bynen waives the $10,000. He would not have made such a song and dance about the Toronto Star’s assessment of his alleged earnings if he was trousering on the side another $10,000.

It is though surprising that a former banker of 30 years standing, a man who lives and breathes figures,  originally claimed he was getting $151,000 – not $182,000 but by the time the Star published its correction his remuneration had drifted up to $159,856.

Unearthing old By-Laws

The authority for the directors’ remuneration can be traced back to a Newmarket by-law in 2000 but getting hold of this is not a straight forward matter. I am also told the remuneration has not been adjusted since that date. This commendable self denial comes at a price. The Bank of Canada inflation calculator tells me that $10,000 in 2000 is worth a $13,322 today.

For the future, surely, the remuneration of the Hydro Board’s directors should be reported to Newmarket councillors every year as a matter of course. It shouldn't be this difficult finding out who gets what.

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The long delayed "Glenway Lessons Learned" meeting is to be held on Tuesday, 23 June 2015.

It will be led by a Town appointed facilitator, Glenn Pothier.

Former councillors Chris Emanuel and Maddie Di Muccio first called for such a meeting in April 2014 with the formal decision taken by the Town Council on 5 May 2014.

Details of the modalities are still unclear.

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The threatened part privatization of Hydro One has triggered an avalanche of hostile comment, warning Ontario not to sell the family silver.

In a spirited piece in the Toronto Star earlier this week, Transit Union chief, Bob Kinnear, reminds us:

Transit in York Region north of Toronto is the only fully privatized system in Canada and charges the highest fares — $4 for a single Zone 1 bus ride, a dollar more for Zone 2. It is also the most heavily subsidized in Ontario, with taxpayers kicking in an additional $5 every time a paying passenger boards that bus.

While cash fares are being pegged for the next two years, non-cash fares continue their steady progression upwards.

A book of 10 adult tickets goes up from $33 to $34 on July 1 and up again to $35 in 2016. Similarly a book of 10 student tickets rises from $25 to $26 and up to $27 next year. The full list is shown here.

Tomorrow, York Region’s Committee of the Whole will be receiving its regular report on how many riders the buses are carrying. Councillors will find out why ridership is down in the first quarter of the year.

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To the Newmarket Public Library for their latest IdeaMarket offering:  

“Smartphones, You Tube, Infamy: Video Activism and Social Change”.

Soon after kick-off I realize the sweep of tonight’s topic is way, way too wide with nothing staying in focus for more than a few minutes before discussion is moved on.  We hear about cyber bullying and the damage it can do to a person’s self esteem. Now I am watching a promotional video for a women’s refuge. Next up is a short movie clip from a young woman expressing her feelings through the medium of a silent video. It's a jumble that seems very Art House-ish to me.

There is a panel of six (too many) including Tracy Kibble, the Editor of the Era, Newmarket’s local newspaper which is dumped unsolicited on driveways week in, week out.

She tells us that much of what is out there on the internet cannot be trusted. That’s why local newspapers are needed. They care about the truth and double check the facts. As I am listening to this, I am smiling to myself.

Now she is asked about citizen journalism, blogging and its impact on the mainstream press. She seems curiously unconcerned.

Nwkt Town Hall Watch

She mentions by name, Newmarket Town Hall Watch, brushing them aside disdainfully. They hide behind their anonymity and don’t bother to check their sources, peddling half truths and distortions as fact. (That was the gist of it.)

Now Tracy is talking about how the Era is coping in an age where news travels fast. A tweet can be sent in seconds. She concedes they are never (or rarely) going to be first with breaking news.

Indeed, I learn the Era no longer routinely publishes photographs of accidents and the like. One way or another, these go on the web instantaneously. By the time they appear in the print version they would be old news.

We are told the on-line site chalks up an impressive 500,000 page views per month. I am astonished. Clearly, there is life in the old dog yet, albeit in the digital version.

A Huge Cylindrical Roll of Bumf

In the old days, when people bought the Era, there had to be a certain percentage of news in the content. (I was told it was about 40% but this may be way off the mark.) But now the paper is a freebie there is no minimum requirement for news and editorial. What little there is is submerged under a huge mass of advertising bumf.

As I am listening to Tracy I am wondering how many people would take the Era if they had to pay good money for it. And will it exist in its current form in, say, ten years?

Nowadays, people get their news from a huge variety of sources and newspaper editors, like Tracy Kibble, are no longer the gatekeepers they once were, deciding what should be reported and when. That paradigm died years ago.

Nevertheless, I want local newspapers to survive. They could still fulfill an important function.

But they’ve got to offer more than we are getting now; which is a very thin gruel of local news and comment.

They need to become relevant again.

Here's an idea. The Era should start running stories on local issues that influential people would prefer to see going unreported.

I have a list.

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In last year’s Provincial Elections Kathleen Wynne promised to give municipalities the choice of ditching first-past-the-post and changing to the ranked ballot.*

In an interview with the Toronto Star today, the Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister, Ted McMeekin, says he is to consult municipalities in the fall with a view to introducing legislation in Spring 2016.

The Premier wants the new system to be in place for the 2018 elections.

I want to see it happen too.

There are still big unanswered questions about how we get from a-to-b but the direction of travel is clear. First-past-the-post can produce spectacularly bizarre results especially when there are lots of candidates in the race. In last year’s election in Toronto, the successful candidate in Ward 16 (Eglinton-Lawrence) got 17.4% of the vote.

This is unusual but it happens more often than you would think. And of course, there are lots of first-past-the-post elections where the successful candidate gets less than 50% of the vote. The ranked ballot ensures that the winner always gets more than 50%. With that comes a measure of legitimacy.

The Ranked Ballot and Newmarket

However, here in Newmarket the ranked ballot may not make much of a difference. In last year’s election most of the incumbents were home and dry – either because of their own sterling qualities or because the opposition was less than stellar.

The ranked ballot wouldn’t help a polarising figure who is uniquely unpopular. As I tap this out, I immediately think of Maddie Di Muccio, the Ward 6 incumbent, who got 785 votes (24.6%) while her challenger attracted 2115 votes (66.5%).

By contrast, the ranked ballot may well have made a difference in Ward 3 (Twinney 45.9%; Woodhouse 37.8%; Madsen 16.2%) or in Ward 5 (Sponga 46.7%; Heckbert 30.9% and Martin 20.3%). Who knows? That said, it is clear that giving voters the opportunity to express a preference can change voting behaviour.

And candidates, too, will have to think about how their views play with voters whose first preference is for someone else. In some wards, securing lots of second preference votes is likely to be a winning strategy.

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* also known as “preferential voting” or “the alternative vote”.

 

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