Post by Dean Robinson on Aug 5, 2008 9:44:24 GMT -5
TORONTO -- The fate of a new waterfront park that opened last summer stands as a poignant example of an overriding culture of micromanagement that is gripping city hall in Canada's largest metropolis.
The winning design concept called for an artificial urban beach with iconic yellow umbrellas dotting an expanse of sand stretching to the water, allowing urban dwellers the chance to dip their toes in Lake Ontario.
But after the fun police got ahold of the plan, the beach was shrunk to a glorified sandbox, a pathway and a railing were erected at the water's edge to keep clumsy Torontonians from falling in the lake, and the umbrellas were heightened and straightened so nobody would be able to climb on them.
Toronto is a city that loves to make rules.
There are long-time restrictions on smoking, pesticide use, idling vehicles and beauty contestants flaunting their assets at Nathan Phillips Square.
There could soon be rules on the availability of bathrooms at big box stores, the amount of shade in city parks, the health content of vending machine snacks and the amount of organic or local produce that should be served to wards of city day cares and nursing homes.
Plans to expand the menus at street food carts – to empanadas, gyros or falafel – have been bogged down over concerns about the safety of selling anything other than precooked hotdogs.
And when there aren't bylaws there are plenty of warnings. Toronto Public Health recently warned against children under age 8 using cell phones except in emergencies. And parks staff plastered stickers on slides and swing sets this summer advising parental supervision in city playgrounds.
City council and the army of bureaucrats behind it are forever finding new ways to protect Torontonians from each other and themselves, but some wonder at what point Toronto risks becoming a nanny state.
"There's this mentality that people can't monitor their own behaviour so the city needs to do it for them and spend money to do it," said Karen Stintz, a midtown councillor who often finds herself at odds with her colleagues over whether to legislate or let common sense prevail.
David Harsanyi is the author of a recent book on the phenomenon, Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children. In an interview, he said a nanny state results when legislators valuing safety above freedom and developing policies that coerce healthy living rather than promoting it. He would definitely characterize Toronto's forthcoming shade regulations as nannying.
"Can people in Toronto not take care of their own sunburns?" he said. "I've never heard of this one before."
Ms. Stintz tried in vain to stop "shade audits" being carried out this summer, arguing that once regulations are drafted to dictate the ratio of shade per person in parks it will require a bureaucracy to enforce them.
That's what happened with a rebate program for toilets, she said, where the inspectors must determine whether people rightfully claimed $75 for a dual flush loo instead of $60 for a lower-efficiency model.
"We have once again created an entire bureaucracy to make sure people aren't scamming an extra $15," Ms. Stintz said. "We allow ourselves to get distracted by shade audits and vending machines and cell phone use... and meanwhile we're not focusing on the true business of the city."
But Councillor Howard Moscoe, a city hall veteran who chairs the licensing and standards committee, disagrees with anyone who would say Toronto is nannying with such policies.
"It's our laws that make us a civil society – starting with the Ten Commandments," he said. "If we didn't have laws this would be a dog-eat-dog world. We need laws to protect us from each other."
That collective responsibility is heightened when it comes to protecting children, said Mr. Moscoe.
"Can we trust all parents to make the right or wrong decisions about their children? Well, we have Children's Aid Society because all parents can't make the right decision," he said. "There are lots of people who can be trusted to regulate the health of their kids, but there are many people who can't and that's why we have health regulations."
Mr. Harsanyi said this is the most common rationale behind nannying.
"Most nannyistic initiatives are framed around children, because if you can't protect children, who can you protect? That's why they get away with that kind of stuff," said Mr. Harsanyi. "No one wants to be the one to stand against the children and it makes it very difficult for them to vote against initiatives like that typically."
Toronto is a city that definitely seems to have a lot of regulations, agreed Duncan MacLellan, a professor of politics at Ryerson Univerity. But he added:
"It's not like Toronto is alone. It seems to be kind of a trend that's occurring in a lot of cities across North America, for good or bad."
For a number of reasons, Prof. MacLellan said municipalities seem to be a catchall for this type of legislation. It is the level of government people usually report feeling most connected to. And with no party system in most cases to act as a filter, such issues are frequently championed by individual councillors reacting to a public increasingly concerned with health and safety.
"Let's face it. You can get a lot of profile out of an issue that the public really grabs on to and feels strongly about, or one that may be a little bit over the line," said Prof. MacLellan.
But the consequences of piling on regulations are the need for more money and personnel to enforce them.
"I think we need to be mindful of the kinds of laws we put in place because I think we can overregulate citizens to the point where nothing you do is without a penalty of some sort," Prof. MacLellan said.
Mr. Harsanyi identifies an overarching consequence in the title of his book: the removal of accountability and responsibility from the individual for their own actions.
"When government takes care of you, when it sort of micromanages your life, what lesson does it teach citizens? It teaches them that they no longer need to take care of themselves that government will take care of them," he said. "It sends completely the wrong message."
With newly unleashed legislative powers conferred under the provincial City of Toronto Act, Mr. Moscoe said council will continue to enact and fine-tune laws that he says are widely recognized as "reasonably progressive" and often followed by other cities or even provinces.
For instance, he expects to bring forth measures this fall requiring stores to have a packaging-removal station so shoppers, who now have to pay for the removal of non-recyclable trash from their homes, can leave it behind.
"The city of Toronto has enormously expanded potential to affect change that it didn't have before," he said. "We're just getting our feet wet."
www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=680439
National Post
The winning design concept called for an artificial urban beach with iconic yellow umbrellas dotting an expanse of sand stretching to the water, allowing urban dwellers the chance to dip their toes in Lake Ontario.
But after the fun police got ahold of the plan, the beach was shrunk to a glorified sandbox, a pathway and a railing were erected at the water's edge to keep clumsy Torontonians from falling in the lake, and the umbrellas were heightened and straightened so nobody would be able to climb on them.
Toronto is a city that loves to make rules.
There are long-time restrictions on smoking, pesticide use, idling vehicles and beauty contestants flaunting their assets at Nathan Phillips Square.
There could soon be rules on the availability of bathrooms at big box stores, the amount of shade in city parks, the health content of vending machine snacks and the amount of organic or local produce that should be served to wards of city day cares and nursing homes.
Plans to expand the menus at street food carts – to empanadas, gyros or falafel – have been bogged down over concerns about the safety of selling anything other than precooked hotdogs.
And when there aren't bylaws there are plenty of warnings. Toronto Public Health recently warned against children under age 8 using cell phones except in emergencies. And parks staff plastered stickers on slides and swing sets this summer advising parental supervision in city playgrounds.
City council and the army of bureaucrats behind it are forever finding new ways to protect Torontonians from each other and themselves, but some wonder at what point Toronto risks becoming a nanny state.
"There's this mentality that people can't monitor their own behaviour so the city needs to do it for them and spend money to do it," said Karen Stintz, a midtown councillor who often finds herself at odds with her colleagues over whether to legislate or let common sense prevail.
David Harsanyi is the author of a recent book on the phenomenon, Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children. In an interview, he said a nanny state results when legislators valuing safety above freedom and developing policies that coerce healthy living rather than promoting it. He would definitely characterize Toronto's forthcoming shade regulations as nannying.
"Can people in Toronto not take care of their own sunburns?" he said. "I've never heard of this one before."
Ms. Stintz tried in vain to stop "shade audits" being carried out this summer, arguing that once regulations are drafted to dictate the ratio of shade per person in parks it will require a bureaucracy to enforce them.
That's what happened with a rebate program for toilets, she said, where the inspectors must determine whether people rightfully claimed $75 for a dual flush loo instead of $60 for a lower-efficiency model.
"We have once again created an entire bureaucracy to make sure people aren't scamming an extra $15," Ms. Stintz said. "We allow ourselves to get distracted by shade audits and vending machines and cell phone use... and meanwhile we're not focusing on the true business of the city."
But Councillor Howard Moscoe, a city hall veteran who chairs the licensing and standards committee, disagrees with anyone who would say Toronto is nannying with such policies.
"It's our laws that make us a civil society – starting with the Ten Commandments," he said. "If we didn't have laws this would be a dog-eat-dog world. We need laws to protect us from each other."
That collective responsibility is heightened when it comes to protecting children, said Mr. Moscoe.
"Can we trust all parents to make the right or wrong decisions about their children? Well, we have Children's Aid Society because all parents can't make the right decision," he said. "There are lots of people who can be trusted to regulate the health of their kids, but there are many people who can't and that's why we have health regulations."
Mr. Harsanyi said this is the most common rationale behind nannying.
"Most nannyistic initiatives are framed around children, because if you can't protect children, who can you protect? That's why they get away with that kind of stuff," said Mr. Harsanyi. "No one wants to be the one to stand against the children and it makes it very difficult for them to vote against initiatives like that typically."
Toronto is a city that definitely seems to have a lot of regulations, agreed Duncan MacLellan, a professor of politics at Ryerson Univerity. But he added:
"It's not like Toronto is alone. It seems to be kind of a trend that's occurring in a lot of cities across North America, for good or bad."
For a number of reasons, Prof. MacLellan said municipalities seem to be a catchall for this type of legislation. It is the level of government people usually report feeling most connected to. And with no party system in most cases to act as a filter, such issues are frequently championed by individual councillors reacting to a public increasingly concerned with health and safety.
"Let's face it. You can get a lot of profile out of an issue that the public really grabs on to and feels strongly about, or one that may be a little bit over the line," said Prof. MacLellan.
But the consequences of piling on regulations are the need for more money and personnel to enforce them.
"I think we need to be mindful of the kinds of laws we put in place because I think we can overregulate citizens to the point where nothing you do is without a penalty of some sort," Prof. MacLellan said.
Mr. Harsanyi identifies an overarching consequence in the title of his book: the removal of accountability and responsibility from the individual for their own actions.
"When government takes care of you, when it sort of micromanages your life, what lesson does it teach citizens? It teaches them that they no longer need to take care of themselves that government will take care of them," he said. "It sends completely the wrong message."
With newly unleashed legislative powers conferred under the provincial City of Toronto Act, Mr. Moscoe said council will continue to enact and fine-tune laws that he says are widely recognized as "reasonably progressive" and often followed by other cities or even provinces.
For instance, he expects to bring forth measures this fall requiring stores to have a packaging-removal station so shoppers, who now have to pay for the removal of non-recyclable trash from their homes, can leave it behind.
"The city of Toronto has enormously expanded potential to affect change that it didn't have before," he said. "We're just getting our feet wet."
www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=680439
National Post