Worth Reading – June 6, 2013

A guest post on Pundits’ Guide discusses some of the misconceptions about the Canadian Senate and abolition. The author writes that abolishing the Senate may be easier than widely thought and the provinces need not wait on the federal government to act. 

Steve Munro, noted Toronto-based transit expert, writes in the Torontoist about the Metrolinx investment strategy. This is by far the most detailed and best laid-out description of what is going on with the Big Move.

Martin Regg Cohn in the Toronto Star talks about the political risks associated with the Metrolinx Big Move plan. 

The knee-jerk anti-tax discussion is not helpful. In the Globe and Mail there was a piece discussing the opposition to new revenues by Mayor Ford, the Progressive Conservatives and even the ONDP. The question is what are we willing to pay for?

Brent Rathgeber (IND – Edmonton-St. Albert, AB), an outspoken Conservative backbencher, has announced his resignation from theConservative caucus over spending issues and a lack of transparency. 

In the long-overdue column, the Ontario government goes ahead to half the number of teacher’s college positions per year. 

Ahead of the Conservative convention later this year, Peter MacKay (CPC – Central Nova, NS) suggests that changes to the party’s voting mechanism will re-open old schisms internally. 

According to this article, critics of Rob Ford need to stop worrying about his daily scandals and start getting ready to defeat him in the next election. At this moment I’m not confident that the opposition will field a strong enough candidate to win. The question to my mind is, is there a left-right split, or a Ford-anti-Ford split. I could see a lot of value someone like Councillor Karen Stintz challenging Ford from the right, along with a lefty challenger, but would that mean Rob Ford would be re-elected with 38% of the vote?

I found this piece from The Atlantic Cities really interesting, and related to my post from Tuesday. The article discusses class in relation to bicycles. Cycling culture has been associated with yuppy urbanists, but research has shown that a while financially secure white urbanites strongly advocate bike use a growing number of visible minorities are moving on two wheels. Bike use could be polarizing and cars being relegated to a tool by the lower-middle class. It’s definitely an interesting filter through which to view these issues.

National Post has a piece about the decline in the virtue of accountability. Very timely.