I wrote a couple weeks ago that I was fed up, to the teeth, with the incessant nattering in Toronto about transit. “Two things that drive me nuts about Toronto, ” I wrote.  “One, the manic focus on transit issues, 24/7, to the total exclusion of all other issues, like poverty, health, crime, environment, etc.  Two, the fact that, despite the continual yammering about transit, nothing ever friggin’ gets done about transit.”

Some of you were surprised, however, when I suggested yesterday that the historically-huge Metrolinx/Big Move price tag was a career-ender for most politicians.  Some of you reacted with astonishment that Warren – A progressive! A liberal! – could have the gall to decline to swallow the Metrolinx stuff hook, line and sinker.  How dare he!  Such effrontery!

Well, too friggin’ bad.  My take on these things is pretty simple.  Here it is, in six digestible nuggets, none of which come with a multi-billion-dollar price tag, and on which no experts were consulted.

•  When a city – any city – gets bigger, it becomes harder to get around.  If you want a two-minute commute, move to Bancroft.  Duh.
• Polls show urban folks consider transportation issues to be numero uno, I know.  Polls also show they don’t want to pay for it.  Also, they favour unicorns.
• The so-called experts don’t have a single, understandable solution.  They fight about everything.  And they couldn’t organize a two-house paper route, let alone intelligently design an entire transportation system for a big city.
• Citizens might’ve gone along with paying more for a better commute – if they hadn’t seen successive governments, at all levels, for decades, promise transportation bliss and deliver yet more gridlock and empty treasuries.  Oh, and stuff like Ornge and the 407 sure don’t help, either.  Nope.
• The political pay-off is too removed from the pay-up: that is, those of us paying now won’t see a meaningful improvement in our lifetimes.  We’ll be residents of the dirt farm, by then.  In politics, that’s called the Get Defeated Quick Scheme.
• Again, I am SICK – as a progressive, as a liberal – of this goddamn issue eating up the entire political landscape, every single bloody day.  Can we not focus on some other issues, for once – say, a dramatically-aging population, and an increasingly-expensive health care system?  The fact that violent crimes are claiming the lives of too many young men? That our mayor is a certifiable lunatic?

Anyway, thus concludes my rant.  Any politician who wants to stake their political future on getting voters to pay yet more for what they feel their tax dollars should already be funding is hurtling towards ignominious defeat, full stop (cf. The Green Shift, RIP).  And I don’t care if they’re red, blue or orange.  They’re, ahem, roadkill if they think the Metrolinx price tag is comprehensible, let alone saleable.

So, after all that, I can see the transit Philistines angrily demanding that I, Warren, come up with a solution to our transit woes.

My answer?  There isn’t one.  And, again, if you don’t like how hard it is getting around where you live?

Move to the country.

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Yep.

Good thing.

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Perhaps that silly sally at Sun News, and the “explosive” media tour, wasn’t such a hot idea after all.

Meanwhile, somewhere, one of Canada’s most principled journalists is frantically trying to figure out how to scrub stuff from the Internet.

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He’s been denied his ridiculous demand for compensation in the conflict of interest case, as expected.

What’s fascinating, however, is that the Divisional Court seems to be suggesting that he shouldn’t expect the coming Supreme Court hearing to go his way, either:

• They take pains to note that he lost on three of the four grounds he argued on appeal – ie., don’t get cocky, sonny.
• They characterize the case as a “significant” matter of “public interest” – which is effectively the threshold you need to meet to get the high court to hear your case.

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I have more than 5,000 Facebook “friends.” Except, as you might expect, they’re not all friends.  Some are Facebook fiends.

Because Facebook comments are unmoderated, stupid things sometimes happen on my Facebook profile. When I am over there, I will whack the stupid comments, or (sometimes) block the stupid people.  I do my best, but I can’t be there all the time.

Last night, two guys named Bruce and Robin got into a fight about something. What it was is irrelevant. Bruce called Robin a “retard,” however, and I think there were comments made about medication.

Anyhow, Son One – who is a night owl, who has won awards for helping out the less-fortunate, and who has been having a tough time with his broken hip from a hockey tournament in London – got involved in Bruce and Robin’s fight.

Again, I’m not totally clear on the context. But I read Son One’s comment, early this morning, with a mixture of sadness and pride. Pride because there he was again, defending others. And sadness because his vocabularly suggests to me that he is not a little boy anymore. When he was, just yesterday.

Anyway. Just thought I would share it with you.

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If you impose tolls and yet more taxes to pay for this Metrolinx thing, you’re all dead men (and women) walking. Make better use of the tax dollars we already entrust you to manage. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Warren and four million friends

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Boy, am I ever glad I shelled out for Raptors season’s tickets.

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As uprisings go, it sure ain’t The Mutiny On The Bounty.

Not yet, anyway.

As you may have heard, last week Official Ottawa was agog over the fact a couple of Conservative backbench sheep finally got up on their hind legs and bleated “no” to the boss. An avalanche of columns and news stories immediately ensued, including some that actually went as far as suggesting Stephen Harper’s corpse might soon be swinging from the yardarm.

The Toronto Star: It’s a Conservative “revolt!”

It’s “a rare show of courage!” enthused The Globe and Mail. It could be the beginnings of a “leadership challenge!” wrote one respected columnist.

Um, not quite.

The beginnings of the mini-mutiny can be traced, mostly, to the abortion file. Some of the nobodies and lunkheads in the Conservative caucus still want to try to make abortion illegal. They have devised all manner of clever motions and resolutions to achieve that.

Ship captain Stephen Harper, however — to his credit, and to the surprise of people like me, who wrongly said he had a hidden agenda on abortion — has said no way. He has ruthlessly crushed any and all attempts to kickstart the abortion debate.

Harper has been more resolute on the abortion issue, in fact, than any prime minister in a generation.

He deserves credit for that. He said he wasn’t going to reopen abortion, and he meant it. Harper’s party pledged to leave abortion alone in successive election campaigns, and they did just that.

The motley crew below decks, however, aren’t satisfied.

So they’ve devised dishonest tactics and tricks to move the country back to the bad old days, when the only choice women had were coat hangers in back alleys.

Some of the MPs say they are focused on “gender discrimination,” or what constitutes “complete birth.” They’re lying. They want to make abortion illegal and they lack the guts to say so out loud.

Some of them, meanwhile, aren’t upset about abortion at all. Instead, they’re upset about something else — two tiny letters, which they would like to see appended to their names on fancy letterhead: “P.C.”

As in, privy councillor. They figured they’d be in cabinet by now and, seven years in, the mutinous MPs have finally figured out they won’t be. So they’re popping off at Captain Harper.

Should the conservative captain be concerned? Yes and no. Yes, because when your government is slipping in the polls, as his is, you need all the shipmates rowing in the same direction.

But, also, no. This pipsqueak revolution, led by pipsqueaks, is nothing like what Jean Chretien loyalists (like me) had to contend with a decade ago. Back then, ambitious Paul Martin supporters used every dirty trick in the book to hurt Chretien and drive him out.

Chretien, however, fought back and ended up staying far longer than he’d planned. All the Grit mutineers ended up doing was sinking the S.S. Liberal. And themselves.

Captain Harper quickly put down last week’s rebellion, and the anti-abortionists and the overambitious sailors have — for the moment — gone quiet. If I were advising Harper, however, I’d advise this: Throw a few of the nobodies overboard and make everyone watch as the sharks tear them to pieces.

Things will be shipshape again, and in no time at all, too.

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The loss of this extraordinary bookstore is an unmitigated disaster for anyone who loves (and needs) books. With the exception of Ben McNally’s spot on Bay, there just aren’t many book sellers like Nicholas Hoare anymore.

I had two book launches at Nicholas Hoare, and both were special. I am very sad to see them go.

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Adrian Dix’s B.C. NDP release an attack ad on themselves. Absolute genius.

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