Politics: There was a Garbage Strike?

A garbage truck re-appeared on Harshaw Avenue for the first time since the city worker's strike ended on 5-August-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The city collected recyclables on my street for the first time in more than a month today as services resumed following the extended strike by city workers. While I certainly hauled more material to the curb than usual (three stuffed recycling bins for my building instead of two lightly filled ones), overall I join a chorus of people saying that the garbage strike just wasn't a big deal.

Unless one lived in an area affected by the extra traffic or the smell created by one of the more popular temporary garbage collection sites, there really wasn't much direct impact of the strike. The general public's consciousness about waste collection may be at an all time high, so they were already minimizing garbage and even recyclable creation in favor of re-using things, buying things with less packaging and so forth, and thus their home containers could go a long way without regular collection.

Oftentimes, I haven't even filled up my primary garbage bag when the every-other-week garbage collection day comes, and I end up filling up the bag with all my other receptacles and take that single bag out to the building's single large bin. During the strike, I just waited until the bag was actually full and took it to the bin, and watched as the bin gradually filled for a change. I generally carry what little waste I create at lunch home and put it in my own garbage--during the garbage strike, I had to do that whether I wanted to or not with the public receptacles sealed off. So, there was not much change in procedure for me.

The bottom line seems to be that lack of garbage collection just doesn't seem to be enough of an inconvenience for enough people to be a powerful weapon for unions to use against the city politically anymore. Instead of demanding that the government resolve a strike, residents just shrug and adapt.

As for the question of whether the city caved to union demands in this recent dispute, I found this statement released today by city councilman Gord Perks to do a decent job of accurately characterizing the situation. While Perks is often an ally of Mayor David Miller, he doesn't include much spin in this statement. Conservative statements criticizing Miller seem to be mostly full of spin, and in some cases downright diatribes against unions as well as Miller's handling of the strike, which don't strike me as productive. Unions aren't going to go away, no matter how much the conservatives might like them to do so.

It is time for the city to get back to normal, and I guess that includes petty politics.

Margin Notes: Upsetting Scenes, CBC, KNX

The garbage collection site at Étienne Brûlé Park in Toronto, Ontario was quiet--and not particularly smelly--on 28 June 2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The largest city in Canada is now entering the second week of a strike by city workers. In rather extensive tours of the city the past few days with my visiting aunt and uncle, there were a few places where the lack of garbage collection was apparent, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I might have guessed. One reason may be that the city has opened nineteen locations to collect garbage across the city. I was surprised to find that one of those locations was my local Étienne Brûlé Park near the Humber River. However, when I walked by the location for the first time on Sunday since it opened, I found that that despite a reasonable amount of collected material, it didn't have a bad smell nor did it really disrupt the use of the park much for locals, as it mostly took up a parking area. Of course, the bad smells may be coming if the strike goes on for too long.

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One thing that has a bad smell to me is the CBC's summer schedule. Most years, the programming on CBC Radio One during the ten weeks of summer features a variety of innovative new shows or old summer favorites, some of which go on to become permanent additions to the schedule. That's not likely this year. If I am reading the web page correctly (and that should be clear in the coming week), then only six summer shows are producing new content this year, and only one of those (Socket) is a new series never heard before. Other shows are things we've heard in previous years, and in some cases, it appears that the old series are being rebroadcast (including the excellent "Hidden City" and "White Coat, Black Art"). I know the CBC is in budget trouble, but at the rate things are going we're going to be listening to "As It Happens" repeated continuously before long.

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More non-news out of the radio industry came out of Los Angeles. I thought I was going to be reporting that another major AM station had started a FM simulcast. However, it turns out that the only change at KNX 1070 AM is a simulcast on a digital subchannel of smooth jazz KTWV 94.7 FM. That's nice, but considering that almost nobody has a digital radio, that's about as consequential as if I decided to re-broadcast KNX to my neighborhood--just about nobody will hear it.

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A crew cleaned the Monument to the War of 1812 on the Toronto Waterfront on 27 June 2009

Fortunately, just about nobody will see the vandalism that apparently occurred on Douglas Coupland's controversial Monument to the War of 1812 located near Fort York in Toronto. By chance, I caught the cleaning crew already well into their mission on Saturday, so I don't know if it was American hooligans upset by the message of the sculpture or what.

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The Frankenstein Museum and Burger King were engaged in a bit of co-marketing at Niagara Falls, Ontario on 26 June 2009

Some might consider the scene above upsetting, but I found a certain appropriateness to the Frankenstein Museum and Burger King mixing their signs in the tourist-crazy zone of Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Somehow I can just see Frankenstein saying "Sometimes you've gotta break the rules."