The next municipal elections in Toronto will be held in November 2010. It’s been a couple of months since Mayor David Miller announced his decision not to seek re-election. Former McGuinty cabinet minister and MPP George Smitherman has thrown his hat into the ring as has Councillor Georgio Mammoliti. Former Ontario conservative party leader John Tory is mulling it over while getting 15 hours a week of prime radio time as a talk show host on crfb (I’ll admit I do listen sometimes). Councillor and Toronto Transit Commission Chair Adam Giambrone has mused about a possible run.

My local councillor, Joe Mihev says “whoa there”. Before talking about “who” – the horse race he calls it, let’s talk about the “what”.

So a couple of weeks ago, Joe launched a project called “Setting the Agenda 2010: What’s your vision for Toronto.” It’s an opportunity for Ward 21 residents to participate in a process whereby we generate ideas around a number of themes that will be synthesized into a sort of job description for the mayor’s job. What are the things that matter most to city residents? What are the priorities? What are the show stoppers?

The “job description” will be a defacto standard upon which to judge the merits of various candidates based on vision, policy and strategy – not the default campaign traits such as personality, style, political baggage, wedge issues and often, slimey “winner take all” tactics.

“Setting the Agenda” began as a website which was used to generate a list of issues. Joe started with two – hard and soft infrastructure.  The site had almost 5,000 hits and three hundred comments within a few days. A number of other issues were suggested and discussion threads started.

Part 2 of the process was a community meeting which was held last night. There were two guest speakers – Rahul Bhardwaj, President and CEO of the Toronto Community Foundation and economist Hugh Mackenzie. Close to 100 people turned out. About 18 tables were set up based on the discussion topics which were proposed on the website. Everyone was asked to sit at the table which most interested them. Issues included public spaces, youth, green initiatives, affordable housing, arts and many others.

Rahul talked about Vital Signs, the Foundation’s look at Toronto from all angles. I won’t try to capture what he said – I recommend you read the report – except that we were doing well compared to other cities in Canada and around the world but that the growing disparity between the rich and poor is setting off major alarm bells. Hugh talked about the big picture with themes about leadership, infrastructure investments, the dreams of immigrants and the “three cities”. The meeting was videoed and will hopefully be posted online soon.

I sat at the urban agriculture table with about a half dozen people with different focuses on food security and growing food. Some of the projects, issues and organizations discussed included Not Far From the Tree, The Stop, habitat restoration, Growing Power, Jane & Steeles, Downsview Park, community gardens, school yards, hydro sub-station grounds, the emergency food system, Foodshare, Ben Nobleman Park orchard, backyards, Leaf, Evergreen, fish farming, chickens, highrise farming, Seedy Saturday, the challenges facing farmers and city parks initiatives.It was a very interesting information sharing session although we didn’t come to any conclusions or decide on any major priorities. Did you know that there’s an estimate that Toronto’s fruit and nut trees yield about 1,500,000 pounds annually?

All the ideas generated at the tables are to be updated on the website. It’s an interesting process, one that Joe hopes is repeated in every corner of the city by various groups of people including community groups and small business associations. I hope so too but I’m afraid that this form of participatory democracy is not shared by all councillors.

I look forward to see where this is going. I really enjoy living in Ward 21!

Gary Shaul

Gary Shaul is a life-long Torontonian and retired Ontario civil servant. He's been involved with a number of groups over the past 45 years including voting reform and his union. He served as President...