Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

What a week this was on the radio. It started with City Hall and Provincial politics, went to Burton Cummings, and ended in a philosophical discussion regarding aliens, causality and the beginning of time and life after death.

This year, while we celebrate Nova Scotia as the cradle of Canadian democracy, we see our own municipal government not bothering with any of it: not enough Councilors voting, missed votes, people defeated, without the moral authority from the public, but who voted anyway on a technicality; the newly elected prevented form voting on the same technicality.

The vote to which I am referring is the Waterside development on the historic properties which seeks to place a modest office tower with class “A” space above the facades of six old buildings that would otherwise be demolished. We haven’t had class “A” office space here in over 20 years. Companies that would locate in Halifax simply cannot.

All this in the backdrop of “Democracy 250” where, in Nova Scotia, 250 years ago, we began what many in this country now take for granted. Out of the woods (and into the wild!) were we graciously granted our God-given democratic right by our haughty British egalitarian overlords.

Ironically, during this important year, and right after his re-election, Mayor Peter Kelly refused to vote on the important Waterside development at the Historic Properties. He did this for “family reasons” (many speculate, instead, that he thought that the whole thing would pass so he wouldn’t – once again – have to take a position).

Worse yet, Peter Kelly’s former Mayoral nemesis, Sheila Fougere meantime, missed the vote too! She, apparently, along with others, thought that the vote would be at 6 p.m. that night, instead of earlier in the day. The result: the Waterside development didn’t go through because the vote was tied.

The latest news is that the Province will intervene to support an appeal process. Good for the Conservative MacDonald government.

On this very subject I began the week with an interview with N.S. NDP leader Daryl Dexter where he condemned Premier MacDonald for interfering with city politics in the Waterside development controversy; when I applauded the Premier for speaking up about the resulting job losses, etc. Dexter refused to support his words, saying instead, “Where was he during the spring vote on HRM by Design (the city development process streamlining measures soon be legislated)?”

The Premier made a mistake in assuming that City Hall would have some modicum of common sense – they don’t.

However, the crisis regarding city development was not present yet in the spring session of the Legislature – but neither was it for the opposition. Where, I ask, was Daryl Dexter in the spring?

Daryl Dexter says he is a friend to development and uses as proof his time in Dartmouth leading development there.

At one point in the interview, Daryl Dexter slyly made mention of a “controversy” surrounding “Founders Square”, the property developed by the same people now involved in the Waterside project – Ben McCrea and the Armour Group.

When I pressed Dexter on whether or not he was questioning McCrea’s integrity, he quickly backed down and back-peddled.

The “controversy” to which he was referring, was the bogus, politically motivated event where a reporter from the Globe, on a jihad against the Conservatives, impugned the character of Ben McCrea alluding to patronage in the awarding of the Founders Square project many years ago.

What happened? McCrea sued. McCrea won. McCrea won damages. The Globe had to pay. They even printed a retraction.

Is it fair to bring up proven false allegations? Who started those allegations? Shall I discuss what the court records all those years ago revealed? Make no mistake; it was a politically motivated smear.

Is there a member of the New Democratic Party that will stop pandering to a rabid anti-development, not-in-my-backyard, dogmatic, angry, misery-loves-company political base?

The NDP have never run Nova Scotia; they are wonderful complainers; I have not heard of one prominent businessman that they like.

They attack for political gain at the expense of the city of Halifax and the provincial interest.

In case you have been under a rock, these are tough financial times.

Even Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told a hearing yesterday (the House of Representatives oversight and government reform committee) that he never saw the credit meltdown coming, that he “wasn’t smart enough.” That he was “wrong,” on so many counts - this, from a man who has been the guiding guru for U.S. economics for18 years!

It turned out that derivative financial products such as credit default swaps were just too complicated for the market. More than that, it was classic “smoke and mirrors,” using strayed physics math to justify the unjustifiable - parsing the truth until it became theoretical.

Crashes are never theoretical. They hurt.

These days, it is important for a city, and a region, and a country, to know what an opportunity is, what is real, and what is immediate, and what is air, promissory, wishful, or plain B.S. In Nova Scotia, we need all the business we can get.

We have to create a developer-friendly culture here or face the consequences.
The Waterside development is a textbook example of what is wrong in Halifax on a cultural, bureaucratic, and procedural level.

For here is a developer, Ben McCrea, of the Armour Group, with a solid track record in the city, who comes with money, and plans, and expertise in hand, willing to maintain historical preservation plans and build around, and on top of the original facades (the standard in cities around the world), and add a new nine storey tower (is that all?) - And it wasn’t good enough.

One problem: the process. According to Deputy Halifax Mayor Stephen Adams, who was on the air with me today, “staff asked the developer to use glass, in order to show separation from the original building, and then some councilors voted against it because they didn’t like the glass and wanted brick”? That’s called a broken process.

Then there’s the culture of Halifax: anti-development. The Waterside development was the first contract development for an office building in 25 years. That is an embarrassment. There is no class “An” office space that is available for companies to locate here. Mr. McCrea wanted to change that.

The functionally obsolete “historic” buildings in question in Downtown Halifax only have first floor tenants and Mr. McCrea already has a demolition permit in hand for some of the 6 buildings. So, instead of demolishing, he is trying to preserve and add to - a builder.

While the Mayor points to six new developments that have been approved, most have taken so long for approvals that construction costs have risen more than 65 per cent. Some doubt whether or not all of them will even be built (where are those “Twisted Sisters” anyway? Another victim of slow approval?).

From the outset, Mr. McCrea could have just used the wrecking ball. Indeed, Paul McKinnon, Director of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, feels that demolition is cheaper than an appeals process.

At the end of the day, is it really about the buildings? These buildings have been under used, antiquated, and falling apart for years. Where have the councilors been?

In order for a building to really be historically preserved, it has to be continually used - not just part of the building either.

As far as historical aesthetics are concerned, how many Councilors can really tell you the difference between Edwardian, Romantic, Victorian, and neo-classical architectural styles? Is it really their aesthetic depth of understanding with which we are dealing?

With Councilors it is less about art history and more about votes and squeaky wheels. It is always easier to be a subjective stickler and throw your two cents around when it is with someone else’s money.

The Premier of Nova Scotia, Rodney MacDonald, now says he will try and intervene and overturn the council’s decision in order to save jobs and investment. Good for him.

Now, if only the McCrea wrecking ball could, in a broad swath, envelope some councilors.

This past Sunday, on the TV program Meet The Press, former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell announced that he was betraying his party and supporting the Democrats and Barack Obama as President.

For those who know the failed Powell, who left the Bush administration with his tail between his legs, his is the stuff of a facile and fawning world far removed from his military doctrine of overwhelming force.

Indeed, other than his desk-jockey warrior days in Washington or in Tampa at CENTCOM, much of the legend of Colin Powell has been under-whelming. Perhaps we have been shocked by his being pushed around by V.P. Cheney and Pentagon Chief Rumsfeld, and awed by his malleable spine – a tiger in uniform, a pussy-cat in the hallway.

Badly in need of hormone replacement therapy, Powell watched as his star dimmed as fast as a geriatric clapper switch and Condi Rice took his job at the State department in Bush’s second term. Powell-boy went quietly.

Never have we heard a peep from Powell, except now, at the cusp of an Obama victory with record-setting fundraising, whispered promises of employment, and polls that show a certain win over his real party’s Republican candidate, John McCain.  

Why turn your back on your party now, so late in the game?

Because that’s what Powell does — the path of least resistance.

Real leadership is about standing up when it is not popular, when the decision is right in your mind, but difficult. Think of Bill Casey in Nova Scotia, or Jean Chretien staring at Bush and saying no to Iraq, or Trudeau with the FLQ, and, of course, Winston Churchill.

Had Powell come out early on for Obama, when the Democrat’s candidacy was still questionable, or when McCain showed a lead in the polls, that would seem less opportunistic, less like piling on.

The second bit of disingenuousness from old Colin Powell concerns the issue of race itself. Powell maintains, like all of them, that Obama’s race doesn’t matter; that Obama is a “transformational leader.” Fraudulently, Powell emphasized Obama’s relative youth as the key characterisitic.

Put it this way, do you really think if Obama was white Powell would have endorsed him? C’mon.

After mentioning Obama’s youth and limited experience as an asset, a freshness, he launched into an attack on Sarah Palin for her lack of experience (according to him).

The difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama is when Palin doesn’t know an answer to a question she will tell you. Obama will either ignore the question and answer something else, or bullshit you; usually prefacing it with “the real question here is,” or, my favourite, “Well, the real question you have to ask yourself…..” You get the idea.

When Powell was circumspect about the Whitehouse case against Sadamm’s WMD, he went along with the team. At the UN he insisted that CIA Director George Tenet stand behind him (as if anyone cared about Tenet). Even at the time, Powell knew that the Iraq deal was either a rush to judgement (at best), or an aggressive, cynical and illegal power play and resource grab under the shadow of 9/11.  Still, Powell stayed on.

It was easier.

Here’s the tally: three elections, and three minorities — in four years.

The requiem for Dion will be sung by the Green Party – Dion’s lasting, nice-guys-finish-last, legacy. You see, as a result of the soon-to-be former Liberal leader Stephane Dion, the Green party gained prominence in the national debates and also in the public consciousness, raising to the environmentally friendly rafters the profile of party leader Elizabeth May; and while Elizabeth May is just as well intentioned as the Pollyanna Dion, the end result is more trouble for the Liberals.

Take, for example, Saint John Liberal incumbent Paul Zed. He lost by 5 per cent of the vote – a percentage that went to the Green party. He also lost because the Liberal leader could not sell a complicated “Green (tax) Shift” that needed selling. Moreover, by Dion not running a Liberal candidate in Elizabeth May’s Central Nova riding, and by his insistence that she partake in the nationally televised debates, Dion cannibalized his own green platform; his branding was diluted by the presence of the Greens; moreover, if his “Green Shift” platform was so damn good, weren’t the Greens an irrelevancy? In supporting the Greens he negotiated with his own platform.

Either you believe in the efficaciousness of your platform or you don’t. Why support the Green party in the first place? Who were their votes going to come from anyway, the Tories? If Dion thought that he was only bleeding NDP votes, he was wrong.

The other strategic error that bled Liberal votes this week was applying the Green Shift policy to B.C. With the pre-existing imposition of a Provincial carbon tax there, the Federal one did not fly and many Liberals did not get elected or re-elected this week as a result.

Dion failed to consult with his B.C. caucus in devising his green platform and did the same thing with the Maritimes. While Liberals in the Maritimes were skeptical of Dion’s “Green Shift” due to the above-average consumption rate of heating oil here, the Liberal members were ignored.

Dion’s green policy platform and his kindness to the Green Party itself were his initiatives alone — it was an environmentally friendly sword that he fell upon, I am sure.

For his part, Stephen Harper called the election to get a majority and he fell short too. Picking up seats doesn’t cut it when you need less of the popular vote to win a majority with the advent of the Greens and the left-of-centre crowding that the Liberals made with the NDP.

It could be argued that the only true centrist party this time was none other than the Tories! But could they stay there with Stephen Harper at the helm?

In the end, Stephen Harper, perhaps overconfidently, couldn’t resist his social conservatism. His shirt was, again, rubbing his neck red.

It was Harper’s social conservatism, and nothing else, that cost him his coveted Majority. His two bone-headed party platform moves in question were his “get tough” on youth crime penalties for minors, and his 45 million dollar withdrawal of funding for the arts.

For while the latte-drinking, gala going, arts crowd don’t usually vote Conservative in English Canada (unless they are really wealthy, and most in the arts community are not), in Quebec, the effete arts crowd might actually vote Tory — and sometimes do.

Moreover, it is not only the hardcore film and fine arts crowd that we are talking about in Quebec; there, the average Joe is concerned about his culture. Culture, in Quebec, is a religion — even if it promulgates a lack of moral values, something the social conservatives are interested in.

As far as Harper’s “get tough” policy on minors goes, Quebec hated it and perceived it as unnecessarily punitive. Youth crime is not a problem in Quebec, and, when it is, social conditions and prevention is given priority.

Nether Dion, nor Harper, cared to consult or question the party members of the regions in question — and both men live with the fruits of their misguided labor.

So, with all this, what happened to the other folks? Well, Elizabeth May, even with the debate seat on TV and with Dion not running a candidate in her riding still got beat by incumbent Peter Mackay. Mackay is simply the most popular Conservative in Canada (that must burn Stephen’s butt).

What about the mustachioed NDP leader Jack Layton? He still never broke past 18 percent in the popular vote. He still never beat Ed Broadbent’s seat total. And that was Jack’s benchmark. He failed too. They all know it. They all lost.

What a crapstorm.

But, don’t worry Canada, Frank is coming.

Daddy’s coming home.

Central business districts are the life blood of cities and feeder communities; as successful cities go, so goes the region and/or province(s). Many studies also show that when cities do well, so do the outlying rural regions. Those are the inconvenient (for some) facts.

Chicago, Detroit, New York: All have had clean-up phases and redevelopment, even when the downtowns’ were ghettoized war zones like Detroit or when New York’s Time Square was a sea of panhandling and uninhabitable sleaze shops, peep shows and porno houses. And while Detroit still has lots of problems, there has been huge capital investment; Chicago too has developed its waterfront magnificently (Toronto’s is way behind).

In Canada, ratty-old Windsor (in Ontario) invested over $100-million in capital investment during the six years of 2000 – 2006. Shockingly, in that same period, here in Halifax, we invested only $1.4-million, according to the HRM Capital District Task Force.

$1.5-million, spent over that period, means nothing. Really, zero was invested in Halifax.

During the Mayoral debates sponsored by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, this week, I presented these facts about the downtown. Mayor Kelly’s response: “Which downtown”? “HRM” he went on to say, “has many downtowns”.

Really?

At the beginning of the debate I mentioned that the cruise ships that come into Halifax harbor don’t have their denizens stopping at Chicken Burger in Bedford. Rarely, do any visitors, unless they have friends or family there, ever go to Bedford, Sackville, Fall River, Tantallon, etc. They just don’t do it. They go to their hotels and visit the places in the downtown core.

Instead of recognizing the win-win nature of a successful city, there is, in Halifax, a rural/suburban resentment.

A dear friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, and who lives in Bedford, said to me this morning in reference to my above discussion “I am tired of hearing all of these downtown people whining all the time.” Not comprehending that if we leave the potential of the downtown to wane, that that also restricts him and his family in Bedford.

There just doesn’t seem to be a connection. So, please tell me where all of those fine people in Bedford are driving to every morning? Boston?

Instead of the Mayor playing divide and conquer where everyone gets a pony, and downtown Halifax, the economic generator of the region, gets short shrift, and where the bedroom communities receive short term benefits, but where the longer-term benefits are quietly sacrificed, he should embrace the common sense principles of urban planning.

There are many urban planning experts out there who believe we are leaving all kinds of money on the table by our slow-moving red tape process and lack of strategic direction.

Urban planning now is knee-jerk, reactive – it is putting out fires and squeaky wheels. Simply put, a pot hole approach does not work when it comes to urban planning in the HRM or anywhere else.

My brother, Michael McClelland, was the lead architect behind Toronto’s huge “Distillery District,” where the historic Nineteenth Century industrial architecture of the Gooderman and Wortz distillery was used as the centerpiece of mixed use development.

Michael has also authored several books on architecture and urban design. His practice is one of the best in North America. I have been listening to my brother and his associates for decades and I have a sense of what is involved for Halifax – so do others who have lived here a lot longer than I and who know what I am talking about in this regard.

Instead of rallying people to support the city of Halifax proper, the downtown core, Mayor Kelly does the opposite. The sentiment expressed by outlying areas that says that the Downtown complains too much is tacitly winked at and exploited. Consequently, the downtown businesses, movers and shakers, and concerned residents are, generally speaking, opposed to the Mayor.

And so it goes.

I don’t know if you have been to L.A. or not but it is interesting to see. There is such a vast urban sprawl that there really doesn’t appear to be a downtown that is measurable. Through the smog and haze of everyone commuting by car, you can see, in the distance, tall buildings almost as a clump of bushes surrounded by a fog. The metro area of LA has almost 14-million people — 4-million in Los Angeles proper alone. There are so many people that the weight of urban sprawl is almost offset. But it’s not. It is still a mess, with long commutes and indescribable infrastructural problems – with water especially.

By not effectively concentrating resources, and by not setting urban goals and urban sprawl infrastructural limits (we need urban sprawl development disincentives); by spreading a skinny population thinner, you risk leading and leaving a legacy of sleepwalking, cover-your-backside pothole filling; by supporting through action or inaction that which is unsustainable, with a sizeable whiff of anti-densification, you leave, as a legacy, more years of treading water and decline.

Cursed with an untenable city size through amalgamation, City Hall leadership is ignoring the facts for that which is politically expedient.

Everyone gets a pony.

Unfortunately, there is only one downtown — despite where you get the votes.

The late, great, juggler, comedian, vaudevillian, and actor W.C. Fields (January 29, 1880 - December 25, 1946), never really liked kids or dogs. It could be said that Stephen Harper never liked bad actors, actors generally, the arts, or kids - at least 14 year old felons.

But does Stephen like dogs?

Much can be said about a person by what they call their dog. Stephan Dion calls his dog “Kyoto” (after the climate change summit), and apparently, Stephen Harper calls his dog Lehman Bros.

Ok, maybe not.

Clearly, for Harper, his bizarre insistence on cutting funding for the arts (44 million worth) and his “get tough” youth crime policy with punks and violent crime (what Gilles Duceppe refers to as sending them to the “university of crime), will be his “Green Shift” in Quebec - policies that backfire. In fact, according to many, Harper has lost the majority he so coveted by losing the votes in Quebec he so needed with those two foolish electoral planks.

As far as policy goes, “getting tough on punks” works well in Ontario, and in Eastern Canada, but not in big cities and in Quebec where crime issues are seen as more complex; in fact, Quebec has a very low crime rate - a rate that they proclaim is due to their more compassionate social policies, and not punitive policing and sentencing.

As far as the art cuts go, it was the oddest thing Harper has done yet. It was totally unnecessary and not predicated on political gain. It shows, in Harper, a cultural bias and mean-spiritedness that is more true to the persona and form W.C. Fields the curmudgeon, than Stephen Harper the statesman.

But Harper is not a man of the people. One case in point was illustrated by former Tory, now independent Bill Casey, who pointed out this week that Harper has imposed/chosen one third of the riding candidates in Nova Scotia, instead of drawing from grassroots riding associations. Casey said “He would never have gone over the heads of 1/3 of the riding associations in Ontario”. Moreover, Harper, according to Casey, unlike Conservative leaders past, does not consult his regional party caucus members. This lead-from-above-approach culminated in the regionally alienating Atlantic Accord fiasco and the sub contract loss which circumvented the Maritimes for Victoria.

All of this points not to a culture of defeat, but to a culture of defeating the Maritimes.

The debates don’t really matter either. It doesn’t change the facts that Stephen Harper is a mean, dry drunk.

Have a cigar Mr. Fields; boy was he was bitter — dry or wet.