By Sheldon Taylor
On October 06, 2011, voters in 107 political ridings in Ontario are to decide the outcomes in the provincial election. However, to the poor and downtrodden; the miseducated; the persecuted; and to many elementary and high school students; and ones struggling to pay mounting postsecondary education fees; and to those seniors unable to make ends meet, it won’t really matter who wins. For everyone: rich and poor, neglected and disillusioned, the out of work and members of the shrinking middleclass, life will go on as usual.
After October 06, the rich will get richer; the politicians will become embarrassingly quiet and the day after, October 07, if an unusually heavy snowfall blankets the province for an extended period of time the serenity that Ontario is known for will hardly be disturbed.
This is a sad commentary about the times we live in. Whether it’s Toronto, the City of Hamilton, or North Bay for that matter, most of us whose ambition it is to leave our country Canada, Ontario, and our cities better than we found them have decided such a goal may not matter as much anymore. While their backers and financial masters exploit us, the politicians, save a handful of them, lie to our faces as they chase after their own selfish aims. It is for this reason so many people in Ontario, including younger voters no longer care who is elected. Furthermore, there are many more potential voters who’ve not bothered to ensure their eligibility to vote in the upcoming Ontario election.
The disillusionment and voter apathy are based on real life experiences and political neglect many Ontario voters are subjected to. Many of our children are miseducated by teachers who are ill equipped to be in the classroom and, employers gleefully claw back workers’ rights and gains, while doing what is necessary to fatten their companies’ bottom lines. The state of affairs in the province is not good for members of the middleclass who find themselves in debt, working longer hours and are being overtaxed. Yet very little is heard on the issues that really matter in this election from other than mainly special voter interests.
And the fact that polling is taking place hardly accounts for the disinterest manifest in this provincial cycle, especially since so many more people now rely only on their cell phones. Many of the all too conforming citizens in the province are without effective political representation at Queen’s Park, but no one would know this since everyone in playing their own roles are acting as if all is well. All is not well! Just ask any twenty-something who their political representative is at Queen’s Park; the response received usually amounts to a blank stare or a confusing answer.
Members of the political class may be quick to respond that these people are from the other side of town or are not well educated. But this is not true since many very educated young people; ones from economically sound families really don’t care about the election. More recently, I listened to a teenage girl who was born in Canada and attends school in Ontario (never attended school in the US) recite the United States’ Pledge Allegiance to the Flag word for word, then was unable to do the same for her country’s national anthem.
Canadians tend to grumble rather than make waves about what’s pissing them off. Also the nature of our society in Ontario for example means the one who refuses to conform, keep quiet; can easily be picked out, picked on, and made to suffer. Nothing works better to ensure quietude based on conformity, even when there is mounting citizens’ dissatisfaction, than the threat of going homeless and hungry; being unable to meet one’s children’s needs; not being capable of at least having a beer while watching the game on TV; or, lacking the means to be in malls with stores already displaying possible gifts for Christmas. So many of us move around aimlessly, indecisively and act as if we are only sheep bleating anxiously for the next pasture of grass.
Most of us are nothing but a flock of sheep and the politicians knowing this are aware that not one of us is willing to rock the boat. This does not mean the political process is without any dynamism. The presence of political parties suggests voters have options and that our political culture does offer choices. However, this may be misleading, since irrespective of party platforms and persuasions, many voters are aware that in Ontario party lines are fudged by the lack of quality in the candidates and the degree to which rather than the candidates influencing the times and political atmosphere with brave and innovative ideas that challenge us; instead, they are being aided and abetted by special interests who are not responding to the needs of the majority. So they ply their do-nothing campaigns and are comfortable in the knowledge that with this election so close to the ham and turkey season, they can get away with being indignant to us. Yet it seems as if there is nothing the Ontario electorate wishes to do about its political impotence.
“Yes we can,” you say. Well just remember as many Americans have found out, hope is an intangible concept. The ruling class knows, if we get rid of one group of do-nothings, our choice is to elect another group of people incapable of standing up for principles based on sound leadership and a willingness to speak truth to power. No one is brave enough to bell the cat. No one is willing to hold those in power accountable. None of us will take risks in an era when risk taking means being ostracized by employers, friends, the banker, family, the neighbourhood butcher and even one’s dog. Got to eat, has become the rationale for a kowtowing existence. Even a politician who stands on the wrong side of power soon realizes that he or she is in effect sitting on a steeple thereby risking the possibility of having its point becoming a tool of immobility.
The current political environment is akin to being in a living-room where the furniture is well arranged. But while the place is lit up, and the wallpaper is immaculately patterned and in good condition, there are scratching sounds coming from somewhere. Initially, one can’t just make out where from. Then on closer inspection the situation is better understood. For behind the spotless wallpaper lives a population of cockroaches in splendor and selfish comfort. That is the Toronto some people know! It works for them. Turning up their noses, they don’t understand why we just won’t get our own wallpaper from which to hide from daylight; to hide from the truth.
All seems well on the surface. “Clean city” tourists are often heard to say. Nice restaurants and entertainment district we as residents boast about to our friends in far off places. Some crime, but not like New York and Chicago commentators suggest. Live and let live is what our political and religious leaders tell us to do. But for those in the know there is a trail of dirt manifesting an unhealthy set of circumstances under our societal carpet that belies the harmony, serenity and stellar quality of life we talk about.
As the provincial election draws to a close not much commentary will appear in the media about the real ills Toronto and the rest of Ontario suffer from. No one will speak of how First Nations Peoples are treated in their own homeland. Or of how they mortgage their children’s futures in order to seek redress for past wrongs and exploitation. Yes, someone may raise an issue about healthcare. Tongue-in-cheek, another person will utter a line or two about the need to do more about education. But nothing of substance will be discussed other than in a fashion of barely mentioning what the issues really affecting and concerning many of us are all about. Crime in Toronto, the capital of Ontario? Well, you know, eh, Torontonians are polite, so that discussion will be left to the imagination in public, and talked about in private amongst friends and family.
Embedded in many minds is as the “them against us equation” suggests, crime is mainly a black youth problem in areas of Toronto where one really doesn’t venture, anyway. Stoically, such erroneous commentaries will proceed around pristine dinner tables: “If only those black and single mothers who are on welfare will just take the time to rein in their unruly children,” some imbibed person will lament. Poverty among the elderly? Oh! Just give them another decrepit supermarket selling weeks’ old ill-nourished vegetables. Miseducated children you say? “Hell! if they won’t go to school, build bigger prisons where the little buggers can rot away.”
On September 22, 2011, the crawl on the TV screen said: “Day 16 of the Ontario provincial election.” Which meant, as voters, we’ve had 16 days of nonissues being tossed at us, plus many years before of do-nothingness at Queen’s Park where the provincial legislature’s primary and privileged residents sit doing their knitting and stitching of lies, as a majority of Ontarians, too scared to speak out, too confused to stand up, languish, and are unable to represent themselves or their neighbours’ interests.
Ontario voters have never been a brave lot. Over the province’s history, most of its residents have been too busily consumed in day-to-day matters of survival. Yet until recently, there was always a small group of brave and do-something politicians. Leslie Frost comes to mind. He was a politician and party leader who unlike the present coterie of provincial legislators was not afraid to lead by example. He elected to not wait for the winds of change to push him aimlessly towards popular issues of the time. Instead, using his pen, his ears and his sensibilities, Frost introduced a set of conditions that became the foundation for the progressive era under Bill Davis’ premiership and partnership with Ontarians.
Leslie Frost was from of all places, Orillia. Not a bad part of Ontario to be from. But his birthplace was certainly no hotbed of progressive liberal undertakings in twentieth-century Canada. However, that city’s native son in the developing Cold War period, an era of conformity, coloured by deep right wing politics, and everyone must know his or her place, especially, “the Negroes and Jews,” did what was possible at the time to forge pragmatic alliances. He boldly introduced a progressive government agenda that is not commonly known about for nothing about it has been taught in schools, yet it is still unrivalled to date.
Steve Paikin at least mentioned Frost’s political sustainability in a September 20, 2010, Toronto Star article, “‘Old Man Ontario’ Frost Set Bar for Electoral Success.” But even that article fails to mention the former premier’s important social justice agenda that openly addressed issues Canadians to that point liked to think were grounded only in the US; for after all the tired political recant until then was, there was no racism in Canada.
It was no big deal for Frost to make a promise to black leaders he thought would genuinely work with him. And it was no surprise to them to hear the premier shortly thereafter go to bat to ensure his promise was kept. His small town values endeared him to the belief that a promise made is a promise to be kept. When was the last time Ontarians saw this sort of commitment to purpose in action at Queen’s Park?
Many black people in Toronto and ones living in other Ontario cities believe their salvation came about because of Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s forward thinking agendae. No doubt they are right to credit him for his work later on which made him a friend, ally and supporter of theirs when he was Prime Minister. But during the time Frost was causing Hoity-toity and haute white Ontarians to blush in amazement, Trudeau was still an intellectual in Montreal. Frost was too busy to intellectualize. He was also about lessening the political distance for blacks; in turn for the first time in Ontario their citizenship was being validated. He provincially, and John Diefenbaker federally as Prime Minister were sinking their feet in the wet cement of change and action so that for all time to come black Ontarians would know a Prime Minster and premier who both chose not to look the other way.
Frost became Ontario’s premier in 1949 and remained in that portfolio until 1961. His premiership supported and enacted the Fair Employment and Fair Accommodation Practices Acts. His accomplishments too, included establishing the Ontario Human Rights Directorate that evolved into the Ontario Human Rights Commission. And unlike now, back then, and with Frost’s blessings, the budding Directorate under a black man’s direction, Dr. Dan Hill, worked to introduce social changes that are now under attack.
Frost was no lover of restricted covenants which was a tool used mainly by WASPs to keep immigrants and members of certain ethnic groups who could afford to from moving into Lilly white pristine residential neighbourhoods in cities like Toronto. Ahead of his moment and knowing so, Leslie Frost did not always supine to his Bay Street bullying friends, but bravely acted on behalf of the people who mattered: the ones who got up each and everyday and worked to make Ontario the super economic engine the province soon became.
In fact, as leader of the Conservative Party of Ontario, that old boys club of privilege, certainty and favouritism where only the rich need apply, Frost took on the patricians and his friends on Bay Street, and also stubborn ones too on Main Street. That is what Fair Employment Practices Act meant: the hell with your age-old privileges and prejudices. His actions did not change all that was bad, but it allowed for a benchmark that is still used today to assess progress, and, measure the do-nothing politics contemporary policymakers and political leaders cling to with pride.
Frost when necessary took the opportunity to ensure his Minister of Labour, Charles Daly, (no friend of black people), if unwilling to behave as his portfolio suggested, at least did what the provincial cabinet advised and consented to. Daly hated Frost’s ushering in of a more pragmatic political mood in Ontario; felt it was communistic, but ever the leader, the premier dragged Daly along and while he kicked and screamed made him relent as a new era of provincial politics became a best example of what a political leader is supposed to be all about.
Just imagine an Ontario politician willingly opening his doors to black leaders who were eager to suggest to him how change should be defined. They were mainly working class, some were sleeping car porters, but it was their government, their Ontario, their country, and they weren’t going anywhere until they were heard. Frost listened eagerly to them and to progressive whites who wished to see an Ontario that was true to its motto: “Loyal she began; thus she remains.” Not in terms of some supremacy ideology, but in being true to the needs and wishes of all Ontarians. His legal training had him ponder their main arguments and he finessed their ideas into legislative authorities. Those people in power soon got the idea that for Frost there was to be a marked difference in attitudes from the prewar period.
It was not by accident that Toronto hospitals started hiring black women who were qualified nurses, or that gradually institutions like the University of Toronto took an interest not only in welcoming a few more black students, but that one or two of its professors started commenting favourably on the merits of a fairer immigration policy for people from the Caribbean region. Each time a student enters the Frost Library at Toronto’s York University, they are fulfilling a wish Leslie Frost had for all Ontarians: that progress, growth and development are to be experienced by all Canadians regardless of colour and economic circumstances.
Frost’s activities mentioned above and his actions that allowed for political enactments were part of the sea change begun in Ontario that widened to influence a progressive agenda elsewhere in Canada. Unfortunately, this type of leader is absent from the current political morass. As the 2011 Ontario provincial election limps towards a conclusion, there is nothing to feed the imagination. One day after the election, October 7, the powerful will still be oppressing the poor. Many economically distraught black children will continuously be subjected to myopic teachers whose boast is that most of them are graduating; albeit with substandard grades.
No provincial politician or current political candidate have the guts to remind these educators: education is part of the provincial mandate originally enshrined in the British North America Act (1867). As such it is the responsibility of the provincial cabinet to ensure all students in Ontario are equitably educated. You won’t hear this because politicians are spineless in their fear of teachers in the province who are in many ways a special interest group that is attached to a powerful pension fund.
Those teachers who genuinely care about their students will tell you with honesty and regret that many of those black learners with the stamina to maintain a presence in Ontario schools sometimes do so in learning environments that are mainly damaged by incomprehensive curriculum guidelines and inferior learning strategies.
The province’s education policy is to blame. In Frost’s world, conditions would have been ripe to allow black parents to take leave and legally challenge an education system run amuck. Just imagine the Attorney General, or the Solicitor General supporting such an initiative in the current atmosphere of conformity and political chicanery. Instead, what would be done is to find examples from other ethnic groups of students doing well so as to pretend there really is nothing wrong with education in Ontario and in particular, the public school system in Toronto.
More young people, black ones too, are occupying prisons where they may become hardened criminals. Forty-some-things who are down and out of work are being told newer immigrant hires are to be encouraged by bonuses for employers. Take a look around Toronto at all the out of work black young adults in the 18-30 age category; who is providing employer bonuses to allow them to make positive contributions to themselves, their families and the society they were born into?
When you see a senior strolling down the grocery aisle where pet food is shelved, the question may come to mind: Is that bag for his dog bowser or for him? However, such sociological considerations are as far away from the minds of the people who now conjure up political party platforms as Leslie Frost’s leadership by example is from the present day, its-all-about-us political leaders.
This is the Ontario we live in! It is one we are again being asked to vote for on October 06, 2011. It is one filled with the trickery of people who really don’t give a damn. If we the majority are not careful our children will inherit this mess that has become, not as it says on Ontario license plates: “Yours to Discover” but instead: Ours, that we can’t do anything with.
At first blush we may feel safe in blaming the people we elect and send to Queen’s Park. They deserve as much blame as we can put on their shoulders since they have already abused their role as political shepherds. But a closer look however suggests we have also ourselves to blame for being so oblivious to our legacy and current day realities. For those we elect are supposedly a mirror image of the rest of us. And after all, this blog is claiming that most of the Ontario electorate is nothing but a flock of sheep.
©Sheldon Taylor, September 2011, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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