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We Gamed. We Saw. We...um...Camped?
Public consultations, as the City of Toronto currently conducts them, are at best formalities and at worst shams. The City has a Public Consultation Unit, and they tend to do a good job running consultations and then compiling the results into reports. The trouble is that the staff who run the projects on which consultations are being held already have a very clear idea how they'll be going ahead, having formed their opinions long before the initiative had come to the public consultation phase.
Which is to say that when public opinion syncs up with staff's opinion, staff are happy to tout that they have the backing of the public. But when public opinion differs from staff's preconceived opinions, they will very blatantly ignore what the public has to say; when asked, they emphasize that the concept of "consultation" does not imply any obligation on their part to incorporate the positions of the public into their final recommendations.
BUT, the consultations on the new sign bylaw—as mentioned in yesterday's Urban Planner—are different. Perhaps because the people leading the Sign By-law Project Team are not typical City employees but rather outside experts hired for the specific purpose of crafting this bylaw, they actually care what the public has to say. And, after years of becoming accustomed to the indifference of City staff, attendees are caught off guard.
We went to the meeting in North York last week and the one in Etobicoke the week before that. After the Project Team gave their brief presentation, they turned things over to attendees to offer their thoughts. Instead of offering suggestions of what they'd like to see in the new bylaw, the attendees focused primarily on asking questions about what staff are planning to do. This is how we have been trained. To almost every question, the Project Team replied with a variation of "Well, we don't know yet know what we're going to do. Would you like to offer a suggestion?"
The people tasked with crafting the new bylaw are genuinely looking for guidance from the public, not just on details, but on overall direction. Unlike with other public consultations, they don't already have their report two-thirds written. They want to know what people would like to see and then they will begin from scratch a report that is to go to the Executive Committee in November. For the first time in memory, it's not a stretch to refer to the public as "participants" at a City consultation.
The final meeting is tonight (Thursday) at City Hall at 7:00. If you're unable to attend, you can also send your thoughts to signbylawproject@toronto.ca or leave a phone message at 416-392-8000. If you're still unsure about whether it's worth your time to take part, just read the last paragraph of the old Dale Duncan article here.
Photo by sssteve.o from the Torontoist Flickr pool.
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Jonathan, you are naive if you believe that the consultant does not already have two-thirds of the report written.
people still use pcAnywhere?
Mark: Maybe not, as this sign was removed in March. Although there's a good chance Tribar's screen at Dundas and Spadina uses the same system.
Here are some things I'd like to see banned:
1. Internet slang, emoticons and txt-style writing in ad copy.
2. Any use of Comic Sans.
3. Bad 'shop jobs on photos of allegedly good-looking people.
4. Photos of radio personalities.
5. As pictured in the article - the use of any Microsoft software to run video billboards.
6. Photo-realistic anthropomorphized animals.
7. er
Let's ban all outdoor advertising entirely, as they did in Sao Paulo.
Better yet, let's ban private enterprise.
Rek as usual wants someone to listen to him, I will bite. His homework assignment: determine how the ban of billboards, modelled after brave Sao Pauloans (who have, since the billboard ban came into effect, shown an admirable lack of concern over shampoo brand differentiation), comply with the protections given to freedom of expression under section 2(b) of the Charter.
(I'll save you some time, its blatantly unconstitutional. Can we move on now?)
Easily done. Levy a $100,000 per square foot tax on licensed advertising surfaces/structures, with a $2,000/day fine for any violation. Freedom of expression intact, but expensive for advertisers.
Or use the Notwithstanding Clause (Queen's Park would have to do that) to make Toronto exempt from fundamental human rights, specifically limitless freedom of expression, applying to commercial advertising.
Since "it is hard in a city of 11 million to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what was and wasn't legal, we decided to go all the way, to zero things out," Kassab said. Sounds a lot like Toronto.
And why exactly would anyone post unless they wanted "someone to listen to [them]"? That's fundamental to communication. Otherwise you're attention-starved, x_the_x, since you're posting a comment too. Brilliant.
I am reasonably confident that any court would deem a $100,000/sq ft charge on all public ads to be tantamount to a ban and thus an unconstitutional restriction on free expression. I am doubly confident that no legislature in its right mind would invoke the notwithstanding clause in order to overrule a court on this point.
Municipalities already have the power to impose reasonable restrictions on ads, including the right to ban billboards over a certain size (Vann Niagara v Oakville). Arguably, efforts would be better spent on lobbying the city to design and enforce more effective laws, rather than to implement a quasi-ban that is unlikely to be enacted or enforced.
Personally I'm less concerned with the quantity of advertising and more concerned with the quality. I'd like to see Ottawa legislate idiocy, camp and all attempts at wit out of advertising. Any copywriter found guilty of cliche, dream mongering, failure at comedy, or insulting the intelligence of the public audience would receive a penalty of up to their entire life's savings or public execution by a million bitch-slaps.
(The formatting in my previous message screwed up a bit.)
Robin - But it wouldn't be a ban, there are companies that could afford that price for at least one ad in one location. The price given isn't the important part anyway, just the possibility of jacking up the rates so high it's *nearly* impractical. And the goal wasn't to "impose reasonable restrictions" that the advertising companies would then ignore or fight on a case-by-case basis, choking the city with lawsuits that won't be resolved until years after the offending instance has been cycled out for a different ad, the goal is to find a way to ban advertising.
AJB - I'm astounded by what passes for "fine print" these days, specifically on TV. Tiny blurry paragraphs of white type flash or scroll for 3 seconds and that counts as informing people of the various restrictions and catches?