Results tagged “democracy”

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.

Michael Frayn's play Democracy, currently playing at Tarragon, is not always easy to follow. For some reason, this doesn't particularly matter. The second political drama set in Berlin in Tarragon's current season chronicles the rise and fall of Willy Brandt, West Germany's charismatic leader from 1969 until 1974, and is crammed full of politicians, spies, treaties and references to the nuances of Cold War-era Germany that may occasionally go over your head. But it never for a second stops being absolutely fascinating. Frayn is known for his tightly-packed scripts, most famously for his smash-hit farce Noises Off, but also for his other political work, Copenhagen. This one focuses on the relationship between Brandt and his favourite aide, Gunter Guillaume, an East German ex-pat who also happens to be a spy.

Democracy beckons. Will you heed its call?

The debate between mixed-member representation and first-past-the-post representation has been a spirited one, assuming that you're one of the twelve percent of the public who knows what the hell that first half of the sentence just meant there. Friday night at the MaRS Centre, the Centre for the Study of Democracy held a debate, with Andrew Coyne of the National Post and former NDP cabinet member Marilyn Churley arguing for MMP, and Christina Blizzard of the Toronto Sun and former PC attorney-general Mike Hernick arguing for the FTFP system.

You've probably heard by now that Ontarians will be asked to cast a second ballot on election day. That is, unless you're among the 47% of Ontarians who, according to a recent poll, are completely unaware of the upcoming referendum question on whether to replace the existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system with a proposed mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. Whether this is the first you've heard about it—which seems unlikely since Torontoist has mentioned it numerous times—or you've been doggedly campaigning on the issue for months, here's an event that'll pique your interest.

Last Monday was not just the start of the Ontario general election campaign—it was also the beginning of a campaign to change the way we elect our representatives to Queen's Park. On October 10th, Ontarians will vote on a proposal by the Citizens' Assembly (a randomly-selected group of 103 Ontarians) to switch to a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system, similar to that used in some other countries including Germany and New Zealand.

Jagshemash!

Gossip in this town is generally confined to one columnist of record and a talking goat. Torontoist doesn't know smack about gossip, but we do like the little articlette-like tidbits it comes in. Herewith, some droplets of easy reading: