Fair Vote Waterloo Hits the Ground Running on Electoral Reform

Repeated in the Throne Speech last month was the Liberal government's dedication to reforming Canada's electoral system, and ensuring that 2015 is the last election using "First Past the Post." Some are sceptical of the government's intentions, others doubt it's doing to be a done deal by the government's own 18 month deadline, but the grassroots support that made electoral reform an election priority isn't about to let those in government forget that promise.

Uber Has Landed in Guelph (and K-W and London)

Here's something interesting. A few months ago I pondered about the chances of Uber coming to the Royal City as the debate about its imminent arrival heated up just up the road in Kitchener-Waterloo, and wouldn't you know... A good friend tipped me off this morning, followed up quickly by a CBC report, and then an official press release from Uber itself this afternoon. Uber has landed in Guelph, and for the first couple of days it will be free.

Is Uber Coming to Waterloo Region? And Can Guelph be Too Far Behind?

If you've not heard of Uber, then you're missing something that crosses the new frontier of social media, mobile communications and on-demand service. A service in more than 200 cities and growing, Uber aims to connect people who need rides with people who have rides, be they licensed taxis, driving services or private citizens in their own car, and it seems that Kitchener may be the next branch office. Yesterday, Uber held two information sessions for potential drivers, and it's unclear how much interest was expressed. What's also unclear? Whether or not the Region of Waterloo will let it happen if the interest is, indeed, there.

PRESS RELEASE - Regional Mayors Agree on Pushing Forward on All-Day GO

A lot's changed in the last 10 months since the Wynne government, Metrolinx and regional councils all declared that all-day GO train service would be coming soon to the tracks of Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo, not the least of those changes is that new people all sit in the Mayor's offices of each of those cities. But despite the political shift, those new mayors, including Guelph's Cam Guthrie, want us all to know that they're all still dedicated to make all-day trains happen, and they're now getting support from new Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey.

GO Transit Set for All-Day Service

I guess the Tri-Cities (sorry, I meant Canada’s Innovation Supercluster consortium) has gotten a taste for GO trains and likes it. Either that, or Premier Kathleen Wynne is looking to secure votes in this area for "Schrödinger's Election" (since the provincial election is both happening and not happening). But then again, maybe it's a case of both, a win-win if you will. Regardless, full-day GO Train service will be coming to the Kitchener-Guelph corridor in 2016, and the funding (what ever it is) will be covered with the full extent of the service extension in the upcoming provincial budget.

Region Wants more GO to Get On

Not to sound either pessimistic or bitter, but how likely is the campaigning outlined below going to yield any real results? The following press release, which I received from the City of Kitchener's Director Corporate Communications & Marketing Laura Johnston, discusses a consultation meeting in the Tri-Cities today where local politicians met with provincial counterparts about expanding GO Transit service in the Toronto-Kitchener corridor, including two-way train service. But between the present mayors of Kitchener and Waterloo stepping down after this fall's election, and the strong possibility that the Liberal government will fall after presenting its budget, what are the chances, if any, that this proposal will bear any fruit?

MacDonald to Go From Weatherman to Waterloo Mayor

If we can step out of our own municipal race for a second, which already has four people on the ballot for mayor, we can look slightly westward to Waterloo, which, as of yesterday, has one candidate for mayor, and it's someone you may already know. If you've ever watched the news on CTV's Kitchener station, then you probably at some point got the weather from Dave MacDonald, and now the former weatherman is making his bid to be Mayor of Waterloo.

Fife Beats Bludgeon

Catherine Fife's not so surprising surprise victory in Kitchener-Waterloo Thursday night opened a can of "Who-knows-what?" in terms of what's going to happen next in Ontario. It really feels like we're at a kind of crossroads, a Choose Your Own Adventure-like fork in the road that could take us to strange new worlds, somewhere passively dull, or a complete disaster that's as cataclysmic as it is unexpected. But it probably won't be that bad.

Yes, Fife, and by proxy Andrea Horwath and the NDP, do surely deserve praise and kudos for the victory, but how much of it was dissatisfaction with the Liberals, how much of it was the uncertainty of Hudak's leadership of the PCs, and how much of it is blowback from McGuinty's seemingly ill-advised attempt to make Ontario's teachers the villains of our dire financial straits. 

But let's break the results down by party:

A Great Week for Politics

It occurred to me today that this is a great week for the politically observant, filled with many interesting stories from all sectors of politics: the local, the provincial, the national and the international. Let's look at the big four this week:

Eric Davis Running for Liberals in K-W By-Election

Coming more than a full day after the writ was dropped in Kitchener-Waterloo and Vaughan for by-elections for the Ontario Legislature, Liberals in K-W have announced lawyer Eric Davis as they're candidate for the riding, CTV is reporting. Davis beat out Waterloo Region Police Officer Raj Sharma, and Waterloo City Councillor Karen Scian for the Liberal nomination, and he will now go on to face Conservative Tracey Weiler, NDP Catherine Fife, and other candidates to represent our Highway 7 neighbours at Queen's Park. 

Game On For Not One, But Two By-Elections

In the midst of this summer of discontent, Premier Dalton McGuinty is going for the double down. Needing to win one seat to keep his minority government seat count at 53, and needing to win two in order to achieve his slight, but coveted majority, McGuinty announced today that the voters in Vaughan and Kitchener-Waterloo will go to the polls on September 6th. 

By-Election Showdown in K-W

Rarely does so much ride on one seat. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But each of Ontario's three major parties have something to prove, and something to lose, when voters in the riding of Kitchener-Waterloo go to the polls later this fall.

On the one hand, the Liberals are one seat away from a majority. With it, Premier Dalton McGuinty buys himself three years of not having to negotiate with the opposition, Tim Hudak's Conservatives keep a seat currently sitting in their column and stick it to McGuinty as the heir apparent, and Andrea Horwath's NDP gets to add fuel to that orange crush that's sweeping the nation. But what do the odds look like for any of these contenders? 

The Presses Stop

It was a sad but inevitable situation this past Saturday when I got an e-mail from Ron Kilpatrick, editor-in-chief of Echo Weekly, telling me and other contributors thatpublication had stopped on the vaunted Tri-City alternative. There will be no more Echo from this moment on, and that is sad. At least for me. 

Echo was one of those things that immediately caught my attention when I first came to Guelph in 1998 for university. It wasn't the type of newspaper I was used to (it had swearing in it!), and I ended up enjoying this weekly dose of left-leaning politics, the politically astute comic strip Weltschmerz, and Josey Vogles' classic sex column, My Messy Bedroom. (Mind you this was before the internet revolution took hold.) I very much looked forward to Thursdays, but that was then... Dan Savage replaced Josey years ago, and Weltschmerz took its bow a few summers ago.

But as numerous people have noticed - and related to me - there's been a definite decline in, I wouldn't say quality, but engagement. There hasn't been a proper cover story in the last year, the paper has been thinner and thinner, and it seems that no one's really been invested in making the once great alternative pop again. And the bitter truth is, there really hasn't. It's been a chicken and the egg type thing: The more the paper lost money, the more it pulled back and did less, which meant fewer people were willing to invest in Echo, and that started the cycle all over again. 

Adding insult to injury is the appearance that the people in charge in Echo maybe just didn't care anymore. It moved headquarters from Old Quebec Street to the Trafalgar Building, and then all operations were moved to the View's offices in Hamilton. In other words, there's been no Echo operations in the Tri-Cities, which is weird because it covers the Tri-Cities. It's seemed that the people in charge of operating Echo have been less focused on covering the scene in Guelph, K-W, Cambridge, as much they've been focused on just making sure that there's a magazine to cover it.

Of course, the harsh reality is that all the things that Echo did are now being done by a dozen some-odd websites and blogs out there, and these are the times. What perplexes me is that you drive to Toronto, and on any given day, there are about half-a-dozen alternatives that you can pick up off the newsstand, and people do pick them up. I wonder where the disconnect with the people of Guelph and area now is that we can't even pick up a single alternative to the point that it's viable?

So that's the end of Echo, and I really am sorry to see it go. I love newsprint, but in the meantime Guelph Politico will stay in business, and I guess that's the point.

More Radio Days

If you should happen to be up early on holiday Monday - or if you're like some of my friends, 7 am is usually when you go to bed - then I invite you to tune in to CFRU 93.3 to listen to "Beyond the Ballot Box." Why? Because I'll be a guest talking about municipal issues along with the Guelph Mercury's Scott Tracey. We will be talking about recent staff moves at City Hall, issues of development and how the new council is faring after six months on the job. 

If you just can't wake up that early on a holiday though, the show might be re-airing next Friday afternoon as well, or you can just listen to it on the CFRU archives at the station's website. That's where you can now listen to my last appearance on "Beyond the Ballot Box."

Additionally, pick up the Waterloo Region Record this weekend, that is if you're interested in what I'm reading right now. I was recently asked to contribute to the "What They're Reading" feature in the weekend Record. 

Well, that's about as self-promotional as I'll get for now. Have a good Victoria Day long weekend folks.

Holly Weird

Those of us in the know, know that Guelph is a very film-centric little berg. Which is why this piece in The Hollywood Reporter made me take notice this morning. It talks about how Darren Aronofsky's film Black Swan is becoming a $100 million blockbuster, despite having opened in limited release early in December, and it's thanks to small markets, like Guelph, who are packing the movie house after the expanded release. 

I checked the movies currently in release at the Guelph Galaxy, along with Black Swan there's also other Oscar bait movies like Country Song and the new Canadian film Barney's Vision for which Paul Giamatti won the Golden Globe last weekend. Along with ongoing releases like The Fighter and True Grit about half the Galaxy is filled with examples of top tier filmmaking. (Of course the other half has Yogi Bear and Tron Legacy, but I digress.)

I was reading the 59 Carden St blog this week and saw a comment by someone waxing about Guelph's yester-years in the face of two proposed high-rises to be built in the city. Well, I wax about Guelph's movie patronage. When I moved here there were three film houses, and then when Galaxy opened there were four. And then there were two. The Cineplex at Stone Road Mall closed and then the Three Star folded. And while the Galaxy and the Bookshelf have their benefits, to my mind, there was always something better about seeing a film like Aeon Flux at the Three Star for half the price of seeing that same movie at the Galaxy. 

It's a curious thing that Waterloo now has four movie theatres inside it's city limits, with another three in Kitchener. Granted the combined population of K-W is more than twice what it is for Guelph, but you can't tell me that people from Guelph are not attracted to art house movies that come to the Princess Cinema before the Bookshelf, or might enjoy seeing a movie that's been in release a few weeks and is still in a K-W cinema, though it has long since be removed from rotation at the Guelph Galaxy. Or maybe it's just me, and I'm way too into movies. Tough call.

It surprises me that since the theatre in Stone Road Mall closed over five years ago, that people in the south end of Guelph haven't pushed for film screening amenities for their neck of the woods. It's not a pleasant drive I imagine, coming from the Claire Road area and heading to Woodlawn Road at Imperial for a night at the movies, especially when your dinner options are Turtle Jacks, Wendy's, A&W and Subway. Shall we start the petition to the Ward 6 councillors together? 

Oh, and what to make of Black Swan, is it worth your money or not? Well this guy thought it was pretty good.