Category: Politics

Toronto’s waterfront is altogether wonderful. Really. Honest.

This post originally appeared in The Globe and Mail on March 7, 2007

Let me preface this by saying that I am not on the Porter Airlines payroll. I have never even met Robert Deluce. If I did, though, I would give him a hug.

Last week I had a late night event in Toronto and an early morning meeting the next day in Montreal. I live in the glass and concrete jungle down by the lake, right next to SkyDome (I refuse to call it the Rogers Centre), so I thought I would try the new Island airport service to Dorval (I refuse to call it Trudeau Airport). I felt a bit uneasy about this, since I read the newspapers and am well aware that Robert Deluce and the Toronto Port Authority are supposed to have horns.

I rolled out of bed at 5:15, was out the door by 5:50, and walked—walked, mind you—to the terminal at the foot of Bathurst Street by 6:10. Something was wrong. There were no crowds to fight, no lineups to endure, cheerful X-ray screeners, and first-rate coffee in real mugs in the passenger lounge.

As I strolled to the brand-spanking-new Porter Airlines Bombardier Q400, I watched the soft warm glow of the morning sun bathe the Toronto skyline in gentle vermilion hues. I settled in my tastefully upholstered leather seat and exchanged smiles with the winsome flight attendant. I was barely halfway through the first story in my morning Globe when the engines started; two minutes later we were at the end of the runway. Fifteen seconds later we were aloft, climbing past the sunlit downtown core.

It was then that I realized what a wonderful waterfront we have.

Now, I understand that this is heresy. Toronto is supposed to have the sorriest, least well planned, most embarrassing waterfront in the developed world. Porter Airlines was supposed to be a step in precisely the wrong direction, poisoning the lakeshore with noise, pollution, congestion, and people who don’t vote NDP. It was supposed to thwart a nature-friendly, people-centered renaissance. It was supposed to ruin our chances of catching up with Chicago.

Well, I don’t want a lakeshore like Chicago’s. I like ours. I like almost everything about it: the massive landfill dump known as Leslie Street Spit, a birder’s accidental paradise; the Redpath Sugar refinery, an increasingly rare link to our gritty industrial past; Harbourfront and the Queen’s Quay Terminal, vibrant in summer and calming in winter; the bizarre community of hippies and yuppies on Ward’s Island. I even like the Gardiner Expressway, which shouts “Welcome to Toronto” from the top and “Wash Me, Please” from below.

Our lakeshore has character. Chicago’s is plastic. Sure, it has a lot of attractions, most of which are very nice in and of themselves. We have a lot of attractions, too. They just aren’t all clustered in one place. Chicago’s lakeshore is touristy, expensive, and soulless. You have to be rich to live anywhere near it. Real people live near ours.

It occurred to me, as we rose to meet the pastel clouds, that all this opposition to the Island airport was nonsense. Porter Airlines has been operating for five months and I have only ever noticed their planes twice. I never hear them. There is no real opportunity cost to the airport; we have plenty of green space on the Islands already. If I have to fly in and out of Toronto anyway, I would far rather walk to the airport and board a fuel-efficient Canadian-built plane than spend extra time, money, and carbon credits going all the way to Pearson (I no longer call it Malton) only to deal with crowds, surly security guards, a 30-minute taxi from terminal to runway, and the extra blood pressure that goes with it all.

Nor would it make any positive difference if we tore down the Gardiner. It isn’t really an obstacle to anything, being above ground, and we would miss it the minute it was gone. Sure, there are a few eyesores near the lake, and large areas that are badly used, but our waterfront is diverse and dynamic. It is a patchwork quilt. A mixed bag. A delightful jumble of styles and moods. It is, in short, a metaphor for Toronto. It is us.

And it is improving, bit by bit, thanks to no one’s master plan, but thanks in large part to people with ideas, even initially unpopular ones. People such as Robert Deluce, the guy who got me to downtown Montreal by 8:40 am. I doubt Mayor Miller could be persuaded to give Mr. Deluce the keys to the city or put his name on a bridge to the Island airport. But at the very least, on behalf of us all, he should give him a hug.

Let them eat what they want

This post originally appeared in The Globe and Mail on July 7, 2003

Last month, as a side trip to an academic conference, I toured Monsanto’s massive research facility outside St. Louis, Missouri, where scientists develop and test genetically-modified crops. The science is truly impressive. And the people at Monsanto are proud of their accomplishments. The fellow who conducted our tour—a researcher himself—could not contain his enthusiasm for YieldGard® Corn Borer, Bollgard® Cotton, and Roundup Ready® Corn and Soybeans, which promise higher yields, reduced pesticide requirements, and cleaner ground water. He was a true believer.

At the end of a flashy PowerPoint show, he took our questions. His enthusiasm turned to defensiveness and frustration when he discovered that we were social scientists. What did he think of the European ban on biotech foods? What about safety concerns? What about downstream unintended consequences? Exasperated, he insisted that Monsanto’s GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) were the most intensively tested crops ever; that they had been proven 100% safe; and that the European ban had no scientific basis. It was trade protection, pure and simple, designed to keep foreign agricultural products out of the European market.

“How can you prove something is 100% safe?” I asked, not meaning to be rude, but genuinely curious. “Didn’t we think DDT and Thalidomide were safe, until we discovered by surprise that they weren’t?”

“Well, okay,” he said; “99.999 percent safe.”

That was quite an admission on his part, and I admired him for it. A true scientist never claims more than he or she can justify. Years and years of testing in the lab and in the field, he meant to say, had given us no reason to fear GMOs. If there were something to fear, odds are it would have turned up by now.

He’s probably right. The longer we go without discovering that GMOs have serious negative consequences, the more confidence we can have that they do not. We can never be 100 percent confident, but for my part, I would happily eat Roundup Ready® Corn and wear clothing spun from Bollgard® Cotton. I judge the risks these products pose to my personal health and safety minuscule compared to the risks I run every day by driving, or even just breathing, in Toronto. But what if I were more risk averse? Or what if I objected, on aesthetic or spiritual grounds, to monkeying around with genes? In either case, I would certainly be unhappy about being forced to consume GMOs because I had no way of knowing whether the products I bought were bio-engineered or not.

The political issue is coming to a head. Canada, the United States, and Australia have all challenged the European ban on GMOs as a scientifically unjustified restraint on trade. Hoping to avoid an unfavourable ruling from the World Trade Organization, the European Parliament voted this week to lift the ban, but will require strict labelling and tracking of GM crops, and will allow the 15 EU countries to set their own rules for preventing seeds from fields planted with GMOs from drifting. The Bush administration has already signalled its dissatisfaction, and seems certain to challenge these measures, too. Ottawa will shortly have to decide whether to do so as well.

It would be politically and economically tempting for Canada to challenge Europe’s new measures. The Bush administration cares strongly about this issue, and U.S.-Canadian relations are still suffering from the Iraq debacle. Canadian agricultural exports to Europe would certainly be higher without labelling and tracking requirements. But there is an ethical issue here, and it is clear: Europeans should be allowed to make their own judgments about what they consume, and Canada should not stand in the way.

EU polls show that 70 percent of Europeans do not want to eat genetically-modified food, and 94 percent want to be able to choose. Labelling and tracking requirements reflect the democratic will of Europe. Europeans may overestimate the risks; they may appreciate how small the risks seem at present but simply prefer not to run them; or they may have some principled objection to genetic modification. Whatever the ground of their reluctance, they have a right to be reluctant. We have no right to tell them that they do not.

Toward the end of our tour, my guide and I broke away from the group and had a long and interesting conversation about culture and science. “The Europeans think we just want to make money,” he said. “Of course we want to make money. But we also want to make the world a better place. Science is the way to do that, and throughout our history, Americans have always embraced it. Europeans are more skeptical.” A sweeping claim, I thought, but probably true enough—and a tacit admission that Europe’s opposition to GMOs is not merely protectionism after all. What I really wanted to ask him was whether he thought one country had a right to impose its attitude toward science on others. But I held my tongue.