Mock Turtle

I can’t believe I’m bothering to quarrel with a report from the Fraser Institute, but sometimes it’s just too tempting to resist. The right-wing think tank released a survey yesterday that will be the foundation of its urban policy research agenda, headed up by that champion of cities, former Ontario premier Mike Harris. Among the findings, according to the Star’s report:

Sixty-two per cent of respondents said the city does not spend money efficiently and 63 per cent believe its tax policies are driving business away. Forty per cent worry Toronto is falling behind other cities such as Calgary or Vancouver.

Wow, sounds serious. Except:

The findings, based on the responses of 653 residents surveyed earlier this month, are considered accurate to within 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

I’d be floored if pollsters could find 653 residents of Toronto who could actually identify the key services the city funds — especially those downloaded services that still, more than a decade later, don’t really make sense as city-funded given the limited avenues of revenue generation permitted the city. I’d be even more amazed if any part of the 653 had any insight into how much those services should cost, and how much Toronto paid for them versus other GTA municipalities — which, by the way, have higher property taxes. So given that, I’m not particularly concerned about what 653 semi-informed residents of the city contacted by the Fraser Institute think, though the findings might give the mayor’s PR team another wake-up call. And, unlike former premier Harris, I’m not sure the findings suggest that Torontonians are looking for “leadership” or a “vision” for their city’s future — it sounds more to me like the findings confirm that 98% of Torontonians are completely unengaged with how their city is run and are blind to any vision grounded in reality.

(For an assessment of the city’s fiscal position and efficiency record grounded in research, check out the Blueprint for Fiscal Stability and Economic Prosperity submitted by a blue-ribbon panel of business and labour leaders in February.)

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The original hat tip for this in the Toronto blogosphere goes to 299bloorcallcontrol, as far as I’m aware, though Spacing has weighed in:

The TTC has just begun installing a new 2008 edition of its subway network maps in subway cars … The TTC did away with just displaying the approximate address numbers along Yonge, Bloor, Danforth and Sheppard (only printing the street name where the subway deviated form one of those four streets), and now has the precise municipal address for each station. Coxwell Station now has a Strathmore Boulevard address, instead of 1568 Danforth Avenue, and Rosedale is now at 7 Crescent Road instead of 1009 Yonge.

This new system is useless when looking for the closest station to an address on Bloor or Danforth. On Yonge, this is especially redundant, as not only are the stations already named for the cross streets, Yonge is also the origin point for addresses east and west of that street. So knowing that Dundas Station is actually at 3 Dundas Street East is not that helpful.

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Has anyone else noticed that two of the addresses are wrong? St. Andrew Station should be on King Street West, not East, and Castle Frank Station should be on Bloor Street East, not West.

Comment by Annika

June 26, 2008 @ 12:18 am

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Ever-wise city councillors vote to kill street life on Bloor. I guess they’re hoping this will transform the exciting line-up of nondescript architecture, inexpensive European chain clothing stores and discounters into Toronto’s own answer to the Magnificent Mile. If you’d rather be able to buy the occasional hot dog, well, perhaps you should just move:

Councillor Peter Milczyn said the widened sidewalks planned will enhance the attractiveness of Toronto for visitors. “Indeed there’s a place in our city for some street vendors,” Milczyn said. “But to those who like Middle Eastern bazaars, go to the Middle East.”

Do you ever get the feeling that, despite the odd well-publicized junkets, many of our local politicians have never been to any large cities outside their own?

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Do you remember Tyler Roulston? What about Tristan Wright? Jonathan Rodrigues? What high schools did they go to? They were all shooting victims under the age of 25 this year in Toronto. One may have been known to police. Another was shot in front of a house party with dozens of witnesses. Another was killed at home. Unfortunately, since they all died in the “east end”, where shootings are apparently just another inconvenience of being poor, not white, and living in a high-rise, I can’t tell you much more about them.

On the other hand, I know a lot about Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin. They grew up in Rosedale. They’d completed postsecondary education. Girls had crushes on them. They participated in organized sports. This morning’s Globe and Mail even tells me what one of them liked as a favourite snack. Did I mention they grew up in Rosedale?

And, it seems, the police also know a lot about the two. In some magical fashion, although the two were “not known” to police, Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux was almost instantly able to assert to reporters just hours after they were shot that they were “certainly not – and never have been – living any high-risk or criminal lifestyle”. It’s easy to see why this conclusion was easy to draw. As we all know, the wealthy are never involved in criminal activity.

A paragraph in the Globe clumsily highlights why this story has been the focus of so much ink, when random shootings of young men in the city are anything but unusual:

The violent crime shook the city and surprised many who struggled to understand why the young men from Rosedale were killed in a brand of crime associated with neighbourhoods very different from their own.

I don’t mean to be minimize the sadness of this situation. It just seems to me that the violent, random, untimely deaths of young men who had little are just as tragic as the violent, random, untimely deaths of young men who had it all. And it also seems to me that Martin and Ellis’ families now have a lot in common with many other bereaved families in neighbourhoods “very different from their own” — whatever the reporting around this story might suggest.

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An awfully specific simile from the Economist:

Spending time in Russia is a bit like taking the psychotropic anti-malarial drug Larium: anyone with a propensity to anxiety should probably avoid it.

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A recent Economist article highlights some of the questions over whether we’re experiencing peak oil now or not. There have been a number of stories recently alleging that oil prices are artificially high right now in part because there are vast quantities of crude sitting on ships offshore. Another issue is limited refinery capacity. According to the Economist story, these factors are linked:

At the moment, diesel is in short supply and there is a glut of fuel oil. That makes processing heavy oil unprofitable for some refineries, since the gains from diesel are outweighed by losses on fuel oil. As refineries turn instead to lighter grades, it pushes their prices yet higher. The discount on heavier crudes has risen to record levels. But even then, points out Ed Morse, of Lehman Brothers, another investment bank, Iran is having trouble selling the stuff. It is storing huge quantities of unsold oil on tankers moored off its coast.

Fuel subsidies, particularly in Asia, are keeping demand up. Some commentators consider the incredible shrinking margin at North American refiners to act as a subsidy on our consumption — which large oil companies, who own both production and refiners, can afford to extend.

And then there’s the issue of what’s happening to demand. Growth in fuel consumption in OECD countries has been dropping since 2004. Sure, demand in emerging economies is growing, but with some of these countries scrapping or reducing their fuel subsidies, don’t expect it to continue to increase at the same pace. And that argument about China having an insatiable appetite for all commodities because of its race toward the Olympics will soon be stale-dated:

China’s growing thirst for oil is often put forward as one of the main factors behind today’s higher oil prices. Demand for diesel there, for example, rose by over 9% in the year to April. But Mr Morse argues that such growth might not last. The government has ordered oil firms to increase their stocks of fuel by 50% to be sure there are no embarrassing shortages during the Olympics. It is also planning to run some power plants near Beijing on diesel rather than coal, in an attempt to reduce pollution during the games. These measures are helping to boost China’s demand for diesel, but the effect will be transitory.

Changes in consumption are underway. Those changes will show up in demand statistics in the not-so-distant future. The question of whether the price of oil is really linked to supply or demand, however, will remain.

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Given the state of the classical music market you can’t blame people for trying to be inventive.

But we are still recovering from the design of one of EMI’s latest releases, a Chopin disc by the Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter. Donald Manildi raved about it in International Record Review this month and I picked up a copy as part of our CD shopping binge a few weeks ago.

I’m starting to think the disc is really pretty good. But I’ve found that to get there, we’ve had to purge the effect of possibly the weirdest bit of marketing design I’ve seen in a serious classical release. The packaging features numerous pictures of the pianist, all of them subtly but unmistakably drawing attention to cleavage. OK, so sex sells. But then the overall theme of the design is this soft-focus ultrafeminine garden wedding fantasy theme in pink and green. So we’ve covered both halves of the market (or at least the heterosexual portion thereof), but meanwhile poor Chopin, not to mention the considerable musical merits of Ms. Fliter’s playing, get buried in some weird combination of Maxim lite and Martha Stewart Weddings.

It’s an interesting example of how packaging can affect the view of the product, at least until the packaging effect wears off.

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1. A piglet scared of wallowing in mud has overcome its fears with the help of some Wellington boots.
2. ROME (Reuters) – An Italian couple who were caught having sex in a church confessional box while morning Mass was being said have repented and made peace with the local bishop.

Some days my media scan is more entertaining than others.

EDIT TO ADD:
3. Cold, wet spring threatens B.C. pot crop

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Shocking news from our friends at BMO:

Canadian shoppers are still paying 18 per cent more on average than Americans for the same items, BMO Nesbitt Burns says in a study that suggests consumers aren’t reaping the benefits of a strong dollar.

The rest of the article seems to indicate that, in fact, the report suggests Canadian consumers aren’t fully extracting the penny-for-penny benefits of the strong C$. That’s a different conclusion. However, as the report, entitled “Uh oh… The Price is Still Wrong,” isn’t yet posted to the BMO website, I can’t confirm that.

In the interim, here are some other interesting things that are still true:

- Canada’s population is still 89% smaller than the U.S. population.

- Canada’s minimum wages are still higher than U.S. minimum wages — ranging from $7.75-$8.75 per hour, vs. $5.85-$8.07 per hour.

- Canada’s payroll taxes are likely not the same as U.S. payroll taxes, though I don’t feel like adding it all up to be sure. (Interestingly, it’s incredibly easy to look up payroll taxes in the U.S., while a similar search in Canada leads to a million vendors of software and payroll outsourcing services. This may mean something.)

- Canada is still physically larger than the U.S. Except, as it turns out, in terms of actual land, on which humans might live, the U.S. has us beat — 9.16 million sq km vs. 9.09 million sq km. Who knew? Nonetheless, there are certainly vaster tracts of undeveloped land separating cities in Canada than in the U.S..

Could some or any of these factors play a role in keeping prices in Canada at a different level? I didn’t think a year in retail analysis would be necessary to come to that conclusion, but perhaps I’m wrong. And as BMO’s Doug Porter usually likes to mention in his reports, the GST is only 5% now. Buy, buy, buy.

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Business reporters are constantly under pressure to quantify whatever they’re writing about. Unfortunately, there’s so little context associated with this that the reader is left with absolutely no idea as to whether the information is significant or not. Case in point: the dreaded “in XX period of time” construct. First example, from today’s Globeinvestor.com:

Prices for new homes increased just 5.2 per cent in April from a year earlier, marking the slowest pace in more than two and a half years, Statistics Canada says.

The Star:

The U.S. trade deficit widened in April, meanwhile, as the surging cost of oil boosted imports to a record, overshadowing the biggest gain in exports in four years.

Bloomberg:

Canadian industrial companies used less of their production capacity last quarter than at any time in the past 15 years, as auto manufacturers and lumber mills slowed production.

(Not surprisingly, given Bloomberg’s position as business news behemoth, its short article contains more than one of these constructs, also highlighting the fact that Canadian GDP contracted for the first time in five years in the first quarter.)

Now put all together, one might assume that all these indicators point to one thing: a slowing economy. I do. But it’s also possible, if we look only at the “lowest in XX years” phrasing, that they’re all one-time blips that are an aberration from an overall trend, whether it’s after two and a half years or fifteen. It’s particularly easy with the aid of a Bloomberg terminal or a simple spreadsheet to come up with these calculations. But in the end, it’s simply a way to add numbers to stories — numbers that really don’t mean very much.

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