Matt Todd's Pursuit of Idyll Minds

Everyone knows that greed is the root of all evil. It’s used to explain why a developer would destroy a neighbourhood – they swoop in, make tons of money, then disappear leaving a mess behind – all for the sake of that intoxicating, corrupting profit.

The dictionary defines “greed” as an intense and selfish desire. Many times I’ve heard that greed makes people blind to the obvious and do things that don’t make sense in the long run. I agree. I believe it’s well demonstrated by hypocrisy and greed often arriving as a pair. It’s amazing how people’s perceptions of greed can be projections of their own intense and selfish desires.

If translated into the language of 9 year old, disagreements between neighbours and a prospective developer would often sound like a lot of name-calling and, “I know you are but what am I”. But really, doesn’t it take one to know one?

My advice? Don’t talk about the developer. Talk about the development. Don’t talk about what you don’t want. Talk about the qualities of what you do want. And please don’t fling the “greedy” label. Name-calling never helps.

Though smoking is becoming less tolerated in our society, nicotine is still widely sympathized and underestimated as a drug.

In 1998 the US Surgeon General concluded that nicotine is as addictive as cocaine or heroin. A more recent report decreed that there is no safe level of cigarette smoke – it is poisonous at any quantity – more toxic than previously thought.

The dangerous effects of nicotine use are not obvious at the beginning. However, tobacco is the main factor in the top 3 causes of death in Canada – cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory illness.

The difference between nicotine and alcohol addiction is that, in Alberta, 90% of people who smoke are addicted to nicotine while only 2.7% of people who drink alcohol are addicted to alcohol.

An addictions research commission in Alberta believes that, since the initial physical reactions to smoking are so unpleasant, it is social pressure that causes people to continue experimenting with tobacco until they become addicted.

There is a study referenced by the Canadian Cancer Society that suggests it may take as few as one or two cigarettes for a teenager to become addicted to nicotine.

Of youth smokers, 48% purchased their own cigarettes even though they are under age. One third of them bought at a convenience store.

For more information, follow these links:

Health Canada tobacco stats

Research from Alberta on nicotine

Health Canada site about youth smoking

Canadian Cancer Society info about lung cancer

lung cancer death stat factoids

causes of lung cancer

Canadian Council for Tobacco Control

Why is it that I see the same people angrily lecturing me to respect their right to express themselves then get outraged when I express my own perspectives. Am I not also entitled to a personal opinion, or did I abdicate that right by being elected? Public debate should be about sharing ideas and stories, not name-calling and personal insults. It’s a sad commentary on our society that we cannot have a public dialogue without some people being abusive and rude. Please, let’s have a debate of ideas without judging the people in the debate.

It seems to me, one of the things that helps a new candidate win an election is that they be outspoken. Being outspoken is usually fuelled by opinions. Voters want to see a potential elected representative as being familiar with the issues and willing to take a stand for their ideas.

What’s interesting is that citizens seem to prefer candidates who don’t shy away from sharing their opinions, but yet get very aggravated, even outraged, when an elected representative disagrees with them. It makes for an awkward and confusing learning curve for a newly elected politicians.

In doing a bit of research preparing for this week’s Social Committee meeting, someone explained to me that many people only feel listened to if you agree with them. After being conditioned to worry about inciting an obstructionist, this creates the need to temporize with ambiguity and vague commitments.

Sometimes I look at the way I’m dealing with issues, and I don’t like what I see. I’m learning to be a politician. I didn’t want to be a politician. I wanted to be the anti-politics politician. Unfortunately it often feels like I’m having that beat out of me.

It has become obvious that the reason politicians act like politicians is because that’s what they have to do in order to achieve goals. It’s something learned through trial and error after being elected – learning by what people in the community accept and what they reject.

Though people complain about politics, it really is an animal of their own creation.

Many people say that “perception is reality”. I have often heard that it is most important for elected people to appear to be effective.

The obvious problem with this, of course, is that councillors make choices everyday in how to spend their time. Given the choice of working on something with long-term and dramatic impacts or appearing in public, someone who is more concerned about their reputation than actually achieving meaningful results would abandon the lower profile or non-public meeting in order to be seen as effective. It’s an interesting contradiction.

This does little to build teamwork among councillors as the more important tasks end up being completed by the remaining councillors, but those who abandoned the effort actually end up looking good in the public eye. Voters reward self-promoters.

I personally hope that politicians would choose to focus on making improvements to the community over building their public image.

It’s disappointing, but the reality is that voters tend to see only a flashes of the work of an elected person. And perception is reality, so what they see in that fleeting glimpse is what they have to base their judgment upon.

So, for political survival and success, I suppose it is more important to be seen as effective than it is to be effective. I’m just not sure it supports effective governance.

Vancouver is often called the most livable city in the world. After visiting Montreal, I wonder about the criteria.

What I saw was a city where decent rental housing was available for a couple hundred a month. Ownership is still possible under $200,000. The streets were very safe. The neighbourhoods are compact and walkable. The people are diverse and accommodating. Road rage is relatively non-existent. I saw very few panhandlers, none who would follow you with their story about running out of gas and needing to get back to Abbotsford. Though built out, it is green. Trees everywhere. They don’t seem infested with the kind of view-mania that nags BC trees to death. There are neighbourhood parks throughout. There is public art everywhere. Public festivals fill the calendar.

Montreal is a mature and confident city from which Vancouver cities have a lot to learn.

My, my how quickly the tables turn when someone in the room has millions of dollars in their pocket. It’s surprising to see who in this community seems to find it so easy to spend other people’s money. It’s become a room full of righteous pick-pockets. Attempted extorion justified by the oft-repeated statement that Bosa should be “giving back to the community”. Greed is greed.

A lot of people seem to have a lot to say about how much money Bosa will make from their Town Centre development amendment. And as the figures fly, I wonder, so what?

It’s amazing how fast communist rhetoric shoots from the mouths of the most conservative conservatives as the community salivates over Bosa’s potential profits. I always thought I was a socialist, but here I am asking the question, why shouldn’t they make a lot of money?

I hope they do. If they make a lot of money, then hopefully other developments will follow. Those redevelopments bring opportunity.

In the meantime, all those who think that scanning the real estate listing makes them a pro forma expert should put down the calculator and think about the principles of a healthy community that need to be maintained and strengthened. Let’s stay focused on those, shall we?

It’s a bit depressing to see so many examples where being nice and attractive is apparently more important to voters than being intelligent and constructive. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that an amiable personality and agreeable appearance are not reliable indicators of a person’s ability to make good decisions. Since elections are all about choosing people to make decisions on our behalf, it’s really too bad that manners and physical attractiveness so often trump competence.

After writing my post from this morning I was wondering, why do some people get so upset when it is revealed that they weren’t paying attention to something that maybe they ought to have? I wonder if this is another example of a culture that avoids taking personal responsibility for our choices. To blame government communications is to try to deflect taking responsibility for the fact that they didn’t think the information interesting enough to catch their attention until it had some obvious relevance to their personal lives. ie: “the City didn’t do enough to tell residents about plans to redevelop the town centre!” But yet those plans had been on the books and the subject of public meetings and newspaper articles since 1966. It has been a very active subject since 1987. There was a brief denial of logic for several years (“I don’t want it to make sense because then I would have to accept something I don’t think I will like”), but the body of evidence and principles only grew stronger.

There should be more to “communicating” than trying to convince someone to agree with you. What is the purpose of communicating if you’re not trying to get someone to agree with you? There is so much value in simply sharing perspectives. I hope we, as a community, can foster open communications – sharing of stories.