What separates you from the other candidates in your riding?
Real life experience and physicality – I am probably the oldest candidate in the race in Davenport but easily the most fit!!! I rode my rolling campaign office/cargo-trike – containing my big Roland keyboard amp – all the way up to Rogers Studios for our Goldhawk Live debate, discussed policy with Andrew Cash, and Mario Silva (Conservative candidate Theresa Rodrigues was again a no-show) for the better part of an hour, and then rode back downtown. Find me another great-grandfather anywhere who could do that, eh?
What is the defining issue in your riding this election?
Despite what anybody else says, anywhere in urban Canada, it’s transportation. How and why we move affects everything including our health, our environment and our economy. Just ask Calgary’s Naheed Nemshi or anyone who suffered through our own ten months of mayoral mayhem last year.
Do you believe the relationship between municipalities and the federal government needs to be redefined, and if so, how?
Yes. Again with transportation, all three levels of government have huge bureaucracies dedicated to how we move. Obviously the overlap gives cover to their collective failure. The federal government needs to take charge by implementing a national sustainable urban mobility strategy for Canadians and our goods.
Which of your party’s policies would make the biggest impact on Torontonians’ lives?
The Green Party’s True Democracy plank calls for a restructuring of our electoral system through the adoption of proportional representation. This long overdue shift would allow the more sophisticated voices – even from our nation’s most selfishly backward communities – to be heard. Toronto might just escape her burden of endlessly unfounded national derision.
Tell us something flattering about your main rival in this campaign.
In the mid-nineties, when he was a Toronto City Councilor, Mario Silva supported me – as did Jack Layton – in my decades-long fight with Revenue Canada to bring a modicum of respect to the hardest-working people its ever been my honour to know: Canada’s bike messenger fleet. Thanks again, Mario.
