I’m a big believer in public transit, and for that reason alone, I can appreciate what Miller has tried to do as mayor of the country’s largest city: turn Toronto’s aching, geriatric transit system, the TTC, into a modern, attractive, financially sustainable service. Recent coverage in the media has focused on Miller’s failures, but Munro eloquently highlights his successes:

• the creation of the TTC’s Ridership Growth Strategy
• moving future expansion away from new subways towards modern light rail
• pushing funding from being more fare-based to more subsidy-based

Of course these are controversial measures for some people. Even though there is no public transit system on earth that is fully self-funded, there are many in Toronto who think that if the TTC needs more money, it should simply raise fares; that those who use it should pay for it. Munro explains: “Operating subsidies fell over the years, and farebox cost recovery grew from about 70% in 1988 to almost 85% by 2000. Partly this was achieved through fare increases, and partly through service cuts.” Miller has pushed the level back down to 70%, and ridership is at an all-time high in absolute numbers — projected to be 473 million rides this year. To put things in perspective though, the previous all-time high was 463 million in 1988. According to Wikipedia, the City of Toronto’s population has grown about 300,000 since then, and the Greater Toronto Area’s has grown by at least 1.3 million. In proportional terms then, 2009 is hardly a peak. Also, 70% of funding through fares is exceptionally high, even within Canada, but especially when compared to the other countries. Recent headlines about how monthly pass popularity has “hurt” the TTC’s budget are an absurd way of suggesting that the TTC needs to increase fares. Our own transit agency is complaining that more people are using public transit? It’s pretty simple: if Torontonians want good public transit, then their government(s) must pay for it.

It’s been one year since my wife and I moved to Toronto, and in that time I’ve come to know the TTC for better and worse. I had expectations based on previous visits to the city that transit here was good. I remembered a subway and streetcar system that ran reliably and frequently, and that many of the streetcars operated twenty-four hours a day. Single fares are pretty reasonable: $2.25 if you buy tokens and no “zones” — one fare can take you 40 km from Kipling Station in Etobicoke to McCowan Station in Scarborough. Saying all that, I can see now how the TTC creaks and groans as one the most heavily-used transit systems in North America. Its most frequent customers are often its biggest critics, and like all public transit systems in Canada, it struggles for funding to expand or even just to maintain existing service.

What’s wrong with the TTC? The subway is good if your origin and destination are close to it, but Toronto suffers from arriving late to the underground party. The two original lines, built in the 1950s and ’60s, provide insufficient coverage for today’s population. Sadly, the only recent expansions — the Scarborough RT in the ’80s and the Sheppard line in 2002 — are suburban routes that attract but a fraction of the ridership of the two older lines.

Meanwhile, the iconic streetcars prove better in theory (clean, reliable and frequent!) than in reality (garbage-laden, crowded and stuck in traffic!). Waiting half an hour on a “frequent service” route is common — eventually three or four packed cars will show up, making one feel that walking would have been a faster choice. (Cycling is always faster.) Queen Street, the retail heart of the city from east to west, ought to be one of the city’s best-served transit corridors, but the Queen streetcar is among the system’s least reliable. Buses are good in some places, but service can be patchy (half-hour schedules on Sundays on downtown routes is nearly criminal), especially once one gets north of Bloor Street.

If you’re a regular customer, the TTC is not cheap. The cost of a monthly pass ($109) is markedly higher than in Vancouver ($73) or Montreal ($68.50), making driving more attractive to many people. There’s also the fare system itself that could charitably be described as antique. If you don’t want or need a pass, there are only small, easy-to-lose tokens and old-fashioned paper transfers. If you switch from a surface-level route to a subway at an older station, you have to line up to show your transfer to the booth attendant because the turnstiles don’t permit them. And forget about any integration with the city’s GO commuter trains. The provincially-knighted but totally toothless regional transit authority, Metrolinx, would like to implement a modern smart card system, but has no ability to pay for it.

Nonetheless, David Miller and his followers have fought to make improvements, and growth in ridership and more frequent service are positive signs. Ironically though, the biggest achievement of all may be one that doesn’t come to fruition until well after Miller’s retirement. “Transit City” is the city’s comprehensive light rail plan that would see the construction of seven new light rail lines (all with dedicated rights-of-way to ensure reliable service). If it all gets built — and that is a mighty “if” — the plan has the potential to drastically alter life in a city whose pervasive car culture threatens to choke it to death by smog.

The “if”, as always, is where the money will come from. Although Miller has been successful in increasing the TTC’s budget during his reign, it has come largely through ritual cap-in-hand begging at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa. This is a testament to what, in my mind, is the biggest problem facing confederation. It is certainly the thing that has brought a premature end to Miller’s mayoral career. Put simply, the inability for Canadian cities to pay for the services their citizens need is ruining the very places where most Canadians live. Canadian cities are not allowed to levy income or sales taxes, but property taxes are insufficient to pay for the services that so many Canadians, especially lower-income Canadians, rely on. Successive provincial and federal governments have found reason to cut permanent funding in transit, housing and social services while simultaneously giving responsibility for them to the cities. Toronto runs its own welfare program, has its own public housing agency, and operates its own transit system, but is extremely reliant on provincial transfers to pay for all of it. Any change in the political winds or the economy threatens that arrangement.

How does this make any sense? Shouldn’t the government most directly involved in providing a service be the one that raises the taxes to pay for it? This is something on which I believe most taxpayers would agree, because it urges transparency about how tax dollars are spent. The current dysfunctional arrangement, where cities go begging to the province, and the province goes begging to Ottawa, does quite the opposite, all but eliminating accountability. (Perhaps federal politicians like it this way.) Sadly, the design of the political system in Canada makes change difficult, to say the least. Our country’s historical legacy has given us provincial legislatures and a national Parliament where the rural population is overrepresented, and it has blessed us with a winner-takes-all voting system that locks many ridings to one party. In the City of Toronto, the Liberal party has a virtual lock on most seats, both provincially and federally. Thus the Liberals in power at Queen’s Park all but take Toronto voter support for granted, while the Conservatives in Ottawa all but write it off. Worst of all, the system breeds apathy, leading to declining voter turnouts with each passing year.

David Miller spent some of his time fighting the system, but he largely approached his role as a pragmatist, with a level bravado that bordered on brinkmanship. He successfully convinced the province and Ottawa to fund the Spadina subway extension by bullying. Similarly, the subsequent announcement and promotion of Transit City before any funding was in place was essentially a dare to the province and Ottawa to say no, to risk public backlash. It worked with Ontario’s sympathetic premier, Dalton McGuinty, but it backfired spectacularly when Miller pressed Ottawa to use recession “stimulus” money to buy the city new streetcars. The federal cabinet said privately it wouldn’t do it, and Miller pressed them publicly. Eventually Miller was made to look like a fool after the Conservatives did the political arithmetic. (No Tory seats in Toronto means no angry voters.) Miller’s credibility took a big hit, and then it was damaged further by the civic workers strike. I think Miller’s P.R. team failed him during the strike, but the strike itself was an inevitable outcome in a city whose costs simply outweigh its capacity to pay. Until this changes, it will be nearly impossible for any Toronto mayor to do better than David Miller. The city is ungovernable.

In Ontario, almost all wine is sold at the LCBO. Since it’s not spelled out in full too often, I’ll mention that LCBO stands for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which is a government agency (run at arms length) that controls the import, distribution and sale of alcohol in the province. To be fair to the LCBO, they keep their customers relatively happy. There have plenty of locations in Toronto where I live, and most stock a decent selection of wine, although the vast majority of it is what I’d call mass-produced stuff without much character, most often from Australia, California and Italy, with sprinklings of New Zealand, Argentina and Chile. There’s a little from France too, but not a lot, because the French don’t really like making mass-produced wines. There is also lots of wine from Ontario itself, and nearly all of it — even the more expensive stuff — is utter plonk.

After about six months living here, I’d concluded that 90% of Ontario wine was downright awful, and the other 10% was merely okay but overpriced. To be fair to Ontario, I don’t care for Riesling, one of the most common varietals here, but even still, everything else, particularly the red wine from the LCBO, is just bad. Many restaurants serve bad Ontario wine too, for which one pays an outrageous markup. The dark secret though is that the majority of the wines sold in the Ontario section of your LCBO are actually made mostly from imported grapes, with a small amount of local produce mixed in. These bottles are labelled “Cellared in Canada”, and while some of them might be inoffensive enough for a night in front of the TV, I resent the false pretense under which they’re sold. By contrast, I assumed that wines with a VQA label, which guarantees the origin and quality of the product, would be at least decent, but even most of these range from bad to mediocre, and most are overpriced at $15-25 a pop. It wasn’t until I took my first trip to the Niagara region, and visited a few wineries between St. Catharines and Niagara-on-the-Lake, that I discovered there is actually some lovely winemaking happening in Ontario. You just can’t buy the fruits of that labour at the LCBO.

Talk to any small Ontario winemaker (or even a larger one who focuses on quality), mention the LCBO, and watch their faces wrinkle in disgust. Why? Many LCBO stores have a “Vintages” section, selling fine wines from all over the world, many made in smaller quantities. It isn’t all mass-produced Aussie shiraz — if you want to explore French wine, the Vintages sections will keep you happy. In theory, you could buy some of the nice, affordable Ontario wines there too, if you could find them, except that mostly you can’t, because most good, affordable Ontario wines are made in such small quantities that the LCBO isn’t interested. The process for getting your products listed with the LCBO is also apparently quite onerous, and even when everything falls into place, stocks will be limited given the public’s level of awareness and interest in Ontario wine — an interest hindered by the horrific rot that is sold in the mass-produced aisles. Most of the good Ontario wine that makes it to Vintages goes straight to collectors’ wine cellars and to nicer restaurants. And what’s left is often astonishingly expensive. Why spend $40 to get a good Ontario wine when a $20 Spanish wine will likely taste better?

Still, the wineries themselves are allowed to sell their own products, and thank heavens for that. There’s even one private retail chain, the Wine Rack, operated by Vincor, the elephant among the gnats of the Canadian wine industry; they own dozens of wineries and thus have enough product to stock their shelves. Most wineries can’t afford to operate retail stores though, so they only sell products directly at the winery or online. Unless one lives in Niagara, buying wine online isn’t a bad way to go, especially if you can convince other people to go in on a case and save on delivery costs. Nearly all the wineries sell products on their websites, or there’s also Winery to Home, which lets you mix-and-match to a very limited degree. This is as close as it gets to my hand-picked selection at the deli in Nottingham.

Of course, if you have a free weekend and some cash burning a hole in your pocket, even better is to simply go to Niagara and visit some wineries. I and my travel companions did that this past weekend and we returned with a truly shameless amount of wine, but we were so impressed by what we tried that it seemed silly not to bring back as much as we could afford (and fit in the car). It means we don’t need to go to the LCBO for awhile (a long while if we behave ourselves), and better still we’re supporting the little guys making quality, local products. These people do it because they enjoy it, not because they’re making a lot of money.

One of the wedding gifts we received last year was The Wine Atlas of Canada, a lovely book which helped us narrow down the geography of Niagara and find a selection of wineries to visit. But the book was published in 2006 and many new wineries have opened even since then. This is an industry still in its nascent stages, and I was astonished by how many wineries there are. The majority of them are really small operations, producing something like 5000-10000 cases of wine per year, and perhaps only 500 cases of any one particular wine. On the whole, Canada is a tiny, insignificant player on the world wine scene.

This past weekend we rode bicycles around the villages of Jordan and Vineland, and the town of Beamsville, stopping to taste wines in the area. (We had to bring the car back the next day to pick up the goods.) Producers in Ontario have recently tried to bring the concept of “terroir” to Niagara, to emphasize how much influence local soil conditions can have on the product, so many of the wines now mention exactly where they’re from — sub-appelations like Twenty Mile Bench and Lincoln Lakeshore. You can cycle between these places in no time — they’re tiny little geographic divisions. The Niagara Escarpment scenery is terrific and we were impressed with a great deal of what we tried. Everyone seemed to be excited about the 2007 vintage, particularly the reds, but since different wineries release their wines at different times we tried wine from a number of different years. On a functional note, many of the smaller wineries offer free tastings, but the ones that don’t will usually waive the fee if you buy any wine.

Some of the highlights included:

• everyone was selling recently-released rosé for not much money ($10-15), and most of it was decidedly drinkable — light, dry and refreshing.

• Calamus: a small winery near Ball’s Falls. They won points for selling very affordable wine ($12-$20 for the most part), which ranged from merely good to downright great. I enjoyed their Calamus Red and the Meritage, and the Pinot Gris.

• Featherstone: the highlight was the 2007 “Onyx”, another red blend, but we liked just about everything here, including the fact that they use sheep to eat the leaves off the vines during the late season when the grapes need all the sunlight they can get. They’re also insecticide-free.

• Kacaba: some big, impressive red wines at this small winery, but they don’t come cheap. The host said his favourite was their 2007 Cabernet Franc Reserve, and I found it hard to disagree. Lots of award winning wines.

• Fielding Estate: another small winery making great, affordable wine in the $10-20 range. One of many wineries in Niagara where the architecture helps sell the wine. More great reds, both for single grape and for blends, and their 2007 Sauvignon Blanc was very smooth.

• The Organized Crime Winery: the name and the artsy wine labels made me suspicious — were they selling cheap tat, or going for the trendy crowd? In reality though, it seemed to be neither; this is a tiny “boutique” winery focusing on good-quality wines, and they’re just marketing them with a bit of character. The Pinot Gris was flying out the door thanks to a recent review on CBC, while the 2007 Syrah was maybe the smoothest wine I tried all weekend.

• Daniel Lenko: if the name makes it sound like one guy pouring wine in his kitchen, that’s because it is. (Well, actually his dad is there too.) There’s no pretension here, but there are some amazing wines. My only regret was that the affordable ones I liked here — the White Cabernet and the 2006 Old Vines Merlot for instance — are only available by the case. And at $60, the 2005 Meritage was out of my price range, although it was superb. His Riesling made me forget that I don’t like Riesling.

• Hidden Bench: they don’t make enough wine here apparently, because they were running out of red when we arrived. The single type left, a Merlot-Cabernet Franc blend, was very good, but more impressive to me was the 2006 Estate Chardonnay. I’m generally apathetic about chardonnay, but this one really wowed me. Hidden Bench is one of the newest wineries to have opened in Niagara, but apparently already in great demand. They tossed their entire 2004 vintage because it didn’t meet their standards so you know their wines aren’t cheap, but most hover around $30, good for a special occasion.

I understand why the LCBO may not carry any of these wines — when you sell to all 12 million Ontarians, it’s hard to justify carrying a wine that would sell out if 0.05% of the population bought one bottle. But this just highlights the absurdity of the system. It should be possible for a small winery in Niagara to sell its products to people 100 km away in Toronto without making them pay a visit or buy a whole case at a time online. The simple explanation is that liquor laws in Canada stem from the Prohibition era, and while they’ve changed since then, they’ve never been overhauled completely. I find it bizarre that our governments perpetuate a system that is stacked against our own domestic producers — and by extension, consumers — not only within each province, but between provinces. As difficult as it is a for a small Ontario winery to have products on Ontario store shelves, they can all but forget about the idea of appearing on shelves anywhere else in Canada, and good luck finding any of the nice Okanagan wine if you live in Ontario. Tasting BC wine in Ontario is largely a matter of having your relatives bring it with them when they visit, but even that is technically illegal. It’s also illegal for wineries to ship their products to other provinces. And don’t even get me started about beer. I look forward to the day that the “free trade” mantra applies to Canada itself rather than just between Canada and other countries. And I look forward to the day when our government realizes it should promote our wine industry rather than hinder it.

“From the start, the commission should never have considered such a project,” she writes. Why? “Such angry reactions are to be expected when an event is deemed offensive by a large part of the population. Contrary to the reports that circulated throughout Canada, the opposition was not limited to militant sovereigntists. It came from large numbers of francophones, including many federalists.” Of course, she doesn’t cite any surveys to back up her claim, but it’s hardly the point. The point is revealed later in her column:

True, the British conquest had some good effects for French Canadians - those who stayed after the French elite sailed back home. They went from an authoritarian monarchy to a constitutional monarchy where some basic civil rights were beginning to be recognized. In 1763, they benefited from habeas corpus, while in France (even to this day), one can still be jailed for months without being charged. In 1774, French civil law was restored in Quebec. In 1791, French Canadians were living in a parliamentary democracy, while a bloody revolution was going on in France.

But these are rational arguments that ignore emotions. The Battle of the Plains of Abraham still has a strong emotional echo in Quebec. It is the day of la Conquête (the Conquest), which resonates through many interpretations of history and is at the root of Quebec nationalism.

Gagnon admits — as any student of history ought to — that French-Canadians actually did quite well under British rule after 1759. France cared little for its fledging colony. It was too far away, too small and too cold. The Plains of Abraham battle was certainly symbolic and it makes a nice painting for history but it was hardly a turning point in itself. The French conceded New France to focus their attention on more important battles. They traded the New France territory to the British so that the British would stop harassing them in the far more lucrative territory of Guadaloupe.

But all that doesn’t matter. The symbolism of the Plains of Abraham is far more important than historical accuracy for the purposes of Quebec nationalism. Of course we have a word for when people put overloaded significance into historical events to suit their political aims: it’s called propaganda. Every country does it, but Gagnon’s argument essentially boils down to the idea that Canadian federalists shouldn’t challenge Quebec propaganda because it might upset Quebec nationalists.

Never mind that the Plains of Abraham re-enactment is hardly a provocation. It didn’t imply a celebration of one side or the other, it merely implied recognition of a historical event that took place. Exploring the myths of history is an important exercise for any nation, be it the French-Canadian one or the not-mutually-exclusive pan-Canadian one. Not only should it be okay for Canadians to challenge Quebec’s nationalist myths, federalist Quebecers themselves ought to be the ones doing it. That they don’t, or won’t, is a sad commentary on the fragility of Quebec identity. Stripped of ideas like “la Conquête”, Quebec might be forced to confront the fact that not only did French-Canadians flourish under British rule, but they were in fact the very same people who agreed to confederate with British Loyalists (the English Canadians) a hundred years later. The history of New France is the history of Canada, and non-separatist French-Canadians ought to take more credit (or blame) for creating this country instead of thinking of reasons to disown it.

For a far better examination of the Plains silliness, I recommend Konrad Yakabuski’s column in Saturday’s Globe and Mail. Kudos to the Globe for showing both sides of the coin, even if it shows how ridiculous the face of one side is.

What confounds me even more is when immigrants to Canada become fervent sovereigntists. Amir Khadir, a new assembly member elected in the volatile riding of Mercier, is a respected doctor and community activist. He has also lived in Canada since he was ten, so perhaps it’s naïve or even xenophobic to think of him as an “immigrant” — he’s been in Canada longer than I’ve been alive. Still, I can’t help but find the notion ridiculous when the very existence of the Quebec sovereignty movement depends on ethnic nationalism and xenophobia. Dr. Khadir is a Montreal sovereigntist — an intellectual — but the movement depends in large part on the masses of Quebec nationalists that live in the surrounding and rural areas of Quebec, where the population is nearly homogoneously ethnic French-Canadian. Of course, it’s not politically correct to use that term anymore, but since Quebec nationalists insist “Québécois” means all Quebeckers, not just the white, French-speaking ones, I’m not sure what other term to use to describe people who trace their roots to the original colony of New France.

I’m impressed that the upstart Québec Solidaire party has unseated an incumbent Parti Québécois member, especially when the PQ was not, and is still not, in power. On the other hand, the CBC says the party “has been trying to capture sovereignists disillusioned by the PQ’s recent lukewarm embrace of sovereignty.” If your agenda is really social change, why not start by using the vast powers already available to the Quebec government? Hint: provinces already have control over health, education and welfare. Why does a progressive agenda require an independent Quebec? I believe that the PQ’s credibility on social policy is thin, but why does the alternative need to be even more zealously sovereigntist? Am I the only one who has ever lived in Quebec and felt the sovereignty movement was a hindrance to social change, not a catalyst?

Some of my favourite round-ups, follow-ups and tidbits below:

• CNN et al invariably show the red-and-blue maps of the U.S. showing which states were won by Obama and which were won by McCain. Such maps ignore population size and really amplify the level of Republican support in the U.S.

  Compare the geographical map with a map adjusted for population size:

  

  These and other excellent maps are from Mark Newman.

• Before the election, many people were talking about the Bradley effect, but Obama proved those rules no longer apply. He did better in almost every swing state than the polls suggested.

• Unfortunately, it looks like Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, will be approved in California.

• If you’ve ever wondered how major news organizations prepare for any eventuality, check out this graphic from CNN’s web site.

• The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg makes the case for BHO. We can embrace Barack Obama’s middle name now that the American electorate has decided that, um, no really, he’s not a terrorist.