@noel.semple7 A tour of urgent central Etobicoke infrastructure needs… the billions being wasted on Doug Ford’s Mistakes by the Lake could do a lot more good spread across the province!
♬ original sound – Noel Semple
Transcript:
They say that everyone who makes it to the top eventually forgets where they came from, and forgets the people who helped them rise.
It’s just a question of when.
And this neighbourhood, Central Etobicoke, is where Premier Doug Ford of Ontario came from. It’s middle class suburbs like this across the province that gave him his electoral majorities.
But people around here are starting to wonder whether the Premier has, in fact, forgotten the people who put him where he is as we watch this extremely expensive obsession of the Premier’s with downtown Toronto waterfront mega-projects.
So $2.2 billion of public money is being spent on the Ontario Place luxury spa and the shrunken Science Centre. And here I’m standing at the Wedgewood Park community pool, which as you can see has no water in it and is completely closed.
It will be closed until late June, even though there’s plenty of days like today, which are in the high 20s in June where lots of kids would like to be using this pool and adults too.
And of course, if you’re trying to sign your kids up for swimming lessons at any time, good luck because they’re generally full. Now, of course, the pool is a municipal project, but the city does not have the money to open these things more. And the province has no problem interfering in municipal jurisdiction when it wants to change something.
So why can’t some small portion, some tiny portion of that 2.2 billion go instead to open our neighbourhood pools?
Here’s another example of neglect that I find pretty depressing. So this is the old Etobicoke school board building. It’s this cool architecture they call this brutalist architecture.
This used to be the school board headquarters for Etobicoke, back when Etobicoke was its own city. Then, of course, Etobicoke was amalgamated into Toronto by a conservative government, and we lost our local school board.
And then most recently another conservative government has taken over the Toronto District School Board and this building has just been allowed to go completely to seed.
You can see the stairs have fallen apart so badly that they’ve had to be blocked off so no one can use them because they are a serious hazard, and the landscaping is not being kept up, things are overgrown and you know there’s a big pothole over here as well.
These should be our civic jewels. Good things should be happening here. The government should be taking care of them instead of just taking them over and then letting them fall apart, so they’re eye-sores and do no good to anyone.
This whole district is called Etobicoke Civic Centre and it was a City of Toronto building for a long time. The City of Toronto is now moving its staff out of here, and a lot of people are asking whether anything great might be done with this site once the city moves out. Perhaps top of the list would be a new healthcare facility.
There are over 200 hospital sites across Ontario. We have zero hospitals or hospital sites in Central Etobicoke. There’s 75 community health centres across Ontario. Again, we have zero community health centres in central Etobicoke. And we have a a high population of retired people; we have a lot of people with high health needs, and yet we are simply not getting investments in health infrastructure in Central Etobicoke.
And I think I know why: it’s because the people who represent us even though they are very powerful- Premier Ford living in Central Etobicoke, the Minister of Infrastructure representing Central Etobicoke — simply take this area for granted and don’t think they need to prioritize investments here when they could be spending that money on the waterfront instead.
Alright, one more example for you. So this is the Etobicoke Olympium and it’s terrific. This is a world class swimming facility and a gym and a rec centre. The problem is that this was built in 1976, and it’s the last significant recreation centre that was built in a Etobicoke Centre, 50 years ago.
Just last year there was the possibility of having a recreation centre built in the riding at Eglinton near Royal York but the MPP and the Premier and our Councillor teamed up to get It cancelled.
They said they didn’t like the location, but there’s been no talk whatsoever of having that built in another location (in the riding). And this (Etobicoke Olympium) was built when Etobicoke was much smaller than it is today.
And you see in Mississauga and in other parts of Toronto and the suburbs, beautiful new recreation centres opening up so kids can learn to swim and adults can use the gym and all this stuff.
And we are just not getting that in central Etobicoke. It’s like we’ve been forgotten or the people who are supposed to be speaking for us and fighting for us are just taking us for granted.
So we’re stuck in the past.
Maybe when you get to be as powerful as Doug Ford is right now, nothing smaller than a huge mega-project by the lake — like a 2.2 billion dollar spa or a jet runway or a convention centre on Lake Ontario — maybe nothing smaller than that is big enough to seem important to you.
But for the people who actually live in the communities of Ontario, it’s the little things that make a difference. And until we can get our pools open on hot days and have health care facilities where we need them and, you know, opportunities for our kids to learn to swim, let’s put the priority where it belongs and tell these people who are supposed to be representing us that they need to do better.