way to pretty much tell your entire base that voted for you to “fuck off, I like money from corporations more than you.”
Truly. Everyone I know who’s in some hybrid or remote arrangement voted for her. And these folks do not want to be 4-5 days in the office.
And asking them to fund better methods for getting downtown, right? Or subsidizing food costs so restaurants don’t cost a lot, right? Or not working employees to death so they don’t mind staying downtown every so often, right?
No, no, gotta make employees come downtown, that’ll solve it. What little I could read, the banks are asking her to lead the way. So now it’s up to Queens Park to improve the city, which the province will not fund, which will mean half measures and shitty work for the rest of us. Great job Olivia, try harder.
You bring up a good idea, we should start to normalize employers subsidizing commute and office lunches, if they are going to require people to be in the building of their choice when workers could have done just as well from home.
I am remembering an article months ago that stated Toronto businesses were having trouble employing people due to cost of living driving up wages.
So while I’d hope we could argue for the above, I don’t think the top earners want to give up anything. Or rather they (the top earners) realize this, know a return to work will kick off people quitting for company’s that are remote, and have told Chow that she has to deal with the consequences, aka finding a way to travel the city better than currently and food prices to calm down or for rent prices to drop.
Back To Office strategies are all centered around one thing, and one thing only : Commercial Real Estate values and their tie ins to the largest Mutual Funds which have been invested in by the largest corporations (and government) retirement plans. Folks are freaking the fuck out. It’s a very big deal.
Then maybe they shouldn’t have let costs of living get so out of control that people can’t live in Toronto so that the only source of spend is people who have to commute in?
We knew the housing market in Toronto (and Vancouver) was getting stupid in 1997, but doing something about it back then would have meant the rich might have had to make do with a little less. We had additional changes in 2001, 2008 and probably as recently as 2020, but still refused each time because, again, it was making rich people richer.
Also voluntary attrition, a.k.a. free layoffs.
You want people to go downtown more? What about making it easy and safe (from stabbing) to go downtown via public transport? Rather than trams that takes 1h+ when it should be taking 20min?
Your name has made me hungry. (Sorry this doesn’t contribute to to conversation at hand)
She is so out of touch. People do not want their lives to be centered around the office anymore.
I know converting Offices to apartments is very hard to do (Plumbing is the biggest issue, BTW) Why not convert some floors to farming like this: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=farms+in+high+rises You could even convert floors to 1 or 2 apartments and use the rest for Farming.
Single use High rises should not be built anymore.
Farms are HEAVY tho
The kinds of farms I saw were trays of lettuce on rolling shelves using daylight LEDs to replace natural sunlight. That’s way lighter than big desks and filling cabinets full of papers plus people.
Why don’t we just chain office workers to their desk for 40 hours every week? I’m sure that will make the downtown vibrant.
And then march everyone in a line, all attached to a tether like preschool kids, to lunch midday and shopping after the whistle blows.
As long as the mega rich are happy
Oh hell no.
In a lot of (European) cities, downtown is not dominated by the banks and offices. And foot traffic is not pushed underground into a privatized area full of overpriced chains, in favour of cars.
Toronto’s downtown is very unwelcoming, and I don’t see a reason for anyone to wanting to be there. Unless they like staring at the monotony of floors ten to twenty of First Canadian Place from their office window.
christ don’t get me started on the Path. “We only open our stores Monday thru Friday from 7am to 4pm and no ones shopping there! what? people use the path on the weekends or in the evening? no, no ha ha we won’t cater to them.”
I use the path on the weekends cause it’s easy quick access to places from where I live. I can’t begin to tell you just HOW many times tourists or other people have asked me “where’s the nearest tim hortons?” or “is there any food courts near here to eat?” and I always just end up pointing them to Union Station. There’s ONE food place in the Path that’s open on the weekends and surprise, surprise, whenever I walk by it, it’s busy.
I swear the motto for this city should be “we’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas”
Man, I’m glad I don’t work for one of the banks any more. This is just making it clear that I need to push for wfh to be in employment agreements going forward. Didn’t know I’d have to worry about both the company and the local government. 🫠
“Fuck her” for being exactly what she is? Anyone elected to any position has to be, by definition, amoral and selfish. Now she is being blatant about it, that’s all - she’s the incumbent and doesn’t have to worry about re-election (google “running for versus running as” and you’ll see the many advantages of running while being in office) so she displays her true colours. Fuck the dolts who thought she’d be different.
How well do you know Toronto and Ontario politics? Do you know who Olivia Chow, former NDP MP and wife of the late Jack Layton, is? Do you remember who our last mayors were (Milquetoast do-nothing Rogers board member, preceded by a brash, know-nothing crack smoking populist whose remaining brother is currently the provincial Premier)? Both of the previous mayors were chroncially shortchanging the City I love while pretending everything is fine.
If Chow is no different than these two, we’re truly hosed.
If Chow is no different than these two, we’re truly hosed.
It seems like she’s backpedaled a little from this on Twitter:
https://x.com/MayorOliviaChow/status/1800655717927354683
"While I share their desire for a downtown recovery, when it comes to returning to in-office work, it’s up to employers and workers to determine what’s best.
My goal as Mayor is to help create a city that is vibrant and dynamic. We do that by building more affordable housing close to where people work, and working to fix transit and congestion so that your commute isn’t a chore. So that you have the flexibility to return to the office if it makes sense for you."
That being said, I wasn’t expecting “9-5ers propping financial core real-estate investments is good for Toronto” from Olivia Chow of all people.
I got an email response from her office stating the same thing, she backpedaled on it a bit because what I read in the email I got wasn’t like what this article stated. I imagine she got quite a bit of flack on this one.
