Blue Like You

Archive for November 18th, 2007

Not much time to devote to this one, but a very alert reader noticed this in Saturday’s Financial Post - Who’s getting, who’s granting.

It’s a list of top charitable givers and receivers, with the Toronto District School Board topping the list of Canada’s richest charities at an astounding $2.4 billion dollars! By contrast, the Salvation Army ranks only 184, and Heart and Stroke failed to even get into the top 200.

Unfortunately, what isn’t available online is the accompanying List of the top 10 most generous foundations, with the Ontario Trillium Foundation ranking first. I checked out their website and under “where we get our funding” is simply says that it is an “agency of the government of Ontario“.

I would certainly appreciate any more information on why the TDSB would be top receiver, and a government of Ontario agency top foundation donor.

Thanks in advance.

Good old Pogo. I used to love reading my youngest aunt’s stash of Walt Kelly’s comic books even though I was too young to really appreciate them at the time.

His wisdom still rings true today. In today’s Sun column (Tory would have been sitting prettier under MMP), Christina Blizzard points out a number of trends that threaten democracy - the biggest one of all being voter apathy. First she explores the very different results that MMP would have delivered to Ontario had it been in effect during the last election.

But the way that referendum was thrust on us in a similar manner that FB-funding was announced, left voters with little time to properly sort out the issues in a rational process.

Fear-mongering and paranoia overcame the debates. Personally, I ended up being against MMP and have no regrets on that score, but it was a difficult process trying to sort out the various ramifications of a very complex question. Little information was given to voters before the election. Similarly, John Tory’s fatal flaw was to spring FB-funding on us as a campaign platform that allowed the opposing side to run with the fear-ball all the way to the goal line.

Blizzard interviewed Peter MacLeod, of Queen’s University’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, and received this observation:

“The recent election wasn’t a contest of ideas, it was a monologue about one bad idea. Yet Ontarians had no way to tune into a different conversation,” he said.

“There was no space for a discussion about any number of issues — mainly because we’ve created a political culture where ideas and issues have themselves become dangerous,” he said.

“No wonder so many people simply change the channel or pull the plug.”