Is it fair to call a policymaker elitist, ageist or racist if he passes policies that fit that bill? Perhaps the NPL Internet policy was only one example of exclusionary policies. Let's consider two others examples.
While drafting the Newmarket Strategic Plan 2004, Council conducted a SWOT analysis in May of that year. SWOT is an acronym for "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats". All of this was submitted in a report to Council authored by the CAO. Members of the 2004 Council who are currently in office include Tony Van Bynen, Tom Vegh, Chris Emanuel and Dave Kerwin.
In this Newmarket Strategic Plan 2004 report, under the "Threats" category, are two items that are disturbing and shocking to our community sensibilities as quoted below:
1) Migration of "Old Town" people and aging baby boomers out of town as community character changes from town to city; lowering standards in housing services to appeal to the lowest common denominator with the idea that we must create affordability to fuel industry -- will cause middle class to flee while ghettoizing the town (T)
2) Guard against concentrated pockets of ethnic groups - becoming a melting pot, not a mosaic (T)
What points 1 and 2 demonstrate is that a core group of current Councillors received this document and approved of it (because it was posted to the Internet with Town of Newmarket letterhead) even though it contained outrageous elitist and racist sentiments. If some of these politicians subsequently draft policies that perpetuate exclusions of people based on age, financial level etc., have these politicians not earned our derision and scorn? As the saying goes, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a duck.
Further to this point, on Monday, Council heard evidence about and passed a motion regarding shark fin soup. As the author of the motion, Councillor Twinney made an impassioned plea on behalf of the hard luck sharks. It astounded me that she never made even polite mention of the cultural group that would be affected by a ban on shark fin soup in her speech. It seems that predatory sharks rank higher on Councillor Twinney's list of legislative concerns than certain cultural groups.
I was further disturbed to witness that only Councillor Di Muccio seemed to clue in that Monday was also this cultural group's national holiday. Even when she raised that point, the rest of her colleagues were nonplussed. Clearly this Council's white bread view point is out of touch with Canadian society.
People tut-tut when critics employ racist, ageist or elitist labels but is there another more appropriate set of words that fit in this case?
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