Archives: Issues

Community Programs offered by Schools, Parks and our Community Centres can really enhance the lives of our kids as well as ourselves. Do you think what is offered can be improved? 

Please email me your thoughts at myopinion@paulcookson.ca 

A Common Sense Affordable Housing Plan by Paul Cookson

What this city needs is a better way of building and managing City Housing! Once the following actions are complete the city should sell off all the buildings they own and pay people who qualify for assistance; a housing allowance based on their situation so they can live where they want. Too many City housing residents complain about security, poor maintenance and an overall poor quality of life in City Housing.

A) Let’s legalize and incentivize developers to build rooming houses to increase housing supply so the City can have a say in where they are. We can then oversee them with bylaw officers and set firm rules landlords will follow. This will also create jobs and More rooms available will bring rents down.

B) Let’s give incentives to homeowners to build safe legal and fire department approved basement apartments. This will also create jobs and more apartments available will bring rents down.

C) 25housing.ca is a site I created to encourage residents to offers rooms in their home in return for doing chores. For example; A homeowner will get the benefit of having someone to cut the grass and other odd chores and the occupant will have no rent to pay. This is a Win – Win ! Again, More rooms available will bring rents down.

D) Rent Control – A loophole needs to be closed that when a landlords does minor renovations to an apartment they can not increase the rent to unmanageable levels.

E) The City should mandate that all developers building residential condominiums and houses will allocate a percentage of the development for affordable housing. The developers will manage the units which will be overseen by bylaw enforcement. More apartments available will bring rents down.

F) The City owns properties in various areas of the City that they could be leased to developers at highly attractive rates and in return they could build affordable housing and manage them. More apartments available will bring rents down.

G) The City needs to do a better job of re-training, mentoring and assisting people to become self supporting. The idea of assistance isn’t supposed to be a life long thing.

If you’d like to talk about this issue further or any other issue please call Paul at 416-271-7994 or email myopinion@paulcookson.ca

Other communities have the Taste of the Danforth, Pickering Ribfest, Port Credit Buskers Festival, Markham Fair and others. It’s time that our community has a yearly event that we can all look forword to attending. It could include live music, games, food trucks, clowns, face painting, celebrity signings, games, an air show and much, much more.

A possible name for it is RougeFest.ca

Please call me at (416) 271-7994 if you’d be interested in helping sponsor and or organizing this event.

In 1974, the Toronto Zoo opened its doors to the public. As my kids grew up, we would visit the zoo once a year at the most. Adding better TTC service, more food options, bike rentals and other new things would make the Toronto Zoo more attractive, profitable and exciting for anyone who visits.

Paul is ‘pro business’ and supports attracting more business and tourism to the City, but we also need to keep an eye on the impact to the environment.  Keeping our City clean and beautiful with our green space and parks protected, can become a difficult balancing act.  Please share your ideas on how we can grow business while maintaining the purity of our air and water. 

I took the subway from Yonge Street to Union Station today. Minutes into my trip a strange man came up behind me uncomfortably close, causing me to turn around and look.  For some unknown reason he felt the need to ‘get in my face’, but then quickly backed off without saying a word.  His actions were so disturbing, that I felt the need to reach for my mobile phone when I remembered there was no cellular service or Wi-Fi in the subway. 

 I wondered how many other riders have ever felt unsafe while in the subway and been unable to use their phones. It also occurred to me that many people might choose to drive instead of taking the subway for this reason, which might be adding to the terrible congestion on our roads in the City.  Could the City or Toronto work with major carriers such as Rogers and Bell to install free WiFi on subway trains in return for ads from either company on the TTC?  Maybe it’s time to address the issue of safety on our subways because when people feel connected it’s a move towards peace of mind for everyone.  

Toronto is one of the worst cities to drive a car in compared to all other cities in North America. Toronto City Council has to get serious about fixing this and make it a top priority. We can’t get this done without getting employers on board? I’d make getting this problem fixed a priority.

Cities often raise taxes in order to pay for improved services, pay off debt, or invest in infrastructure upgrades. Scotiabank just paid 800 million dollars over 20 years to have the Air Canada Centre named after them, which opens up some food for thought about stretching this idea to new lengths.

Would the City of Toronto be able to offer some corporate sponsorship models along the same lines?  Perhaps some important City owned places could be ‘renamed’ for a price, to bring in much needed revenue instead of bleeding constituents for more taxes.  

Maybe the City should look at charging for the naming rights to rename Union Station; Billy Bishop Airport; Centre Island; and the Metro Zoo?  Could we also create a ‘Toronto Deficit Lottery’ where any revenues earned from this, go directly to pay off the deficit? 

Focussing on creative solutions for some of these age-old tax burdens, might just be the new approach we need to improve things for everyone. 

I’m pro business and I’d like to look at ways to attract more business and tourism to Toronto. This is a world class city in so many ways and being a magnet for business will help keep it that way.

Paul has donated his time and effort to a charity in Toronto that feeds and clothes Toronto’s marginalized. That experience has taught him that we have a long way to go to end homelessness in this City. Paul doesn’t want the tourists in our City, walking by our homeless sleeping in the streets, to have cause to question our status as a world-class City.  Many of Toronto’s homeless currently do not take advantage of the shelters that are offered to them because of bed bug infestations, and personal safety concerns. Paul believes that the City can use its current resources to improve this situation.  By implementing some creative bylaws and improving public education, we can move towards ending homelessness in this city.