Matt Gurney: The country is falling apart. Let's talk beer and school-food programs

If we draw up a list of core, basic government responsibilities, that list looks depressingly similar to a list of things Canadian governments can't do.

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By: Matt Gurney

In my business, you're always looking for a "hook." The hook is the topical news item or even anecdote that serves to launch a column. I really wanted to write about how the basics in this country are falling apart while we announce ever-more new programs, but I was missing a hook. Until one landed in my inbox last Monday morning. It came via my colleague Joe Cristiano, who is the producer for Moore in the Morning, a radio show on Toronto’s NewsTalk 1010 CFRB, hosted by John Moore (hence the name). I was set to join the show for a chat about what was in the headlines and Joe sent out a list of stories.

Near the top of the list was a column by Marcus Gee, of the Globe and Mail, in which he lamented that the city of Toronto, as a municipal government, is incapable of getting the little things right, and that the city is suffering from the consequences of accumulating neglect. City gardens are overgrown, trash bins are overflowing, transit stations are dilapidated. The next story on the list was a news article from the Toronto Sun, which reported at shocking if amusing length the process that city officials went through before removing a piece of arguably offensive and no-longer-used signage from a city facility. Reporter Justin Holmes filed access-to-information requests, and what he got back was 450 pages of internal city emails, much of which focused on getting the sign down without anyone in the public ever finding out about it.

So, Line readers, you smartest people in the world, you. Do you think there is any possible link between a city that is falling apart due to the failure of the municipal government to successfully execute basic functions, and that very same municipal government generating 450 pages of correspondence as part of an intricate plan to discreetly take down a sign?