Law Times

Law Times • January 24, 2011 would use P3 for transit B etween feasting on sushi, working, and catching up with Brave politicians Inside friends, I spent last week riding the SkyTrain in Vancouver. That's when it struck me: Could Premier Dalton McGuinty's train to electoral redemption be the University subway running under his office? This is a local issue that goes straight to Queen's Park. To- ronto Mayor Rob Ford is cur- rently in talks with the province to rejig light-rail lines under the Transit City plan into subway tunnels despite the enormous extra costs and critics who say there's not enough demand for subways in the suburbs. But here's the rub: If you build it, they will ride. At the same time, if you expand tran- sit, higher densities inevitably follow that generate revenues in the form of both residential and commercial taxes. The problem here is not that the TTC is a broken organiza- tion — that's a discussion for a different time — but that the funding model for both operat- ing and capital costs is a wreck for which much of the blame rests with the province. Some quick background: In its 2011 operating budget fore- cast, the TTC says a resurging economy will trigger an "all- time record high" of 483 million rides. That's a problem because each ride costs the system about $3 while it collects only $2 in revenue. The rest comes from Toronto's property tax base. The province plays a bigger role in capital costs. On this subject, I defer to my most knowledgeable source on all things TTC, Steve Munro, who has studied the sys- tem, its structure, and politics for more than 25 years. His web site, stevemunro.ca, drills into the mi- nutia, but the bottom line is that there are serious funding chal- lenges ahead around bringing sta- tions up to fire-ventilation stan- dards, rebuilding the bus fleet, and other long-deferred projects. "There is a $2.3-billion short- fall between the available fund- ing and the project requirements in the 10-year window from 2011-20," Munro notes. "This is because of a decline in provincial funding from about $240 mil- lion in 2011 and 2012 to about $115 million from 2015 onward and a further unexplained de- cline in 2019-20." At the same time, the feds have bailed and the city has become more focused on debt reduction, which is a bigger issue since tra- ditionally half of the capital costs have come from borrowed funds and the rest from Queen's Park and, to a lesser extent, Ottawa. "We have a very serious, structural problem with transit funding in Toronto," Munro says. "Toronto is decades be- hind in transit construction. We fiddle around the edges; we agonize over arcane questions of accounting and inter-agency Queen's Park By Ian Harvey responsibility; we keep every consulting engineer in south- ern Ontario employed studying lines that will never be built; but we don't commit to spend- ing money on infrastructure and service." No one is holding their breath for real change because the Liberal government is flat broke and can't make any more paper promises. That opens the door for a pub- lic-private partnership, although existing case studies on transit signal it would likely be a disaster unless we adopt a new approach. "Vancouver was screwed on the Canada line in that the ven- dor made changes after the con- tract was signed which led to a successful lawsuit," Munro says. The big issue is that no tran- sit system can cover its operating costs if fares remain affordable. That means indefinite subsidies. You can build transit with a P3 but then go broke running it without support. As any practitioner knows, the devil is in the details of the deal. Is it not possible for those smart minds in the private and public sectors to see each partner bring their A game to the table? Private- sector managers run a tighter ship, while public bodies borrow at lower costs and take the long- term view. Developers gamble that higher densities along rap- id-transit lines will bring future profits to offset today's invest- ments. Can we not see a deal in the making here? "I have heard rumours Bom- bardier is back at their proposal to build Eglinton as a [P3] using SkyTrain technology," says Munro, who's uncomfortable with the idea if it involves an untendered con- tract. "The problem with a [P3], aside from the question of wheth- er it would work, is how much we would be on the hook for the long term in lease and operating costs? A lot of this is accounting hocus- pocus where we make projects go 'off book' so they don't appear to be part of the deficit." What's needed is leadership with attitude. Ford may have it, but does McGuinty? Will Con- servative Leader Tim Hudak step out of his cone of silence on policy? "You have to write the contract carefully, and vendors tend not to like it," Munro notes. "London [England] wrote a tight contract, and the consortium walked away from it. Would anyone in Cana- da actually have the balls to make Bombardier take a loss?" LT Ian Harvey has been a journalist for 32 years writing about a diverse range of issues including legal and political affairs. His e-mail address is ianharvey@rogers.com. www.lawtimesnews.com COMMENT A lawyer's timely advice on research, and personal training in Canada," is set to recommend downwardly revising Can- ada's physical activity guidelines. The new guidelines will be the absolute min- imum, or entry-level standards, so to speak. Simply meeting them doesn't guarantee opti- mal health and fitness, just as the entry-level requirements for bar admission don't make someone a good lawyer. If adopted by the Public Health Agency of Can- ada, the change would slash the current recom- mended volume of physi- cal activity for adults to an aggregate of 150 minutes per week from 60 minutes per day. Imagine the implications of eating 66-per-cent less food, sleeping that much less or taking a two-thirds cut in bill- able hours. For kids, the target of 90 minutes per day will decrease to 60 minutes. The change is an attempt to make the guidelines more attainable given that only a small minority of people meet the current standards. The premise that less is more — in this case that less is more than what we're do- ing — is a defeatist resignation to mediocrity analogous to lowering academic standards with the expectation that more students will enrol and do better as a result. Changing the guidelines because they were wrong in the first place is one thing, but making them easi- er because most people weren't meeting them seems to muddle science, social policy, and marketing. While larger socio-economic issues about the way North American life is structured may be at play along with a seeming sense that we've become a blob of overworked, overfed, overstimulated, under-read sloths, what's clear is that we're not getting enough of what's good for us. Of course, what's good for us is fundamen- tally a matter of common sense. So at a time of the year when many are ex- periencing the anticipatory or fundamental breach of their new year's resolutions and un- derstandably focusing on professional matters such as targets for billable hours, it's worth- while to consider whether you're on track to meet the minimum standards, and if not, the reasons why and strategies for change. In some cases, the culprits may be an ad- mitted lack of interest in physical activity, a wilful blindness to the risks of a sedentary lifestyle or, bluntly, outright laziness, but it doesn't take an opinion poll to tell us that most Canadians know they need to be doing more. Having heard almost all of the excuses and having lived a few of them from time to time, the reason most people don't get enough exercise is, without a doubt, lack of time or lack of control over it. Time, for many lawyers, of course, is their meeting lowered fitness standards T BY GEOFFREY WHITE For Law Times his week, the Canadian Society for Ex- ercise Physiology, the "principal body for physical activity, health and fitness Speaker's Corner product and most valuable commodity. But working hard or burning the candle at both ends to tend to family commitments doesn't have to be an excuse to neglect exercise. Those are actually the main reasons, aside from the obvious health benefits, in favour of getting more exercise and making more sensible life- style choices. If a lack of time or control over it is the rea- son you aren't getting enough exercise, then consider the following simple and effective strategies: first, get up very early as the morn- ing is often the only free time you control; second, plan fitness into your weekly sched- ule; third, take fitness breaks in the afternoon or evening when facing a late night at the office; and finally, commit to a regularly scheduled team or group activity. Of course, what you do with your exercise time is a critically important but often over- looked aspect of fitness planning. In this re- gard, it's wrong to focus exclusively on quanti- ty when in many cases quality is what matters, especially for time-starved people. The key to effective exercise under time pressure is to focus on efficiency and functional fitness. Ef- ficiency means engaging in short but intense bouts of cardiovascular exercise, performing resistance training circuits, and eliminating as much dead time during the workout as possi- ble by performing alternative exercises in lieu of rest periods and chit-chat between sets. Functional fitness means performing multi-joint body-weight exercises that require a full range of motion and mimic real-life activities. You aren't going to bicep-curl, hip- abduct or ab-blast your way out of any sticky real-life situations that require strength, speed or physical resilience when accidents hap- pen. You'll need strong hips (from dead lifts), a strong back (from squats), pushing power (from presses), flexibility (from stretching), and speed (from sprints). For women, em- phasis should be on weight-bearing exercises to build bone density. Of course, exercise is one-third of the puzzle. To get the most out of limited exer- cise time, you also need sufficient rest periods and a nourishing and varied diet that involves more protein, whole grains, leafy greens, fruits, and nuts and less fat, caffeine, sugary drinks, and alcohol. Why would you care? Fitness promotes en- ergy, concentration, better moods, and higher productivity. That's why your employer is likely to care as well. Consider, if you don't already, taking your health and fitness as seriously as you take your practice, something that in- cludes taking the long-term view and many small steps today. The dividends will begin to pay almost immediately. Of course, whatever steps you take, do so only under advisement of a trained medical or fitness professional. Geoffrey White is an Ottawa-based lawyer and certified strength and conditioning specialist. His e-mail is geoffrey_white@hotmail.com. PAGE 7 LT

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