The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) may have set the record for quickest dismissal of a case Wednesday, when it threw Stephen Wahl's objections to the new City ward boundaries out the window about 45 seconds after the hearing ended.
"I got slaughtered, humiliated and insulted,"
the city centre resident said yesterday, after taking some time to lick the wounds to his psyche he suffered following the curt dismissal of his case.
Wahl, a self-appointed City Hall watchdog, may have made a strategic error (Duh!) in accusing the City of gerrymandering in his opening remarks. In his closing arguments, Wahl who also made the mistake of representing himself, tried to withdraw the gerrymandering accusation, having seen the withering reaction it received from OMB Vice-Chair Susan Campbell. But she wouldn't allow it.It's rare indeed for the OMB to issue a verbal decision at the end of a one-day hearing and it's even rarer when the member is so pointed in her dismissal.
Campbell said the allegations of gerrymandering gave the appearance that the appeal was frivolous and vexatious. Ouch!Though bloodied, Wahl is unbowed. His argument was always basic arithmetic. He wonders why the smaller, older wards are being kept intact, despite their smaller populations, and the hugely overpopulated wards 6 and 9 - small cities of 100,000 which should have been addressed years ago as the OMB said in a previous decision - are essentially being divided in two to create wards 10 and 11. It's an argument you can make but you have to have more than polemics to support it.
City lawyer Michal Minkowski said four witnesses, including Brad Butt who chaired a citizen task force on representation, "made it clear to the Board that this was an objective exercise." The instant dismissal "speaks volumes about the City's case."
Wahl believes he's learned the valuable lesson that, "truth does not matter, just proof."
City councillors will be pained to hear Wahl say that in the same circumstances, he'd do the same thing again.
"I learned something and I'll be better prepared next time. But I'm not going to stop doing stuff for the City," said Wahl who has a ton of certificates recognizing his past volunteer efforts.
You've got to admire his guts, if not his acumen.
"I'll keep going because basically I'm a stubborn little prick," Wahl said proudly.
Which is how he ended up all by his lonesome before the OMB in the first place.
Comments (4)
Mississauga’s lawyer boasts that the OMB's
instant ruling ‘speak volumes for the city’s case’on fair ward redistribution.
Don’t believe it.
The ruling broadcasts that the OMB has determined that Bill 186 on Regional Government in Peel and its fundamental claim of ‘representation by population’, was frivolous and vexatious, since Mississauga’s proposed ward re-distribution is clearly not based upon equitable ‘representation by population.’
The city’s core claim was reduced, in Campbell’s 45 second decision,
to volumes of frivolous rhetoric.
The instant ruling by the vice-chair of the OMB, Susan Campbell, speaks volumes about the OMB goliath (Ontario Municipal Board) in the worst way. She and her colleagues are appointed not elected. Her instant repudiation of the valid objections of a citizen has left the OMB wide open to what the Liberals have been salivating to do
for years…...stone it and speak volumes about democratic renewal in the process.
Posted by Janet Seabrook | September 24, 2005 9:46 AM
Posted on September 24, 2005 09:46
Mississauga’s lawyer boasts that the OMB's
instant ruling ‘speak volumes for the city’s case’on fair ward redistribution.
Don’t believe it.
The ruling broadcasts that the OMB has determined that Bill 186 on Regional Government in Peel and its fundamental claim of ‘representation by population’, was frivolous and vexatious, since Mississauga’s proposed ward re-distribution is clearly not based upon equitable ‘representation by population.’
The city’s core claim was reduced, in Campbell’s 45 second decision,
to volumes of frivolous rhetoric.
The instant ruling by the vice-chair of the OMB, Susan Campbell, speaks volumes about the OMB goliath (Ontario Municipal Board) in the worst way. She and her colleagues are appointed not elected. Her instant repudiation of the valid objections of a citizen has left the OMB wide open to what the Liberals have been salivating to do
for years…...stone it and speak volumes about democratic renewal in the process.
Posted by Janet Seabrook | September 24, 2005 9:43 AM
Posted on September 24, 2005 09:43
Gerrymandering is putting it lightly. How it is the Regional Council for Peel gave us the tab for an unelected Premier, Ernie Eves, that nobody wanted in the first place is a factor that will most influence the 2006 municipal election where ever the bounderies move. It's not rocket science that the $111,000 selling of Tilson's public office trumps the largest welfare pay out in Ontario history that the Peel's Fair Share steering committee had been given "Bums Rush" from Queen's Park transfer payments. Peel Region can't speak in our behalf provincially nor federally because of the credibility gap in caucus bi-elections.
Posted by wayne nagy | September 23, 2005 5:09 PM
Posted on September 23, 2005 17:09
Just a small change in the nuance of the quote about me being “a stubborn little prick.” You did not misquote me by any means, but rather, I did not qualify the statement at the time.
I am not proudly a stubborn little prick. Rather, I am quite capable of being one when such a stance is necessary, like when standing up to a bully. I always think twice about taking such action because I realize the probability that I will not come out of such encounters unscathed.
However, on such occasions, take a stance I must, for if no one ever stands up to bullying we will always be put down.
Posted by Stephen Wahl | September 16, 2005 3:05 PM
Posted on September 16, 2005 15:05