Random Access

The headline in The Toronto Star today says, "Region opts to keep windfall from 'Toronto tax.'
Windfall? WINDFALL?
Wait just a minute here.
If Mike Harris tells us we, as Mississauga residents, should donate $40 million a year from our City property taxes and give it to Toronto to pay for a higher level of social services than we can afford in our own municipality, and then Dalton McGuinty has second thoughts and refunds our money, is that a windfall?
Absolutely not. It's our tax money, which people who were elected in the City of Toronto had no business spending in the first place.
It's a classic case of taxation without representation. If Toronto councillors spent the money frivolously, how would we know in the first place and what could we do about it in the second place?
Guess we could call all the friends we have in Toronto and ask them to vote against their incumbents.
The slow phasing-out of the pooling money paid by the four surrounding regions to Toronto is not found money — it rightfully belongs to Peel taxpayers.
Regional councillors decided to keep the money themselves yesterday and use it for human services spending, including providing some of the dental programs for the needy which we had been paying for in Toronto but weren't available here. The pooling rebate is reducing the tax hit from Peel this year by 1.3 per cent to 4.3 per cent.
• • •
Have heard stories for years about the herd of white-tailed deer that roam around the University of Toronto Mississauga campus (we're apparently not allowed to call it UTM anymore. That's gone the way of Erindale College.)
Students often see deer grazing near the Five-Minute Walk between the South and North buildings. They are usually greeted only by a doleful glance from the animals as acknowledgement of their presence.
Yesterday, I made up for lost time. On Principal's Rd, there was a furtive figure on the road as I passed in the car. Sure enough, creeping up the road and then parking, there were not one or two or three but at least seven or eight (It was hard to count because they kept moving around in the woods) deer. They were ensconced in the backyard of the artist's cottage, which was once the gardener's house for Lislehurst, the beautiful heritage property where the principal lives.
While some of the deer, several of which were obviously in their first or second years, browsed under the snow cover, some helped themselves to seed that had been knocked down from the bird feeder.
Fast-forward to today when Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) General Manager Rae Horst is talking about the fact that climate change has arrived in Peel in a big way. Witness the gypsy moth infestation and frequent incidence of opossum, among many other things.
"We're at a dangerous time," says Horst. "We know things are going to get worse."
One of the key ways to help species survive is to develop natural corridors that allow urban animals to move around, especially if hotter weather forces them to move north to survive.
The private lands south of Dundas St. where deer are common, UTM and Erindale Park and Riverwood and the Culham Trail lands are an example of the linked systems that create the corridors necessary. Hence the success of the white-tails there.
"We are protecting the odd pockets of woodlands here and there but we need have those connected to some kind of corridor system," says Horst, "or some of these species are not going to make it."
The CVC is counting on the public to help make it happen —especially to pitch in with the huge amounts of tree-planting that is going to be required to mitigate the effects of hotter climes. CVC plants about 70,000 trees a year with the assistance of the City of Mississauga and Evergreen, but some 500,000 are needed.
CVC decided to drop its education program in 2006 when the Province chopped its budgets. Fortunately, Peel Region picked up the ball and came through with $5 million to start a climate change campaign.
But the authority is reviving its public education programs now. Climate change is one issue where the public seems to be ahead of the politicians. Make no mistake about it: Money spent on climate change isn't window dressing — it's about survival of the Northern Leopard Frog and the Jefferson salamander and, ultimately, about another species at the top of the food chain which is sometimes a slow learner.