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Leslieville / Studio District

Half the people that I know how work in the film industry would make more money working at WalMart. Once you add in the subsides that the film industry needs I am not so sure it would be a net benefit. Lastly, considering Toronto has less jobs now than it did twenty years ago, should it really be discouraging any type. Yes, good jobs trump McJobs, but McJobs trump no jobs.
 
Cross-claims on jobs -- you're all FoS

TOinTO said:
Quite a claim. The number of low end service jobs downtown is declining, while the number of high paying service jobs is increasing. Do you have any evidence to back it up? Is there less retail downtown than there used to be?

The 'jobs for the poor' argument is just a put-on by the SmartCentres PR department. It holds no water. It's sad how many people are thoughtless enough to buy it.

There is no evidence that there will be a net increase in retail jobs as a result of this development. There is no evidence that there will be a net increase in retail activity in the east end of Toronto, and certainly not the city, as a result of this.

For example, would anyone be surprised if Home Depot moved out of Gerrard SQ and into this new development? I would be surprise if they didn't.

No society ever made itself richer selling itself foreign made goods. You need to create wealth. Retail is not a net creator of wealth for this country. The film industry is.
Click to expand...

Glen is just as bad with his 'Toronto has less jobs than 20 years ago' balderdash (Toronto has way more people and a way lower unemployment rate today than it had in the early '90s recession. Ergo, it must have more jobs.)

But almost every sentence in this rant is ridiculous.

Item: Canada's banking and financial services industry has grown in leaps and bounds and has been centered on Toronto since the PQ's great '80s adventures. These are the quintessential 'high-paying service jobs.'

Item: You might not like the new retail jobs that would be created by a new mall, but to say that there will be 'no net new jobs' is patently ridiculous. The guys at Mercury Espresso Bar haven't gone out of biz (apparently, business is so bad they're opening two more locations) despite Starbucks moving in across the street.

Item: 56% of Canada's GDP is consumers consuming. They do that by buying stuff. The fact that it's not manufacturing doesn't mean that every other piece of the supply chain isn't value-added and part of a growing economy.

Item: The Gerrard Square managers would probably kill to have Home Depot move out, since that sweetheart deal could be replaced with something more lucrative now that they've remade that mall. But that HD is always packed -- I'm sure they're printing money. They might add another location in the Foundry District if they thought it wouldn't cannibalize sales, but I'll bet you'll see a RONA instead. I'm sure they're drooling over the prospect.

And, FINALLY: Portugal, Spain, Holland, and England. Before them, Venice. Before them, China. Six great empires built on selling themselves foreign goods -- off the top of my head!

End of rant. Phew... I feel better ;)
 
Why not have both? There's no "either or scenario" imho. Film jobs and retail jobs. Both can survive. The film business in Toronto reminds me of the suburbs: single use only! I know people in the film business who claim "everyone" in Toronto is somehow tied to the film business! Really? How about those thousands of people assembling products in the inner'burbs? Or assembling sandwiches?

So the film industry, like the auto industry union, is clueless of everyone else! Neither should be taken for granted, neither will probably exist in 2208, so will a few "temporary" big boxes kill them?

Nyet!
 
I guess actually reading what I wrote would have ruined the fun of your rant.

"There is no evidence that there will be a net increase in retail jobs.."

Does not equal

"There will be no net increase in retail jobs..."

I'm in no position to make the latter claim. Likewise, Smart Centres is in no position to make the claim of creating thousands of jobs.

I'm not saying that retail is a zero sum game, as you suggest with your Starbucks example. But clearly, flooding your city with malls is not a credible job creation policy. At some level, without increased local wealth from other sources, you simply have retail sites competing for the sames dollars. I don't think there has been any serious study of the impact that this mall will have on retail, or retail employment, in Leslieville.

As for high-paying service jobs in Toronto - I didn't deny that they have increased in number, but I questioned whether they have increased at the expense of low paying service jobs. There has not been a decrease in the amount of retail downtown in the last decade plus. There has certainly been an increase of retail in the Leslieville area.

Do we need such an additional influx of retail? Is it really a good economic development move to allow retail monoculture between Lakeshore and Eastern from the Don to Leslie? Certainly it isn't. Unfortunately the decision is now up to a tribunal that will probably focus on whether the City adhered to proper process.

And FINALLY: empires made themselves rich by taking resources (either outright theft or at reduced cost through a restricted trade), making stuff with them, and then selling that stuff, in part, back to the people they took the resources from (again in a monopoly arrangement). Nobody who knows any Canadian history should get that setup wrong.

Doesn't really compare to operating retail outlets for multinational chains that buy on an open market, does it? Managing a WalMart is not quite the same as running the British East India Company.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Glen is just as bad with his 'Toronto has less jobs than 20 years ago' balderdash (Toronto has way more people and a way lower unemployment rate today than it had in the early '90s recession. Ergo, it must have more jobs.)
Click to expand...

2008 -20 = 1988

You might want to have a look at the numbers provided by the city itself.....

http://www.toronto.ca/finance/pdf/taxpolicy_pres_oct2005.pdf

Page 9. Toronto still has less people working in it today than it did in 1989.

and from here.......

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2006/agendas/committees/edp/edp060504/it010.pdf

In fact, Toronto is not keeping pace with job growth as compared to the 905. Figure 1 below shows the change in employment levels compared to the base year of 1989, on an annual basis. Toronto has yet to return to the 1989 employment level while the 905 has seen significant new employment growth
Click to expand...

You might also want to compare today's unemployment rate to that of 1989's 3.9%.

Toronto's population was 2.13 million in 1998. It is now 2.48 million. Averaging less than 1% a year. Consider also that between 2001 and 2006 Toronto's population increased by an anemic .9%

Welcome to Boom Town.
 
^man, you'd love miketoronto if he were still around.

The comparisons to 1989 is pretty pointless considering how business is conducted has dramatically changed and specifically, 1989 being the peak of an uncontrolled frenzy of big bucks spending until the whammies hit us for most of the early ninties.

1% a year population growth is also pretty gosh darn good for our population base and lack of virgin land.
 
You parsed that pretty closely, mate!

TOinTO said:
I guess actually reading what I wrote would have ruined the fun of your rant.

"There is no evidence that there will be a net increase in retail jobs.."

Does not equal

"There will be no net increase in retail jobs..."

I'm in no position to make the latter claim. Likewise, Smart Centres is in no position to make the claim of creating thousands of jobs.
Click to expand...

I read every word. But, it is true, I didn't parse them. If you didn't mean to imply the latter when you wrote the former, I'll eat my HBC beaverskin top hat. You implied that, in a small area like Leslieville, a huge number of jobs can be created and there will be no net new increase. That implies job losses.

Smart Centres is probably exaggerating, but there is NOBODY WORKING on those lands right now (particularly the condemned foundry.) There WILL BE PEOPLE WORKING THERE if they build a mall. The jobs might be crap, but they're jobs, and there will be lots of them.

Spaniards stealing gold and the sugar/rum/slave triangle weren't exactly history's most enlightened moments, but those exploration/empire years also had the spice trade and the cod fisheries. Trade is not a zero sum game, and trade implies selling stuff to consumers at some point. Which is retail.

Glen -- my apologies.

You & I were talking different times & terms. I was thinking housing meltdown and early '90s recession, you were thinking the bubble just before that. Also, I don't really care if you live in Riverdale and commute to Oakville or live in Oakville and commute to Riverdale, so I was speaking about the overall Toronto economy, which to me means GTA.

That having been said, I'll bet that if you updated your graph on p.9 to 2008, it would show the City of Toronto as a cumulative gainer, if tiny, and I'll bet if you update for 2009/10 when the Telus/RBC Dexia/Bay Adelaide kick in, the numbers just get stronger & stronger.
 
Page 9. Toronto still has less people working in it today than it did in 1989.
Click to expand...

Yup. I believe there are more people working in the downtown core, but there has been a big exodus of office and manufacturing jobs from the inner burbs to the 905.

Chased out by high taxes. And a lot of that land has been replaced with big box retail.

To which, I guess, the Smart Centres proponents say, "More of the same!"

Or, we could bring our commercial/industrial taxes more in line with the 905 (already happening) and set aside land in appropriate locations for future commercial/industrial development.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Glen -- my apologies.

You & I were talking different times & terms. I was thinking housing meltdown and early '90s recession, you were thinking the bubble just before that. Also, I don't really care if you live in Riverdale and commute to Oakville or live in Oakville and commute to Riverdale, so I was speaking about the overall Toronto economy, which to me means GTA.
Click to expand...

Looking at the stats from the early nineties is scary. The fact that job creation started anew in 1993 in the 905 while losses continued in the 416 is something that should not have happened. While I would not expect the the rates of losses and gains to be the same, they should not be moving in opposite directions.

The tax climate issue was certainly to blame for that opposite pattern. Toronto might be running the risk of having history repeat itself. With so many eggs in the F.I.R.E. basket, troubles there would spell disaster for the city. That is why I dislike targeted government programs. History shows "Governments are usually not good at picking winners — but losers tend to be very good at picking governments."


That having been said, I'll bet that if you updated your graph on p.9 to 2008, it would show the City of Toronto as a cumulative gainer, if tiny, and I'll bet if you update for 2009/10 when the Telus/RBC Dexia/Bay Adelaide kick in, the numbers just get stronger & stronger.
Click to expand...

Ya, I think that we are just slightly over or under that high peak right now. If one takes into account the population growth within the 416 during that time though, the percentages still suffers.

Cheers
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
And, FINALLY: Portugal, Spain, Holland, and England. Before them, Venice. Before them, China. Six great empires built on selling themselves foreign goods -- off the top of my head!
Click to expand...
Speaking for the British Empire, it did not build the empire on selling themselves foreign goods. Indeed, in the British Empire there were strict controls over the import of products in Britain from other parts of the Empire, especially the, ahem... black and brown bits. The idea was for the distant parts of the Empire to send raw materials back to Britain for manufacturing, processing or repackaging into the goods Britons would themselves buy, such as cotton clothing from India, beaver and other pelts from North America, tea from India, etc. So, perhaps we could say that the British Empire was built upon selling themselves domestically produced products made from imported ingredients or materials, though since the colonies were as British as Britain was itself, can we really call these "foreign goods"?
 
That's not really true. Certainly by the Victorian era, Britain was the world's great proponent of free trade. It eliminated all of its tariff barriers, and with them the preferential access to the British market for the colonies. That was a huge problem for places like Canada, which were forced to develop domestic markets (or in our case, the American market). As for manufactured goods, Britain was essentially in a class by itself. In the early 19th century, Britain's manufacturing capacity outstripped virtually the entire world combined. Later, however, countries like the United States and Germany industrialized to such an extent that they became larger than the UK. That was the beginning of Britain's relative decline. Britain didn't have significant barriers to imports from foreign countries. It was just that until the late 19th century, nobody could successfully compete with British manufacturers.
 
The point remains that the British Empire was not built upon selling itself foreign goods, first of all because they made all the goods they needed,m and second of all, any goods from the colonies can not be considered foreign.
 
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