A few weeks ago, while writing another column, I had cause to go listen to former U.S. president John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s speech at Rice University in Texas. On September 12, 1962, the president committed America’s then-fledgling space program to the audacious goal of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the Earth, by the end of that decade.
The speech is probably best known for this bold declaration: “We choose to go to the moon!” But I’ve been thinking about something else he said during that speech, something that also echoes through history, though perhaps not quite so loudly. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Do we even try to do hard things today?
Kennedy’s words were still ringing in my ears when I appeared on a talk-radio panel last week. The panel was moderated by former Toronto mayor John Tory and also included Toronto councillor John Burnside. One of the topics we were discussing: possible changes to how Toronto operates and manages High Park, which saw most vehicles removed from it last year. There have been some legitimate complaints about lack of access to the park in the car-free era. One problem is that the park is used by athletic teams, and, without vehicle access, it can be a challenge to carry in all the equipment necessary for games. Burnside noted that there had been a proposal to build a storage shed for the equipment but lamented that, as is the case with so many of Toronto’s “grandiose plans,” the shed was running behind.
That jumped out at me. I like Burnside and didn’t want to dunk on him, so I noted as gently as possible that perhaps one of the problems we have is that building a storage shed on city-owned property is now considered “grandiose.” The councillor and the former mayor laughed good-humouredly but both agreed — and I do not contest this — that in government, even things that should be easy often end up being, as Kennedy might have said, hard. Tory noted that, during his time in government, he saw government accomplish great things, and quickly, when crisis demanded it.
Fair enough. But I had a sincere question that hadn’t been addressed. I asked the councillor what would count as simple or easy. What would be something so straight-forward that Toronto could accomplish it? Building a storage shed on city-owned property seems to be something that falls into the “too hard” category when it comes to getting it done in a reasonable timeframe. So what wouldn’t be?
He didn’t have an answer but said he’d get back to me.
None of the above is intended as a dunk on the councillor. I believe he works hard, and I’ve always found him pleasantly forthright and honest. I can’t say that about all his colleagues, past and present. Indeed, it’s because I do trust Burnside that this exchange has stuck with me. I believe him when he says that getting the shed built in a timely way is beyond Toronto’s ability. Which is why I just want to know … okay, so, like, what can we do? And to Tory’s point, what can we do when it’s not an emergency?
You might have read over the long weekend a fascinating story in the Toronto Star about how the city dropped the ball on the vacant-home tax. My last column here noted, with as much forced good cheer as I could muster, that there are some preliminary positive signs on some of the large-scale transit projects we are working on, but also that we face major challenges with many of them. Our health-care system is in a state of permanent crisis. Our basic infrastructure is a mess. Basic public-safety and law-and-order issues are a matter of quiet, personal conversations to an extent I’ve never seen before in my life. And then, of course, we’ve got housing and cost-of-living challenges galore.
Crime, transportation, health care, infrastructure, and construction — these things all seem likely to fall under the “hard” category, no? And that’s the category of things that we’re struggling with, right?
The fancier term we use to describe our ability to get things done — even hard things — is “state capacity.” I like that term. It’s good. It sounds formal and smart. But I wonder whether we’re not closer to the mark, and frankly better off, if we keep it more basically confined to the concepts of easy and hard. We clearly are struggling to do hard things in Canada, Ontario, and Toronto, which are the three jurisdictions I worry about. I’m not convinced we’re doing a great job on the easy things, either.
I reject the simple explanations for this, too. These problems seem to persist no matter which people are in power at any given moment. I’m all for throwing the bums out on general principles, but “the other guy was in power” doesn’t seem to be an explanation that will stand up to scrutiny. Nor do I buy that this is simply a matter of resources, that we’ve starved our systems via austerity. No doubt we do need to spend more money on a lot of things, but even things we’re funding relatively well seem to be struggling.
The problem is deeper, and I don’t honestly know what it is. And I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t envy those like Burnside. They get the blame and, as far as I can tell, are as befuddled by this as I am. But I do offer this warning: The public is noticing that we can’t do hard things. It’s noticing that we can’t do easy things, come to think of it. That is a corrosive thing in a democracy. We should fix it, while we can.
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