Can smart panels be smart? (Letter to the Editor).

The smart growth panels being set up across Ontario have the potential to become significant forces in creating more livable cities and actually defying gravity if gravity is the way we do things now. The idea that the economic development of any town should be based on someone else's garbage simply perpetuates the cargo cult so prevalent in many parts of rural Canada. When drive-thru coffee shops form the core of any sustainable community's plan for the future, the future is bleak.

Middle-class welfare programs were not conjured up in some star-chamber in Toronto or Ottawa. They reflect what the forces of economic and political power in the community have asked for consistently over the years. Just help us build this arena, industrial park, by-pass or [your favourite project here] and everything will be great -- until the next one.

Cities are pushing hard for new sources of revenues -- note that they never say taxes -- to once again, make everything right in urban Canada. But they haven't yet looked over the silo walls that artificially divide them from their neighbours. Yes, the staggering amounts being spent to bring economic sustainability are massive. The other alternative is to spend new staggering amounts to do something different.

Smart growth is a slogan looking for policies unless someone, somewhere starts to stop this paternalistic, 'see what we're doing for you' spiral that has augured so many economies into the ground. The logical conclusion of waiting for saviours is to close towns and rely on the magic of the marketplace to make everything right.

When most people speak about public/private partnerships they are referring to contracting out and outright sales of the delivery of public goods to the private sector. Once we get over the facades that tells us that profit making is the ultimate public good or that profit is bad; perhaps some innovative public policy can be achieved.

Lamenting that the Ontario government has cut back in your community while nodding in agreement when local services are cut to bolster some politician's boast of being hard on taxes is contradictory.

And yes, Chris Hodgeson is a smart cookie, now if he would just come out of the smoke-filled rooms and closed-door smart growth 'panel' meetings; we could see how smart his ideas are.

Steven Megannety is a writer living in Toronto, responding to Michael Atkins' Smart Growth column in the June issue.