Beginning this week, Toronto’s newest quarterly magazine will be delivered to every household in the city — regardless of whether or not they want it. Well, technically it’s a newsletter not a magazine, and in a sense you’ve already paid for it. After all, the premiere edition of Our Toronto is created, published and distributed by the City of Toronto as the first in an $848,000-a-year initiative to keep residents abreast of what’s going on at City Hall.

Almost instantly, the release of the newsletter found the usual moth-like dissenters bumping their heads against the mayor’s light bulb of an idea. It’s probably worth debating whether a 24-page full-colour mail-out could be seen as a narcissistic waste of money in a time of economic crisis, or possibly some super-early campaign literature parading as city-sponsored propaganda. But before we get into that, let’s have a look at the fall issue of Our Toronto itself and see if there’s anything that will save it from the recycling bin.

According to Our Toronto’s welcome letter, “Our goal is to provide residents with the information they need to fully participate in City programs, access City services and participate in local government.” A noble aim, and convincingly executed, considering the thing is available in 12 different languages. Although die-hard Waste Watch and City Routes readers may be saddened to learn that their beloved publications have been rolled into this all-purpose booklet. (So much for the zine culture at Toronto council).

For the most part, the newsletter offers brief, un-provocative updates on many of the city’s current initiatives, like the Mayor’s Tower Renewal, the ambitious Transit City plan and the waterfront redevelopment, all of which seem intended to pique the reader’s interest in the greater detail available on the projects’ respective city websites.   

What’s missing in almost all cases (the waterfront in particular) is a sense that the public has any stake in the progress of such projects. There is no mention of the fact that community groups have been actively involved in shaping the waterfront redevelopments plans, and that they will continue to do so throughout the construction process. If the newsletter is serious about engaging the public’s participation, here is a perfect opportunity to make residents aware of such activity and encourage them to come out to future public consultation meetings.  

Similarly, the section on one of the mayor’s major initiatives, the Handgun Ban, is merely a hopeful explanation of what has been done so far, and where the action stands with federal and provincial leaders. Nowhere does the city implore its residents make their own appeals, or even ask that they join the 65,000 others who have already signed the petition.

Despite this apparent lack of engagement, the newsletter does offer handy clip-and-save diagrams for how to help conserve water and properly dispose of garbage, as well as one detailing whom to contact when your local infrastructure is in need of repair. A list of numbers for reporting damaged bus shelters, requesting new bike posts, road and sidewalk repairs, and broken parking meters creates a (possibly false) feeling of having municipal services at your beck and call. Somehow I doubt that this information will reduce Jack Lakey’s workload as “The Fixer."

Disappointingly, the only public input featured in the entire newsletter is a quarter-page interview buried on page 20 asking a resident their “Favourite City Feature” and “Favourite City Service.” Also missing from the newsletter: anything substantial about poverty reduction, social housing or homelessness; any mention of the upcoming billboard bylaw (now even in the who-to-call section); a tally of bike lane improvements or street furniture improvements; or any suggestion, now having all of this knowledge about what City Hall is doing to improve Toronto, of how we as residents might now be able to participate.  

But the intentions of this advertorial get a little fuzzy when considering the mayor’s own introductory letter. He offers that, “This publication continues our tradition of communicating directly with Torontonians about the issues that matter to them and their communities.” While Our Toronto doesn’t rely on Newspeak or any other overtly manipulative means of convincing Torontonians that everything is OK with their city thanks to the current city council, the “communication” of which the mayor speaks certainly comes across as flowing in only one direction. Consequently, Our Toronto reads more like Their Toronto.