Is the wrong guy called out of touch?
Reference Issue # 22, November, Redway Out Of Touch.
Surely it is Barry Schneider who is Out Of Touch. Barry is correct in pointing out that Alan’s business park (not industrial park) is becoming a retail park and he goes on to support that change. Unfortunately, the only way today’s Leaside retail park can survive is for our residents to have money in their pockets!
What money? Money earned from their employment in Alan’s manufacturing, industrial and related industries.
The good thing about Leaside Life is the way it brings readers a picture of the historical aspects balanced with present day aspects. Stick around Alan.
D.Gordon Champion,
Millwood Rd.
I was pleased to see Barry Schneider’s letter in the November issue of Leaside Life. It proved to me that someone actually reads my articles and that apparently on occasion they can stimulate both thought and comment.
As your readers may gather I have spent much of my life as a lawyer and as a politician having people tell me I am wrong. So this is not the first time and I am sure it will not be the last.
Mr. Schneider writes that retail is the economic engine in Canada. Leaside had lots of vibrant and healthy retail before the SmartCentre arrived.
Unfortunately now that retail is suffering.
In fact it is consumer spending as opposed to the retail business itself that makes up the major part of the Gross Domestic Product of North America. A significant and growing proportion of that consumer spending is now done on the internet.
Here in Toronto it is the higher income jobs of the financial industry together with accountants and lawyers as well as unionized public servants, educators and health care workers, not the minimum wage retail jobs that are the driving force of our consumer spending. In other parts of southern Ontario the driving force is the well-paying jobs in the automobile parts and assembly plants.
In order to maintain our consumer spending and keep the retail business in business we need higher paying jobs such as those provided in the Leaside industrial area.
According to Mr. Schneider, there are no manufacturing industries to replace those that have left the Leaside industrial area. Yet he refers to the recent arrival of the Amsterdam Brewery from downtown Toronto.
As residential and commercial developments squeeze out industry in other parts of the city I am sure that there will be many other industries looking for a new home.
Hopefully Leaside will provide them with both a new home and a warm welcome.
Alan Redway,
McRae Dr.
