Should we talk about freedom?

There’s a lot of different definitions and interpretations here.

Think: William Wallace, or if you want, Mel Gibson in Braveheart.  

We all remember that last scene in Braveheart when Wallace was tied to the chopping block in the village square, and all he had to do was submit to the King, and perhaps his life would be spared.  Instead, he infamously yells, “Freeeeeedom!” and is decapitated.

Think: the United States of America.

Their obsession with freedom, or the concept therein, has resulted in millions of people refusing to wear masks during a pandemic, some of whom have famously died of the virus itself!  Oh, the irony!

My wife’s cousin lives in Georgia, born and raised.  His take on this debate, which of course, has to take the Constitution into consideration (is there a more ridiculous piece of 250-year-old paper?) is that people should wear masks, but it shouldn’t be mandated by the city, state, or country.

I suppose I see the logic, but at the same time, I don’t.

Many of the freedoms we enjoy are based on historical precedence.  Many are innate.  Some are earned.  Some are privileges.  And in the end, many, if not most, could be debated.

So what about the right of a property owner to do as he or she sees fit with that property?

I know, this is a massive grey area.  I can’t put a billboard on the roof of my house, nor should I be permitted to.

And in different jurisdictions, property rights can tie into other rights, like, oh, I dunno, say – shooting a person on your front lawn with an AR-15 assault weapon simply because they stepped on to your property.  There are two rights bleeding into one!  No pun intended…

But back here on planet earth, we recognize that owning a property has inalienable rights, but at the same time, we have no choice but to look to the experts for guidance on what we can and can’t do.

Can I pave over my front lawn and put up a basketball court?

Can install a permanent bio-dome over my backyard?

Can I legally operate a hair salon from my garage?

Can I dig a large pit in the middle of my driveway, and encourage my children to dig to the centre of the earth?

All of these seem like “no’s” to you and I, but somewhere out there, in our jurisdiction or another, there’s a home-owner clamouring for the right to do so.  And somewhere out there, there’s a place that would allow this too!

Back in February, I wrote a blog called “Much Ado About Parking Pads”

I was shocked by the response!  Not only because such a boring topic resulted in over sixty comments from the readers, but also because so many of the readers knew an awful lot about parking pads!

The inherent “right” to park a car on your property is anything but.  Depending on whether or not you’re taking a spot of street parking away from the public, by cutting the curb and disallowing people to park there, your “rightful” gain would come at a loss for the public.  Many readers commented on the issues with water drainage if a pad was created where it shouldn’t be, or in a way that isn’t conducive to proper drainage.

Other readers felt that misery loves company, and if they don’t have a parking pad, then their neighbour shouldn’t.  Or vice versa, it’s not fair for their neighbour to have one if they can’t to.

There’s seemingly no shortage of topics we could explore when it comes to the rights of a property owner, and don’t even get me started on the absurd amount of property tax I pay, only to have to buy larger garbage and recycling bins, and then cross my fingers that the “sanitation experts” pick up my trash, if it’s not too heavy or cumbersome, or doesn’t stick out of the bin, or doesn’t offend them in some way.

But what about cutting down a tree?

Is that a right?

I mean, it’s your tree.  It’s on your property.  Front yard, back yard, side yard – it’s all the same, right?

Oak, maple, birch, or cedar – doesn’t matter, right?

How about the size?  The foilage?  The amount of shade the tree provides, or how many branches are hanging over the neighbour’s fence?  Oh boy, there’s a doozie!  Can a neighbour trim your tree?  Let’s not even go there.

You can’t imagine just how many issues trees cause in the city of Toronto, and how crazy people will go to protect a tree that they think is being unfairly targeted – especially when it doesn’t belong to them!  “High fences make great neighbours,” and all that, but just how many times have we heard about neighbours arguing over trees?

Of course, it could be worse.  Have you heard of Harvey Updyke?  He’s a football fan.  Actually, that’s an understatement.  A fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Harvey went to the Auburn campus in 2010 after Auburn had beat Alabama in the Iron Bowl, and poisoned Auburn’s century-old oak trees, for which their campus is famous!  Then he called into a radio show two weeks later and bragged about it.  He was promptly arrested, fined, and jailed.  He died last month, which is rather timely.

Last month, I had a tree cut down on my property.  It was probably between thirty and fifty years old, if I had to guess.  It was dead, and still standing, and I wanted to ensure I took it down before it fell on my house.

I took a few videos and a lot of photos, and planned to share that today.  But low-and-behold, an article came out in the Toronto Star on Tuesday dealing with exactly this topic!  The timing couldn’t be better, even if Harvey Updyke had a say in the matter.

This article uses the word “absurd” in the title, to explain the process of removing trees, and debating the trees’ removal.

If you’re like me, you assumed that the “absurdity” had to do with the idea that a property owner has to jump through hoops to get permission to remove a tree from his or her own property!

But then I realized this article was in The Star, and read it.

Here it is in full:

“Toronto’s Trees Provide More Than Just Shade. So Why Are City Council’s Tree Removal Debates So Absurd?”
Matt Elliott
Toronto Star
8/11/2020

Big number: 14, the number of tree removal permit items considered by Toronto council so far in 2020. The trees have an 8-4-2 record. Eight decisions went in favour of keeping the trees, four went for removal, two decisions were delayed.

Things got prickly at the July meeting of Toronto council. It started when Coun. James Pasternak demanded an apology after Coun. Gord Perks used the word “foolhardy” in a speech. “For Councillor Perks to call people who don’t agree with him ‘foolhardy’ is totally inappropriate,” said Pasternak. Coun. Frances Nunziata, who serves as council’s speaker, echoed Pasternak’s request for an apology.

But Perks chose to stick to his point. “Councillor, as much as I have been tempted on occasion to call you foolhardy, I did not. I said, ‘If you are foolhardy enough to believe this.’” He added that he wouldn’t apologize for “citing science.”

That branched into a linguistic digression on whether describing someone’s belief as foolhardy is the same as calling someone a fool. Neither side backed down.

The roots of all this friction? You’ll never guess. It was a debate about whether council should grant a permit to remove two spruce trees in front of a property on Kane Avenue in the Silverthorn neighbourhood.

It wasn’t the first time a council debate about trees got tense. So far in 2020 council has considered 14 tree removal permits on both private and public property, many of them concluding with razor-thin votes.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. You’re probably thinking something like, “Hey, wait, why is the government of Canada’s largest city spending so much time, in the middle of a pandemic, squabbling about individual trees?”

That’s a darn good question. Because, yes, this is all very absurd. But there are things you need to know about why this happens.

First, trees matter. More than just providing some nice shade during hot summers, trees provide quantifiable benefits. City hall’s urban forestry division says Toronto’s 11.5 million trees generate $55 million in annual impacts, including $8.2 million in energy savings, $37.6 million in savings related to pollution removal and $4.8 million in savings by helping to absorb stormwater.

Recognizing this, Toronto council has a longstanding target of covering 40 per cent of Toronto with tree canopy, but getting there hasn’t been easy. According to the latest report on the state of Toronto’s trees, between 2008 and 2018 the canopy increased by an estimated 1.8 percentage points. These days, the city estimates the canopy at somewhere between 28.4 per cent and 31 per cent — still well short of the goal.

To make progress, not only does city hall need to step up their tree planting efforts, they also need to protect the trees that already exist, even if homeowners would like them out of the way. (About 60 per cent of Toronto’s trees are on private property.)

That’s the basis for the city’s permit process for tree removal. Letting homeowners go wild with an axe —in their yards and on adjacent city-owned boulevards — would have negative implications for everybody, so city hall requires that urban forestry staff inspect trees cited for removal. If trees are deemed healthy, a permit to remove will generally not be granted.

Property owners can appeal a denied permit, however, which is what triggers the council debates.

Few councillors celebrate this process, but changing it could prove more contentious than the already-contentious debates over the permits.

Some, like conservative-minded Coun. Stephen Holyday, tend to support granting permits for removal of trees on private property. In January, he tried (and failed) to convince councillors to support a motion that would have looked at loosening the rules for removing private trees, so long as homeowners took responsibility for planting additional replacement trees.

Other councillors have argued that the matter should be left entirely in the hands of the tree experts at city hall, leaving politicians out of it.

But until council votes for a new policy, the absurdity of council’s tree debates will continue, and often not to the benefit of the tree canopy.

The two spruces at the centre of the Perks-Pasternak argument? A property owner wanted to remove them to make way for a driveway. Despite Perks’s point that it would be foolhardy to believe any new trees planted to replace these mature trees would provide the same benefit, his motion to deny the removal permit lost on a 7-15 vote.

Two more trees gone, cut down by an absurd process.

“That branched into a linguistic digression…”

Oh, I see what the author did there.  Nice pun!

But is it safe to say this article has a “side?”  A “slant,” if you will?

Yeah, I think the author is one of those people – I can’t remember the term – something to do with affection and trees?  In this case, literally and figuratively.

To each, their own.

I howl at our neighbours south of the border for their “freedom” to keep rocket launchers in their basements, and they think I’m naive.  But by the same token, the author of the article above might think I’m naive for suggesting that a property owner should be free, or more-free, to do as they please with trees.

I think there’s a middle-ground somewhere between saying, “All trees must remain in place,” and “Property owners should do as they like, whenever, wherever.”  But in the case where an owner wants to cut down a tree to widen a driveway, if the curb is already cut, and a parking space wouldn’t be taken off the street, then whats’ the problem?

Oh, the problem is that there is one less tree.

But it’s the property-owner’s tree.

Grey area?  Or black and white?  If the latter, then which side of the oak leaf does your opinion lay?

From the article:

To make progress, not only does city hall need to step up their tree planting efforts, they also need to protect the trees that already exist, even if homeowners would like them out of the way. (About 60 per cent of Toronto’s trees are on private property.)

But to what extent?

A city-wide mandate to “grown the tree canopy” would conflict with a property owner’s rights to some extent.

Are we trying to find a middle-ground here?

From the article:

But until council votes for a new policy, the absurdity of council’s tree debates will continue, and often not to the benefit of the tree canopy.

Not according to that statement.

The debates are absurd, apparently.

We should simply look to protect the tree canopy, first and foremost, at all costs.  No debate.  No rights of property owners.  Just the tree canopy, please and thanks.

I don’t like absolutes.  But unfortunately, grey areas take more time to sort out, and when this concerns government, it means more resources and more costs.

When I sat out on my back porch, getting shit on by birds that perched on the dead tree branches above, getting rained on by bits and pieces of dead limbs, often gnawed and pecked at by woodpeckers, I feared that the City of Toronto would do something stupid – like not let me cut it down, even though it’s my house, my property, and it would be my cost.  I also wondered if they would force me to plant a silly little sapling in the middle of my yard, for essentially no reason, except that we “need more trees.”

My house.  My property.  My yard.  Their sapling.  Hardly seems productive, in my opinion.

Thankfully, I was granted an “exception” by the city, and I’ll share that with you on Friday.

For now, let me hear it from those who believe that the trees own the city, and we are merely tenants…