Had a frustrating exchange with my city councillor @gordperks earlier today on Twitter. I had more time to think about what he said, and his response was so inadequate that I'm still fuming. I thought I'd try to explain my point of view in more detail. (Short )

As background, I live in Parkdale, in the M6K postal code, which is an official COVID hotspot. Up until today, there was literally only one clinic in the city vaccinating people from Parkdale, @westparkhcc, and they announced this morning that we're no longer eligible there.

I asked Gord Perks what he was doing about this situation, and his response was extremely disappointing. Basically, he tried to put all of the blame onto the province for the situation while talking up things the city has done which aren't really relevant to the situation.

For reference, you can see his comments in this thread here: https://twitter.com/gordperks/status/1387802352388825096?s=20

It's frustrating to have to try to do an elected politician's job for them, but unfortunately that's the situation here in Toronto/Ontario, so I have a couple of suggestions for Councillor Perks:

1) Acknowledge that there's a problem! You can search in vain through his tweets on this topic for any acknowledgement of how frustrating this situation is for his constituents. We're all eligible for vaccination, but there are no appointments at all for us! That sucks!

2) Publicly advocate for your constituents! Call out the people who have power to do something about this. Do it loudly and publicly and frequently. Squeaky wheels get the oil - that's Politics 101.

For an example of what this looks like, here's Parkdale's MPP @BhutilaKarpoche giving Christine Elliott a hard time about the vaccine rollout in Parkdale: https://twitter.com/BhutilaKarpoche/status/1387131738082746368?s=20

Will this approach get results? It's hard to say. But at least people in Parkdale know that the agencies and departments which make decisions about vaccines are aware of our situation and that our representatives are trying to do something about it.

3) Stop blaming the province for everything! Like, we get it. Doug Ford sucks. Torontonians of all people don't need this pointed out to them. But he's not the only person responsible for this mess! The city has made a lot of poor decisions about the vaccine rollout.

4) Explain the city's decision-making! I'm not an epidemiologist or a doctor. Maybe there's a really good public health reason why we're not getting any vaccines while other hot spots in Toronto have had multiple pop-up clinics. If so, be honest with us about it.

5) Stop dismissing people's legitimate frustration with this process! https://twitter.com/gordperks/status/1387474556852572166?s=20

The fact that the city is relying on a volunteer organization's Twitter account to share information about scarce appointments with extremely online people several months into a profoundly flawed vaccine rollout is nothing to celebrate.

Yes, the province owns a lot of the issues with vaccination, but there's plenty of blame to go around. A little humility from the city would go a long way here, but all we get is condescension and deliberately uncharitable misreadings of our very legitimate complaints.

I'm sick of hearing nothing but excuses from the supposedly progressive city councillors. For the last year, they've been MIA on everything from evictions to encampments to policing. It's just an endless litany of excuses and blame-shifting and empty aspirational statements.

Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I don't think I'm the only person in Parkdale who's feeling pretty underwhelmed by Gord Perks.