CP24 just cut away from their live coverage of Premier Doug Ford’s end-of-year press conference to go to a live interview with Mayor John Tory about the Toronto Raptors.
So the timeline of Ontario’s vaccine passport is:
Summer: Premier drags feet
Sept 22: passport goes into effect, but QR code isn’t ready
Jan 4: QR codes become mandatory
Jan 5: Restaurants/bars/etc ordered to shut down
Jan 31: Things start to re-open
Mar 1: End of vaxx passports
Premier is asked why measures haven't worked in TO/Peel, Ford says "that's just my personal opinion, driving around, a lot of people are gathering in larger groups." Says restrictions worked before to limit gatherings.
From Ontario’s new 2051 transportation plan: “Commence work towards a major gridlock relief solution to add lane capacity in the central Highway 401 corridor between Highway 427 and Highway 404.”
Right. Sure. A couple more lanes ought to do it. (PDF)
Let’s count the ridiculous things here.
1) People need housing, but they’re hiring private security.
2) Parks need to be better maintained, but they’re hiring private security.
3) The city already spends a billion dollars a year on police, but they’re hiring private security.
“City of Toronto restoring Trinity Bellwoods Park while continuing to help people experiencing homelessness” is a hell of a euphemism for “we’re sending the cops in to kick people out of their tents.”
Here’s the basic thing about elections: to defeat an incumbent — no matter how unpopular (and Doug Ford is still pretty unpopular!) — you’ve still got to run a decent campaign explaining why you’ll be better.
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: all the “stay home” messaging from government doesn’t mean a damn thing without actual support for workers, including paid sick days.
Let’s be clear about it: vetoing changes made by a democratically-elected council as the mayor is in the process of resigning is obviously an absurd abuse of power.
Council will be around to deal with the consequences of this budget. Tory won’t. Council should get the final say
I voted last week so I speak from experience when I tell you it’s worth doing. There are folders, big sheets of paper, markers AND you get to watch your ballot get fed into some ballot-reading gizmo. Five stars, don’t miss it.
Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster announces he CAN’T announce a new opening date for the Eglinton Crosstown. He says he has a good sense of the schedule, but builder Crosslinx still finding “issues and defects that require additional time” so he’s made choice not to offer a date. Wow.
Pending approval by new mayor Olivia Chow and Toronto city council, here’s a list of Toronto parks where you’ll be able to crack open a beer or share a bottle of wine as part of a pilot project running between August 2 and October 9.
The street trees in front of this grocery store at Christie & Dupont were dying, so Loblaws replaced them with a series of signs warning pedestrians not to trip on the dead tree holes. The state of our city. (Photo by the Star’s Jack Lakey.)
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: Premier Doug Ford says Toronto should avoid electing a “lefty” mayor to replace John Tory. But city hall has tried low-tax conservative governance for more than a decade, and it’s not working.
Time for a new approach.
307 Lake Shore Road East
2019: Toronto headquarters of a splashy new urban-focused subsidiary of a tech giant, ground zero for much-hyped new era of “smart cities” and “innovation”
2021: A Budget rent-a-car
The TTC should get to keep all cars that drive into the Queens Quay tunnel. Mount them on spikes outside the tunnel entrance as a warning to other drivers.
Please please please: fewer columns about whether Doug Ford COULD win, more columns about whether Doug Ford SHOULD win.
Less of this: “his folksy populism could resonate in the GTA suburbs!” More of this: “his budget plan doesn’t add up and he has trouble telling the truth.”
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: after cholera, there was a worldwide revolution in clean water and sanitation. After COVID, we need a revolution in ventilation and air filtration.
City hall can lead the way.
David Miller: To save time and money, we should build transit projects above ground
Ford government: No ONLY SUBWAYS
*Ten Years of Delays and Budget Increases Later*
Ford government: To save time and money, we should build transit projects above ground
Meet my really good excuse. Freddie was born at 11:11 p.m. on Dec 15, 2021 after a ridiculously heroic all-day labour from my partner Erin.
The kid is two weeks early, but right on time. Eight pounds and very sleepy. Mom is doing great. Dad is frazzled but enduring.
On a Friday afternoon, the City of Toronto has finally published costs on how much it cost to evict people in park encampments this summer.
$840K for trespass enforcement, $357K for fencing, $792K for remediation.
Grand total? A hair under $2 million.
Hell of a thread on a popular Canadian deals forum where landlords are sharing strategies to kick tenants out of rent controlled units and jack up rents. Glimpse into a different world.
Lot of emojis to parse here, but I think the gist of this city ad campaign is something like: Toronto is full of litter, our trash bins are often full, and it’s your fault.
Adamson Barbecue, the business making headlines for flaunting lockdown restrictions and inviting people to eat indoors at its Etobicoke location, saw its Leaside location get cited by DineSafe in July for failure to sanitize surfaces, protect against pests.
STORY: Police officers who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of November will be placed on an “indefinite unpaid absence,” Toronto police announced Thursday.
CBC’s Jill Dempsey did a great job grilling Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma on Ontario Place plans on Metro Morning. Surma says she can’t share numbers on cost to repair the Science Centre building because numbers have not yet been “triple checked.”
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: we call them “investors” or “speculators”, but people who buy up homes and keep them vacant are really just parasites — extracting wealth from the city and giving almost nothing back.
Tax them, and tax them hard.
Imagine devoting your whole life to politics and the PC party. You waited 15 years to get back to power. You had hopes and dreams.
Your task today: convincing Doug Ford not to overrule the constitution to get his revenge on Toronto.
#BREAKING
: Source tells me
@fordnation
is convening cabinet right now to discuss using 'notwithstanding' clause re Bill 5 decision. He will make public his intentions on how gov't to fight decision at noon,
@globalnews
will have live coverage.
#onpoli
#topoli
#cdnpoli
I remain confused by the emphasis on opening up indoor dining. Most people I’ve talked to who are taking this virus seriously seem to have ruled out eating inside restaurants. Which leaves a clientele of people who are generally taking the virus — and the rules — less seriously.
The notion that the Bike Share system needs to “break even” strikes me as pretty misguided. Eliminate it and a big chunk of the service’s 4.3 million annual trips will shift to other modes like driving, ride-share or transit. There’s a cost to that.
The province has done a whole lot of inexplicable things over the last few weeks, but I am still stuck on their decision on March 19 to actually raise indoor dining capacity in the red zone. What the hell was the thinking there?
The notion that Metrolinx has to use Osgoode Hall land — and rush to take down trees — to build an Ontario Line station entrance strikes me as pretty ridiculous when you’ve got a vast expanse of University Ave right there.
A lot of Toronto businesses have long groused about the importance of on-street parking, but after the CafeTO experience 75% of surveyed business operators said they’d prefer to keep using curb lanes for patios. Just 7% want to go back to parking. (PDF)
“There are no price tags attached to the plan” is your cue to treat the plan as fundamentally unserious
(Platform doors cost ~$2.9 billion; 50 new cops costs ~$7.4 million; 40 special constables is ~$4 million; 100 social workers is probably $10 million+)
Per TTC CEO Rick Leary’s latest report, the TTC has a shortage of space to store its growing streetcar fleet so they’ve decided to… just keep more streetcars in service overnight in lieu of parking them in a yard somewhere. Radical thinking.
New data from the city suggests the presence of traffic agents on the King Street transit corridor reduced average eastbound streetcar travel time in the evening rush from 45-65 minutes to 17-21 minutes.
Would be cool if the city introduced a mandatory crowdfunding program in which residents and businesses contributed to city services and capital projects on, say, an annual basis.
In scrum Mayor
@JohnTory
said he will float “crowdfunding” to help buy property w historic tree, use private donations and potentially “some” public money to potentially turn land into a parkette and preserve massive centuries-old oak
My
@cbctoronto
column this week: Forget about the number of wards. If the goal is to make Toronto council less dysfunctional, there’s an obvious place to start: replace Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti.
#TOpoli
More details. Turns out provincial governments can’t just enact spite-based legislation affecting Canadian cities and local democracy for the hell of it.
Breaking: Justice Belobaba finds
#bill5
breaches s.2(b) of the Charter, and has not been justified under s.1. Declared of no force and effect effective immediately. October 22nd election will proceed as scheduled but with 47 wards, not 25.
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: I wanted it on the record — I’ll show up at 3 a.m. for a vaccine appointment.
Once vaccine supply is available, it will be the city government’s time to step up. The effort should be 24/7, with no excuse for delay.
With around 19K votes, Chloe Brown — despite being left off most debate stages and facing a very crowded field — got double the support of Councillor Brad Bradford, and nearly matched Mitzie Hunter. Another VERY impressive performance. Hope we haven’t heard the last of her.
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: Give downtown Yonge Street to pedestrians. The math demands it — and it’s also an opportunity for the City to make a bold statement about their commitment to road safety.
Doug Ford, 2023: don’t vote for mayoral candidates who voted to “defund” the police by cutting 10% from their budget.
Rob Ford, 2011: the police must cut their budget by 10%.
My
@TorontoStar
column for this week: The City of Toronto spent about $33,000 per person to kick people out of park encampments this past summer.
It’s money that could have gone toward housing people. Instead, it was spent to evict them.
Speaking of Saunders/Furey, they combined for just 13.5% of the vote, both running campaigns that were very preoccupied with tearing up bike lanes and blaming cyclists for traffic. There’s not a large constituency for this anti-bike stuff anymore. Progress!
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: tens of thousands of cyclists were counted riding closed-to-cars sections of Toronto roads. No one should be surprised.
The trend is clear — make streets safe and welcoming for cyclists, and they’ll show up.
Hard to know which part of this story is more absurd. City not issuing tickets to 25%+ of speeders caught by photo radar because of staffing shortages? Or literally TURNING OFF the cameras for part of the day to “manage the volume of tickets”?
If the province sold this Foundry land for a fair price to a great developer that was going to build oodles of affordable housing, wouldn’t they want to, you know, tell people all about it?
This Bob Rae guy gets it. Any candidate promising inflationary (or below) property tax increases can’t realistically promise to do anything else. It’s a pledge for austerity.
John Tory’s “promise” of no real property tax increases over next four years will coincide with four years of cuts from the province. City will have to make massive cuts.
#TOpoli
Meanwhile, the premier is weighing in. It’s been 12 years since Toronto had a left-wing mayor and the city has a $1.5 billion budget hole so I’m not sure what the fear is, really. The last left-wing mayor left office with a budget surplus.
“If a lefty mayor gets in there, God help the people of Toronto,” Mr. Ford adds.
“If a left-wing mayor gets in there, we’re toast.”
But he adds he wouldn’t rescind the strong mayor powers, says it’s up to people to decide.
My Toronto Star column this week: as a councillor, a mayoral candidate and now the premier, Doug Ford has spent almost a decade trying to find big government waste at City Hall. He’s failed.
I’ve been hearing from residents from across this city, and I’m committed to building a
#Toronto
we can all be proud of. That’s why I’ve assembled an Advisory Committee that crosses sectors, political ideology, and geography. The future belongs to Toronto.
What a waste. The City, by their own admission, doesn’t have enough affordable housing units and shelters are seen as unsafe. The tents will come back, here or in another park. The people will return. City will have spent money and resources to make no progress and help no one.
Also: this only targets Toronto? Ottawa has 23 city councillors for a city of less than a million people. Toronto gets 25 for a city almost three times bigger? Nothing makes annnnnny sense.
Here’s an unhinged letter from the Davenport Triangle Residents Association opposing the end of parking minimums. “There are no captains of industry, or tradesmen taking a bike to work or mothers cycling their kids to school.” Jesus, what year is it? (PDF)
Silver lining: they walked back the playground ban via a tweet, instead of hinting at changes for several days, letting rumours take hold, and then making everyone wait around for a thrice-delayed press conference.
The city owes us a full accounting of how much money was spent on the Trinity Bellwoods encampment evictions, the fences, the continued presence of security guards, etc. How much was spent to move ~20 people?
Here’s my transcription of Premier Doug Ford’s Arthur anecdote at the end of his schools-are-closed press conference this afternoon. “Like a little butler.”
Blue Jays President Mark Shapiro has written to Mayor Tory and council, urging an end to the ActiveTO program on Lake Shore West. “We support folks getting outside and being active, but Toronto has many options and routes to use, whereas our fans do not”
Councillor Lai defends giving pedestrians reflective arm bands, saying “I don’t think we should blame anybody” for pedestrian injuries. I dunno, feels right to me to blame the people carelessly operating heavy metal boxes hurtling around at high speed.
If the provincial government is dictating what Toronto can and can’t do with the Gardiner and DVP, the provincial government might as well just own them. Stick Queen’s Park with the Gardiner and its $2 billion repair bill.
NEW: The Ford government is shutting down talk of tolls on the Gardiner and DVP saying it "will not be imposing any new tolls on any roads in Ontario."
This after John Tory said he’d consider revisiting tolls on Toronto’s Gardiner, DVP
#onpoli
I still don’t understand why DineSafe info like this has long been public, but the city isn’t publishing the names of businesses who have been cited for breaking COVID rules. It’s the same basic public health principle.
Banning cars in High Park during the cherry blossom season is a good move. People who try to drive in just get stuck in slow-moving traffic jams anyway. And make things dangerous for pedestrians.
I think some people would be less anti-condo if: a) the commercial spaces actually filled up with places like Sneaky Dee’s or whatever, instead of chain fast food and dental offices; b) inclusionary zoning meant some affordable housing was guaranteed.
The city by its own post-eviction media releases counted 23 people in the encampment at Trinity at time of eviction, 26 in Alexandra Park, 11 at Lamport Stadium, so about 60 people evicted in total, for $2 million in combined costs. Cost per person of about $33,000.
“Give us some space,” Metrolinx CEO urges on Crosstown project. “Let us come back to you and give you that feedback on where we are, every two months.”
In summary:
- Only leave home for essential reasons
- Non-essential businesses can stay open (for curbside)
- Max of five people can gather outdoors
- Don’t leave your home to gather outdoors
- Don’t go to work if you’re sick
- There is no provincial money for paid sick days
🤷♂️
Just incredible that in 1997 our govs looked at 25 years of a pretty darn successful affordable housing model in Toronto — co-op housing — and were like, “hey, we should stop doing this.”
My
@TorontoStar
column: Mayor Tory says city hall must keep property taxes low to protect seniors.
But city hall has a program designed to shield lower-income seniors from tax increases.
Please, can we have an honest conversation about city revenues?
Next time someone at city hall tells you there’s no money to provide beds for homeless people, remember that the city has an active program that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to commercial property developers.
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: Toronto’s neighbourhood-level COVID-19 data tells a story of inequality, not density. This pandemic shouldn’t prompt us to rethink dense city living. It should push us to end poverty.
These proposed new street designs for Kensington Market sure seem to put a lot of emphasis on maintaining on-street parking, despite survey results suggesting a lot of people don’t think there should be an emphasis on maintaining on-street parking. (PDF)
In replies,
@TorontoPolice
says they weren’t actually issuing tickets to “speeding” cyclists and were there to “increase awareness and educate people.” But wow, I’m surprised the police have the time and resources for this, and that it ranks as a priority.
My
@TorontoStar
column this week: times like this remind us why local public health departments are so important. So, hey, remember a year ago when some people wanted to cut public health budgets? Let’s never do that again.
This city’s love affair with flexible bollards has got to end. Turns out “Trucks can drive over them!” is not a desirable feature for cycling infrastructure.
Around intersections, the Bloor bike lanes leave some protection to be desired.
How long before we can build properly safe infrastructure?
@NotSafe4BikesTO
#bikeTo
Our long civic nightmare is over. Councillor Brad Bradford and Mayor Olivia Chow have presented a motion to next week’s council meeting that’ll replace the “no tobogganing” signs at city parks with signs that merely warn tobogganing has risks.
Between now and Dec20, the debit/credit payment options are being removed from the Fares and Transfers Machines on our low floor streetcars as they were causing the machines to be unreliable. Customers are encouraged to switch to PRESTO or pay their fare by cash, ticket or token.