ArchiveFebruary 2013

By: Metro Canada Published on Thu Feb 28 2013 Toward the end of last week's meeting of Toronto City Council, I tweeted this: That pretty well sums it up. The meeting last week was marked by a few items that took an extraordinary amount of time, sparked heated debate and then — as councillors started to worry that they'd need to come back for a third day — a mad rush to get...

By: Metro Canada Published on Tue Feb 26 2013 They're calling him the Teflon mayor. After the Compliance Audit Committee voted yesterday to not proceed with prosecution, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's campaign audit woes came to an end. With his defamation suit, most likely his conflict of interest case and now the campaign audit behind him, it's a safe bet that we won't be seeing...

By: Metro Toronto Published on Mon Feb 25 2013 In the debate about shelters and homelessness, both sides have their numbers. On one side, represented mostly by Mayor Rob Ford and his allies on city council, who last week voted to delay debate on the subject until next month, there’s this: 172. That’s the number of shelter beds that went empty and unused on Feb. 8. In fact, Toronto’s shelter...

By: Metro Canada Published on Wed Feb 20 2013 With various proposals coming forward at Toronto City Hall to look at either removing or capping the city's municipal land transfer tax, I guess it's time to ask if there might be good reason for getting rid of this thing. Spoiler alert: there is not. Despite some noise from the real estate industry and a continued anti-tax stance from Mayor...

By: Metro Canada Published on Fri Feb 15 2013 An open letter to Toronto Centre MPP Glen Murray, who this week was sworn in as Ontario's new Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure under Premier Kathleen Wynne. Hey Glen, Congratulations on the new job. It's going to be really hard and a lot of people will probably hate you. But you have to be okay with that. The reality of your...