January 9, 2008
Overtaxed Cars, Not SARS, Hilary Stars
Apparently 6% GST is still being charged in parking lots at Pearson airport, in spite of the fact that the tax was lowered to 5% on January 1. The overpricing is being blamed on a system glitch that is being "worked on," but in the meantime, the GTAA plans to keep the extra cash for themselves. A spokesperson explained, "If you don't like it, then you can fly out of another international airport in Toronto."
In other airport news, passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv were quarantined at Pearson yesterday after 75 people on the plane reported experiencing "flu-like symptoms." After ratcheting up the panic quotient by giving some (but not all) of the passengers lab coats and masks, authorities took their temperatures and sent most of them home. Either three or eight passengers were sent to hospital, depending what source you read. However, it's not SARS, and CNN is not coming to profile our City In Crisis.
Why does Dalton McGuinty hate families? Apparently the new Ontario holiday with the Orwellian name "Family Day" is going to cost millions, and a whole bunch of people are complaining about it. Best solution: cancel Family Day so that a whole bunch of people can complain about that.
In the U.S. presidential primaries in New Hampshire, Hilary Clinton ("the female candidate") surprised everyone with a come-from-behind victory over Barack Obama ("the black candidate") in the Democratic race. On the Republican side, the contest went to John McCain ("the crazy candidate").
Greenpeace reports that farming is a principal source of greenhouse gases, and a good chunk of those gases come from livestock-produced methane. Note to cows: farting isn't only bad for the environment, it's just plain rude. To be fair, fertilizer overuse is actually a bigger problem, but not as funny.
Photo by PDPhotography from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Obama wins! Upset! Hillary wins! Upset! It's raining! Upset!
That airplane thing was SOOOOO an episode of House a few weeks ago.
But actually, my bet is that only one or two people on the plane were actually sick--the rest has mass hysteria, a repeat of that 2004 bus incident in Vancouver, perhaps?
The parking thing - I was talking to someone in the parking business recently, who told me they weren't able to change their system until the GST reduction became law. Despite it being announced months ago, the actual change in the law only passed two weeks before Christmas which is causing mayhem to their systems.
Unfortunately the Government of Canada has a nasty history with this sort of thing - some may recall the Liberals' income tax reduction that the Tories reversed because the Martin government had never actually passed the necessary legislation to make it stick.
It's worth mentioning that there is no law requiring anyone to reduce how much they charge as GST. If they still charge 6%, that extra penny just goes to their pockets instead of the government.