news
Newsstand: July 25, 2012
Happy midweek! It's the day that's cooler than the foreweek and promising of the hindweek soon to come. In the news: Mayor Ford and the prime minister get suggestive with each other over gun crime; Daniel MacLeod wakes up from his coma; Elections Canada might be playing dirty at the Supreme Court; Toronto actually has relatively low rate of severe crime; a spontaneous tractor-trailer combustion; and the police are looking for a Good Samaritan.
Yesterday’s chat between Mayor Rob Ford and Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not end with news of any new money for addressing the problems at the root of Toronto’s recent flare-up of gun violence. Rather than coming away with any solid new deals regarding social or law enforcement programs, the leaders merely made suggestions to each other. Good news though, the two politicians left the meeting at a photo-op–friendly police station in Scarborough ready to “look into some additional measures” they can each take.
Daniel MacLeod, the 22-year-old man that has been in a coma for the past three weeks following an alleged assault on Dundas Street near Lisgar Street is awake. While he still cannot walk or talk, he is able to open his eyes, breathe without the assistance of a ventilator, and he has written messages to family. MacLeod’s doctors initially told the family that if he did wake up, he would almost certainly have long-term brain damage. So, this is great news.
There is further potential scandal in the federal riding of Etobicoke Centre. Former Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj is claiming that Elections Canada neglected to give all the relevant facts to the Supreme Court of Canada, which is currently in the process of deciding whether Tory MP Ted Opitz is able to keep the seat he won from Wrzesnewskyj by just 26 votes in the last federal election. The missing information is regarding “new evidence” showing that 44 of the 79 problematic ballots cast were from valid voters. The margin between a win by Opitz and the number of problematic ballots is still in Wrzesnewskyj’s favour, but the detail of how Elections Canada has presented facts to the Court and Wrzesnewskyj’s legal team is troubling nonetheless.
Toronto has the third lowest crime severity rating in the country (that is a good thing). The crime severity index on which this news is based measures the amount of police-reported crime while taking into consideration the severity of those crimes. For metropolitan areas, the GTA falls only behind Quebec City and Guelph. This does not diminish the magnitude of recent events in the city, but it does add to the list of reasons for not wanting to live in, say, Kelowna.
Last night at 10:40 p.m., a tractor-trailer burst into flames on Highway 401 near Allen Road. There was no collision or injuries, but some people were evacuated from the area over concerns about toxic smoke. The highway wasn’t fully reopened until 6:30 a.m. this morning.
Did you run out into traffic on the Don Valley Parkway yesterday to save the life of a woman who had just jumped from the Lawrence Avenue bridge? If so, you should show yourself because you are a great person. Police are looking for a Good Samaritan that did the things described above. The woman has a few fractures, but the police say that she will be okay.
