Torontoist » finance

Economist: Taking the Dive

People work hard for their money, but they don’t make their money work hard for them. It’s time to fix that. Economist whips your income into shape with smart, practical advice. Photo by Shahram Sharif. Over the last week, those who followed the TSX must have reached for the Gravol. The index plunged 1,100 points, [...]

No Throne Speech Pork for Hogtown, or Anyone Else

Photo by Owen Byrne. This week marked the opening of the new federal Parliament, which gave the re-elected Harper Conservatives the chance to lay out their plan for the coming session—via Her Majesty’s representative in Canada, of course—in the Speech from the Throne. And with our level of economic worry as high as it has [...]

For Sale: CN Tower, Slightly Used

Now that the federal government is teetering on the verge of its first budget deficit in a decade, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is publicly considering the possibility of selling off the CN Tower to help balance the books—and pay for Prime Minister Harper‘s still-planned tax cuts. The building, until last year the world’s tallest freestanding [...]

Flaherty Vs. McGuinty, Solid Gold Fever, Serf’s Up

Premier Dalton McGuinty has fired off a whiny letter to the PM complaining about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s public criticism of Ontario and its tax laws. Flaherty, who apparently counts all time lost when he’s not psychologically bitch-slapping his governmental inferiors, responded by calling McGuinty a “big stupid crybaby.” Time to start prying out grandma’s [...]

U.S. Dems Slam NAFTA, Flaherty Vs. Miller, Hope There’s A Big Changing Table At Queen’s Park

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman has caused a furor with his comment that he’d be willing to test-drive an adult diaper to see if being left in soiled diapers for hours on end is really all that bad. Critics say he isn’t taking the issue of sub-standard care in nursing homes seriously, which seems a [...]

RIM Down, Obama Up, Leafs Cold

A three hour Blackberry outage affected millions of people across North America yesterday, leading to much wailing and handwringing over the temporary unavailability of a technology that didn’t even exist ten years ago. Truly we are a nation of whiners. The Toronto Maple Leafs braved the cold to hold an unannounced outdoor skate at Withrow [...]

PhotoTO: Housing Not War

A protest outside the Toronto office of Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Thursday drew attention to the housing crisis in Canada, demanding that resources spent on military action in Afghanistan be diverted to provide an additional 1% of the federal budget for social housing. When the organizers tried to present a letter of protest to [...]

Villain: Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty, et al.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we’ve either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and [...]

Shoppers Shop, Governments Tax, Juniors Win

With self-check-in a success at airports around the country, Air Canada is preparing to implement a system that would see passengers check and tag their own luggage. Coming in 2009: who wants to learn how to fly a plane? In spite of fears that we might not be as greedy as last year, yesterday stores [...]

Downtown Dark, Ban Logging In Park, Leafs Suck

A large part of the downtown core from College to Queens Quay and York to Bayview, was blacked-out for about 2 ½ hours yesterday. In response, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said that Toronto has the ability to generate all the power it needs and certainly wasn’t getting any more from the Province, while Federal Finance [...]

Fire At Jarvis And Mutual, Normal Mailer Dead At 84, Ron Joyce Escapes Plane Crash Unscathed

A massive fire at a townhouse complex on Jarvis Street near Mutual resulted in the death of an unidentified victim on Saturday night. Construction on the townhouses had been abandoned for ten months and the building was being inhabited by squatters, says a resident at the adjacent Radio City condo tower. Novelist Norman Mailer died [...]

Clubland Gets Violent, Taxpayers Get Break, Artists Get Housing

The Entertainment District got a little more entertaining early Monday morning as an innocent bystander was wounded in a wild movie-style shootout involving at least four gunmen. Mayor David Miller called for a crackdown on gun smuggling as part of his strategy of blaming all problems in Toronto on forces outside of his control. Finance [...]