Results tagged “bush”

TTC "U-pass" close to passing for students, possibly also hotel workers. If the scheme passes, the TTC will suddenly be crowded once again, rendering all those recent fleet upgrades essentially moot. Hooray for public transit!

David Miller delivered a balanced budget yesterday, thanks to higher property taxes, some fabulous new tariffs, and a one-time infusion of $150 million from the the provincial government. According to Miller, the property tax increase of 3.75% is in line with his commitment to limit raises to the rate of inflation (1.9% in Toronto last year), evidence that the mayor is either math-illiterate or assumes that everyone else is.

The Star reports that TTC operators have a rate of post-traumatic stress disorder four times higher than Toronto police officers. The syndrome is often a result of witnessing, or becoming the victim of, physical violence, and is now the second leading cause of missed work days at the TTC. Arming operators a la Mad Max probably isn't the right solution, but hoping that the assholes who assault drivers will magically disappear may not be realistic. Anyone?

Toronto-based Naked News (NSFW, duh), which already broadcasts both an English and Japanese version, will soon also be available in Spanish, Italian and Korean. That's right. While other newsrooms are cutting back, laying off correspondents, and eliminating foreign bureaus, Naked News is (insert your pun of choice here).

When local promoter Dan Burke so unabashedly declared “less drugs, more shows” as what he looks forward to for this calendar year, no one believed the drugs portion of that resolution—but Friday is reason to start believing the show portion.

Almost half of all Toronto-area residents are foreign-born. This is the first little tidbit released from the 2006 census, which the government is doling out as if it were a movie trailer or something. (Will Smith versus zombies: probably more entertaining.)

A Milton woman went on a rampage with a samurai sword on Sunday, injuring her boyfriend and an off-duty firefighter, smashing windows at a gas station and hacking at a parked car. While Torontoist doesn't condone senseless irrational violence, you've got to give her points for style.

Sending typed letters, postcards, or small packages of treats via snail mail is sadly going the way of the dinosaur. It’s a rare surprise to find a handwritten letter in the mailbox among the pizza menus and flyers for the local gym. When it comes to mail art, the extra time and effort in composing the work is far more rewarding than attaching a .jpg and pressing send. For the receiver, opening a mailed masterpiece is extra special and a cause for celebration.

Scandinavian Airlines says that they will permanently ground their fleet of Canadian-made Bombardier Q400 turboprops following three accidents involving problems with landing gear. In response, Bombardier will no longer market the plane as the Q400 Skid.

The Stephen Harper government unveiled its plan for the country in the Throne Speech last night, emphasizing the usual panoply of tax-cuttin', crime fightin', environment dismissin' Conservative virtues. Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe have already stated they will not support the government, while Liberal leader Stéphane Dion will decide whether to force an election after consulting with his caucus. Dion is envied by the other opposition leaders for his massive caucus.

October 16 is the day that the Walt Disney Company was founded (1923), the day that Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping (1970), and the day that President Bush signed into law the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (2002). It is also, though you may not know it, World Food Day, as deemed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. World Food Day has been celebrated in more than 150 countries since 1979, and since 1981, each year has had a theme. This year's theme is The Right to Food; that is, "the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity, rather than the right to be fed."

Marcel Marceau dead at 84. Torontoist hadn't heard anything. (Rimshot!)

No Film Friday today as we’re too busy with the festival, but we can let you know that this week sees releases of some pretty decent-sounding films: 3:10 to Yuma, Shoot ‘Em Up and Hatchet. Er, and also The Brothers Solomon, starring Will Arnett and directed by Bob Odenkirk but apparently dire. Let's Go To Prison wasn't great either. Sob.

A 13-year-old boy at St. Mary's Catholic Secondary School in Toronto was arrested after he was found to be carrying an illegal 200,000 volt stun gun in his backpack.The Star quotes school board chair Oliver Carroll as saying that "everyone was shocked." Presumably Carroll was not speaking literally.

Environment Canada reports that this has been the driest summer in fifty years for Toronto, with the city only receiving around half of its usual rainfall. Short-term predictions suggest that fall will be equally dry, with the the long-range forecast calling for global warming followed by drought, famine, plague and societal collapse. Sounds like great picnic weather!

Upwards of 1,500 protesters from Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, and Hamilton marched on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday to protest the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush. Bush will meet today with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Montebello, Quebec on the two-year-old Security and Prosperity Partnership. The agenda is to include emergency planning for an avian-flu pandemic, the recall of Chinese-made toys, and border security. Demonstrators denounced the summit as anti-democratic and warned the public that Canada's sovereignty is at stake, and anti-war activists chanted "George Bush shame on you/Daddy was a killer too." The otherwise peaceful protest ended with one arrest related to a spray painting incident.

Enormous DVD piracy bust in Missisauga. Investigators believe it was making over twenty million dollars a year. This is a huge blow to professional movie piracy in Canada. (Well, at least to that one piracy ring. Other movie pirates probably don't care. And in fact are kind of happy about the loss of competition.) Of course, this is not so much the case to people who just want to pirate movies for their own use, because they can just download them off the internet—oh wait, we're not supposed to mention that bit!

They’re trying to hypnotise us, people. They’re trying to brainwash us and subdue us by bombarding the television with adverts and by using the media to confuse us, and they’ll never stop… Until Superbad is the number one movie this weekend.

This Thursday evening, some of Toronto's finest culture jammers will descend on the Rivoli (334 Queen Street West) for GlobalAware's take YOUR space!, an event that intends to "see how adbusts, culture jams, and reclaiming public space is indeed art in itself."

One of the things that makes The National's music so brilliant—and what might make the band's latest album, Boxer, the best release of 2007—is its ambiguity.

Only three days left in the 17th Annual Inside Out Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival! Last night, Eleven Men Out screened at the Bader; an Icelandic comedy with a reasonably original premise: a soccer player named Ottar being interviewed by a reporter in the locker room after a game while the rest of his team is changing decides, for the benefit of appearing on the magazine's cover, to come out of the closet at that exact moment. As a result, he is thrown off the team and becomes the pariah of his family, including an alkie former-Miss Iceland ex-wife, a biggoted soccer-exec father, a video-store managing brother with a penchant for shemale pornography and a moody tweenage son who would rather play Counter-Strike than have a conversation with his father.

It was only inevitable; indeed, they would say we asked for it. The Secret, the latest in a long line of mega-selling self-help phenomena, is on its way to Toronto. Several "teachers" featured in the original film and the subsequent book will be holding forth on April 14th and 15th at the Westin Harbour Castle. The promotional literature is distinguished by its modest proposal: "The Secret to everything—the secret to life filled with joy, good health, financial freedom, loving relationships, abundant energy, youth: everything you ever wanted." Profundity and provocation are sure to be the order of the day.

Ontario to raise minimum wage to $10.25 by 2010 in new budget. NDP critic predictably says "no, we want it NOW," but Torontoist feels this is one instance where Dalton McGuinty's tendency to take as middling a road as possible has produced just about the best possible result. A twenty-five percent raise in the minimum wage over three years (and what will be a sixty-six percent raise since the Liberals took office in 2003) ain't nothing, not even close.

George W. Bush made his State of the Union address last night. Among his policy initiatives introduced in the speech were a request to Americans to reduce their gasoline consumption by twenty percent in ten years (while simultaneously claiming American needed to increase domestic gasoline production), and a proposal to tax employer-based health plans to pay for HSAs (which don't actually solve the problems facing American healthcare). An annotated and rather niftily clickable rebuttal of the SOTU speech can be found here. However, they cannot rebut the fact that George Bush's chosen example of the ideal American immigrant is Apparently the plaque on the Statue of Liberty is being changed to read "Give us your tall, your agile, those capable of dunking and rebounding with equal facility."

Starting today, you must have a passport to fly from Canada to the U.S. If you're dead set on clearing customs, it might be best to leave your anti-Bush shirts at home.

Toronto can't seem to keep its trash out of trouble. Those giant sidewalk trash bins aren't generating enough in ad revenue to honour their $1-million-a-year payout to the city, so now what? Well, bids for Toronto's street furniture contract are still being accepted. The winning companies will be supplying garbage bins, bus shelters and bike racks for no cost, but will reap the benefits of the "furniture"'s potential adspace.