Results tagged “money”

Last year, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities unveiled a new program that gave out $150 to any and every full-time post-secondary student in Ontario who applied for it, no strings attached. More than half a million students province-wide qualified for the Technology and Textbook Grant, or TTG, intended to help cover the "added academic expense related to textbooks and technology and other academic supplies," as John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, told the Queen's Journal last year.

For a Torontonian, walking through downtown Detroit on an ordinary Saturday afternoon is an eerie, Rod Serling–esque experience: where're all the people? Nobody’s around. From time to time a rolling vehicle will pass by, on the lookout for a safe lot. It is a desolate, almost post-nuclear dystopia, where every storefront and sidewalk is as deserted as a Chrysler dealership. Even ten or fifteen minutes out from the downtown core, there aren't many locals in sight. Perhaps the odd drifter hustling tourists in a near-empty McDonald’s or Burger King. The savvy eat in their parked cars, while roving police cruisers outnumber pedestrians and pleasant chatter by a wide margin. Portraits of yesteryear glories hang wherever you go, and you’d like to think this famous city has more heart than a Michaëlle Jean snack, but downtown NoMo-town is undeniably a lifeless, soulless scene.

There's more than enough trash-talking to go with the tulips this spring on Parliament Hill, with some distinctly unflowery themes (Fiscal mismanagement! Attack ads! Election threats! Secret tapes!) echoing through the air.

Ever since the Art Gallery of Ontario reopened its doors in November, its free Wednesday nights have been a big hit. The cultural access initiative has been a popular smash (gallery users line up in droves for the evening and crowd the museum’s spaces with a palpable enthusiasm) and a media slam-dunk (Toronto’s other big renovated museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, did away with their free Fridays upon reopening and came off more elitist as a result).

U of T's flat fee proposal for Arts and Science students—the one that would force new students to pay for 5.0 courses, regardless of how many courses, from 3.0–6.0, they actually took—has barreled over the final administrative hurdle at the University of Toronto, and was passed this evening by the university's Governing Council at a meeting held at the school's Mississauga campus.

We're not sure most would consider it a sensible way to spend your last dollars. But it's certainly a way to get creative with your cash.

Two weeks after the University of Toronto got one step closer to passing a contentious proposal that would force many new students to pay a flat fee regardless of the number of courses they were actually enrolled in, the University of Toronto Students' Union (UTSU) and the Arts and Sciences Students' Union (ASSU) have—according to a press release sent out by them this morning—"filed an urgent application asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to stop a flat fee proposal from moving ahead."

Following Wednesday's announcement by Ontario culture minister Aileen Carroll, six GTA cultural institutions will receive an additional $43.4 million in funding that recognizes “the innovative programming and collections that attract millions of visitors and help Ontario compete on the international stage.” The beneficiaries of this one-time surge of $18.6 million and total annual operating increase of $24.8 million are the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Ontario Science Centre, the Ontario Heritage Trust, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Ryan Bigge—Toronto's least ironically named freelancer and, according to the first issue of Spacing, a former "magaging editor" of Adbusters—last year estimated that Richard Florida pulled in $170 000 a year from U of T. When the 2008 Public Sector Salary Disclosure (Sunshine) list was released, Bigge took the figure of $169,999.98 to mean that his guess was only two cents off. What Bigge failed to take into account, however, was that the 2008 list was actually the disclosure of salaries for 2007, and only included money paid out for that period. In other words, because Florida was only hired away from George Mason University in July '07, the money on the list covered just the half-year he was at U of T.

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.

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.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released the government's budget plan today, entitled "Canada's Economic Action Plan" (a.k.a. "Money Can't Buy Me Happiness, But Maybe Massive Deficits Will"). While the broad strokes of the budget were all leaked ahead of time—tax cuts, massive infrastructure spending, support for the unemployed, increased regulation of the financial industry, and an $85 billion deficit over five years—a few details from Flaherty's speech are of interest to Toronto. Specifically, the federal government plans to pump cash into the revitalization of Union Station and augment the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal rail corridor in order to reduce travel time between Toronto and Montreal by thirty minutes. There was, however, no mention of funding for the TTC's Transit City plan. Maybe this snub will finally lead to the cage match between Jim Flaherty and David Miller we've all been waiting for. Two GTA politicians enter, only one leaves!

With the national economy struggling under the weight of a global economic crisis, Governor General Michaëlle Jean yesterday delivered a throne speech that was both incredibly brief (the English version contains just 750 words) and, due to the intense Ottawa cold, surrounded by hardly any of the usual vice-regal pomp and circumstance. Which was probably just as well, given that yesterday's speech was really just the pre-game show for today's main event, the federal budget.

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.

This is the third in a three-part series exploring the effects of the global economic downturn on Toronto. Two weeks ago, economist Walid Hejazi gave an overview of what we're in for as the slowdown worsens. Last week, community activist John Campey explained how Toronto's most vulnerable residents might fare in the crisis. Today, the view from City Hall.

This is the second in a three-part series exploring the effects of the global economic downturn on Toronto. Last week, economist Walid Hejazi gave an overview of what we're in for as the slowdown worsens. Next week, a view from the halls of power.

This is the first in a three-part series exploring the effects of the global economic downturn on Toronto. Next week, a community activist explains how the city's most vulnerable residents might fare as the crisis worsens.

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 Owen Byrne.

Today was the kind of day that sent financial reporters scrambling for their thesauri to look for synonyms for the word "plummet." In its biggest one-day point loss since the crash of 1987, the TSX fell 764 points, largely on the back of tumbling oil prices and bad news from TD Bank. The 9.02 percent hammering brought Canada's main stock market down to 7,726 points at the closing bell, the first time since 2003 that the exchange ended a day below 8,000. The loonie also faired poorly, falling 2.48 cents to 77.35 cents US. The abysmal market performance was not the day's only troubling financial news: Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page earlier released a report predicting that the federal government is on track for a deficit of up to $13.8 billion next year, despite the Prime Minister's insistence during the election campaign that such an event was outside the realm of possibility. If all that doom and gloom has you feeling a bit down, think of it this way: at least we're better off than Iceland.

Photo by Jenna Marie Wakani from the NDP's Flickr photostream.

People work hard for their money, but 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.

September and October have been quite the wild ride. With the $700 billion financial rescue package, a Canadian federal election, the U.S. presidential race, and the threat of corporate bankruptcies, it's been hard to de-politicize the current economic environment and take note of the fundamental trends at play. For most of 2008, Toronto didn’t need to worry about this big picture—the TSX was the world's leading (or least worst) stock market and its economy didn't look too shabby. Recently, though, the situation has deteriorated, and things in Toronto don't look very promising now: since September 1, the TSX has lost 32% of its value. To make things worse, its daily volatility has been obscenely high and 5–8% intra-day swings are not uncommon. Why does this matter? Because the investment savings or RRSP you've been trying to start (or have continued to fund) will also be down by 32% on average, and the baby boomers' pension plans are taking a deep hit.

Users of RBC debit machines across Canada were left to fend for themselves this morning after computer problems caused much of the Interac network to go down just before 10 a.m. The outage disrupted banking nationwide for almost two hours and stranded customers trying to use RBC-serviced point-of-sale terminals and ATMs. Moneris, the company that connects debit machines to Interac, apologized for the inconvenience. No word on whether they snickered while giving their mea culpa.

Photo by heyjoewhereyougoinwiththatguninyourhand.

In an effort to erase last week's record losses on the Toronto stock market from their memory, Canadian traders sent the TSX soaring by 1600 points first thing this morning, its biggest opening rally ever. This comes a day after the Dow posted its largest one-day point gain of all time, closing up 936 points, or 11 percent (the TSX was closed Monday for the Thanksgiving holiday). In other economic news, the U.S. government has announced that it will partially nationalize nine major American banks in an effort to stabilize teetering financial markets. The news leaves Canadians asking one question: who's the socialist mommy state now?

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has told reporters that G8 leaders are considering closing the world's financial markets while they figure out a way to fix the international financial system. According to Bloomberg.com, Berlusconi said that he and his fellow leaders are "talking about a new Bretton Woods," the landmark 1944 conference at the tail end of World War II that led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which later evolved into the World Trade Organization. The Italian PM has a reputation for stretching the truth, but with world markets continuing to slide precipitously—the TSX had lost more than 700 points and the loonie was down nearly five cents by mid-afternoon, its biggest one-day drop ever—Berlusconi's comments may be an accurate reflection of just how far the world's leaders are willing to go to prevent a total economic meltdown.

Cheap Thrills is a new bi-weekly column filling you in on fresh ways to get your kicks in the city and on the cheap.

Of late, downtown Toronto has felt a lot like New York City. In addition to the influx of celebrities for TIFF and Toronto’s growing reputation as a hub of pop culture, the amount of new tower construction near Union Station is reminiscent of the development boom in the Big Apple.

Cheap Thrills is a new bi-weekly column filling you in on fresh ways to get your kicks in the city and on the cheap.