Results tagged “taxes”

Late last night the City's proposed new billboard bylaw and tax [PDF] cleared a major hurdle, unanimously passing through the Planning and Growth Management Committee on its way to a hearing before the full City Council. The meeting ran 'til about 11 p.m. and had to be moved from one of the regular committee meeting rooms to the main Council Chamber in order to accommodate fifty-plus deputants and scores of other observers. It was a pitched battle, one that has lasted through several years of debate, consultation, and resistance leading up to this moment. A tremendous victory for public space advocates, progressive councillors, and Mayor Miller, the bylaw will provide harmonized regulation of the billboard industry (the rules haven't been updated since amalgamation) and the tax will create the revenue needed to enforce those regulations.

Today doesn't mark any kind of numerically significant anniversary for the fire that destroyed six buildings near the intersection of Queen Street West and Bathurst Street on Feburary 20 of last year. There's no nice, round number of days, years, or months to occasion this post. The timing here might be inconvenient, but then so was the fire's. (5 a.m. on a Wednesday?) So we're not totally out of line.

We've been at City Hall a fair number of times, but it wasn't until this week that we had the rather delightful experience of being met by a beatboxing duo at the front door or rocking out to OutKast in the Council Chamber. The occasion for this upending of formality? A town hall meeting, hosted by a network of organizations known collectively as the Beautiful City Alliance. The coalition is working to convince city council to direct revenue from the billboard tax it plans to introduce this summer towards art in the public sphere and is stepping up its campaign efforts as the vote on that tax approaches. The town hall, attended by some two or three hundred artists and activists, as well as several city councillors, was part informational meeting and part pep rally, with a bit of spontaneous art production thrown in for good measure.

Opposition critics are calling the review of the controversial provincial health tax a sham, pointing out how Dalton McGuinty has already acknowledged that the tax would not be eliminated and the review was going forward only because it's required by law. The premier at first denied the charge, but upon hearing it repeated, said, "Oh, I thought you said 'scam'. Yes, the review is definitely a sham."

Many fast-food chains and grocery stores are reintroducing tomatoes to their menus after the American tomato salmonella outbreak last week. Officials for the stores said that they waited until everybody had forgotten about the salmonella thing before bringing back the tomatoes, and that in future they hope to make us forget about bad things faster.

People work hard for their money, but don't make their money work hard for them. It's time to fix that. The last Wednesday of every month, Saverist whips your income into shape with smart, practical advice.

Photo by jpghouse.

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."

In this occasional feature, two Torontoist staffers face off to debate an issue that is important to our city. We invite our readers to join in the debate in the comments section after the post.

Former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto was assassinated yesterday in a bloody suicide attack that killled at least 20 other other people. Anyone thinking that this news isn't sufficiently Toronto-centric should hope that the destabilization of this nuclear-armed extremist-incubator state doesn't have much direct impact on Toronto, because if it does it's likely to be in ways that are not at all fun.

The half-wit OCAD student who planted a fake bomb at the ROM on Wednesday has turned himself in to police and been charged with mischief and common nuisance. Ha, closing a major thoroughfare, wasting the time of hundreds of police and emergency service personnel, and forcing the cancellation of an AIDS gala—what a lovable scamp. The death rates at Canadian Hospitals have now been made public in a report from the Canadian Institute for...

In an age of hipster irony and shirts to match, the Joy T-Shirt Project and its slogan, "Wear the World on Your Heart," seem impossibly sincere. But the "we're all connected" paradigm rings true: each shirt features the face of a real person—not Paris or Perez, but Sonya from Toronto or Sabry from Algeria, or one of over a hundred others in the online catalogue—hand-drawn and silk-screened over the wearer's heart. "It's more than just...

Photo by afiler.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has announced that the rich pay the lowest tax rates of all income groups. Heather Reisman, Jim Balsillie, and everyone who lives on the Bridle Path celebrated this by heating their gigantic mansions with a fireplace full of money and cackling. Maniacally. Dalton McGuinty is adding to economic fear-mongering by claiming that the rising loonie is hurting Ontario’s economy and that interest rates should be lowered. Meanwhile on...

Toronto gets a C+ on the annual Smog Report Card. Most of the blame for the low grade goes to the city's financial crisis, which is stalling transit improvements and other environmental initiatives. The rest of the blame goes on YOU. Yes, YOU. In the back. Don't try to point to the person sitting next to you! You horrible polluter, you!

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.

City officials to David Miller: don't tax booze. They reasonably pointed out that consumption taxes don't work when people can just drive thirty minutes to evade said taxes. In response, Miller pouted and ran up to his room, refusing to come out for dinner.

Will the province take over the TTC? Apparently such rumours are all the buzz in political backrooms. Which are kind of like political bathrooms, except that the backrooms have no toilets or sinks or indeed any serious practical use, which is why they feature so prominently in government. Torontoist's suggestion, from its own backroom: let Pizza Pizza take over the TTC. Then we would at least get Rip-Off Charity Pizza Days more often.

Mayor David Miller passed a compromised version of his contentious land transfer and vehicle registration taxes yesterday. The taxes will raise only about $175 million of the $414 million estimated budget shortfall, and will add about $3,700 to the price of the average home. "I think it's a vote of confidence in Toronto," said the Mayor inexplicably about the plan to layer more costs onto taxpayers in a city with a hollowed-out manufacturing base, declining incomes, and anemic economic growth.

City Council is going to be crazy today. We highly recommend you watch. (Click here for the online feed.) The chambers are going to be packed to capacity, with the overflow relegated to watching the proceedings on the screen in the rotunda. This does not happen often. It will be loud. It will be hectic. It will be exciting.

If you loved (or hated) MasterCard skating to the rescue of Toronto's outdoor rinks this winter, you'll love (or hate) one of the city's other sponsorship innovations: traffic signals. Yes, Toronto allows—encourages—corporations to pay for the installation of audible pedestrian signals (APS) at the intersections of their choice. In return, companies receive free advertising space at each location declaring their largesse and the city's poverty.

There has been a lot of debate recently about how and to what extent corporations should be allowed to fund community initiatives. City Hall is currently ablaze with lobbying and ambivalence as we draw nearer to City Council's vote on land transfer and vehicle ownership taxes, a decision that could easily blow the door open to more private sponsorship of community services and public space.

David Miller has enlisted the aid of a team of hired guns to find savings in the municipal budget. Their recommendations should arrive in time to incorporate into the 2008 budget, but too late for Tuesday's vote on controversial new taxes. City Council is optimistic that the group, whose members include Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, Templeton "Faceman" Peck, "Howling Mad" Murdock, and B.A. Baracus, will be able to solve all our problems.

Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize. And then Ann Coulter's head exploded.

New laws will officially criminalize identity theft by making it illegal to gather personal information which can be used for criminal purposes. Fun fact: if your identity is stolen online, the chances of the crime ever being investigated or prosecuted are practically zero. Surf safe, kids!

Mayor Miller was in Etobicoke yesterday, trying to convince the people who regularly vote in Ford, Holyday, Nunziata, et al. that new taxes are a necessity. It went about as well as you'd expect.

A note to Torontoist readers from an artists' group with some impressive collective activist-power: