news
Newsstand: February 10, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
Now that news is out that Councillor Adam Giambrone (Ward 18, Davenport) has been dating other women secretly for some time now, we’ll see how it plays out. “I misled you and I am sorry I have no excuse,” Giambrone told the Star‘s reporter, reversing the position he’d held in earlier statements that he and Kristen Lucas had not had an intimate relationship. Giambrone’s close associate, Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s West) was reduced to speaking in one-word sentences (“Shock, shock.” “Pain.”), and various Twitter users went insane at the news, but back at the Star, Royson James is pretty sure he knows exactly how to fix everything. Oh, and Ashley Madison is riding the rocket to more free publicity, again.
A Toronto cop who shot a boy in the chest, killing him, because he thought the youth meant to run over his partner with a stolen van, was questioned harshly yesterday, but the shooter wasn’t the one on trial. If only to remind you that there’s hard news in Toronto, here’s the story of a potentially precedent-setting negligence case against Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, which cleared Constable Steve Darnley of wrongdoing in gunning down Duane Christian, 15, in 2006. The provincial Ombudsman André Marin accused the SIU of being biased towards police in 2008.
Bob Kinnear, the head of the Amalgamated Transit Union, told a press conference yesterday that he wants riders and members of the press to attend town-hall events. He gave a them taste of the dialogue he hopes to open, reaching out to urge them to “stop harassing people who are doing their jobs. Stop insulting them. Stop waving your phone cameras in their faces as you get on the bus or streetcar. Stop spitting on them. Stop calling them lazy and overpaid.” As for management, Kinnear signalled his willingness to enter talks regarding the whininess of Gary Webster’s “rant,” in which the TTC general manager accused some transit workers of unacceptable behaviour.
Although it may come as a surprise to some, you can in fact spell “Haiti” without “Hate.” Now that Canadians have donated over $113 million to humanitarian relief to survivors of January’s devastating earthquake, the backlash against Haiti has kicked off in Toronto. In defense of the Sun, that paper touches briefly on the ethical problems of human trafficking. But in a bizarre attack of tone-deafness, illegal immigration from Haiti was characterized, negatively, as an “underground railroad.”
And Dalton McGuinty just announced that he will prorogue Ontario’s parliament for a short period until after the Olympics. He hasn’t set a date for the session break, but some observers who predicted it say that it will give MPPs some time to catch up on their homework in the wake of a cabinet shuffle. McGuinty recently called for two by-elections on March 4.
But hey, if it’s been a rough season for some, at least it’s been pretty clear outside. Mild snowfall this year has saved the city about fifteen million dollars compared to 2008–2009 for things like snow removal and road salting. We’re even on track for our least snowy winter ever. Or are we?