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Newsstand: March 10, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
Good morning! Now stop distracting us! We’re all worked up about the surprise press conference Mayor David Miller is holding later this morning. His office has been tight-lipped about the contents of Miller’s announcement, but as you can see, it’s going to be big news. That, or he’s going to royally piss off a lot of journalists. Or both! Is he going to run for a third term after all? Is he going to cut short his current term? Will he just do this for a while? Has he secretly been Hazel McCallion all along? We just don’t know, though the first two ideas are especially plausible. Torontoist will be there, and if you’re as excited as we are, check these guys to get the whole story the minute it becomes available.
Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby (Ward 4, Etobicoke Centre) wants to “freeze” all bids and pending contracts in the eight-billion-dollar Transit City project until we can confirm that it isn’t staffed exclusively by John Cursio’s girlfriends. Lindsay Luby’s reasoning is that, for all we know, the fifty-thousand-dollar gig Cursio helped Robin Thoen get with the project is just the “tip of the iceberg.” For context, the payments Cursio unscrupulously signed over amount to less than one ten-thousandth of one percent of the project’s budget. Lindsay Luby said that all the large contracts are “very transparent,” but is citing concerns over smaller deals.
Councillors on the Etobicoke York community council also shot down proposals to allow a bunch of digital billboards over the Gardiner, but allowed several—three over the expressway, one of them awaiting provincial approval, and a whole mess of them in the west end. The acrimonious meeting was part of a huge glut in billboard-related applications in advance of the city’s new sign bylaw, which takes effect in April. Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) took the opportunity to protest against the new bylaw, an interesting move by him, since he actually voted for it just three months ago. What’s changed since then? “I read it,” said Mammoliti. Would that make this a bad time to remind you that this man is running for mayor?
It’s never nice when media handling of a story eclipses the story itself. Okay, maybe this is making a big fuss over nothing. The Sun puts it best: “T.O. to become even more multicultural.” The Star was almost on the ball, quickly changing their initial headline, “Whites to be visible minority in Toronto by 2031” (oh noo!), to something less alarmist. The Globe coined the term “visible majorities,” which seems okay, except it’s a bit incorrect to suggest that white people are invisible. They can usually be seen with the naked eye, except in thick snowstorms, when they’re standing in front of clean drywall, or in discussions on racial politics. We kid, we kid.
Weirdly, that almost gives a bit of an opening to quote Senator Nancy Ruth, the driving force behind the failed proposal to make “O Canada” gender neutral. “Language is the power of the ruling class to define reality in its own terms to make invisible all others!” she said, with what is apparently her typical enthusiasm. Though the Prime Minister’s Office dropped the idea almost instantly after it was mentioned in last week’s throne speech, Ruth is creatively prodding Parliament to consider it.
Centennial College is all set to offer Canada’s first course in Islamic finance this May. For your cheat-sheet: the course will cover how to run a lending institution without charging interest, and a number of religious prohibitions, such as staying out of industries that involve alcohol. So, probably that means no journalism. Oh well. And that’s your news.