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Newsstand: March 9, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
A lawyer for Steve Ellis, the immigration judge accused of trying to coerce a woman to sleep with him, says that, technically, Ellis never asked Ji Hye Kim to “have sex” with him at all—certainly not on a you-show-me-yours-I’ll-let-you-remain-in-the-country kind of way. Ellis may have merely implied that, in his opinion, Kim might want to consider getting into bed with him as a free expression of her wish to live in Canada. Indirectly, you understand. Ever so slyly. The trial continues.
While watching American politics self-destruct over the issue of health care reform, it’s been a relief to know that, here in Ontario, that whole problem has already been sorted out. Nice preconception you’ve got there. It would be a pity if something were to happen to it. That’s right, yesterday’s provincial throne speech singled out an OHIP overhaul as one of this year’s priorities. In an effort to cut daunting health care costs, the province is expected to have hospitals compete for funds, narrow their range of services, and focus on being cheaper, better, and busier. It seems like there should be more of a tradeoff—maybe they’ll be meaner or serve only foul-tasting cherry Jell-O. Or maybe they just won’t be as good.
MyTTC.ca and its ilk would be perfect if surface vehicles always followed their published schedules, but delays are a fact of life on the TTC and can’t be accounted for are easy to track. As of now (a.k.a. The Future) satellites are monitoring the situation on seven streetcar lines, with a cold, unfeeling eye set on enriching your waiting experience. As we understand it, NextBus employs a dazzling blend of lasers and science to estimate how long it will take for a streetcar to reach your stop, including unplanned delays. To put it differently: the system assumes the cars won’t be running on schedule. Try it out here, but remember it’s still in the beta (a.k.a. crappy) stage.
Cycling nut Igor Kenk is back at home after serving his sentence, and his wife says that all he wants is to be left alone. His neighbours, also talking to the press, say (and this is a paraphrase) “meh.” We’ll boil it down: the Post got its article on Kenk’s reintegration into society out ahead of the competition by slapping a mildly suggestive headline over a couple of neighbourhood interviews, the centrepiece of which was Kenk’s spouse telling their reporter politely to go away. Oh, National Post, we’ll at least trust you when you say that Kenk is, indeed, out of jail.
Oh yeah, and the classiest man at the TTC is out of a job. No, we don’t mean Adam Giambrone! Charm he may have, but not an ounce of the sort of regal bearing it takes to abuse your position overseeing a multi-million-dollar public works project to get your girlfriend a high-paying job and then send your daughter to work for the mistress. We filled you in on the basics yesterday, but, thanks to the Star, you can now forget everything, because your tax dollars are no longer paying his salary. Why not invest them in something nicer? We hear that small bookstores are worried about money. Now get out and have a good morning.