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Newsstand: April 20, 2010
lllustration by Clayton Hanmer/Torontoist.
Last summer’s civic works (aka garbage collection) strike is still raising a stink. We know, there was far more disrupted during those six politically deadly weeks than just solid waste pickup. But those infested local dumpsites and requests for residents to store decomposing trash in their freezers made a lasting impression on voters. In fact, even nine months later, it looks like a strong majority of Torontonians supports privatizing garbage collection. That same survey found mayoral contender Rocco Rossi’s idea of selling off Toronto Hydro massively unpopular.
Meanwhile, the Star has obtained and read through hundreds of TTC rider complaints. Maybe it’s not shocking that the bulk of these are furious over a bad experience with frontline transit staff: It’s hard, though not impossible, to get quite so worked up about fare hikes or a lack of smart cards. The complaints folder is thick with stories from ticked-off riders: daily harassment by drivers, racist or sexist treatment, and one case of a driver refusing to move his bus for twenty minutes until a baby stopped crying. The transit workers union has held town hall meetings to hear from riders, and the TTC’s customer service advisory panel is expected to deliver its own detailed report in June. In the meantime, TTC spokesperson Brad Ross reminds you that “there are two sides to every story.”
The nearly two-hundred-million-dollar pedestrian revitalization project at Queens Quay has received the provincial thumbs-up it needed. The plan, which we noted last September, aims to cut two lanes of traffic from the boulevard and plant a grassy, “green” streetcar track through the area. The Waterfront Business Improvement Area voiced concerns about the plan, citing the stalled St. Clair streetcar project that caused trouble for businesses in that neighbourhood, but even they were cautiously optimistic. “You have to have a decent plan from the get-go, which I think Waterfront Toronto has the capacity to do properly,” said Waterfront BIA chair Kevin Currie. The project currently has enough funding for the forty-eight-million-dollar first stage, to be completed in Fall 2012.
Go green or go home seems to be the message today, as City Hall kneecapped an anti–wind turbine campaign by Guildwood residents who want a province-wide moratorium on wind turbines. The group, with the support of Councillors Brian Ashton (Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest) and Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East), seeks to block the construction of turbines on the Scarborough Bluffs, which they believe will “destroy the Scarborough waterfront.” The city is currently studying the environmental impact a wind power generation site would have on the bluffs. That study “will likely take a couple of years,” at which time city council has advised the residents it might be ready to weigh their suggestions.
Ontario’s teacher-training programs are graduating two certified teachers for every one that retires in the province, and so the province is telling universities to cut as many as one thousand teaching program spots. The government has indicated that it will stop funding those spots to ease a situation that has led many new teachers to find work overseas or in other professions.
New teachers can’t even catch a break with supply positions, apparently. Under a policy put in place during a teacher shortage two decades ago, many Ontario school boards, including the TDSB, give more supply-teaching jobs to retirees than to new teachers and at a significantly higher pay scale. See, teaching grads? You really should’ve stayed in school. That’s the news.