news
Newsstand: October 15, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
It’s Friday, start drinking at noon! In the news, Joey P. talks budget, more G20 embarassment, and another big race this weekend.
Joe Pantalone, now the last significant also-ran still limping behind Ford and Smitherman in the mayoral race, has released his fiscal plan for Toronto. While he stopped short of shouting, “Gravy trains for all!” and hurling fistfuls of loonies at the assembled media, the little optimist says that his plan will avoid service cuts and keep property taxes contained while also eliminating the vehicle registraton tax. One of the assumptions made in his plan is that Toronto will wind up with a $180 million budget surplus for 2010, which is a tricky thing to predict and not necessarily repeatable.
Another ninety G20 protestors have had all charges against them dropped due to lack of evidence. Most of them were activists from Quebec who were staying in a U of T gymnasium when it was raided by police on Sunday, June 27. Your tax money at work, people.
In a related blurb, new bail restrictions placed on alleged G20 troublemeister Alex Hundert are being called an “astonishing” deprivation of rights. Hundert had previously been forbidden from attending politically tinged events, but a judge has now extended that ruling to prevent him from speaking to the media. The Star has a picture of a sombre Hundert looking as though he’d really, really like to say something.
Six years after police raided the former Molson brewery in Barrie and dismantled one of the biggest marijuana grow-ops in Canadian history, twelve more people have been arrested and charged with a variety of offences. There’s probably something ironic about growing weed in a brewery, but we’re not sure what it is, or really even what the word “ironic” means.
Rats! As we told you yesterday, the beloved and reviled Green Room has had its license revoked. More detail to follow later today.
Toronto streets will be filled with panting ectomorphs this Sunday for the second of two fall marathons. The GoodLife Fitness Marathon starts at 8 a.m. and will see road closures from downtown up to North York. The event follows only three weeks after traffic was disrupted for the Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon on September 26, forcing motorists to try alternate routes for several long painful hours and making Rob Ford even more irate than usual. Ford supporters and general road-ragers should be mollified by the knowledge that next year the GoodLife event will be held in the spring so they’ll have forgotten about it by the time the fall marathon rolls around.