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Newsstand: December 31, 2010
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
Noisemakers? Check! Dancing shoes? Check! Lady Gaga on endless loop? Check! Hello, you’re our upstairs neighbours! Today, bag fee may get tossed, you’ll pay more tax in 2011, and regular-sized Ethiopians take another shot at Little Ethiopia.
Having convinced council to scrap the auto registration tax, the people’s penny-pincher may be turning his attention to Toronto’s plastic bag fee. Mayor Rob Ford evidently wants to kill the nickel-a-bag levy, telling the National Post that based on an undisclosed number of conversations with shoppers “All of a sudden the five cents is really becoming a sticking point with people and it wasn’t really before, so I want to get rid of it.” The Star reports that some retailers, notably Loblaws, will continue to collect the fee and give it to charity, and that it’s likely the City doesn’t have the right to tell stores what to charge anyway. Quote from Franz Hartmann, executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance: “Why would Mayor Ford want to cancel a fee where the end result will be more garbage, more litter and less money to charity?” One word—gravytrain.
Happy New Year! If you’re a regular shmoe, you’ll be paying more taxes next year. Apart from higher EI and CPP premiums, working folk will be shelling out on average several hundred bucks more to the province and the feds, with Ontarians getting hit the hardest. On the plus side, if you’re a working family making $45,000 a year and paying an extra $390 in taxes, you could save the same amount by using eighteen plastic bags every day and not having to pay a nickel for them. Also, if you’re a business, your taxes rates will drop by 1.5%, so you may want to get incorporating.
An Angus Reid poll says that 55% of Canadians would like to get rid of the penny, which is pretty much worthless and costs a cent and a half to make. Of course, that means we’d have to replace the term “penny-pincher” with something more current—we suggest “nickel-nipper” or “toonie-tweaker.”
The idea of creating Little Ethiopia on the Danforth may be back on the table. A new board has been voted in for the Danforth Mosaic Business Improvement Association, which includes three members of Ethiopian background and the intent to revive the idea of a branded Little Ethiopia neighbourhood on the Danforth between Greenwood Avenue and Monarch Park. The idea had been turned down by the previous BIA board because the area is more multicultural than Ethiopian. No word on the proposed “Little Canada” district, which would be a sports bar near the ACC.