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Newsstand: March 10, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
It’s Day One Hundred in Ford Nation, and the mayor celebrates with a council-supported ousting of the TCHC board; TV screens in school are put on pause for now; Sarah Thomson is really going to run in the provincial election for real; the SIU reopens another G20 investigation; and two thousand dead birds cover the floor of the ROM.
After a long, sometimes contentious, often weird debate, city council voted in favour of immediately removing the remaining members of the TCHC board of directors. With a vote of 25–18, it’s goodbye recently assembled board of thirteen and a warm welcome to Case Ootes as interim overlord. You may know Ootes from his old gigs as city councillor (gravy alert: a position for which he will continue to collect severance while also getting a paycheque for his new board duties), Mel Lastman’s deputy mayor, and Mayor Ford’s transition team leader. And what a smooth transition that’s been, eh! Highlights of the meeting included councillors’ rhetorical acrobatics in attempt to avoid direct mention of the auditor general’s report that pretty much everyone knows is the lynchpin of mayor Ford’s attack plan, but can’t say since it hasn’t technically been reviewed by council yet. And the public gallery’s use of jazz hands to silently register dissent/indignation/amusement or whatever else they did kept getting scolded by the speaker for expressing with jeers, claps, and titters. Good for all manner of emotions, it seems that as the debate dragged on, “opposing councillors began to taunt one another with menacing jazz hands.” The menacing jazz hands of Ootes will be starring in this one-man show until June 15 at the latest.
Another late-night debate-a-thon was going down Wednesday night, as school trustees decided whether to allow the installation of TVs with information and advertisements in seventy TDSB schools. After three hours of debate, no decision was reached with the trustees instead deciding to press the pause and send the matter to a committee. But TV isn’t giving up. The issue will most likely come up again at the next TDSB meeting.
After months of speculation, Sarah Thomson has confirmed she will run as a Liberal in the upcoming provincial election. Thomson made the announcement that she’ll run in the Trinity-Spadina riding currently held by the NDP on her Facebook page. The announcement note comes hot on the heels of her last important Facebook missive: a chain letter about her favourite authors.
In what’s becoming a familiar headline, the SIU is reopening a G20 investigation after new video emerged of the incident. This is fourth case out of the six that the SIU originally probed and closed that has been reopened. So search your footage folks, and help round out the SIU’s collection of probed-closed-reopened G20 cases.
There were dead birds all over the floor at the ROM yesterday. But no, not like that freaky bee thing that went down in early February. The birds were part of a display by FLAP, the organization that rallies to save migratory birds from meeting an untimely end at the windows of office towers. Flap on, flappers!