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Weekend Newsstand: March 26, 2011
Illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist.
Here’s the story of a man named Harper, who was running a whole country on his own. Until this morning, that is, when he asked the Governor General to call an election. Now we’re all in it together, team! Also in the news: Toronto’s average eighty-minute commute is bad for business, an inquest hopes to avoid another death in Toronto immigration detention, disgraced pathologist Charles Smith skips his reprimand hearing, and a fan tries to buy the Maple Leafs.
Welcome to the first official day of the federal election campaign, Toronto! Prime Minister Stephen Harper has emerged from his visit to the Governor General to get this party started—election May 2! Meanwhile, a Toronto Star poll finds the Conservatives could finally end up with their much-coveted majority government after their fourth election campaign in seven years. It places the governing party in the lead with 39% support, while the Liberals trail in second at 25%. While we all know how accurate polls can be, this one puts the focus on battleground ridings in the 905, where the desire to get the “ethnics” onside has been strong with the Harper Conservatives. It just goes to show that there are worse things than being the first government in the entire British Commonwealth to be found in contempt of Parliament. It’s almost a little desirable, really.
A ranking by the Toronto Board of Trade has found Canadian municipalities well behind the pack when it comes to public transit, and Toronto even further back than most. Shocking! The report, which calls commute times a national liability that is harming our economy, ranked Toronto nineteenth in the public transit category, which looked at transit ridership, commute times, kilometres of existing tracks, and vehicles per rider. It said our city’s average eighty-minute commute gives it a bad reputation, and that politicians must wake up and smell the congestion or risk losing ground in the market. Campaign issue, folks!
Jan Szamko was a Roma refugee and the first person to die in immigration custody in Toronto, in December 2009. On Friday, an inquest into his death revealed that his captors had ignored the lethal infection that killed him, instead choosing to believe he was being uncooperative in the face of his deportation back to the Czech Republic. Guards thought that when he defecated on himself and refused food that he was just trying to cause trouble, and that his howling moans were a form of protest. The inquest jury has recommended creating a better system for sharing inmates’ medical records, something that surely comes as little comfort to Szamko’s wife and daughter, both Toronto residents.
Disgraced pathologist Charles Smith has unsurprisingly chosen to hunker down in Victoria, B.C., instead of appearing at yet another hearing in which his incompetence was laid bare. On Friday, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario issued a strongly worded reprimand of his failures, saying he has disgraced doctors everywhere by making several mistakes that led to erroneous child-murder convictions. His medical licence was stripped in February, but Smith has not been given any jail time for his negligence, which sent several parents into custody, some for more than a decade.
And finally: listen up, long-suffering members of Leafs Nation. The team of your dreams and anguish could be yours if one of your own has his way. Alberta-based fan Darren Thompson has launched an online campaign to raise money to buy a controlling share in the team being sold by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. His campaign has already raised forty million dollars in pledges, and wouldn’t be the first time eager sports fans have bought into a team—the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Green Bay Packers both set precedents.