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Newsstand: April 21, 2011
Illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist.
It’s one of those Thursday’s that’s kind of like a Friday, so enjoy it with some kind of news. Queen’s Park to Case Ootes: “You are not alone. I am here with you.”; Pride debate put off due to Passover, duh; concerned citizens find a (kind of) champion in Doug Holyday.
Former councillor and one-man board man Case Ootes just got a friendly reminder from Queen’s Park that he’s not all alone in the world. An updated provincial housing law approved on Tuesday retains the province’s right to veto any sale of public housing, yes even including Ootes’ proposed sale of 22 TCHC properties. A spokesman for Housing Minister Rick Bartolucci said the decision was not based on the goings on in any one municipality, rather the impassioned evidence from poverty and housing groups during the committee process. Still, Case Ootes thinks the ruling “just doesn’t make any sense” and is getting all huffy about it in the corner. Alone again, naturally.
Ever wondered how much our free health care service would cost if they weren’t so free? Just emigrate to Canada for a better life and we’ll show you. A woman who arrived in Toronto from India last fall gave birth to twin girls almost four months premature, and got a $22,000 bill for her medical care. The babies got off scott-free because they’re babies and automatically Canadian and all, but since their mother is a landed immigrant, OHIP wouldn’t cover her until she’d been in the country for three months. Health Minister Deb Matthews says thems the breaks for recent immigrants. Mother says next time she’ll try harder to hold in her premature babies.
After realizing it was not a great idea to schedule a debate about Pride versus Queers Against Israeli Apartheid versus concerned Jewish groups in the middle of Passover, the executive committee has put off the matter until May.
Also put off by the executive committee, over 40 people who registered to speak about the City’s plan to cut citizen advisory groups. At 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday the room was packed with cycling activists and community workers concerned about the proposal to essentially silence citizen participation. Not until 5 p.m. did they have a chance to say why that’s a bad idea. Maybe the day-long wait to speak was the executive committee’s way of testing out the idea? In any event, a sort of miraculous thing happened: when one activist excoriated the committee for putting off the speakers Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday replied “I kind of agree with him.” That’s progress.
And Astral is redesigning the foot pedals on the city’s garbage bins so they don’t break so much (which they claim has only happened to 40 of 4,000 bins). No reported plans for a redesign to fix the bins’ ugliness problem.