news
Newsstand: June 15, 2011
Illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist.
Wednesday, you will never be our favourite. Repeat: you will never be our favourite. In today’s news: the nominations are in for Toronto Community Housing’s new board, Dalton McGuinty wants to give refunds for late GO trains, and there will be no injunction to block a certain popular Caribbean street festival.
After scientists confirmed that Case Ootes can not in fact replicate himself six times, the citizen nominees for the new Toronto Community Housing board are in. The nominees mostly consist of lawyers and real estate agents, with no full-time workers in the non-profit sector and a proposed chair who also heads the York University Development Corporation. In other words, the perfect group to sell off those 900 houses Case Ootes wants the City to unload. But before you fret too much, they almost all have community service experience as well. City council will vote on the nominations today.
How late is too late? For some, it’s a few minutes, or even mere seconds. Dalton McGuinty is a little more lax: the Ontario premier wants to give GO Transit riders their money back when trains arrive more than 20 minutes late, as well as free dipping sauce and garlic bread with every trip. Some might say the approximately six-million dollars his proposal would cost would be better spent on getting more trains to arrive on time in the first place, but who’s going to complain about a little money in the pocket? Well for one, the Progressive Conservatives, who are against giving money back to the public unless it’s in the form of tax cuts.
You know that Christmas thank-you letter to your grandmother you’d been meaning to write since January? Now would be a good time to pull out the “But there’s nobody to deliver the mail” excuse, as Canada Post has locked out employees nationwide as of 11 p.m. last night. A spokesperson for Canada Post cited declining revenue and late deliveries caused by postal workers’ rotating strikes as the reasons for the decision. You can almost smell that back-to-work legislation.
Poor Casa Loma. Despite renovations, the kinda-popular tourist attraction has seen decreased attendance in recent years and is now in the City’s hands, after having been run by the Kiwanis Club for more than 70 years. And what are Mayor Rob Ford’s thoughts on what the City should do with this piece of Toronto history? Sell the fucker, apparently.
Good news for fans of ear-splitting riddims, skimpy costumes, and island culture: the Caribbean Arts Group has said, “Hey mon, no problem!” to the courts and decided not to file an injunction to block Caribana whatever the hell that festival is now called from running this year as the group’s legal battles with the City continue. The Caribana founder lost control of the festival in 2006 over allegations that it mismanaged finances. But rather than just kicking back with a Malibu and coke like Caribbean people do in commercials, the group took to the courts, forcing current organizers to stop using the name “Caribana” in conjunction with the popular street festival. No word yet on whether the aforementioned skimpy costumes will be axed as well, but we’ll keep you updated.