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Newsstand: October 7, 2011
Either the world is red, blurry, and head-poundingly painful or our post-election hangovers are kicking in. In the news today: it's a Liberal minority government in Ontario but Toronto is resoundingly red, City staff don't think the sale of shark fins should be banned, Halton police and the OPP go back to driver's ed, and protests at Pearson come to a close.
The good news is you’re not waking up in a city with three tiers of conservative government. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals won last night’s provincial election, falling just short of winning their third straight majority government. Toronto managed to be entirely Progressive Conservative–free, due in no small part to the much of the city’s current dissatisfaction with its right-wing mayor (and, we’d like to think, our own awesome endorsement). You can check who your new MPP will be on this seemingly misleading map of Ontario’s ridings.
Harvesting shark fins for use in expensive soups may be inhumane and environmentally irresponsible, but City staff don’t think the sale, possession, and consumption of shark fins should be banned in Toronto. Rather, staff recommend taking the issue to Ottawa, in a report to be presented to the government management committee next week. The reason being that unless shark fins are banned nationwide, the 905 will still be able to supply the fins to hungry Torontonians with a proclivity toward tastiness and evil, undoubtedly leading to a new age of shark-fin bootlegging, smuggling, and speakeasies, and City staff doesn’t want Vaughan to get all of that action.
Hopefully Rob Ford will ride in the passenger seat if he decides to go up to the family cottage this long weekend, because the police will be out in full force busting people for using handheld devices while driving, as well as not wearing seatbelts and other idiotic behaviours.
Not only are Halton police being forced to take driving lessons because of the rising number of crashes involving police vehicles, OPP officers are as well. The bad news is that, at least in Halton, the lessons are online, meaning they’re probably nothing like the film Police Academy. Police officers in Toronto aren’t forced to do the training course, but are being given advanced classes on how to use a kettle, or something.
Looks like the delays at Pearson airport on Thursday will be put to an end as a court has ordered the airport’s security guards, who are in the midst of a labour dispute, to stop working at an illegally slow pace. The guards’ work slowdown caused major delays at the airport, preventing planes from taking off and making those shops that sell $12 sandwiches multi-millionaires. “Nobody’s leaving. Nobody’s coming in,” according to Bassem Hamdy, a delayed passenger who, by the sound of his name, probably has lots of experience with not flying. Thankfully, the disruption has ended and people travelling through Pearson can go back to being screwed over by incompetent airlines instead of angry employees.