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Newsstand: November 15, 2011
Okay, okay so there probably won't be an NBA season, but that doesn't mean we will stop booing Vince Carter because of it. In the news: Occupiers peacefully and noisily plan for their eviction, experts foretell the downfall of glass condos, the City asks for child care money from the province, another Olympic bid, and more on Byron Sonne.
Mayor Rob Ford, unmoved by the threats from Anonymous, said Occupy Toronto will be handed eviction notices “soon.” PC leader Tim Hudak assumed someone in Toronto cared what he had to say and joined the mayor in calling for the occupation to end. Meantime, the occupiers themselves are developing a detailed escape plan that accounts for the “physically vulnerable and unarrestable” while others yelled about chaining themselves to the trees. Classic Occupy.
Well, you know what they say: those who live in glass houses might as well throw stones because those glass walls will need replacing in a few years anyway. A group of glass condo industry experts are predicting all those glass condo towers Toronto throws up faster than it takes to wait for your iPod to disconnect from iTunes will need retrofitting in just 15 to 25 years. A wall of windows, though shiny and enticing, is not the most efficient option, they say, and can lead to high energy costs, water leaks, and “insulation failures.” The failure probably being the fact that there is no insulation.
The mayor has created a special task force on child care and made Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) the boss of it. So yesterday Mammoliti decided to let some people in on what the task force was up to (after having mostly closed door meetings), and here’s what they came up with: ask the province for at least $74.4 million. Without that funding from the province, said Mammoliti, the City will have to cut 2,000 child care spaces in 2013. Education Minister Laurel Broten feigned surprise (at least we hope that’s what she was doing), saying that during the election Mayor Rob Ford told Dalton McGuinty his City wouldn’t need any money from the province. In other news, Broten and her kids will be disappointed again this Christmas when Santa skips them for some reason.
If you could win the Olympics by always talking about hosting the Olympics, Toronto would be awesome at Olympics. From the same guys who brought you that half-hearted attempt at the 2020 Games comes a bid for the 2024 Summer Games. For those still feeling jilted from losing bids in the past, organizer Bob Richardson has some words of encouragement: “This is moose hunting and it’s long-term. We’re not going after squirrels here.” There, now. Feel better?
And the judge in the Byron Sonne case has decided to uphold the search warrants that allowed police to search Sonne’s property. Sonne’s lawyers argued the officer who applied for the warrants was willfully misleading the issuing judge in his request documents. The Crown countered that the officer was just kind of a dummy. Crown wins, this time.