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Newsstand: January 20, 2012
Welcome to Friday: the one day of the week we like to get down like the Greek god Dionysus. But before all that, the news: Occupiers evicted from City Hall, CUPE's gooey TV spots, Giorgio Mammoliti's got the possible labour shortage covered, mayor's lawyers fight audit request, and we're still number one.
A report from the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, the province’s police watchdog, identifies the five officers that assaulted Adam Nobody at the G20, and recommends they be charged with misconduct for using unnecessary force and for discreditable conduct. Until now, only one officer had been identified. So there you have it.
They came, they camped, they got evicted. As quickly as Occupy Toronto v. 2.0 set up on Tuesday night, the camp was starting to be dismantled by Thursday after the small group was served an eviction notice from the Province. The campers had managed, after all, to set up on a parcel of land at City Hall that is actually owned by the Province of Ontario. And those guys don’t fuck around. Though some campers seemed all too willing to not have to sleep on Canadian cement in the middle of January, the spirit of a bygone era (namely, last October) lived on in a small contingent of Occupiers that stayed put and settled in for some drumming and—as one protester put it—history making.
On Thursday the province issued a “no board” report on the contract negotiations between the City and CUPE Local 416, which essentially means no one at the province is going to try and do any fixing of the labour relations, and a strike or lockout could start as soon as February 5. And just in time, CUPE released these warm fuzzy-feeling TV ads that might make you tear up a bit if you just watched Beauty and the Beast alone (and if the Sun hadn’t mashed up the ad with an interview with a CUPE communications guy).
Have no fear about the labour disruption though, guys, because Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) is going to fix everything. Mammo has graciously offered to be all the people that won’t be at work, should there be a strike or lockout. During the 2009 strike, Mammo opened a private garbage transfer station and skipped council meetings to cut the grass on boulevards in his ward, and now he’s offering to do the same kind of thing if need be. In addition to personally shoveling snow, Mammo says the administration won’t hesitate to seek injunctions against striking workers. But also, he hopes the parties reach an agreement and he won’t actually have to do any of that.
Mayor Rob Ford’s legal team mounted their defense against a forensic audit of the mayor’s campaign financing. A lawyer for Ford said the process would just be a waste of taxpayers’ money, and another lawyer, representing a losing candidate who is being audited just the same, told the committee they’d done “a lousy job.” If that seems like a bat shit crazy way to win an argument with a board of your judgers, you mustn’t have gone to law school.
And despite it all, Toronto’s economy is chugging along, leading the nation.