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Newsstand: November 3, 2014
It's a glorious November Monday and we've all had an extra hour of sleep, so let's dive right into the news, shall we? Public schools face marked differences in fundraising, private clinics are failing safety inspections at a disturbing rate, and traffic light synchronization is a beautiful but elusive dream.
What some see as the growing inequality in our city has manifested itself in a new way, one that disadvantages some of the most vulnerable citizens: children. There is a large gap between the fundraising done by Toronto public schools: those with wealthy families are bringing in as much as 300 times more money than those with less affluent families. That money, often brought in by pizza lunches and fairs, is going to things like Scientists in Schools and new playgrounds while other schools struggle to pay for necessities. Some schools get extra funding from programs like Model Schools for Inner Cities, but the schools just above the cut-off mark for those programs are still miles behind the wealthiest schools, and receive little to no help.
We expect our health-care providers to be both qualified and competent, whether they operate out of a hospital or a clinic. According to a new investigation, though, that expectation might not be realistic: 13 per cent of the province’s private clinics “that do procedures such as cosmetic surgery, colonoscopies, and pain injections” haven’t met inspection standards in the last three years. Inspections have only been taking place since 2011, when the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario took over authority of such clinics. In that time, 44 of the 330 inspected clinics have fallen short of the standards. To compare this to restaurants, which are also regularly inspected for their health and safety standards, just under nine per cent of restaurant inspections in 2012 led to either closure notices or conditional passes. Only 0.14 per cent led to immediate closure notices.
Transit and intra-city travel were key issues in the municipal election that happened just a week ago. One issue all the mayoral candidates agreed on, but which is unlikely to materialize, was co-ordinating traffic lights for better traffic flow. In a city the size of Toronto, with traffic patterns changing and pedestrians and transit vehicles affecting vehicular traffic, it’s next to impossible to coordinate strings of lights. The City intends to re-time 1,000 of Toronto’s 2,500 intersections over the next three years, but that process is complex and the new timing will only last so long.