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Weekend Newsstand: December 13, 2014
Thank God the snow has melted. In the news today: Toronto isn't spending its community grants where it should, it's now legal in Ontario to buy milk in three-litre increments, and Queens Quay construction is far over budget.
The City of Toronto spends $44 million on community grants each year, but very poorly tracks where that money goes and what impact it has. Areas like the Bay Street corridor and Trinity-Spadina, which are well-to-do, rake in millions some years, while York Centre, a North York ward that has three “neighbourhood improvement areas,” collected just $177,435 last year. The city’s policy of tracking community grant money according to where organizations are headquartered could account for some of the discrepancy in allocation. Nevertheless, it’s clear that the city’s method of doling out community funding (which is also not known to the public) needs some investigation.
After a contentious battle between warring factions of the dairy industry, three-litre jugs of milk will be available in Ontario. The Dairy Council of Ontario had been fighting a previous ruling by the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission which limited the introduction of three-litre containers to Mac’s stores. The Milk Act has now been amended to enable all stores in the province to sell the new size. There is some trepidation that the new option may encourage people to purchase less milk (downsizing from four litres to three), but a spokesman for the group representing dairy farmers in Ontario says that it is “not opposed to it at all if it grows the market.”
Waterfront Toronto’s massive Queens Quay construction project, which involves renovating streetcar tracks and sewers and installing granite sidewalks, is 38 per cent over budget. The overages are due to construction issues such as poor City of Toronto sewer illustrations and information, as well as “unforeseeable underground obstacles.” The organization’s board, which has a reputation for conducting its business in an opaque manner, financed the overage by selling off some public land it owned in February. Both Mayor John Tory and Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) openly criticized the Waterfront Toronto board when this information became public this week. Waterfront Toronto claims that all three levels of government were informed about the overage in March, and that Tory “will be quite comfortable with the actions the board has taken” once he is apprised of all pertinent information.