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Weekend Newsstand: December 27, 2014
Take a break from your families and read some news! Three local young Torontonians who might change the world (or at least the city), a judge avoids handing down a mandatory minimum sentence when the defendant's charter rights were violated, and a fire strikes two Italian restaurants in Yorkville.
Metro has identified three enterprising Torontonians under 30 who may well change the city in the coming year. Alyssa Bird is a key member of Open Streets TO, the group behind a pilot project last summer that closed parts of Bloor and Yonge streets to traffic for a morning; Taylor Scollon founded Line Six, the controversial shuttle bus service helping Liberty Village residents access transit without relying on the overcrowded King streetcar; and the person with perhaps the most transformative ideas is Idil Burale, who ran (unsuccessfully) for council in Ward 1, and who has since “focused on reforming the city’s police service.” Burale says the city needs to “ask some tough questions” in order to create a police and justice system that works equally for everyone and that citizens consider legitimate.
Kris Gowdy, a former youth pastor and HIV-positive gay man, was sentenced last week to two years of house arrest and three years of probation on the charge of internet child luring. The ruling was a way around the mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail that the charge is supposed to come with. Ontario Court Justice Michael Block, who sentenced Gowdy, is only the latest in a string of judges using Charter of Rights and Freedoms violations to avoid the often strict mandatory minimum sentences required by the “one-size-fits-all” approach to crime favoured by the federal Conservatives. Gowdy’s HIV status was disclosed by police despite a complete lack of evidence that he had endangered anyone or failed to obey legal regulations regarding safety and disclosure. Even after the trial began, Block wrote in his ruling, Durham Police Detective Randy Norton—who made the disclosure—”explicitly stated [in his testimony] his indifference to any constitutional rights that Mr. Gowdy might have had in the matter.”
In more unfortunate news, both Sotto Sotto Restaurant and Sputini Ristorante and Bar were hit by a Christmas Day fire. The cause is still unknown.