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Weekend Newsstand: January 3, 2015
Happy birthday, deceased pianist and comedian Victor Borge! We miss you. In the news today: residents take a Scarborough housing co-op to the Human Rights Tribunal, the victim of Wednesday's police shooting is identified, city wards may soon change, and the homicide rate in 2014 was identical to that of 2013.
A group of Scarborough housing co-op residents are taking their claims of harassment to the Human Rights Tribunal. The group, which includes the parents of a nine-year-old boy living with cerebral palsy and others, says demeaning and vulgar messages were posted throughout the co-op for months beginning in April 2012, and that while the messages have stopped, those responsible have not been named. The lawyer representing the co-op’s (volunteer) board of directors says the board did all it could and that the messages stopped, but the group making the complaint wants the Human Rights Tribunal to make a co-op board’s responsibilities in such instances clear.
The 33-year-old fatally shot by police on Wednesday has been identified by the Special Investigations Unit as Daniel Clause. Clause died near Warden subway station, where police had been responding to a call about the gunpoint robbery of a toll collector. Clause was shot after an “interaction” with police, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
In a move some consider overdue, the Toronto Ward Boundary Review will look into how the city’s wards should be adjusted in order to better serve the people. The average population for a Toronto ward is around 61,000 residents, but many vary wildly from that number: Ward 23 (Willowdale) has 88,435 residents, while Ward 29 (Toronto-Danforth) has just 44,935. The review will aim to develop recommendations for redistributing the city’s council seats in a more equitable fashion leading up to the 2018 election. The last time the city’s seats were reorganized was in 2000, and the wards were created by simply cutting federal and provincial ridings in half.
Toronto’s homicide rates in 2013 and 2014 were identical, at 57. This is halfway between the five-year peak of 63 in 2010 and a low for that same period in 2011, with 51 murders. Until the end of August, the city looked to be on track for a significantly lower murder rate than last year. But 12 homicides in September alone brought the year back to 2013 levels.