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Newsstand: March 11, 2015
A new phone app lets you answer all your text messages with lyrics from Drake songs. Not completely useful, but endlessly amusing. In the news: a privacy analyst is under investigation at Trillium Health Centre, hundreds of possible job cuts loom over the TDSB, retaliation graffiti appears in Kensington Market, Shad is the new host of Q, and it's back to school for some York students.
A privacy and ethics professional at Trillium Health Centre is being investigated over allegations that he attempted to shut down an investigation into a privacy breach. Sarah Harding, an office manager at a wellness clinic in Halton Region, says she opened mail containing confidential medical information about a Trillium Health Centre client on two separate occasions. She contacted the provincial privacy office after the second incident to make sure she was following appropriate protocol for handing back the confidential records to a privacy analyst from Trillium Health named Simeon Kanev. Two weeks after the incident, Kanev contacted Harding directly and requested that she withdraw her complaint to the privacy office because the commissioner had launched an investigation. Harding alleges that Kanev then told her he “had more important things to do than worry about one person’s privacy.” Harding immediately contacted the privacy commissioner about Kanev’s call, launching further investigation into his handing of the initial privacy breach, which Trillium Health Centre reports was due to a clerical error.
The Toronto District School Board will vote on a series of proposed staff cutbacks at a meeting on Wednesday night. Among the cuts, 266.5 elementary and high school teachers could lose their jobs, along with 27.5 special education teachers. Special education support staff would also shrink by 33.5 positions. While some of the changes reflect declining enrolment, the TDSB is largely feeling the pinch of funding cuts from the provincial government.
Luis Vega, the owner of El Arepazo in Kensington Market released video footage of him violently confronting a graffiti artist who allegedly tagged the door of his property on March 5. Since then, he says that he has been the target of more graffiti, possibly in retaliation for the altercation. It is the latest incident in what some Toronto business owners feel is an ongoing struggle over property vandalism in the city as businesses are often fined and forced to clean up unwelcome graffiti art.
CBC has announced that MC and music artist Shad will replace Jian Ghomeshi as the host of the cultural-affairs radio show Q. Shad, a Juno Award winner and Polaris Prize nominee, was chosen after the search for a new permanent host saw CBC consider nearly 200 candidates. The new and improved version of Q helmed by Shad will debut in April, with a revamped format that promises to showcase more musical performances and be more conversational in tone. The show’s long-term future was left in limbo in the fall of 2014, when former host Jian Ghomeshi was dismissed as allegations of sexual assault against multiple women were reported by media.
Finally, some courses at York University are set to resume on Wednesday, even as the strike by teaching assistants and graduate assistants remains unresolved. A full list of what is back on schedule at the school’s various academic units is listed on its website.