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Weekend Newsstand: March 28, 2015
On this beautiful weekend morning, here is some not-so-beautiful news: new guidelines for the police carding policy are not winning over critics, Toronto's housing market is still outrageously expensive, and John Tory ran the most expensive mayoral campaign in the city's history.
More than a year after the civilian oversight board for the Toronto police began trying to write up rules guiding officers’ use of the controversial “carding” tactic, a draft of guidelines released Friday represents a huge step backward to many police critics. Both Anthony Morgan of the African Canadian Legal Clinic and Noa Mendelsohn Aviv of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association criticized the rules as allowing the practice to continue in its original format, one which many argue targeted young men of colour disproportionately. Morgan said citizens being carded should be told at the beginning of the interaction that they’re free to go at any time, and the rules don’t require police to issue receipts to those who have been carded. Receipts were suggested as a way to allow concerned citizens to inquire and lodge complaints.
With house prices soaring in both Toronto and Vancouver, many young parents and new families are choosing to stay in their condos and apartments when they find houses are out of their reach. This is leading to shifting demands in downtown neighbourhoods,including increased desire for child-focused businesses and revitalized schools.
New financial information from the 2014 mayoral race shows that John Tory’s was the most expensive campaign in Toronto history: he raised $2,860,307 and spent nearly all of that. Among his donors were some of the city’s wealthiest people, and many who stand to benefit from his time in office, such as the CEO of First Gulf Canada Corporation and the wife of the man who started Porter Airlines. At a recent event he shrugged off the idea that running for mayor in this city requires wealth, saying, “If we had no money at all, then if you had an effective fundraising organization, which costs some money to establish and operate, you are in a position where you can go out and raise the money you need to fight.” While Tory’s was the most expensive, late-entry candidate Doug Ford managed to spend $909,421 in just 52 days, an average of $17,000 per day.