Newsstand: April 27, 2015

What's the point after the Raptors lost so miserably last night? Dry your tears while you read about some current events: how drug treatment helped one woman, recently replaced police chief Bill Blair is already planning a political career, and the social security backlog is still "massive."

By Tannara Yelland • Illustration by Matthew Daley

A backlog of social security cases waiting for review is still “massive,” despite the social security tribunal created in December to deal with the situation. Then-employment minister Jason Kenney created the tribunal to address the 11,000 cases of people appealing the decision to deny them social security; when he created the tribunal, Kenney said he expected the backlog to be dealt with completely by the end of this summer. Just under 3,000 cases have been reviewed so far, leaving around 8,000 cases to go.

Although he’s only been out of the police chief office for a few days, Bill Blair has already announced his intention to run for political office. Specifically, he plans to run for the Liberal Party in the federal riding of Scarborough Southwest in this year’s upcoming federal election. The seat is held by NDP MP Dan Harris at the moment. Blair entered the city’s top police job 10 years ago as a reformer willing to publicly acknowledge and condemn the racial profiling Toronto’s police were engaging in; he left this year a staunch defender of police carding, which disproportionately affects the city’s black population, and the conduct of his officers during 2010’s G20 protests.

The Toronto Star has a profile of Kathy Middleton, a woman who graduated from Toronto’s Drug Treatment Court and has been both clean and helping others get that way for the last few years. She now works as a public face for the court, sharing her experiences and trying to reach out to others. Advocates of the program say it’s light-years away from the Conservative Party’s approach to crime, such as mandatory minimum sentencing, in that it focuses on bringing individuals back into society and helping them get their lives in order.