Newsstand: June 29, 2015

Monday morning news! There's a holiday in two days, so let's just get through this together. In the news: Pan Am Games security, contract agreements for Bombardier employees, and cigarette-butt recycling.

By Tannara Yelland • Illustration by Matthew Daley

The Pan Am Games, which will be the largest sporting event Canada has ever hosted, will also be the nation’s “largest-ever security operation.” Officials told the CBC the security threat level was moved from “low” to “medium” in the wake of last September’s shootings in Quebec and Ottawa (though the Vancouver Olympics were also placed at threat level “medium” without those attacks in mind). Police presence will be heavy throughout the Games, and authorities will be “monitoring potential extremist groups in the Greater Toronto Area around the clock,” but they also stressed that the focus of the Games should still be on sport rather than on the law and order work going into the Games.

Union members of two Unifor locals at Bombardier have ratified new collective agreements lasting to June 2018. The agreements include measures for better pensions, more job security, and wage increases, and affect members of Unifor Local 112 at the plant near Toronto, and Local 673 working in technical and clerical positions.

Cigarette butts are a huge littering problem, and the staff of Out of This World Café at Queen and Ossington are doing something about it. They’ve had four cigarette-recycling boxes installed on street poles nearby and café staff are responsible for taking butts from the boxes and shipping them to a TerraCycle plant in northern Ontario. At the plant, they’ll be shredded and separated into organic and inorganic material; the organic material will become non-agricultural compost, while the inorganic waste will be made into pallets and (plastic) lumber.