Weekend Newsstand: August 15, 2015

What a beautiful day outside! Catch some sun, why don't you? The news today: a provincial pension plan has support from young workers, and a public swimming pool with possibly unsafe plastic fibres.

By Tannara Yelland • Illustration by Matthew Daley

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is proposing a province-wide pension plan for the roughly 3.5 million workers (two-thirds of the province’s work force) who don’t have access to a workplace pension right now. Critics, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, charge that it will inhibit corporate growth and job creation. But many young and part-time workers, who are often making scant wages and rarely have access to benefits like pension and health care, favour the plan. Sunita Miya-Muganza spoke to the Star as both a current precarious worker and hopeful future business owner, and said if she fulfills her wish of owning a media company she would have no problem paying into a provincial pension plan for her employees.

The Alex Duff outdoor swimming pool at Christie Pits recently had plastic fibres in it that came from a frayed pool liner, and concerns have been raised that the fibres may have been a threat to public safety. Many pool liners have in the past contained carcinogenic plastics, and it’s unclear if this is the case with the Christie Pits pool. The pool remained open for about two weeks in July when it was apparent there were fibres in it; it was finally closed and drained, and a sealant was put in the pool in order to keep the fibres from mixing with the water. However, that did not solve the problem, and city aquatics manager Aydin Sarrafzadeh said he had “never seen anything like this in [his] 20-year career.” The pool, when it was re-opened, did not post any warning signs for the public. It sees about 650 visitors per day in the summer.