Newsstand: September 2, 2015

Don't let anyone tell you fall is around the corner, because it totally feels like summer. In the news: the carding consultation garners criticism, Toronto's potential Olympic bid is "extraordinarily secretive" and the CNE closes down an hour early because of "large groups of youth."

By David Hains • Illustration by Matthew Daley

At the provincial government’s Toronto consultation on street checks, the controversial police practice otherwise known as carding, protesters and attendees alike criticized the process. The consultation at the Reference Library was preceded by a protest at Yonge and Bloor, and many activists demanded an end to carding. But inside the library, Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters, “The street check thing right now is something that definitely needs to have regulations in place.” The 100 attendees at the consultation were asked to suggest specific regulations and oversight that would improve the police interactions.

Toronto’s potential Olympic bid is “extraordinarily secretive” and the lack of transparency is “highly unusual for a democracy,” according to an Olympics expert at Western University. In an interview with Metro, Janice Forsythe, the director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western, describes the unusual nature of Toronto’s Olympic process—or lack thereof—thus far. Forsythe says that at the very least the members of the bid committee, whether informal or formal, would be revealed by this point. She adds that significant planning has usually been completed by this point and made public, and it is not known whether the City has conducted such research. The deadline for to show preliminary interest in the 2024 Summer Olympics is September 15, and Forsythe says that once a letter of intent is signed, the pressure from various stakeholders makes it “really difficult to pull out” of the process.

Kids these days. Last night the CNE closed an hour before it was supposed to due to what police referred to as “large groups of youth.” It was Youth Day at the Ex, and people under the age of 19 got in free to the end-of-summer fair. It is unclear specifically what the source of the trouble was that caused the Ex to close prematurely, but Cody Simpson was there, so there’s that.