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Newsstand: September 28, 2015
This fine Monday morning, do some reading on police oversight, the (possibly troubled) Union Pearson train, and a close race in an election that is almost, mercifully, over.
The debate around carding (which police prefer to call street checks) has reached a sustained pitch in Toronto, and is spreading to cities across the country. In that debate, one of the key figures is perhaps ill-understood by the public: police oversight boards. The Star has a breakdown of what exactly those boards are and how they function, but in short: they are peopled with civilians, or non-officers, and tasked with ensuring officers are working for the common good of the people they are supposed to serve. Sometimes, as many argue happened before the G20 protests, a board can lose its teeth. In a report about Toronto’s police oversight board regarding its inability to rein in the operations around the G20, retired judge John Morden wrote that the board “viewed it as improper to ask questions about, comment on, or make recommendations concerning operational matter.”
The Union Pearson train, which delivers riders from Pearson Airport to Union Station, or vice versa, in about half the time of the TTC route but costs nearly ten times more—$27.50 for the full fare of the train, compared to $3 for the TTC—is facing decreasing ridership numbers. Those numbers, while bad enough, were accompanied by an attempt on the part of Metrolinx, the company in charge of the train and a number of other transit projects in Ontario, to finesse the numbers into something more flattering than they appear on paper. The report released by Metrolinx claimed ridership went up between June and August without acknowledging the train ran for six more days in August, for instance (with that taken into account, ridership actually fell by 17 per cent). With other transit projects either on the go or anticipated, Metrolinx’s ability to bring affordable, worthwhile transit to the people of Toronto may be a sticking point.
Etobicoke Centre is set to be one of the closest races in the country on October 19th; in 2011, Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj lost by just 26 votes and contested the results, taking the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada. There, the justices ruled that Conservative candidate Ted Opitz was indeed the victor. This year, Opitz and Wzresnewskyj are facing off again, with NDP candidate Tanya De Mello also vying for votes.