Results tagged “politics”

Kensington Market will soon be designated a BIA (that is, a business improvement area), pending near-certain approval by City Council this winter, according to a city staff report, released on Monday. A few area business owners have mixed feelings about the impending designation, but many see it as the best way of ensuring the future of the chaotic little neighbourhood in the heart of Toronto.

As anticipated by transit watchers, the TTC is proposing an across-the-board fare hike, effective January 3, 2010. That hike, to be decided on at the commission's November 17 meeting, would see adult cash fares rise from $2.75 to $3.00, tokens rise from $2.25 to $2.50, and adult Metropasses jump from $109 to $126. A full list of the proposed changes are here; the immediate reasons for them are—as they always are—myriad. (The Star and Globe both take a look at some of them.)

Late last night the City's proposed new billboard bylaw and tax [PDF] cleared a major hurdle, unanimously passing through the Planning and Growth Management Committee on its way to a hearing before the full City Council. The meeting ran 'til about 11 p.m. and had to be moved from one of the regular committee meeting rooms to the main Council Chamber in order to accommodate fifty-plus deputants and scores of other observers. It was a pitched battle, one that has lasted through several years of debate, consultation, and resistance leading up to this moment. A tremendous victory for public space advocates, progressive councillors, and Mayor Miller, the bylaw will provide harmonized regulation of the billboard industry (the rules haven't been updated since amalgamation) and the tax will create the revenue needed to enforce those regulations.

People tend to do a lot of shouting around budget time. They feel, by turns overtaxed, under-serviced, that the City is spending too much, and that the City isn't delivering everything it should. Usually lost in the shuffle are some basic facts about how the budget process actually works and what options are open to the City should it wish to effect any serious changes to its books.

On Monday, Torontoist spent the day at the Toronto Innovation Showcase at City Hall, learning about data sets, queues, and civic engagement. At the top of the agenda was the unveiling of toronto.ca/open, Toronto’s new open catalogue of city data, ranging from—as Mayor Miller explained in a press release on Monday morning—"apartment inspection data to child care availability to dozens of GIS mapping data that will enable a broad range of location-based applications. And yes," he added, "our initial data offering also includes the TTC’s scheduling data."

Enza Anderson waits at a bus stop on the west side of Bay Street by City Hall with a tall shovel in her hand. The bus to Queen's Quay pulls up and all eyes fixate on her as she boards. Walking towards the back, an elderly passenger comments, "A bit early for shovelling the snow off your driveway, isn't it?"

Well, look who's offering candy to babies now. Stephen Harper ditches the friendly blue sweater in favour of something a little spookier in this politically themed Halloween montage in Little India. On Woodfield Road, the resident artist's lawn arrangement is placed perfectly for tonight's festivities—the city will be closing down a portion of the road tonight from 6–9 p.m., where a fire eater will be taking the place of cars. And while the performer is busy chomping on flames and captivating the eyes of kids, well, here's hoping the politicians don't pop out and try to eat the children.

Saying something like, "Hey, it's been a ridiculous year for cycling in Toronto" sounds like a bit of a cheap lead-in, but it's true. This year, already dubious for widespread Obamamania, then equally widespread Obamaphobia, and peppered each month with one tragic, horrifying aviation disaster after another, has sucked pretty hard for local cyclists. From losing one of its own at Bay and Bloor to being told, laughably, that a carbon footprint somehow rivalling that of the city's motorists is cause enough for a bike tax, Toronto's cycling community has a few too many reasons to shake its collective head.

David Miller's announcement on September 25 that he would not seek re-election took many by surprise—including, no doubt, those at Toronto Life. With the big expanse of time between the time articles for the magazine are finalized and the time the completed publication is actually distributed (a delay typical of monthly magazines), the November issue is only now beginning to land in the mailboxes of subscribers. Somewhat awkwardly, it features a full-page look at how Miller stacks up against six possible competitors in the mayoralty race he took himself out of three weeks ago, complete with each one's odds of winning against Miller. And we quote: "A lot of people think David Miller stinks, and not just because of the 39-day garbage strike. But do any of the other likely candidates have what it takes to knock out Toronto's top dog?" The answer: yes, all of them. But only because he knocked himself out first.

In the name of reform, nineteenth-century politician Robert Baldwin was a thorn in the side of more than one governor of Upper Canada. As a result, he has been called a lot of names. One governor, Lord Sydenham, dubbed him "the most crotchety impracticable enthusiast I have ever had to deal with." Another called him "such an ass." Neither seems especially fitting given that Baldwin always carried himself with an impeccable, gentlemanly demeanour in his dogged efforts to undercut the governor's power to govern without need to consult with the local parliament.

One of the many interesting things about Twitter is its democratizing power. Everyone with an account has an identical ability to get in touch with any other user of the service. The amount of high-profile types using Twitter makes this flat communication structure an especially liberating thing. Wil Wheaton can talk to Levar Burton, but so can we, if we want to (though Mr. La Forge/Reading Rainbow might be more inclined to tweet back to his Enterprise crewmate than to Torontoist). But there's one particular thing that Twitter doesn't do very well, and this minor weakness has resulted, somewhat bizarrely, in the tangential involvement, in Toronto municipal politics, of a conservative family man from Utah.

While we here at Torontoist appreciate a bad pun as much as the next conglomerate of web writers collectively writing in the first person plural, said pun was unfortunately the high point of this weekend's internet commentary on David Miller's announcement that he would not run for a third term as mayor.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of prominent women in temperance unions, religious associations, and welfare societies realized that a way to achieve their objectives in reforming society and achieving equality of status was to seek their right to cast a ballot on election day. Through the tireless efforts of suffragettes, and the impact of the First World War, during which women assumed a range of traditionally male roles in factories, offices, and on sales floors, the women's movement achieved a measure of success by the war's close. Ontario women became entitled to vote in provincial elections on April 2, 1917—and entitled to run for office on April 24, 1919.

"I do pushups with no shirt on. And I want to be your mayor."

Among the progressive members of City Council, TTC Chair (and occasional Torontoist Rocket Talk contributor) Adam Giambrone is one of those most frequently cited as a potential mayoral successor to David Miller. In the aftermath of Miller's announcement this morning that he will not be running for re-election, we spoke with Giambrone about the mayor's statement, and about the speculation that has already begun to swirl about his own so-far hypothetical candidacy.

Politics stops for no man, and no retirement.

Earlier today, Torontoist co-hosted a live discussion with Globe columnist Marcus Gee. The topic? Mayor David Miller's announcement this morning that he will not be running for re-election. You can replay the discussion below.

It was, and it wasn't, a surprise.

David Miller will be issuing some kind of announcement about the 2010 municipal election at 10 a.m. this morning (Friday). Word that he would be doing so started to spread a few hours ago, though no official press release has yet been issued by City Hall.

Neither Levy the person nor levy the sales tax was able to overturn the Liberal stronghold of St. Paul's yesterday, as voters selected Eric Hoskins (Liberal) to be their new MPP by a roomy 19% margin.

In the end, it wasn't even really close: Liberal Eric Hoskins has won the St. Paul's by-election with four thousand more votes than the next nearest competitor, Conservative Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy. We'll have deeper thoughts tomorrow.

In a recent article, we described Canadian democracy as "drunken" and "staggering," eliciting the image of a bumbling, well-intentioned dullard saddled with an affliction that, for better or worse, is an effect of his or her environment or circumstances but manifest as failure for reasons entirely their own. Today, with news from Ottawa that two opposition parties are going to supportively wedge themselves under Harper's armpits for a while, we—like others with a shamelessly professed anti-Harper bias—stand by it.

Polls, it is important to remember, do not measure reality but perceptions thereof. The best we can hope to learn from a poll is what people think is going on, not what actually is. Last week, jaws dropped around the city as an Ipsos Reid poll, commissioned by Global TV, revealed that David Miller's approval rating had fallen to a new low of 29%. What this tells us is that our mayor is failing to impress, not that he is failing.

When voters go to the ballot box in St. Paul’s on Thursday their choices will include the latest in a long line of Toronto Sun columnists who have attempted to parlay their print personas into elected office, usually for parties that have matched the paper’s right-wing tilt.

Cue the trumpets, unfurl the banners, make with the fanfare, and let fly with a triumphant shout of "Sweet merciful crap, here we go again."

Take one pulls-no-punches City Hall columnist (er, make that Socialist Silly Hall columnist) and one philanthropically inclined but imported M.D., blend with a controversial sales tax adjustment, add a soupçon of Guinness Record–level persistence, and what do you get? One by-election, ready to serve on September 17. The electoral district of St. Paul's is, as you may have heard, in the midst of a by-election campaign, and because we are big fans of well-chosen representation we have created a central hub at which you can see all of our St. Paul's coverage in one place. It includes a profile of the riding and a map showing handy things like candidate campaign offices and advance polling locations. Read, be enlightened, and get ready to vote!

Sue Ann Levy really doesn’t like the Liberals' proposed Harmonized Sales Tax.

Dario Saleki isn’t happy. In late May, he applied for a Boulevard Café Licence (the city’s fancy term for a patio permit) for his new Italian restaurant, La Veranda Osteria, which is located on the northwest corner of Bloor Street West and Royal York Road. It's August now, and he’s still waiting for his permit. In the meantime, his empty patio is costing him business. Saleki blames the strike (which has created some licensing problems for restaurateurs) and the city’s bureaucracy for his woes, and in a pseudo–grass roots effort has put up several colourful signs in his windows urging Torontonians to complain to the city on his behalf.

Sure, Torontonians are notorious for bitching about our city, but we bitch because we love! Complaining about garbage pickup or graffiti is a whole process, however, and sometimes it's just not worth the time to bother hunting down the appropriate department by email or navigating a phone tree.