Chairman Chow defends steeper Toronto parking fines

Some parking fines in Toronto will more than triple as of today in a move Mayor Olivia Chow says is necessary and not something she is willing to apologize for.

Chow made the comment to reporters at an unrelated news conference on Thursday morning as she discussed increases in parking ticket costs for 123 different offences.

… For example, fines for parking a prohibited vehicle on a bicycle path will go from $60 to $200.

Soon she’ll ban cars.

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Toronto sees ‘troubling’ rise in youth gun violence, fatal shootings

As detectives pored over the details of a “senseless” shooting in the parking lot of a Toronto school on June 2, they zeroed in on a young suspect.

Weeks after the shooting, Toronto police announced the arrest of a 14-year-old boy, charging him on June 24 with two counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder.

His arrest, the force’s chief says, is part of a growing and deeply worrying trend that has seen gun violence, particularly among young people, in Ontario’s capital city.

Sometimes I wonder if they just run the same story every 6 mos. or so. Nothing changes.

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Toronto Jewish sites attacked: School bus burned, anti-Israel graffiti found

A school bus parked in a Jewish Toronto neighborhood was consumed in arson and several Jewish community sites were daubed with anti-Israel graffiti, Canadian politicians and Jewish groups announced on Monday.

York Center Parliament Member Yaara Saks and Eglinton-Lawrence MP Marco Mendico said on social media that the local Police were investigating the burning of the school bus.

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Chris Selley: I’d assumed Toronto had reached maximum cringe. I was wrong

After 15-or-so years observing and covering Toronto municipal politics — only a few of those years, thankfully, being full-time — I thought I had come to terms with the untethered heights and depths of maddening, petty irrelevancy to which city council can rise and plummet. I thought I had cringed as hard as I could cringe, raged as hard as I could rage, about and against the legions of parochial zeroes, elected and otherwise, who want to hold this hard-striving city hostage to their various whims and preferences.

h/t DS

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Toronto’s war on the car

Yonge Street Toronto 1960’s

If congestion is chasing people out of Toronto, there’s only one thing left to do

“… Last year, as part of Mayor Olivia Chow’s transition team, I was in the room with city and private sector experts working on managing congestion. City staff are capable of developing smart solutions and, in Chow, have a leader who is not afraid to be bold and push good ideas forward.

However, we can’t deal with traffic congestion without being honest about the fundamental issue: The days of being able to drive wherever you want, whenever you want, are over. It’s about math, economics, and geometry — not politics.”


Toronto is an overcrowded expensive city with a rapidly declining quality of life that simply isn’t worth the cost.

Public transit is a homeless shelter and the situation will not get better, especially under Chairman Chow.

The exodus, (White flight?), has begun and affordability is only one of the reasons why.

The negligent mass import of incompatible cultures is turning Toronto into a 3rd world municipal wreck.

Foreign ethnic conflicts dominate our streets and the rule of law is undermined by the identity politics of our politicians.

I have lived here since 1964 and see no hope for the future.

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City Hall Restores Robert Stapleton Caldecott’s Name To Historic Toronto Home After Vile Smear Proven False

City officials in Toronto have reversed course on a controversial decision to remove the name of a prominent early 20th century Toronto businessman from a historic home, in light of new information brought forward by his descendants.

City council voted in April to remove Robert Stapleton Caldecott’s name from his former home’s heritage designation on the grounds that he held restrictive — some said racist — views on immigration.

But earlier this week, council voted to restore his name after Caldecott’s descendants complained that he was being unfairly condemned and produced research in his defence.


This time they blinked. City Hall got away with ignoring the truth when they renamed Dundas Square after a black African tribe notorious for their practice of enslaving other blacks so we’ll just have to expect more of this.

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Matthew Lau: Torontonians’ truly awful travel options — taking the car or public transit

Everyone who relies on the Toronto Transit Commission to get to work or school knows “TTC” really stands for “Take The Car.” But given the horrendous traffic drivers must deal with, that’s not a great option either. An Ipsos poll for the Toronto Region Board of Trade finds 86 per cent of respondents agree either strongly (45 per cent) or somewhat (41 per cent) that “there is a traffic and congestion crisis in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).” Similarly, 85 per cent agree that “traffic and congestion have a negative impact on the economy in the GTA.”

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DOUCETTE: Politicians pouring gas on our city won’t put out the gunfire

How many people must die senselessly before politicians stop pissing on our legs while telling us it’s raining?

Politicians at all levels, the special interest groups that somehow always get their attention, and the media outlets that supported our inept leaders’ ass-backwards approach to combatting crime without asking any tough questions all have blood on their hands — a lot of it.

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City Hall asked Feds to let them turn Toronto into giant open air drug den

Federal documents reveal what happened behind the scenes with Toronto’s request to decriminalize drugs

… Toronto updated its application, answered the questions, provided a letter of support from the police and detailed plans on risk mitigation, communications and monitoring and evaluation for the program.

It wasn’t enough to pass muster with Health Canada and the federal agency went back to the city.

“Given the very broad request by TPH (i.e. the inclusion of all youth, all substances in the [Controlled Drugs and Substances Act] and no maximum possession amount), Health Canada continues its assessment of the request and levers available to them in this context,” the department wrote in a May 12, 2023 letter.

WTF?

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Province to give Toronto $73 million to speed up Gardiner construction — with one condition

Traffic-clogging construction on the Gardiner Expressway could end at least one year earlier than originally planned, thanks to a funding injection from the provincial government.

Drivers will still have to endure the gridlock for another two years or so. But at a press conference at city hall on Wednesday, Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria joined Mayor Olivia Chow to announce Queen’s Park would spend up to $73 million to shave at least 12 months off the project, which since it began in April has been causing maddening bottlenecks on the highway and some downtown roads.

Mark this on your calendar. I doubt they will make the completion date, not even the old one.

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