The irony is that if Supt. Stacy Clarke were anyone else employed by Toronto Police, her bosses would want her fired for a promotions cheating scandal she spearheaded to help Black officers vying for promotion.
But firing isn’t even on the table because the first female Black superintendent in Toronto Police history is a “superstar.”
Can’t be fired because that would make blacks angry? Toronto is fucked.
The City of Toronto is turning to the public for guidance on what to do with its empty office space as vacancies continue to rise.
The percentage of vacant office space in the city rose throughout every quarter last year, closing out 2023 at 17.5 per cent – a three per cent increase from the same period in 2022, and a 13.6 per cent spike from the fourth quarter of 2019.
Covid accelerated Toronto’s decline. I have a feeling the city will come to be regarded as Detroit North.
This won’t help.
Headaches, frustration and anger. Brace for three years of Gardiner Expressway roadwork
Within city hall, the project is known as the “Gardiner Expressway Strategic Rehabilitation Plan.”
For the thousands of people who commute and visit the city each day by car, it’s becoming known by a host of other names, none of them flattering and none of which we can print in a family newspaper.
Suffice to say those curses capture well the headaches, frustration, anger as motorists have seen their daily trips along western stretches of the Gardiner Expressway turn into a plodding crawl.
Sun’s out, shovels out.
As the warm weather sets in, Toronto will welcome its unofficial fifth season: construction season.
Workers will be outside taking advantage of the weather to get all sorts of projects done, such as road maintenance and sewer upgrades.
However, the season is notorious for its traffic congestion, and with the amount of work going on, planning experts say better execution is needed to reduce the impact on people’s lives.
Driving in Toronto sucks at the best of times.
Inexcusable police misconduct from a high-ranking officer, or an ill-fated attempt to diversify Toronto’s ranks?
The motivations of Toronto police Supt. Stacy Clarke could take centre stage Monday, as the high-profile and long-delayed penalty hearing begins for the pioneering senior officer entangled in a promotional cheating scandal that rocked the force in 2022.
A diversity effort? I bet she keeps her job.
Of course she’s the victim … High-ranking Toronto police officer helped officers cheat on exam due to isolation and mistreatment, lawyer says
A request by Canada’s biggest city to move forward on drug decriminalization is in limbo, facing significant provincial opposition and renewed political debate prompted by a partial rollback of B.C.’s existing policy.
Toronto put forward a request to the federal government in 2022, and provided additional information in 2023, Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city’s medical officer of health, said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live that aired Sunday.
“Fundamentally, what that’s about is recognizing that addiction is, at its core, a health issue not a criminal issue,” she told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
Toronto may be seeking federal permission to decriminalize illegal drugs, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hinted the city may need broader support from the Ontario government, which currently rejects the proposal.
Ottawa needs to work with “all partners, including provinces” on any decriminalization proposals, Mr. Trudeau told reporters during a May 3 press conference in Hamilton, Ont.
It was over a year ago, last March, when Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa went rogue and submitted an expanded application to the federal government to see Canada’s largest city exempt kids and teens from the criminalization of hard drug possession.
The real estate slowdown in Canada’s largest city is starting to show increasing signs it’s not just a blip. Greater Toronto saw a sharp climb to its mortgage delinquency rate in Q4 2023, according to Equifax data. The share of delinquent mortgages has nearly doubled in just over a year, leading to the highest rate since 2016.
Not good for Chowtown.
As claustrophobic congestion on Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway worsens with years-long lane closures to accommodate road repairs, Ontario’s minister of transportation is suggesting around-the-clock construction could dramatically shorten the time frame.
Parts of the Gardiner, between Dufferin Street and Strachan Avenue, have been reduced by one lane in each direction for “critical rehabilitation work” for three years.
Apparently the overflow has perma-clogged all alternate routes. Guess I won’t be going downtown for 3 years at least.
In downtown Toronto in 2024, going for a run means taking your life in your hands.
You just never know when someone will attack you randomly. Sometimes it’s with a knife or syringe and sometimes it’s with the fist.
Just call them Keystone carjackers!
Three masked and armed losers not only failed to get away with the car they were trying to carjack but allegedly got caught by police in their getaway car, too.
If they build it, they will come.
And, likely, never leave. Why would they? Drug addicts have everything they could ever want right here in the heart of the city.
It was the tents at Rowntree Mills Park that caught the eye of veteran Toronto outreach worker Diana Chan McNally. She’d never seen an encampment here, by the banks of the Humber River north of Finch.
Yet, as of mid-March, at least three tents were erected in this riverside greenspace, deep in northwest Toronto. To Chan McNally, it’s yet another symptom of a ballooning crisis — as city data shows the number of tents in ravines, parks and under bridges is more than double last spring’s count.
Where workers counted 82 tents or other makeshift structures set up citywide on March 15, 2023, that shot up to 202 on the same date this year — edging closer to the 291-tent count seen in the mid-pandemic spring of 2021.
Given the amount of money that Toronto sucks in there should be no homeless beyond those who refuse shelter.
But homeless camps serve a greater purpose as a fundraising tool used to plead for ever more taxes that end up diverted to pet projects.
I am also beginning to suspect that they are used for block busting purposely allowed to fester in order to degrade real estate values for the profit of waiting vultures.
The Toronto Police Association has accused Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow of not backing officers after city councillors questioned the conduct of police who clashed with pro-Palestine demonstrators at a protest.
“We are at a loss for words when our own mayor refuses to stand by our members who have gone beyond the call of duty to police over 500 protests over the last 6 months,” the association said in an April 9 statement.
The association, which represents approximately 8,000 uniform and civilian members of the Toronto Police Service, added it had not spoken with Ms. Chow directly despite an April 5 promise that she would call. “She continues to be silent on the treatment of our members,” it said.
The rollout of the City of Toronto’s vacant home tax has been nothing short of disastrous. There’s no point trying to fix it, as it’s a flawed tax that was always going to be a mess. It needs to be axed.
The vacant home tax, now in its second year, requires an annual declaration from homeowners that they are either living in their property or renting it out for at least six months of the year. This declaration needs to be made yearly for each property a person owns.
