Ontario has handed out over more than $80 million dollars of the public’s money to teacher’s unions since the year 2000 with no accountability apparently for the purpose of professional development. This was revealed by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk who was looking into the $3.8 million given outright to teachers unions during the most recent bargaining..To her surprise, she discovered a cornucopia of the people’s cash tumbling to the unions.  Lysyk said in a report released Wednesday that those payments were unusual, but within the government’s authority. The concerns raised about the payments, revealed in media reports, were “understandable,” she wrote. “These arrangements initially lacked accountability and the controls usually associated with government funding.”  The auditor’s office was unable to find evidence of any other government in Canada paying education-sector unions’ bargaining costs.

 

Police have issued a warning for people to be alert after a couple, both aged 31, who were sitting in a car at Leslie Street and Sheppard Avenue East, were accosted by a man with a gun. This was about 11.30 p.m. Sunday, May 15th. He opened the door of the car and ordered the man and woman out while he ransacked the vehicle. He then fled. He is described as black, 6’1″-6’3″, approximately 35, large build, clean-shaven, last seen wearing a dark-grey hooded sweater.  The Police ask the public to be aware of surroundings and report any suspicious activities or persons in this area.

The prime minister apologized twice yesterday “unreservedly” for marching from his seat in the House of Commons to in effect break up a cluster of MPs who in his opinion were delaying the business of house. The Opposition was upset because of the government’s decision to limit debate on suicide legislation.  Mr. Trudeau apologized first after he was accused of pushing aside NDP MPs who were standing on the Commons floor in advance of a vote to limit debate on the assisted dying bill, C-14. He was accused of manhandling the Opposition whip Gordon Brown and in doing so, pushed NDP MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau out of the way, triggering a shouting match between NDP leader Tom Mulcair and Trudeau. Trudeau stood moments later and apologized, saying he thought that a gaggle of MPs were “impeding” the path of the Conservative whip before the vote, and that this lacked respect for Parliament, adding he thought it was important that the vote take place. But Trudeau suggested he may have accidentally come in contact with other MPs and apologized if anyone was offended. Speaker Geoff Regan tongue lashed the prime minister for his actions saying it was the speaker’s job to call a vote once one whip was in place, as the government’s was. Second apology below

 

See later post

The guessing game about how much it will cost ordinary residents to pay for the provincial cap-and-trade legislation is ranging somewhere around $14 or $15 a month on this day when the Legislature passed the law. It is diabolically difficult to know just what the horse trading in fossil fuel “credits” will really accomplish. To many it seems like a tax on oxygen. Regardless, it is the law of Ontario and people will see it in their fuel bills both at home and at service stations. The Star says Ontario’s economic growth will be dragged down 0.03 percent from 11 per cent to maybe 10.97 per cent through to 2020.

NATURAL GAS?

Still out there is the government’s grand climate change plan which reports have said sees the end of natural gas in home heating by 2030. Today the government was vigorously denying there would be police poking around homes to see how they are heated. Very funny. But there is no blanket denial of such a scheme. The vague nature of the Liberal position on enforced gas reduction remains a source of anxiety among homeowners, 80 per cent of whom use gas.

At least a dozen pregnant moms have complained, some to the police, that a Pickering prenatal imaging centre is handing out the same stock picture to women who go there for an ultrasound. The firm denies it and says, rather lamely, that the same picture is caused by a “computer glitch”.  The lab, Babyview at 1550 Kingston Rd. Pickering, has apologized and is offering a full refund. According to CP24 the lab did not open today (Wednesday, May 18, 2016). But parents who paid $130 for photos and a recording of their baby’s heart beat are incensed.  One woman, Jennifer Cusimano is almost 21 weeks pregnant and on a previous visit to Babyview had a satisfactory experience.  BabyView has changed ownership since then. Ms. Cusimano said she could barely see her child’s features in the sonogram but was told to wait in the waiting room for a photo. When the technician returned she handed over a photo, saying “I cleaned them up a bit,” Cusimano told CTV Toronto. “I thought it was weird, but thought maybe they’re just really good at what they do,” she told CTV. The issue came to light when women began to post their pictures comparatively on Facebook and realized they were all the same.

 

Urban Toronto has a picture spread of a four-storey townhome to be built as part of the Brownstones of Leaside Development at McRae Drive and Sutherland Drive.  It is designed by Peter Higgins Architect Inc. who issued new renderings of the interiors of the development’s eight residences. Urban Toronto. To request more information directly from Brownstones of Leaside, The click here

San Francisco is progressive or radical depending on your politics. Now the City has moved a step closer to an ordinance that would require soft drink makers to put sugar warnings in all advertising.  A lawsuit was brought to the federal court by the American Beverage Association, the California Retailers Association, and the California State Outdoor Advertising Association, all of whom have an interest in putting Coke, Pepsi and other sweet drinks on billboards and elsewhere. But the court says San Francisco can enforce the ordinance at least for now. The warning will read: “WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. This is a message from the City and County of San Francisco.”

The construction of the LRT stations at Bayview (to be known as Leaside) Mt Pleasant, Don Mills (Science Centre) and at Chaplin Crescent and Bathurst Streets will require old-fashioned cut and cover digging. That’s what was needed to build the  Yonge subway 65 years ago. The intersections at Eglinton and crossing streets will be opened up and then covered with metal plates to accommodate traffic as possible. Other stations such as Laird (which will go by its real name) and Avenue Rd. will be built by a process known as mining in which earth is dug out underground and removed by conveyor. Stations where transit lines cross, as in the case of Yonge and Eglinton, will see work done well underground. The LRT line must travel beneath the Yonge subway and its station will sit below the present subway stop.

MEETING TUESDAY

These were some of the things to be learned at a Metrolinx information meeting in the Lea Room at Leaside Gardens Tuesday night. Early in the evening at the two-hour exhibit of charts and photo/art depictions there were as many as 125 people present. Metrolinx employees circulated asking if there were questions. Work on the stations is beginning. Demolition has been completed at Bathurst, Avenue Rd. Bayview (McDonalds) Laird (the strip mall) and the historic former CIBC building at Mt. Pleasant, which will serve as the housing for the LRT station, is vacant.

A surveillance video installed by her family to make sure Alice Swailes was safe, witnessed a brutal attack on the 89-year-old woman from Hull, England and led to the capture of her attacker within hours.

Let the punishment fit the crime and so it does as the sparkplug of that donnybrook Sunday between the Jays and Rangers goes down for eight games. He also pays a $5,000 fine. The Toronto manager, John Gibbons, gets a three-game holiday for coming back on the field during the melee after being ejected earlier in the game.