The South Bayview Bulldog

Melanie Aitken and the lawyers of the Competition Bureau are throwing everything they’ve got at Visa and MasterCard these days.  Ms Aitken is the Commissioner of the Bureau and since her appointment by the Conservatives in 2009 she has proven herself to be a strong defender of the consumer. At stake in the current round of hearings in Ottawa is the way the two main credit card companies charge merchants rates that are, as the Bureau puts it, among the highest in the world.  The Bureau thinks that properly competitive rates would save merchants and consumers some $5 billion a year. More than that, says Aitken’s chief counsel Kent Thomson, Visa and MasterCard are running a “perverse” system that extracts unreasonable fees.  The issue has come to a head as the two leading card companies have decided to produce so-called premium cards which set fees of up to three-percent of the amount of each transaction. This is the way American Express does it and the allure of giving people “gifts” purchased with their own money was just too much for Visa and MasterCard. Did somebody say there’s no free lunch?  Retailers have lobbied for permission to tack a surcharge on purchases, so customers would be more aware of the costs. But the contracts offered by the major credit firms prohibit any such surcharges. They also forbid retailers from selectively accepting only credit cards from the same company with lower fees and denying customers with so-called premium cards.

Mother and daughter wait it out under the Chai on Bayview awning during today’s torrential rain. Then, trusting to fate and fast feet, they make a run for it.

The foremost elder statesman of municipal politics in Toronto declares  Mayor Rob Ford is doing all right and so is city council.  Former Mayor David Crombie is quoted in the Toronto Sun as saying Mr. Ford”s contribution to the democratic process has been impressive.. Crombie was optimistic about Ford’s first 18 months in office. Despite several fights between Ford and council over transit, the budget and the Port Lands, Crombie thinks an agenda is slowly emerging.  Toronto Sun.

It’s a little different to see a made-to-measure wooden fence around a demolition site but that’s what we have here as wreckers get ready to take down 7 Southlea Ave. It’s a good looking stone house but will no doubt pop back up with a lot more floor space. And thanks to the reader who mentioned this pending demoltion to The South Bayview Bulldog.  

Although he has been gone these many years, some people think that Pierre Trudeau has one last spectacular political act left to perform. Sure, that sounds dramatic but if his son, 42-year-old Justin Pierre James Trudeau, runs and is elected Liberal leader, it will be almost entirely because of the PET legend. Until recently, a Trudeau candidacy was not taken seriously. Most people put their money on Toronto Rosedale MP Bob Rae, not withstanding the left over liability of the ill-fated Ontario NDP government. But that was before the dynamic Thomas Mulcair became leader of the national NDP and raised the spectre of an NDP federal government That would leave the Liberals in a lengthening dark night as Canada’s irrelevant party. In her column in the Toronto Star, the astute and well-followed pundit Chantel Hebert calls Trudeau the younger the rock star of this Parliament.. Never mind  that some snidely say Justin has his father’s name and someone else’s brain. In a leadership vote where anyone who signs up as a Liberal supporter will have a say, he would be a formidable contender. Hebert goes on to say that a Trudeau-Rae tilt  “could pit the hearts of many Liberal loyalists against their reason.”  She says that more than a few Liberals would feel that losing on a Trudeau ticket would at least offer the party the grace of dying with dignity.