By John Lorinc
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LORINC: John Tory’s housewarming gift to the new police chief
In the early 1980s, when inner city crime was soaring in many large metropolitan areas, a pair of American sociologists concocted what they dubbed the...
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LORINC: Toronto’s Rooming House deal: Solving the ultimate puzzle
Toronto is a city whose residents are encouraged (or encourage one another) to dislike certain things, but who have also forgotten (or never really knew...
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LORINC: The devil will be in the details of John Tory’s housing action plan
Update: Council passed Mayor John Tory’s Housing Action Plan, with a raft of tweaks, including a provision to require parking minimums for...
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LORINC: 10 questions about the Ontario Place redevelopment
At some point this week, City officials will upload the Ford government’s zoning bylaw amendment application for the Ontario Place redevelopment to...
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LORINC: Toronto’s development charge showdown is a distraction
As the battle over Bill-23 — a.k.a. the “More Housing Bigger Profits Act” — rumbled towards its inevitable conclusion yesterday, the central...
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LORINC: What the Unfair Mayor System could look like in practice
Late last week, after the Ontario government revealed that it was bulking up mayoral veto powers for the cities of Toronto and Ottawa, John Tory disclosed...
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LORINC: Paul Bedford on what happens next with the Ontario Place redevelopment
In the days immediately following the municipal election, the second round of public consultations on the revitalization, so-called, of Ontario Place. A...
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LORINC: Will Toronto defend its rental replacement law from Doug Ford?
In the late 1990s, then St. Paul’s West councillor Joe Mihevc took up the cause of several hundred tenants, many of them seniors, living in two...
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LORINC: Who is behind the Therme Group, the spa company redeveloping Ontario Place?
When Sidewalk Labs rolled into Toronto in 2017, there was no ambiguity about the corporate family tree. Sidewalk officials repeatedly said the smart city...
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ELECTION: Beware of what you wished for
The outcome, at least on the mayoral vote, was not ambiguous: Mayor John Tory, campaigning — if that’s how his performance in the past month or so...
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LORINC: We finally have a ballot question for the ages
Let’s face it: there was never meant to be a ballot question, besides some kind of fuzzy re-validation of Mayor John Tory’s claim of...
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ELECTION: The incredible shrinking transit debate
Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, Toronto’s local politicians had ambitions for local transit. The topic was debated, often intensively...