Thursday’s Headlines

8 comments

1. Let me get this straight: politicians in MISSISAUGA are complaining that Toronto isn’t paying its way? What the fuck?

2. These two-bit Mississauga councilors are grasping at this for political gain/standing. The entire push that Toronto is leading (One Cent, etc) to get a better financial deal is never about Toronto vs. other municipalities, it’s “so goes Toronto, so goes everywhere else”. So, forget about these three, they should be turned back at the Toronto border if they try to get past passport control. They’re trying to create a Colman Young/Detroit vs. Suburban Detroit situation that doesn’t benefit anybody.

3. Toronto didn’t ask the 905 for the $200m, that was the province’s imposition. It wasn’t fair on them – but they aren’t paying it any more.

   I would be okay with user-pay for swimming pools as in 905 rather than see them closed at present, with exceptions for heat alert days like today.

4. Mississauga, unlike some other 905 municipalities (Brampton being a closer ally in several respects), has rejected even the one-cent campaign. My general feeling is that Mississauga politicans often don’t know how to play with anyone else. Remember how they wanted out of Peel Region once their dependance on Peel’s infrastructure construction ended as it got-built out? Now they say stupid things like this.

   Hazel vs. Toronto isn’t as bad as Oakland County’s L. Brooks Patterson vs. Detroit, but there’s some similarity in the suburban/urban politics.

5. Hey look, links to crybaby NOW articles this time. I hope NOW is happy, and not crybaby. Yet the story on the bulldozed lot is a prime example is why I stopped reading a long time ago. Instead of reporting like a normal human being, they make their writers create some kind of class conflict out of nothing, when the development firm bulldozed their own lot because of construction. NOW editors must live in treehouses or in the bush, places not built by devil contractors. I read the response by organizers that was posted here last week (I was going to go to the Lot) and it didn’t have all the made up bullshit.

   NOW mag is so much like Sue Anne Levy it is funny, like the way Fascism and Communism are almost the same thing. Haha, but they make millions doing it, so the laugh is on us, Toronto.

6. These Mississauga councillors seem to forget that most people come downtown Toronto for social services not offered in the suburbs (wasn’t there a time when the city of Brampton would give GO tickets to their homeless to come downtown?). Mississauga and the like have higher property taxes because of their sprawl, all those extra roads cost a lot of money to maintain… I don’t hear them complaint for Toronto, which gives a big share of its business property taxes to pay education throughout the province (Mississauga included), these guys charge less business taxes which is one of the main reasons Toronto has a job drain to the suburbs and now they want the city to charge higher property taxes on homes? Let’s make a deal, Mississauga charges the same rates on businesses as Toronto in a per foot square rate and Toronto increases its property taxes to levels they deem acceptable. I want to see all those offices in the suburbs paying for their big front lawns and massive parking spots…

7. Lefty:

   How does the Now article frame the issue as a class conflict? I mean, sure, the subtext is there, but no more so than it would be in a more mainsteam piece of journalism. Nor does the article demonize the developers; the author even chose not to mention that construction on the townhouse complex isn’t set to start for some time.

   Now articles can indeed be silly sometimes (e.g. “Newmindspace lays an egg“), but I don’t think this is one of those times.

   (Just so no one can accuse me of not mentioning it, I am among the people quoted in the article in question.)

8. What I love about NOW is that they print cry-baby articles about how oppressed the poor are, but flip a few pages and there’s endless articles on where hipsters can buy a $1000 coffee table or the latest $300 jeans.

   Hypocritical, not????