- Nov. 18 - Shooting - In the early morning hours, a woman driving a Honda attempted to run over a male pedestrian at St. Clair and Landsdown.. After the attempt, the man fired shots at the fleeing woman. Police went to the scene and found blood and shell casings and are now looking for the man and woman.
- Nov. 18 - Stabbing - Early Saturday evening, police were called to an apartment in the Gerrard and Greenwood area. They found a man with at least 4 stab wounds to his chest. The victim was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries and identified his roommate as his attacker.
Toronto News & Comment
By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, November 20, 2006
A report came out last week on the present and future state of gridlock within the GTA. Prepared by The Residential Construction and Civil Alliance of Ontario, the report estimates that the cost to the GTA in lost productivity due to gridlock could be as high as $2 billion a year. The report also estimates that by the year 2031, 25 years from now,there will be another 100,000 vehicles on the roads in Toronto. The report that was authored by transportation expert, Dr. Richard Soberman also indicated that roads must be improved; spending on improvements to public transit will simply not be sufficient to end the paralyzing gridlock.
By Arthur Weinreb
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
It is an accepted principle of municipal politics that incumbent mayors and councillors very rarely get booted out of office. The lack of voter participation and the lack of organized political parties to focus contempt upon contributes to the ease that incumbents have in winning reelection. The only incumbent Toronto councillor to lose the election was Peter Li Preti who went down to defeat to Anthony Perruzza in Ward 8, York Weston. With the exception of former deputy mayor Case Ootes who managed to just squeak by challenger Diane Alexopoulos in Ward 29, Toronto Danforth, all other incumbents rode to victory with relative ease.
By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, November 6, 2006
During Toronto’s municipal election campaign, graffiti became an election issue albeit a very minor one. One suggestion that has been made is to prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from buying spray paint in order to stem the proliferation of graffiti. This solution presupposes that all those property-destroying punks (or artists as some would prefer) are under 18 years of age.
By Arthur Weinreb
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Toronto councillor and mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield proposed a new bylaw to prohibit panhandling on the streets of Toronto that was soundly defeated by Mayor David Miller and his left-wing cronies.
By David Cobain
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Newspaper publisher TorStar is having such trouble conning people into buying, let alone reading, its products that it's decided to abandon whatever it's been doing for decades in favour of trying journalism. That was my second thought, anyway, after the front page of its Saturday Star grabbed my sceptical attention, shouting ASK WHY, as I passed a newsstand.
By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, August 14, 2006
In Toronto, the number of murders that have been committed by guns so far this year had dropped to 20 compared to 28 for the same time last year. Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair credits the work of the guns and gang task force and the fact that there are more officers on the street for the decline in fatal shootings. Gun related murder has decreased despite the fact that there has been no appreciable increase in basketball courts throughout the city; the solution to violent crime most favoured by Mayor David Miller and his left wing council whose response to gun violence is to try and spread that warm fuzzy feeling around amongst the killers, pimps and drug dealers.
By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, July 31, 2006
Last week, in a totally unsurprising move Toronto City Council voted to increase the salaries of its members. The increase is about 9% and will see the mayor earning $160,000 while councillors will take home $95,000.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Politics puts people out of business and employees out of work in Toronto.
Three hundred plus employees will be out of work if The Docks Entertainment Complex loses its liquor licence on Friday.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Monday, July 17, 2006
The Guardian Angels began their patrols of Toronto streets late last week much to the chagrin of Mayor David Miller, his fellow comrades on city council and his puppet police chief. The mayors refusal to even meet with the New York based group is more proof that Millers interest in violent crime on Torontos streets is limited to how it will affect him personally in the next election.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Friday, July 14, 2006 A Malvern area youth worker was quoted this week as saying that a program set up to find jobs for "at risk" youth has been a failure.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Thursday, July 6, 2006 Toronto Police recently released statistics showing that the number of shooting incidents in the city has declined by 16%. In the first half of the year, there were 137 shooting incidents (not counting those occurrences where guns are fired into the air or at targets) compared to 164 during the same time in 2005 which has been dubbed "The Year of the Gun". The bad news was that while the number of shootings was down, the number of murders rose from 30 to 33.
Gary Reid
Tuesday, June 27, 2006 Two centuries ago there was a thoroughly effective method for a gentleman to deal with a scoundrel who published defamatory material about him. The victim would challenge the accuser to a duel to defend his honour. If the accuser declined the challenge then he became the dishonourable one. If he accepted and were wounded or killed, honour was satisfied.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 Last Sunday, several hundred people took part in a march to "Stop the Violence". Organized by the Toronto Argonauts and sponsored by the Toronto Police Association and other organizations, this and other similar "marches" supposedly has a purpose but it is hard to understand how a bunch of people marching does anything that will remotely end or reduce the violence that has plagued Toronto in recent years.
Klaus Rohrich
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 Some babe that Jane Pitfield is. Imagine a politician, a mayoral candidate for the City of Toronto no less, talking about "phasing out unions" in Toronto! Thats akin to Howard Moscoe wanting to apologize for the stupid things he says. Its akin to David Miller wanting to save taxpayers money or Dalton McGuinty telling the truth!
John Lawrence
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 Margaret Somerville has quite the resumé. She is a world renowned ethicist. She is Gale Professor of Law and as such, is the first woman in Canada to hold a named Chair in Law. She is the founding Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law in Montreal. She has received honorary doctorates from several universities and is considered brilliant by many of her peers.
Adam Taylor, CTF research director Canadian Taxpayers Association
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 Dalton McGuinty and Toronto Mayor David Miller are two peas in a pod. Their response to any fiscal challenge is to blame someone else for their problems and to dig deeper into the pockets of taxpayers for more money. The Toronto Sun reports that the City of Toronto will not pass on the lower GST to its citizens for services such as parking, recycling, and recreation fees instead they will simply pocket the tax savings. City officials say passing on the tax relief to consumers is just too costly.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Thursday, June 8, 2006 Within moments of the walkout by TTC maintenance workers and the shutdown of the system a week ago Monday, there were calls to make Torontos transit system an essential service. In one of his more logical moments, Mayor David Miller pointed out that making strikes illegal was not likely to prevent illegal strikes of the type that took place on May 29.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 On the same day that Mayor David Miller met with the media to say how safe the city of Toronto is, shots rang out in a downtown residential neighbourhood. A 19-year-old man was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries while horrified residents looked on. Several schools in the area were locked down and train service on the nearby tracks was suspended while police looked for the shooters.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 "We are law-abiding people&" These words were contained in a press release that was issued by Bob Kinnear, the president of Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union when he announced that he was ordering his union back to work after the Ontario Labour Relations Board ruled that the transit strike was illegal and ordered the union back to work. His description of his union as "law-abiding" was laughable, not to mention somewhat dishonest since the order he decided to comply with was the second such order made by the Board within the space of a few hours. Kinnear ignored the first order while he tried to argue that his members were actually locked out; a difficult argument to make when some of his yahoo members were bragging in front of the cameras about how they walked off the job.
John Lawrence
Friday, May 26, 2006 I must admit that I am glad to have once lived in Toronto. It puts a great many things into perspective and after dealing with the most bizarre politicians and special interest usurpations of the same, almost nothing surprises me. Almost.
Gary Reid
Thursday, May 25, 2006 I wasnt very long on the job at the Toronto Harbour Commission ("THC"), in the mid-1970s, before I got my first angry customer telephone call. Although I was not the person to whom the call should have been directed, it was bounced to me anyway. Gamely, I heard out the complaint.
Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor,
Friday, May 19, 2006 Yesterday about 600 police officers from Toronto and surrounding jurisdictions, the RCMP and the OPP conducted massive raids in the northwest section of the city. After the dust settled, 78 people had been arrested and over 90 search warrants had been executed and the total number of arrests is expected to top 100. Police also seized 15 kilos of cocaine, thousands of dollars in cash and several weapons including handguns, automatic weapons and an AK-47 assault rifle.
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