Toronto may be seeking federal permission to decriminalize illegal drugs, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hinted the city may need broader support from the Ontario government, which currently rejects the proposal.
Ottawa needs to work with “all partners, including provinces” on any decriminalization proposals, Mr. Trudeau told reporters during a May 3 press conference in Hamilton, Ont.
It was over a year ago, last March, when Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa went rogue and submitted an expanded application to the federal government to see Canada’s largest city exempt kids and teens from the criminalization of hard drug possession.
The real estate slowdown in Canada’s largest city is starting to show increasing signs it’s not just a blip. Greater Toronto saw a sharp climb to its mortgage delinquency rate in Q4 2023, according to Equifax data. The share of delinquent mortgages has nearly doubled in just over a year, leading to the highest rate since 2016.
Not good for Chowtown.
As claustrophobic congestion on Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway worsens with years-long lane closures to accommodate road repairs, Ontario’s minister of transportation is suggesting around-the-clock construction could dramatically shorten the time frame.
Parts of the Gardiner, between Dufferin Street and Strachan Avenue, have been reduced by one lane in each direction for “critical rehabilitation work” for three years.
Apparently the overflow has perma-clogged all alternate routes. Guess I won’t be going downtown for 3 years at least.
In downtown Toronto in 2024, going for a run means taking your life in your hands.
You just never know when someone will attack you randomly. Sometimes it’s with a knife or syringe and sometimes it’s with the fist.
Just call them Keystone carjackers!
Three masked and armed losers not only failed to get away with the car they were trying to carjack but allegedly got caught by police in their getaway car, too.
If they build it, they will come.
And, likely, never leave. Why would they? Drug addicts have everything they could ever want right here in the heart of the city.
It was the tents at Rowntree Mills Park that caught the eye of veteran Toronto outreach worker Diana Chan McNally. She’d never seen an encampment here, by the banks of the Humber River north of Finch.
Yet, as of mid-March, at least three tents were erected in this riverside greenspace, deep in northwest Toronto. To Chan McNally, it’s yet another symptom of a ballooning crisis — as city data shows the number of tents in ravines, parks and under bridges is more than double last spring’s count.
Where workers counted 82 tents or other makeshift structures set up citywide on March 15, 2023, that shot up to 202 on the same date this year — edging closer to the 291-tent count seen in the mid-pandemic spring of 2021.
Given the amount of money that Toronto sucks in there should be no homeless beyond those who refuse shelter.
But homeless camps serve a greater purpose as a fundraising tool used to plead for ever more taxes that end up diverted to pet projects.
I am also beginning to suspect that they are used for block busting purposely allowed to fester in order to degrade real estate values for the profit of waiting vultures.
The Toronto Police Association has accused Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow of not backing officers after city councillors questioned the conduct of police who clashed with pro-Palestine demonstrators at a protest.
“We are at a loss for words when our own mayor refuses to stand by our members who have gone beyond the call of duty to police over 500 protests over the last 6 months,” the association said in an April 9 statement.
The association, which represents approximately 8,000 uniform and civilian members of the Toronto Police Service, added it had not spoken with Ms. Chow directly despite an April 5 promise that she would call. “She continues to be silent on the treatment of our members,” it said.
The rollout of the City of Toronto’s vacant home tax has been nothing short of disastrous. There’s no point trying to fix it, as it’s a flawed tax that was always going to be a mess. It needs to be axed.
The vacant home tax, now in its second year, requires an annual declaration from homeowners that they are either living in their property or renting it out for at least six months of the year. This declaration needs to be made yearly for each property a person owns.
Two men wanted for machete attack in North York
Two unidentified men are sought for an assault last month in North York that involved a machete.
Toronto Police say the attack occurred near Jane St. and Sheppard Ave. W. around 12:30 a.m. on March 7.
Mayor Olivia Chow says she won’t condemn six councillors who criticized the Toronto Police Service’s handling of a recent pro-Hamas rally. Neither will the six councillors who signed the letter answer questions put to them by The Toronto Sun, detailing the links between the groups organizing the protests and support for terrorism.
Mayor Olivia Chow has no plans to condemn some city councillors for supporting Torontonians’ right to protest following a pro-Palestinian demonstration that included clashes with police officers.
”Whether they are councillors, a deputy mayor or ordinary citizens, they have the right, under the Charter of Freedoms, to assemble, to have their voice heard,” Chow told reporters Monday, responding to a question about the police officers’ union demand that she criticizes the councillors’ actions.
Society is in the grip of irrational ideas that defy common sense and drive dystopian policies. Some inane beliefs and trends are made up out of whole cloth; others derive from ideas that have resurfaced, Zombie-like, from the crypt of historic failures. They are advanced by “progressive” activists in thrall to a post-modern woke-ism steeped in Marxist-Leninism. What makes the phenomenon so threatening is its pervasive influence in politics, academia, media, not-for-profits and big business.
In the summer of 2022, police got a tip from Shoppers Drug Mart. Security at the pharmacy chain had spotted a pattern in a string of shoplifting incidents at suburban stores outside Toronto.
According to police, Shoppers reported that a group of thieves was repeatedly going into stores and picking out expensive items, like electric toothbrushes, vitamins and breast pumps. They scanned the items through a self-checkout kiosk so none of the staff got suspicious but didn’t actually complete the transaction, they just walked out with the merchandise.
