Morning Brew: Toronto is Canada's second greenest city, City workers brace for job cuts, no Burger King for Sick Kids and Raptors lose
Even though we're Canada's most sustainable city, Toronto is #2 on the list of Canada's greenest cities, according to the WWF's Earth Hour List, in partnership with Corporate Knights magazine. Cities were ranked by certain criteria, including greenhouse gas emissions reductions, renewable energy, and green transportation. The city was recognized, among other things, for having the first city-based wind turbine in North America. Toronto scored 7.2 out of 10, putting us behind Vancouver, which is determined to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. Show-offs.
We all thought this might happen. After a leaked memo from city manager, Joe Pennachetti, surfaced yesterday,Toronto city workers are bracing themselves for job cuts. They aren't jumping to conclusions when questions included in the memo ask: "What will the city do for staff whose jobs are affected?" and "How will the city maintain staff morale in this environment?" Councillors note that major cuts is the only way that the city can make up for the massive $784-million shortfall in next year's budget.
And to make matters even worse (at least from one perspective), the province has ordered that Toronto pay its non-unionized employees a performance bonus, which could cost the city millions of dollars. In April 2009, city council stopped the practice and retroactively cancelled the 2008 bonuses, as they had yet to be paid.
You'd figure this would have been done a long time ago. Burger King is king no longer at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Kids, closing down this weekend after the hospital chose not to renew its lease. You know, with obesity rates at an all-time high across the country and the high sodium and cholesterol, it just didn't fit with a hospital's mandate of healthy eating and living. However, Pizza Pizza and Subway still remain.
IN BRIEF:
Photo by mattfromjava in the blogTO Flickr pool.
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