Morning Brew: December 22nd, 2008

Photo: untitled by boukesalverda, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):

For the first time since 1971, from coast to coast, all major cities in Canada appear to be on their way to experiencing a white Christmas this year. Rather than taking this opportunity to demonstrate our collective winter "misery", we should all get out and make snow angels and get into the Guinness book or something.

Toronto Police are looking into TTC security camera footage from a bus that was involved in a rather terrifying incident in the Dufferin & Eglinton area. Passengers on the bus narrowly missed being struck by stray bullets as they got caught in the middle of some men-chasing-a-man-while-shooting-guns crossfire.

The archaic, government-run alcohol monopoly that is the LCBO has quietly raised the minimum price of a two-four of beer to $25.60, up from $24, but a little digging by the media has revealed that the request actually came from the offices of the Ministry of Finance. This lends further evidence to the growing public opinion that the LCBO is not really serving the best interests of Ontarians, and should really undergo some major reform.

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The federal and provincial governments announced this weekend that they collectively will be injecting $4billion in emergency loans to Canada's automakers ($3billion for Chrysler, $1billion for GM), to spare them from collapse in the short-term. Some 400,000 jobs are in danger of being lost otherwise, but there's no guarantee that this bailout will even work. Would this money be better spent on, say, kick-starting some new ideas like high-speed rail links in the Golden Horseshoe area?

Parking maintenance and attendant staff represented by the CUPE Local 416 union have reached a deal that will prevent complete parking lot mayhem during the holiday season. Finding parking in the city, with all the snow mounds and shoppers, is already bad enough as it is.