City
Morning Brew: Facebook Lock Out, Liberals Take St. Paul's, Kenk Case in Jeopardy, Provincial Test Scores, McCallion's Conflict of Interest
Photo: "Getting Ready for Rom 2" by ~EvidencE~, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
28-year-old Playboy model Anissa Holmes, who has been locked out of her profile by Facebook, may have a privacy violation case against the website. Having yet to implement changes to the way that they store inactive profiles brought on by achallenge from Canada's privacy commissioner, Holmes is neither able to delete her pictures nor access her account. The model claims there was no lewd content on her profile, but even if there was, this aspect of Facebook is ridiculous.
Despite their own fears to the contrary, the Liberals did indeed maintain hold of St. Paul's in yesterday's by-election. This is, of course, good news for Dalton McGuinty in general, but also because it represents a victory in a crucial first test of his harmonized sales tax. The Star is reporting that the victor, Dr. Eric Hoskins, "is being groomed for a position in McGuinty's cabinet."
A series of delays from the Crown Attorney is threatening the case against alleged bicycle thief Igor Kenk. The key issue appears to be the lack of evidence being turned over to defence lawyers in the 14-month-old case. Should the delays extend too long, legal experts theorize the case could be thrown out.
Although provincial test results released yesterday indicate that Toronto school students' (in grades 3, 6 and 9) reading, writing and math skills have improved, they still rank below the provincial average. Students in York Region, on the other hand, scored approximately 10% higher on the standardized tests. Here's a look at the breakdown of results across the GTA.
Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion may be in some hot water after having attended private meetings involving a land deal/hotel project her son was working on. Although the mayor had declared a conflict of interest, it remains unclear whether or not her presence violates protocol. McCallion, for her part, has defended her presence by saying councillors could easily turn down any proposal, and that the conflict of interest shouldn't "prevent [her] from hoping something [would] happen" (she had wanted a hotel in that area for some time). I agree with the the latter of these two statements, but find it hard to believe that her involvement wouldn't put some pressure on those voting on the proposal.
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Liberals will always dominate Toronto. I think voters in this city are still scarred from the Harris years or they wrongly link them to the federal Tories and think they are one in the same. This is too bad that people still think this way because I'm pretty confident the PC's offer a credible alternative to the Liberals.
The HST is good, anyway. The reasons that it's good are too difficult to convey in our political environment, so McGuinty's going to have a tough time after the tax is implemented next year.
It would take a Bryant-esque scandal for the Liberals to lose a Toronto riding at this point, no? This by-election might have been more telling if it was in a rural Ontario riding, or even in the suburbs.
Maybe. Too bad John Tory ran in Kwartha before the HST was announced. Then it really would have been a referendum on it. However, Levy went full on against it and, compared to the last election, the liberal vote went up and the conservative vote went down. That's a shocker, considering Bryant was an all-star at the time and Hoskins is a rookie.
Well considering this was his riding - the one he gave up to head Invest Toronto; then it would take something far bigger than his current misfortune.
If you're going to run a conservative government, you must inure yourself to the rage of the unions, the arts, and the media. They're an adjunct of the Left and despite their verboseness they have little in common with the population's opinions (thank god).