MB Toronto
Morning Brew: John Tory still on the fence, Pakistani mango smuggling, Enbridge billing fiasco, Toronto Hydro customers might pay lawsuit settlement, police take down the wrong man, rubber bullet flip-flop
It could be a headline from last last year, or from a few months ago. And it's once again a headline. John Tory is reportedly considering entering the mayoral race. Somehow he continues to spur speculation despite having officially bowed out back in January. With many Torontonians displeased with the current front-running candidates, and with the backing of former (oh, so beloved) Premier Mike Harris, he has a good chance of making headway with those adamant to see an end to spending problems at City Hall.
Pakistani mangoes are so different from other, more common types mangoes that people are willing to go to great lengths to savour their sweetness -- including travelling to Toronto from the US to get a taste, and putting themselves at risk of criminality by trying to smuggle crates back with them. Banned in the US pending adherence to agricultural pest control standards (which may happen in the fall), the fruit is more readily available now in our fine city's ethnic stores and fruit stands.
Are you an Enbridge Gas customer? Have you gotten your July bill? Picked your jaw up off the floor yet? Last year they made errors by setting monthly rates too low for many of their customers, and they've had to make adjustments to their July 2010 instalment invoices to make up for the underpayments. As a result, many customers have a massive instalment to pay this month. In some cases, customers are going to have to pay the equivalent of an entire year's worth of service (i.e. more than 10 times their usual monthly instalment).
Toronto Hydro is also making the news headlines today. Years ago, a lawsuit filed against energy providers concerning the illegal collection of excessive late payment fees was settled. Now Toronto Hydro is looking to pay the $8-million cost of settling the lawsuit not from its own pocket, but by charging each of its 690,000 customers a small fee. Is it justifiable to have the very people wronged be forced to pay for the wrongdoers wrongs? Probably not. Will they gain approval to pull it off? Quite possibly.
Police thought they had their homicide suspect, and swooped in for an assertive and swift arrest. Unfortunately they had the wrong Sharmake Abdi. He was quickly released once they verified his birth date, but Abdi claims that he sustained both physical and emotional injuries as a result of the what he feels was an excessively violent arrest. Police are not apologetic, and urge him to file complaints via official channels if he felt he was mistreated.
On Monday, public statements by officials indicated that Toronto Police didn't fire rubber bullets at protesters outside the temporary detention centre on the G20 weekend. On Tuesday, public statements by officials indicated that Toronto Police did fire rubber bullets at protesters outside the temporary detention centre on the G20 weekend. On Wednesday, the citizens of Toronto will continue to argue severely polarized viewpoints; that the dirty hippie protesters deserved to get shot because they shouldn't have been there after violence broke out the day before, and that our country is moving towards a fascist police state where civil liberties and rights to peaceful protest are being compromised for the sake of perceived security. Regardless, police do need to get their ducks in a row on this one. Making erroneous public statements is not going to do them any good in winning back the publics' trust.
Photo: "Birthday sky through her purple glasses" by PJMixer, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
Discussion
29 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
Anytime you have an election there is a huge portion of the population that will vote left wing or right wing and be unchanging in that vote regardless of who the candidates are.
This has been a problem in federal politics in recent years, with the left wing vote being distributed between two parties (the Liberal and NDP) and the right being distributed to just one (the Tories), the result has been a conservative government despite the majority of Canadians voting left wing.
So, of the population that doesn't switch between left and right, right now we have the left wing vote being distributed between quite a few candidates and the right being distributed between 1 or 2.
Add John Tory to the mix and while you might get undecided voters voting for him and you might get others who will switch from left to right, but the big thing you will see is a -huge- drop in popularity for Rob Ford and only a minor drop in popularity for Smitherman (relatively speaking).
In order for Tory to become the front runner he not only needs to gain the votes of those undecided voters or those willing to cross from left to right, but he has to also pretty much eliminate Rob Ford out of the running and take his voters as his own.
This would make his campaigning very difficult. He'll view Smitherman as his major opponent, but will also have to try and take down Ford. It'll be like Germany trying to take on the allies and the Russians at the same time. Basically, if Tory wanted to join the campaign, he should have done it before Ford gathered so much support.
What will decide if Tory joins the race will probably be a combination of what proportion of the population is willing to cross party lines and the strength of Rob Ford's campaign. If Ford starts to falter, then I would guess that only then Tory will join up.
All they had to do was say hey sorry we f'd up and undercharged you for X$ so we've divided that up over your next (whatever) number of bills so you don't get dinged for more than 50 bucks extra a month.
But no. They say pay the whole thing now and freak everyone out and then have to set up payment arrangements and everybody's pizzed at them even more. Idiots.
But then again, there should be some law about billing people in a timely fashion or you're shyt out of luck.
I wouldn't mind Tory as a mayor if it meant we could avoid the inevitable mess of a Ford ran city.
Adding insult to injury, let's now point out the now spreading 1 million + gallon oil leak in your Michigan line too.
Perhaps this is why you keep charging folks your overinflated rates?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-27/enbridge-michigan-line-stays-shut-as-oil-spill-spreads-to-kalamazoo-river.html
Tory doesn't seem interested unless he can confirm that he's a front runner. I don't want someone like that running my city.
I'm on the BBP and you can compare month to month how much you've used vs how much you've paid for. You pretty much know whether you'd be owing or getting a credit and you'd have a pretty good idea of the amount.
Lazy/stupid consumers are just as much to blame for their bills as Enbridge is.
That doesn't change the fact that Enbridge has handled this pizz poorly.
also, the rates are dropping, which means lower prices for the next 12 months.
people with huge bills must be wasters.
It's kind of like the boy who cried wolf. Except in this case when the boy is being legitimately attacked by the wolf, he still for some reason chooses to try and gather more sympathy by claiming he's being attacked by not just one, but a pack of wolves.
The boy doesn't understand that if he wants sympathy, <b>one wolf is enough</b>. Make it a dozen wolves and while he might get slightly more sympathy from a small handful of gullible people, when most people find out that he had been stretching the truth, any sympathy they would have had for a single wolf attack would be gone.
What basic, human rights relevant to us here in Canada could come to fruition via protesting? What does the public, in Canada, need to know about?
I keep track of my consumption and dont just leave it blasting all the time
People should keep better track so this isnt a surprise
And LMFAO at Rob Ford
I saw one woman hit with a rubber bullet after refusing to move upon police orders. A group of protesters had attempted to breach the distance established by police. She was asked several times and was the only protester out of hundreds who didn't retreat.
She should be billed for the bullet. Would cut into her pot and cat litter fund though.
People who were wrongfully arrested don't need to spice up their stories because when the truth comes out, their credibility and with it, the credibility of others in the same situation will suffer.
So instead of assuming I believe that the police were well within their rights to arrest people without cause, why don't you read what I'm actually wanting to happen, and that's the desire for activists/protesters to smarten up and act in a way that will encourage positive change instead of a way that damages their legitimate concerns.
i find the "blame the protesters" arguement to be as tired and wrongheaded as the "short skirt" arguement. if you wear a short skirt dont complain when you are raped (maybe you are someone who says that).
protesters do not take an oath to serve and protect and protesters are not paid agents of the state (in most cases) the expectation of flawless behaviour is short sighted and simply stupid. asking protesters to behave perfectly to avoid being attacked is really odd, especially when you are paying 1 billion dollars to serve and protect them.
also the whole notion of actualy getting things done as the only condition of protest is an impossible standard. rarely has a single protest or action led directly to a measurable change. when historians romaticize and theorize, often an action is labelled as the turning point but in the midst of struggle it is impossible to know exactly when the desired effect takes hold. often protest leads to slightly increased awareness with an equal amount of indifference, this doesn't mean the protest is a failure or invalid or worthy of a violent state sponsered response.
nice work on the bold font, really drove home your point.
But when the public responds with negative opinions to the activists, how could this possible all add up to positive change in the end?
If we can't say if a neutral protest will have positive change down the road, we'd have to be off our rocker to suggest that protests with a negative response will somehow add up to a long term positive change.
You could continue getting negative and neutral response and have faith that it will somehow end up resulting in positive change (despite the simple logic that would suggest otherwise), or you could stop being so stubborn and make small adjustments to your actions to potentially change those negative and neutral reactions into positive ones.
This is starting to sound like one of the 'if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists' arguments. People can't possibly offer criticism of your methods without you getting so defensive on the matter and failing to understand that they are only trying to help offer a better solution to the problem.
If you know your methods are flawed and probably ineffective, then <b>change them</b>. It's not rocket surgery. You just have to let go of your ego and start caring about seeing the changes you all claim you're trying to achieve.
I love how whiners whine that that weekend was the beginning of some slippery slope into despotism or something.