Breaking News

The Globe And Mail’s Overheated Rhetoric

The planet is experiencing “a summer of swelter,” states a front-page story in today’s Globe and Mail that provides us with anecdotes of the upshot, such as “more than 1000 Russians have drowned in the last month trying to escape record
temperatures.” The Globe then speculates that one cause of the worldwide heat wave could be “the ever-shrinking size of the world’s ice caps.”



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Fresh off the Blog

Toronto Apartment Renters To Insulate Single Family Homes


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Political Reform

YouTube Cons The World

YouTube has censored “We con the world,” a parody that mocks the portrayal of the Free Gaza Flotilla as a humanitarian mission.  The parody, which went viral, logging three million views in less than a week and has Russian, French, Portuguese, Hebrew and English versions, is a take-off of “We are the world,” the 1985 pop single produced in aid of humanitarian relief for Africa.

Transportation

How To Solve Congestion: Own The Roads!

Under a new U.K. think tank plan, every citizen would own a share of the country’s roads. This would benefit them ... and the economy

You paid for the roads. You should own them.

That’s the message from the U.K., where a leading think tank, Social Market Foundation, has a solution for a problem that has bedeviled the government for more than a decade: How to introduce road tolls on the country’s heavily congested road system without raising the wrath of a citizenry suspicious of both governments and corporations.


Sprawl

Stimulating Sprawl

Sprawl in Toronto just got its biggest boost in 50 years, thanks to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's decision this week to stimulate the economy through a $9-billion spending spree on transportation infrastructure. Look for Toronto to bust out all over - North, East and West - in line with the major routes he promises to fund. And look for low-density sprawl to spread to Toronto's detriment, just as occurred with the uneconomic transportation infrastructure built in the past.

Immigration

Toronto Is Still Great And Growing

I weep for Toronto, as do many in Toronto. High taxes are driving head offices to Calgary, and back-office jobs to the suburbs. Our mayor is in the pockets of the unions, and corruption pockmarks city hall. While cities elsewhere have developed glorious waterfronts, ours remains a backwater. When ambitious institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario commission architects the likes of Frank Gehry to work their magic, community activists scoff at their designs and, through regulatory powers, force on us their own banal tastes.