we shall surrender on the seas and oceans,(source)
we shall surrender with growing confidence and growing weakness in the air, we shall
surrender our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall surrender on the beaches,
we shall surrender on the landing grounds,
we shall surrender in the fields and in the streets,
we shall surrender in the hills;
we shall always surrender,
Increasingly, it seems, these days when someone sets out to address a contentious issue they resort to questionable media stunts. If you want to get ink, you’ve got to have a hook. On Sunday, Richmond Hill businessman, Gary McHale, not satisfied that the OPP have enforced the rule of law in the Caledonia standoff, takes his protest directly to the front yard of Commissioner Julian Fantino in Woodbridge. In the legislature, meanwhile, provincial Health Minister, George Smitherman proposes to wear an adult diaper, “as a matter of conscience”, he says, to get a firsthand sense of whether stewing in “three-quarter soaked” Depends really is an undignified hardship faced by our elderly in the province’s nursing homes. (With unintended irony, he promises to get to the bottom of this). As misguided as both men are in their theatrics, the resulting media attention will justify their dog and pony show because, at the end of the day, the public, as much as the media, are enguaged by stories that involve grandstanding, rather than getting bogged down in detail and facts.
John Oakley can be heard from 5:45 a.m.-10 a.m. EST Monday to Friday on AM 640 Toronto Radio
Now Hiring 2.4 Million Busboys
Despite being home to millions of educated and talented professionals, Mexico's development has been hampered by a severe unskilled-labor...
Re:Smitherman assailed for offer
to don diaper
Feb. 28
In 2003, Health Minister George Smitherman wept at what older adults were having to endure in Ontario's long-term care facilities. Yet today, when the union representing the staff who care for older adults is reporting people are being left in filthy diapers, Smitherman responds by saying he intends to wear a diaper himself to see if they are adequate for residents.
From tears in 2003 to quips in 2008. It gives you confidence, does it not, to see how the person responsible for the funding, regulation and enforcement of quality of care in nursing homes views this.
Since Smitherman claims to be so concerned about these residents, perhaps he should consider going the next step – donning his diaper and heading over to one of the nursing homes his inspectors have cited for numerous unaddressed care violations, and spending a couple of nights there. I doubt very much that he would be making any more specious comments.
Dare we hope that this might finally convince the government to provide funding to keep people at home, or provide small, non-profit residences for them in their own communities?
Patricia Spindel, Toronto
While the recent issue of incontinence products for residents in long-term care facilities is a disturbing matter, we need to understand that abuse and neglect of nursing home residents has been going on in Ontario for decades.
What this childish show-and-tell episode by the health minister has done is take away the focus from the failings of the government to properly hold nursing homes accountable for the subhuman treatment and deplorable conditions that many residents endure.
It has an obligation to protect residents and to issue the most stringent sanctions to those facilities that repeatedly do not meet provincial standards. There can no longer be any excuse for ministry personnel to pander to facilities through an ineffective compliance model, when inspection reports and unusual-occurrence documents clearly show the lives of institutionalized residents are at risk.
Ellen Watson, Aurora
Health Minister George Smitherman's comments reveal a complete lack of comprehension. The issue is not the absorbency of adult diapers; the issue is the lack of care that the people who worked their whole lives to build our province are receiving in their last days.
Yet instead of promising to improve their living conditions, Smitherman engages in polemics about adult diapers. The Liberals have done precious little to improve the situation in Ontario's nursing homes, and both they and those who elected them have reason to be ashamed.
Orest Zakydalsky, Toronto
I could always count on the NDP, and MPP Peter Kormos in particular, for their usual left-wing bombast. So imagine my shock when Kormos made perfect sense calling George Smitherman a "damned embarrassment" and urging him to apologize to the 77,000 residents of nursing homes in Ontario and their families for a cheap publicity stunt.
Rob West, Toronto
The diaper dialogue is definitely about staffing levels, not diaper technology. However, when George Smitherman sits in his "loaded" diaper for 24 hours, he will see that the issue is also about human worth and dignity. When he has accomplished this feat (preferably at home), I know he will "have the right policy for Ontarians."
Lynn McDonald, Scientific Director,
National Initiative for the Care of the
Elderly, Toronto
| Councillor Rob Ford would like to see Toronto Council cut in half from 44 to 22. Do you agree? | ||
| Yes |  | 94% |
| No | | 6% |
| Total Votes for this Question: 1455 THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN | ||
| Full Column |
Avi Lewis, the former CBC host and husband of author Naomi Klein, has joined Al Jazeera’s rapidly growing English network as host of a weekly program on the American election.I have a confession. I couldn't quite recall ever having heard of Avi Lewis prior to this interview in which Ayaan Hirsi Ali reduced him to tender little bite-sized pieces.
But then I remembered this;
For reference, Avi Lewis is the son of the image former you’ve got to be kidding party’s Stephen Lewis, who sounds very much like a communist to me. Stephen Lewis is the son of Federal NDP Leader David Lewis, who similarly sounds very much like a communist to me. Stephen Lewis is married to Michele Landsberg, a feminist activist and former writer for the leftist Toronto Star, which is perhaps the most left-wing mainstream newspaper in North America, and the liberals’ Globe and Mail. She sounds very much like a communist to me. Not to be outdone, young Avi Lewis is married to far-left-wing feminist activist and Bush-hater Naomi Klein, daughter of an American draft dodger; and her brother is a director of the far left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (the “alternative” they speak of being global socialism and an end to capitalism as we know it, which sounds very much like communism to me). Naomi Klein was also a Toronto Star writer. She sounds very much like a communist to me.
The Senate has passed the Conservative government's omnibus anti-crime bill, averting an election.
The former commissioner of the RCMP has lashed out at his old bosses, blaming a lack of government leadership for what he says is a growing gap between the demands on police and the resources allotted to them.
The Canadian justice system needs review to eliminate "discount sentences" and ensure career criminals are nailed with severe penalties that reflect society's contempt, says the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police.
Mississauga council has unanimously endorsed a unique citizen-driven plan for the sprawling Lakeview lands that could transform the area around a former coal-fired power plant into a thriving $2 billion waterfront community.
Yesterday's vote was witnessed by hundreds of residents, who jammed council chambers and applauded repeatedly.
The council resolution calls on the province to ensure that a gas-powered plant won't replace the coal-powered one that once thrust four smokestacks high into the sky south of Lakeshore Rd. between Cawthra and Dixie Rds. The stacks came down in June 2006, the rest of the hulking plant a year later.
The industrial area the citizen plan envisions redeveloping totals about 200 hectares, nearly 80 of which the province owns through Ontario Power Generation.
The plan by the 800-member Lakeview Ratepayers Association extends existing waterfront trails and parklands and adds a major feature such as an aquarium or pier. It also envisions doubling the area's population by adding new medium-rise towers – enough people to support extending the TTC streetcar line into Mississauga, from the current Long Branch terminus all the way to Hurontario St.
"This is a historic day for the City of Mississauga," said Jim Tovey, president of the residents' association and a driving force behind the project, along with University of Toronto landscape professor and architect John Danahy.
The crowd cheered as Danahy showed his computer-modelled Lakeview Legacy Plan, and as councillors proclaimed one after another that they would do all they could to make it a reality.
Tovey and Danahy used Google Earth and mapping data from the University of Toronto to come up with the plan, which they said involved thousands of hours of work and input from residents.
"This is our last opportunity to create a vibrant waterfront," said Councillor Carmen Corbasson. "It belongs to us and we must take advantage of it."
Some of the warmest cheers came near the start of the meeting, when Mayor Hazel McCallion buoyed hopes with a letter she'd just received from Energy Minister Gerry Phillips.
Phillips wrote that while Lakeview remains a potential site, OPG's estimate for energy needed in the southwest GTA until 2013 was an extra 850 megawatts.
McCallion interpreted that to mean that another gas-fired power plant in Mississauga proposed by Sithe Global – which has received regulatory approval for a site east of Winston Churchill Blvd., between Royal Windsor Dr. and Lakeshore Rd. – could easily handle the demand. The estimate, she suggested, could also eliminate the need for Eastern Power's gas-fired plant near Dundas St. E. and Dixie Rd.
"These nursing homes, where our loved ones live out their final days, are going to be places where quality and dignity are enhanced," the weeping minister vowed after reading a Toronto Star series describing the deplorable conditions of some Ontario institutions – including the not uncommon practice of leaving bedridden residents to fester for hours in urine-soaked diapers.
Now, five years later, relatives and nursing home staffers report that the diaper situation has changed little and that many residents continue to be left lying in their own urine. Only now, Smitherman doesn't seem to think this is such a big problem. MORE
John Turley-Ewart: On George Smitherman and his dirty diaper
A week after a fire destroyed businesses and homes along Queen Street West, some residents are claiming that the city neglected them.
Andrea Moderacai is one of them. Toronto didn't drop the ball on this fire, she claims; "they didn't even pick it up. I don't know if they know what the ball looks like."
She maintains that she was never registered as an evacuee. "The city didn't prepare a space where we could all go after the event. We just wandered like ghosts," she said, though one shelter in Trinity Bellwoods was open to those affected, as well as a Salvation Army.
She said she had to "hunt down" city employees to ask her questions. More residents voiced their concerns at one of two meetings organized by councillors Wednesday night.
Councillor Adam Vaughan agrees, in part, with Morderacai's concerns. "After getting people into a shelter, the city's resources virtually disappeared. And the city could do more."
Some of the residents had their first chance to go back to the scene on Tuesday. For more on that emotional return, click here.
Obama's response to 
TORONTO — Health Minister George Smitherman says he's “seriously considering” wearing an adult diaper to see if it's adequate for Ontario seniors.
He was responding to complaints that Ontario seniors are wearing soiled diapers for hours on end because nursing homes in the province aren't meeting proper standards of care.
Mr. Smitherman says there's been an evolution in incontinence products which makes them more absorbent and that a decision was made to use them across the province's system.
He says looking into concerns raised about the use of the products.
CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan dismissed Mr. Smitherman's proposal as “silly games.”
He's calling on the minister to enact a minimum 3.5 hours of personal care for residents in long-term care facilities
At least we are still able to deal with the economy and there is some pain but think what it would be like with the free spending attitude of the ndp and the liberals.
Theo fails to reflect our portion of the debt and the need to pay that down.....a typical left wing fiscal approach.
Open thread.
Update: Liberal Party reaction here
Plus - Post-budget analysis I could have written myself.
If you listen to David Suzuki, you'd hear about how human activity is causing the Earth to warm up. Specifically, how a mere 30 million Canadians are supposed to shoulder a large amount of the blame.
His rhetoric has become increasingly heated, ironically.
Well, it seems that the heat generated by his latest comments has caused David Suzuki to throttle it back.
Read more...Well, the Canadian Human Rights Commission spent 22 years – on one file. The Public Service Alliance of Canada alleged in 1983 that Canada Post’s mostly female clerical workers were being paid less than its mostly male workers in operational jobs. The CHRC investigated for a decade, spent 12 more years in hearings, then, in 2005, found Canada Post guilty. The agency was ordered to pay a staggering $150 million in compensation to some 6,000 workers.
You’d think, after all that time and the amount of money involved, that the evidence against Canada Post must have been overwhelming. Then again, these are human rights commissions and tribunals, where rules of evidence are not as exacting as in a court of law.
That became clear when the Federal Court of Canada threw out both the judgment and multi-million-dollar award last week. In fact, the Federal Court judge said he found little evidence of wage discrimination. He did discover, however, that the commission had ignored the fact that most women who had been working for Canada Post were in higher-paid non-clerical jobs. The unreasonable time spent on this case, the judge added strongly, "offends" the public’s sense of what is "reasonable and responsible." MORE
| Taliban Jack: How the NDP lost its way on the Afghan war |
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Re:Board's ruling on alleged slur to stay on ice
Feb. 25
Amber Gero alleges that an employee at North Toronto Memorial Arena called her a "f------ n-----." Gord Thompson, who chairs the city-owned arena's board, insists that the public has no right to know whether the complaint is upheld or disciplinary action results. He insists that this is a "private matter."
Hatred of this sort is never a private matter. Thompson and the board need to take very seriously this complaint and ought to be held accountable to the public.
Jonathan Turtle, Aurora
After a mere three meetings, the fiscal fruitcakes on the city's budget committee put the finishing touches on this year's $8.2-billion operating budget in 82 minutes flat yesterday.
Controversial new taxes -- starting this November -- for those citizens who dare put more than one bag of straight garbage every two weeks? Approved in mere seconds.
Fee hikes averaging 8% for families who use city rec centres, rinks and pools? Passed in barely a blink of an eye.
Don't worry, be happy folks. Mayor David Miller and his wily budget brains have it all in hand. The books are balanced (on the backs of the taxpayers) and the city's $2.6 billion in long-term debt, coupled with the $440 million that will be paid in interest costs to service that debt, is nothing to sneeze at. Recession? Well City Hall insiders insist it won't happen, just the same as Miller keeps telling us a 3.75% tax hike is "in line" with inflation, which averaged 1.9% last year.
In fact, the committee was feeling so enamoured with their finesse at juggling the budget shells yesterday that budget chief Shelley Carroll was quite proud to introduce one "late breaking motion" -- one that would involve a "slight increase to the envelope" for city grants.
Introduced by Kyle Rae -- who fancies himself City Hall's Patron Saint of the Arts -- the motion proposed that his arts friends get a precious $1.5 million more this year on top of the generous scheme already proposed for them.
I wonder if people in Toronto living in the same situation as Cindy Buott would agree with Rae and Mihevic about support for the "arts"
Cindy Buott, a single mother in Peterborough, Ont., says she feels all but forgotten by governments at all levels.
She and her 15-year-old daughter live on $1,300 a month, most of it social assistance. Buott worked for $10 an hour as a telemarketer until a debilitating case of Crohn's disease forced her to quit. There's little cash left once she pays rent, heating, hydro and telephone bills, she said in an interview.
"I eat very light and there are times when I just don't eat. Especially when it gets toward the end of the month."
Buott, 50, is far from alone.
There was even a nice extra $18,000 "tip" for the Friends of Joe Mihevc, otherwise known as Artscape -- the group behind a highly controversial scheme to create 26 "affordable" housing units for starving artists on the Wychwood Car Barns site in Mihevc's ward.
With this special top-up, the grants budget will jump some 3.75% this year to $43.2 million -- even though all city departments and programs were told to keep to a zero increase.
Unfortunately only councillors Doug Holyday and John Parker were there to call the budget committee on their 11th-hour shenanigans.
Holyday said they're sending the wrong message to city staff, who were asked to do more with less. "If we see that for our friends we're willing to make these changes, what's the incentive for staff to come back at zero," he said. "Our instructions are meaningless."
But all reason was lost on the friends and lapdogs of Mayor Miller.
Rae said the city has fallen behind in its financing of the arts in this city (causing some 15 years of "embarrassment") and given the mayor's creativity and prosperity agendas, they must "catch up."
Mihevc was most incensed at the suggestion they were simply giving grants to their friends. "It makes a mockery of what we're trying to do with these sectors," he said, insisting he's pained that he can only increase the grants budget by a measly 3.75%, preferring double-digit increases instead.
Asked where the extra money was found to keep the books balanced, Rae said he couldn't name the savings at this point but they were "able to cobble this together."
Carroll said 45 of 85 deputations that came to their budget hearings on Feb. 5 were on the arts -- which caused a "red light" to go off for her as budget chief. "Every year there's an urgent need ... (this year) that red light issue is the arts," she said.
Well, duh. I hate to suggest to the Mistress of Double Talk that if you give out the message the mayor's city is a highly creative one -- Richard Florida yada yada -- and the culture plan is a priority, why wouldn't arts groups come down to City Hall to cash in on the opportunity.
It's up to the so-called watchdogs of the public purse to recognize that this might not be the right time to reinvest in culture -- given that the city can barely afford to fix its potholes, make the subway an attractive alternative to the car and clear its snow. Real vision means understanding the city's most pressing priorities, however unsexy those priorities might be.
Questioned after the meeting about his colleague's criticisms, Rae said the value of developing partnerships is "lost on Coun. Holyday."
I beg to differ. Consideration for those who pay the real freight in this city -- and it's not the starving artists who prop up the likes of Rae and Mihevc -- is completely lost on the Miller regime.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's new budget offers few big-ticket items but serves up a few surprises, making a virtue out of thrift. more... comments(97)
Toronto, with its growing immigrant population, will likely see an increase of deadly, contagious tuberculosis, experts say. The current system simply couldn’t handle an outbreak, but the province has yet to make the changes required to protect citizens
Something to think about the nest time you are on a crowded subway, running under Chinatown or Little Somalia.
TB is not going to disappear from Toronto as long as we are an immigration centre. We need to plan for cases to continue to arrive here and to be able to deal with them at the highest level of care.
Yup, those ethnic restaurants were totally worth it. Right?
PS: It may also be worthwhile to remember that our immigrant darlings from Islamic countries are a bit needle-shy when it comes to vaccinations. But we must respect their faith, at all costs. To do otherwise would infringe on their human rights. Think about that when you are shipping your kid off to school with their kids.
Whether it’s Polio vaccines in their countries (and sometimes here, because we don’t enforce it), or the MMR vaccine in Britain, or countless other measures (including their own doctors and nurses having sub-standard levels of hygiene because female medical practitioners do not practice safe hand-washing), or the fact that countries like Somalia would rather spend money on warfare than on sanitation (expecting our evil, Infidel Christian charities to foot the bill for that), we are going to continue to have a problem with 19th century diseases resurfacing from 7th century countries.
Posted by: Right Girl
Posted in Apocalypso, Immigration, Medicine, Multiculturalism, Tuberculosis 
1 Comment »
| Full Column |
| Full Column |
The West went into Yugoslavia to prevent ethnic cleansing, and ended up presiding over it
Can’t blame the Serbs for protesting, which is what they do en masse as I’m writing this — not that it’s likely to do them any good. After the province of Kosovo seceded from Serbia on Monday, the major Western liberal democracies stumbled over each other in their eagerness to put the stamp of good housekeeping on it. By now a dozen nations or more, including the U.K. and U.S., have recognized the breakaway province of ethnic Albanian Muslims as an independent country.
The apprentice sorcerers who precipitated Kosovo’s secession by launching a bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic’s rump Yugoslavia in the last year of the last century, are now on the face-saving mission of pretending that this was what they wanted all along. It wasn’t. Their ideal Kosovo was a multicultural Elysium, where Serb and Albanian Kosovars, miraculously reconciled by the bombs of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), lived happily ever after.
Such pipe dreams were shared by the stubborn innocents of the boomer generation, people whose consciousness was shaped by the hallucinogens and chimeras of the 1960’s, from Britain’s Tony Blair to U.S. president Bill Clinton, not excluding Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien and various luminaries in his cabinet.
Jimmy Carter Without The Nuts? It's America first |
| By GREG WESTON |
No matter how much Barack Obama's improbable campaign for the White House may stir the underdog cheerleader in us all, Canadians caught up in growing Obamarama might want to be a tad careful what they wish for.
This young, black Illinois firebrand may well be the most inspiring political orator to shake up America since the days of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
But what he is actually saying -- and how it might affect Canada -- may come as a surprise to some otherwise devout Barack boosters.
For a start, this champion of hope for curing what ails America is also an apostle of the deep Left -- among other things, an advocate of stronger unions with tougher labour laws.
| Full Point of View Large and a big charge City's pay-to-toss trash plan makes no sense for family with eight kids By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN Updated: 68 minutes ago It was pure "frustration" that motivated Joe Simon to write his first letter ever last Sunday to a Toronto politician.
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Merit pay out of control: CouncillorMilczyn says bonuses for city managers have become automatic |
If Mayor David Miller had made it a priority to overhaul the city's generous system of awarding merit pay to senior bureaucrats, it could be accomplished by now, Councillor Peter Milczyn charged yesterday.
This week the mayor's blue ribbon panel on city finances became the latest to take issue with the merit pay doled out to senior officials, who stand this year to score a bonus of up to 3% on top of their 3.25% cost-of-living increase.
The panel urged the city to show leadership by taking a second look at its merit pay policy with an eye to ensuring those who meet "challenging targets" receive larger benefits than other less successful managers.
YOUR MAYOR
YOUR COUNCILORSToronto would be better managed if the mayor had more power and was surrounded by a select group of well-paid councillors who helped to set city priorities
But for that to happen – and it could happen quickly – Toronto council must fully use the powers handed it under the new City of Toronto Act.
That's a key proposal from a blue-ribbon panel organized by Mayor David Miller in October to look at the city's books and identify savings.
Yesterday the panel offered up a wide range of ways for the city to cut costs but warned that little can be done without changing the way business is conducted at city hall.
| Full Point of View 'Real opportunity to change' |
Hope Bay, Ont.–A group of angry cottagers on the Bruce Peninsula has launched a $50 million lawsuit against the federal government and the local Chippewa band.
The cottagers built their dwellings – some with their own hands nearly 40 years ago – on leased First Nations land. The cottages now belong to the Chippewas.
"It's really sad when a group of Canadian citizens has to turn to litigation to hold their government accountable," said Karen McCulloch, spokesperson for Hope Bay cottagers.
McCulloch belongs to one of 60 cottage families abruptly told by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs in December 2006 to vacate their cottages within a month because the Chippewas of Nawash band was claiming ownership of the buildings.
The statement of claim, which has not been proven in court, alleges that Indian affairs handled the situation in a "high handed and reprehensible" manner.
"We're sad, we're angry and we're very disappointed," said McCulloch.
The cottagers have not had access to their cottages for more than one year and are seriously concerned that the buildings are falling into disrepair.
The suit, filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, is seeking general damages of $40 million and punitive damages of $10 million, plus costs.
Indian affairs spokesperson Susan Bertrand said the federal government was reviewing the statement of claim.
There is nothing funny about the abuses being reported in nursing homes but it illustrates the attitude of the McGinty liberals.....Ontario's Human Rights Commission says it's too busy now to look into complaints that elderly nursing home patients are being left to fester in urine-soaked diapers.
In a letter to Ontario Federation of Labour head Wayne Samuelson, who requested an investigation last November, commission policy and education director François Larsen said the rights body is not only swamped with work but is busy reorganizing itself to meet requirements of new provincial legislation.
"As a result of these factors, our resources will be stretched simply to cover existing work, and we need to be very selective about committing to new projects," the letter, dated Feb. 8, reads.
In an interview yesterday, Larsen said the commission might revisit the diaper issue later – if it gets enough money from Premier Dalton McGuinty's provincial government. "This is a very compelling issue," he said. "(But) we don't know how many resources we will have."
"Unbelievable," an audibly frustrated Samuelson said yesterday, "It's absolutely unbelievable."
Oddly enough, the diaper inquiry rejection letter was sent four days after the provincial health ministry asked the rights body's chief commissioner, Barbara Hall, to back off.
In that earlier Feb 4. letter, ministry lawyer Evelyn Brown said it would be "premature for the commission to consider the matter" and that, anyway, the ministry's own "anecdotal evidence" suggests that everything in nursing homes is fine.
The ministry lawyer said that the umbrella labour body was raising the diaper issue simply to create more jobs for union members.
She said there was no evidence to back claims that, as a cost-saving measure, nursing homes are making incontinent residents wear dirty diapers until they are 75 per cent full of urine.
(In fact, evidence of that particular practice was presented to a legislative committee last year and detailed in a July 30, 2007 Toronto Star story by reporter Moira Welsh. As well, the ministry itself lists 86 incidents over the past four years where inspectors found nursing homes that weren't meeting so-called continence care standards).
The nursing home diaper issue has brought two large, somewhat dysfunctional bureaucracies face to face.
On the one hand is the health ministry, which is charged with regulating nursing homes and which comes under constant attack for its failure to ensure that elderly residents of these institutions live in a modicum of comfort and dignity.
On the other is the human rights commission, a body set up to make sure Ontarians of all kinds were treated equally in areas such as jobs and housing which now is routinely criticized either for taking too long to resolve serious complaints or for focusing on those that are trivial.
A recent controversial case involves a Brampton Sikh who claims he is being religiously discriminated against by provincial law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets.
In November, the commission began an inquiry into allegations that Asian-Canadian sports fishermen who fish at night face discrimination – an inquiry that labour federation lawyer Mary Cornish says she took as a model for the proposed diaper investigation.
Larsen said the Asian fishermen case is still not resolved, and one reason the commission is hard-pressed to take on another complex inquiry. Since January, he said it has received 10 to 12 requests for major investigations but will not decide which, if any, to pursue until new statutory amendments come into effect June 30
Two years ago, the provincial Liberal government, over opposition objections, rammed through these controversial amendments to the human rights act, claiming they would make the process to get Ontarians relief swifter and fairer. At the time, opposition parties as well as many rights groups argued that the changes would hobble the efforts of aggrieved Ontarians to get relief.
Ironically perhaps, the new legislation is supposed to make it easier for the commission to look into cases of systemic discrimination, where people – such as immobile residents of nursing homes left stewing in dirty diapers – are abused, not because they are disliked, but because that's just the way things are.
Which brings our never-ending list to 23....Liberal MPs Who've Resigned, Been Expelled, Crossed The Floor....
Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty lashed out at Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty yesterday for having a "lack of vision," as a battle over how governments should respond to Central Canada's slowing economy turned decidedly nasty. MORE
Sidelined again, his party stuck in the same mid-teens doldrums it's been in since the last election, Jack Layton cannot be a very happy man these days. For a while there, it looked like we'd be going to the polls over Afghanistan, so everyone was.. 
Layoffs predicted as city loses Grand Prix. Toronto's hospitality industry will take a $50 million hit this summer with the cancellation of the Toronto Grand Prix.