ZOG: hate charges filed against Toronto's Your Ward News

After years of controversy, the editor and publisher of Your Ward News, a Toronto publication often described as a “hate rag”, have been charged with criminal offences by Ontario’s attorney general for wilfully promoting hatred against identifiable groups.

Both were charged with two counts each of wilful promotion of hatred under the Criminal Code, with one count for the targeting of women and another for the targeting of Jews.

“I think the government is sending a very strong message that it will not stand by and watch the wilful promotion hatred against identifiable groups and in this case specifically against women and Jews,” says Lisa Kinsella. She and her husband Warren Kinsella are founding members of a citizen’s group, Standing Together Against Mailing Prejudice (STAMP), that has campaigned against the publication.

It was the first time in Canada’s history that someone has been prosecuted for promoting hatred against women specifically, she added.

The charges are the latest blow to efforts by James Sears and Laurence St. Germaine, editor and publisher, respectively, of Your Ward News, to continue publishing their pamphlet. The publication was known for portraying Jews as dogs, glorifying Hitler and describing itself as “world’s largest anti-marxist publication.” The two were arrested this morning.

Back in June 2016, Sears had been subject to a prohibitory order on behalf of then-Public Services Minister Judy Foote that barred him from sending mail, ostensibly to prevent him from sending out his pamphlet.

The order is a rarely invoked one. The last time it was used was in 1981, when the federal government moved to ban a publishing company owned by Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel from also using Canada Post to distribute his material.

Back in March, their defence lawyer, Frank Addario, criticized the move, saying, “There’s a lot of crap in the mail and it is not a crime in Canada to publish or distribute defiant or even odious ideas in writing. It is a crime to distribute hate propaganda or defamatory libel.”

The attorney general’s approval of criminal charges means that the two are now accused of having done precisely that.

“Hate propaganda is not free speech, it’s hate propaganda,” says Kinsella. “So anyone who argues that they have the right to say anything is not well educated on Canadian law. Free speech comes with great responsibility.”

The Kinsella’s campaign against Sears and St. Germaine took a personal turn during the summer of 2017, when Sears wrote “chance that some hothead who cares deeply about me… would lose it and do something illegal like bludgeon the Kinsella’s to death.”

Those remarks let to the Kinsella’s pursuing private prosecution for uttering threats. “They were inciting others to hurt my family. And we did not want to stand by and allow that to happen,” says Kinsella. “So we went to the justice of the peace and presented our arguments for why James Sears and Leroy St. Germaine should be held accountable for these statements and the crown agreed.”

Kinsella said she has also launched another libel suit against the pair for remarks they made with regards to women, girls and sexual assault.

Both court cases are currently ongoing.

“In a multicultural and inclusive province like Ontario, the promotion of hatred stands in direct opposition to our fundamental values of equality and diversity,” said Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi in an emailed statement to Yahoo! Canada News. “Hate divides people and communities. Hate crimes are, by their very nature, serious offences because their impacts can be devastating, spreading from the individual, through the social fabric of our communities as a whole.”

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Toronto could welcome almost 170,000 immigrants over the next 3 years — are we ready?

Nearly one million immigrants will be coming to Canada over the next three years, and tens of thousands of them will wind up in Toronto — but is the city ready for an influx of newcomers?

On the heels of the Liberal government's newly-announced strategy to boost immigration levels in the years ahead, Toronto immigration experts are raising questions about whether there is adequate support for the rising tide of economic migrants, family reunifications and refugees, in a city where both stable work and housing can be hard to find.

"The rate of unemployment for racialized immigrant women is very, very high," says Catherine McNeely, the executive director of Newcomer Women's Services, a non-profit settlement organization.

The latest census data shows more than 55 per cent of visible minority residents in Toronto are living on less than $30,000 a year, she adds.

"When they do get work, it's minimum wage, it's precarious, it's shift work," she says. "We serve a huge number of women who live just north of the Danforth, where ... 57 per cent of the households have incomes under $40,000."

Margaret Eaton agrees. As executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, she stresses how most immigrants are highly educated, yet an economic divide persists.

Employers, she says, need to step up and give newcomers a shot. "The heads of these big corporations have to cascade down that message to their hiring managers, and then you have to hire someone."

No. of immigrants climbing to 340,000 in 2020

And that pool of potential workers could grow quickly, thanks to the plan announced on Nov. 1.

Dubbed "the most ambitious" plan in recent history by Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, it means the number of immigrants coming to Canada will climb to 310,000 in 2018, up from 300,000 this year.

That number will rise again to 330,000 in 2019 — then 340,000 in 2020.

Coun. Jim Karygiannis, who represents Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt, praised the Liberals' plan and said previous governments haven't been "courageous" enough to move in that direction. He also says more people in Toronto means more support is needed.

"We need to get ready for them," Karygiannis explains. "We need to make sure our schools are prepared because a lot of the kids coming in do not speak English. We need to make sure we have services."

It's crucial in Toronto specifically, a city which has typically been a "huge magnet" for people coming from abroad, Eaton says.

Hussen says the government plans to prioritize integration of immigrants, ensuring they have access to the resources they require to thrive.

"The supports are there, and they will continue to be there and we are working very closely to the industry," he said.

Toronto home to 17% of recent immigrants

The 2016 census showed the city was home to more than 17 per cent of all recent immigrants to Canada, even though less than eight per cent of the country's population lives in Toronto.

If that trend continued, the city would be welcoming more than 50,000 immigrants in 2018 alone, and  nearly 170,000 over the next three years.

But as the city continues to struggle with affordable housing, one expert says it might not be a diaspora destination in the years ahead.

Diane Dyson, director of research and public policy at WoodGreen community services, says many of the recent Syrian refugees, for instance, wound up settling elsewhere in the GTA.

"A lot of them arrived in Toronto, were sponsored in Toronto, but they moved outside the city boundaries," she says, to places like Mississauga and Markham where housing is more affordable.

Still, the flow of newcomers might shrink, but it certainly won't slow to a trickle.

"If immigrants are going to come to Toronto and have success, they must be supported," says Eaton.

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Jackie Redmond from TSN and Toronto Blue Jay Josh Donaldson caught cheating?????

Toronto Blue Jays Superstar Josh Donaldson was allegedly caught cheating on his longterm girlfriend. Now T.O. received this tip with more info via a solid source, “Started with Estrada, not Josh Donaldson. He came after (pardon the pun). E’s wife walked in on him and J in, shall we say, a very compromising position. Wife freaks out, natch. Estrada’s season suffered as we know, and by his own admission that was not about physical injuries at that point but ‘personal issues.’ (Look back at quotes from him when he re-signed contract.) Donaldson ‘signs on’ with JRed not long after. Problem is he also has longtime girlfriend from way back (high school or college) and she finds out. Dumps his ass and by then a Wags lynch mob forms. E’s wife said only way they would stay/re-sign contract with Jays is if J was sent packing. Firing tricky since team and network same employer, so they found NHL.com gig in NYC. Sad sitch for all involved but those are the facts” says our source.  Blue Jays are doing the soap opera thing off the field, that surely can’t help build team chemistry.-

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Josh Donaldson: Toronto Blue Jays Superstar has been Caught Cheating on his Longterm Girlfriend with Jackie Redmond?

Here’s a little dirt from the diamond. Toronto Blue Jays MLB super star player has been caught cheating on his long-term girlfriend. According to sources, “Josh Donaldson, has been having an affair with Sportsnet reporter Jackie Redmond, and his girlfriend Briana Miller walked in on the two. Since then, she has deleted some photos of her and Josh off her social media. Jackie helps cover the Blue Jays for the Canadian sports station and has since been reassigned to the NHL section, away from the Blue Jays. Sources also say she had hooked up with other Jay baseball players as well. Ouch, that hurts. Check out pic of Jackie below.

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All Hell Breaks Loose In Toronto's House Price Bubble

“It’s fear.”
During the first two weeks in May, according to preliminary data from Toronto Real Estate Board, home listings surged 47% from the same period last year even as sales plunged 16%. The average selling price dropped 3.3% from April – and this, after a 33% year-over-year spike in home prices in March and a 25% surge in April. Something is happening to Toronto’s blistering house price bubble.
Canada’s largest alternative mortgage lender, Home Capital Group, which focuses on new immigrants and subprime borrowers turned down by the banks, is melting down after a run on its deposits that crushed its funding sources. The industry is worried about contagion.
At the same time, the provincial government of Ontario announced a slew of drastic measures, including a 15% tax on purchases by non-resident foreign investors to tamp down on the housing market insanity that left many locals unable to buy even a modest home.
It comes after Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz warned in April that home prices are in “an unsustainable zone,” that the market “has divorced itself from any fundamentals that we can identify,” that there was “no fundamental story that we could tell to justify that kind of inflation rate in housing prices,” and that “It’s time we remind folks that prices of houses can go down as well as up. People need to ask themselves very carefully, ‘Why am I buying this house?”’
A few days ago, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Canada’s six largest banks on concerns over their exposure to the housing bubble and household indebtedness that ranks among the highest in the world.

Now even the relentlessly optimistic industry begins to fret:

“We are seeing people who paid those crazy prices over the last few months walking away from their deposits,” Carissa Turnbull, a Royal LePage broker in the Toronto suburb of Oakville, told Bloomberg. She said they didn’t get a single visitor to an open house over the weekend. “They don’t want to close anymore.”

“Definitely a perception change occurred from Home Capital,” Shubha Dasgupta, owner of Toronto-based mortgage brokerage Capital Lending Centre, told Bloomberg.

“In less than one week we went from having 40 or 50 people coming to an open house to now, when you are lucky to get five people,” Case Feenstra, an agent at Royal LePage Real Estate Services Loretta Phinney in Mississauga, Ontario, told Bloomberg. “Everyone went into hibernation.”

“I’ve had situations where buyers are trying to find another buyer to take over their deal,” Toronto real estate lawyer Mark Weisleder told Bloomberg. Some clients want out of transactions, he said. “They are nervous whether they bought right at the top and prices may come down.” Home Capital had “a bigger impact on the market” than Ontario’s announcement of the new rules, he said.

“Home Capital is affecting things because people who can’t get mortgages from the banks rely on them and other b-lenders,” Lorand Sebestyen, an agent with iPro Realty in Toronto, told Bloomberg. “If you can’t get the mortgage then you obviously can’t buy anything and it’s going to affect the market, especially for the higher-priced properties.”

“It’s fear,” said Joanne Evans, owner of Century 21 Millennium, about the impact of Home Capital on housing. “It’s another contributing factor to the fear of ‘what’s going to happen?”’

And it’s ever so slowly sinking in more broadly.

In Canada, the theory has spread that real estate values can never-ever go down in any significant way – on the theory that they always go up – because they didn’t take a big hit during the Financial Crisis, and because the prior declines have been forgotten. So optimism about rising home prices had been huge. Now weekly polling data by Nanos Research for Bloomberg is showing the first signs of second thoughts. Two weeks ago, the share of people saying home prices would rise in the next six months was a record 50.1%. The following week, it dropped to 47.7%. In the most recent poll, it dropped to 46%.
But those who are able to sell at what appears to be the very tippy-top of the market are not complaining. Bloomberg cites business school professor Michael Hartmann who put his north Toronto home up for sale on May 17 sold it on May 22 for C$1.65 million, C$10,000 above asking price. He and his wife are planning to rent and see.

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Toronto Housing Affordability Crisis

The Toronto region’s shockingly high house prices haven’t stopped the city from achieving one of the highest home ownership rates in the developed world, up 23 per cent over the past 35 years.

Toronto’s ownership rate, at 68 per cent, is behind only Oslo, Norway (69 per cent), and Calgary (74 per cent) among 38 western cities.

But ownership doesn’t equal affordability, says a sweeping study on the Toronto region’s housing crunch to be published Tuesday.

It suggests the Toronto area will need up to $150 billion in new home construction in the coming decade and most of that should be rental units to make housing more affordable.

The report by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, a research firm, paints a picture of two cities in one. It shows that half of Toronto-area residents are overhoused, with 2.2 million empty bedrooms. (There are 400,000 homes in Ontario that have three or more empty bedrooms, according to the report.)

But it would take only about 350,000 bedrooms to appropriately house the 20 per cent of Toronto residents, most of them families, who are shelter-poor.

“If this was happening to our food chain or our water supply, we would have a visceral reaction. But because it’s happening in a very slow-burn housing market, it’s like heating up the frog very slowly in the pan — it doesn’t notice until it’s too late,” said Paul Smetanin, the centre’s CEO, who has assessed the effect of more than 40 housing affordability factors.

House prices are half the problem. But our obsession with home ownership is a big contributor, too, he said.

Toronto has restricted vast swaths of the city to single-family detached homes. That has led to a shortage of appropriate housing.

Smaller households are the most overhoused, as they are in neighbourhoods where the population is shrinking and aging. Meanwhile, larger families — with five or more people — are most likely to be underhoused in high-density apartments without enough bedrooms.

There’s also a shortage of ground-level homes known as the “missing middle” — townhomes, row houses, duplexes and small apartments — that would appeal to families.

Those, along with secondary suites, should have a greater presence in single-family neighbourhoods, but zoning doesn’t allow for it, Smetanin said.

The economic analysis centre has developed a Shelter Consumption Affordability Ratio index that measures housing affordability far beyond a household’s mortgage payments or rent. It factors in shelter-related expenses such as the cost of transportation to work and school, utilities, maintenance and property taxes.

Then it uses computer modelling to assess the effect other factors have on affordability. These range from property speculation to household debt levels and income levels, which have remained essentially flat for 30 years as housing prices continued to climb.

The index results show that one in three Toronto-area residents, and one in four in Ontario, suffers extreme affordability pressure.

“It is serious and has serious consequences for the development of our communities and the economy,” Smetanin said.

The report, “Understanding the Forces Driving the Shelter Affordability Issue,” was funded by the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Architects and the Ontario Construction Secretariat.

It will be presented at a conference Tuesday on the issue of “missing middle” housing in the region, which will include a panel of mayors from Mississauga, Brampton, Barrie and Ajax.

Data shows that rental housing acts as oil in the engine of housing markets, Smetanin said. It also illustrates the stigma attached to renting.

“If you reduce oil in an engine, you get heat and the heat starts to transpire as high housing prices, difficulty in moving and uncertainty. While your engine’s getting hotter, you’re not getting any faster or going somewhere quicker,” he said.

Most underhousing occurs in rentals.

“When you look at the data and the demographics of rental, it almost looks like that’s where we’ve parked all our luggage as a society — if you don’t own your own home, you’re a loser,” he said.

Property speculators fuel the expectation that prices will go up and they crowd out families looking for appropriately sized and priced homes.

“Investors are fine, but free market forces are not necessarily pleasant … You get winners and losers,” Smetanin said. “Sometimes the losers are completely unintended. They’re not people who took too much risk and should have been slapped on the wrist. They’re people who are trying to satisfy their needs. At times, letting free market forces do what they want to do hurts people.”

Rather than band-aids such as Ontario’s recently announced foreign buyer tax and expanded rent controls, he said, governments need to look at new concepts for Canadian housing.

In Europe governments, not-for-profit agencies and private industry collaborate on rental housing that is “architecturally relevant and desirable.”

“If we want to change things, we need to change collectively some of our attitudes,” Smetanin said. “If you do things the old way with the same people, but expect something different, then I believe Einstein mentioned that was the definition of insanity.”

Toronto housing in numbers

45%

Percentage of Toronto housing that is single detached homes, compared to 35% for apartments or condos and 20% in townhomes or “missing middle” housing

1/3

Proportion of Toronto-area condos that are rented out

30%

Of Toronto-area commuters spend 45 minutes or more each way getting to work or school

70%

Of Toronto-area commuters travel by car, compared to 85% outside the region

80%

Proportion of people in two-person households who are overhoused

67%

Proportion of people in households of seven or more people who are underhoused

75%

Proportion of Ontario residents aged 65 and older who are overhoused Please share this

Province replacing Ontario Municipal Board with less powerful tribunal

TORONTO -  Ontario municipalities will have more power over building their communities under major proposed changes to how disputes over planning and development are adjudicated in the province.

Municipal Affairs Minister Bill Mauro announced Tuesday that the Ontario Municipal Board will be replaced by the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal with legislation that will be introduced later this month.

“If our reforms pass, there would be fewer and shorter hearings and a more efficient decision-making process, and there would be more deference to local land-use planning decisions, and there would be a more level planning field for residents wanting to participate,” Mauro said.

The Ontario Municipal Board, an independent adjudicative body, currently conducts hearings and makes decisions on planning and development matters, including issues relating to zoning by-laws, subdivision plans and ward boundaries.

Under new reforms, the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal will have less power.

It will only make decisions on whether or not a municipality has followed its official land use plans. If it hasn’t, the issue will be sent back to the municipality for reconsideration. Only if the municipality fails to come to a decision or fails to follow the planning process a second time would a full hearing be held, with the tribunal making a final decision.

That will mean fewer municipal decisions can be overturned than under the current process, in which each dispute is treated as if it were new, disregarding the decision the local government has made.

The reforms will also give municipalities the power to prohibit residents and developers from appealing local government decisions in areas immediately around major transit hubs, said Mauro.

The development industry might not welcome the change, he noted.

“They, perhaps, it’s fair to say, might have preferred status quo, but we don’t agree,” said Mauro. “We don’t think that’s the way to go.”

The status quo has long been criticized as tilted in favour of developers, who’ve been able to appeal municipalities’ decisions and ultimately build something more profitable, such as a taller condo building with more units than a local council wanted.

Toronto City Councillor Josh Matlow the new changes will make it easier for local leaders to plan their communities, without having to bargain with developers and fear being overruled by the tribunal.

“Finally, the government is taking substantive steps to tip the balance of power towards communities, locally elected bodies and local planners, rather than developers’ financial interests,” he said.

Hearings will be also quicker, relying only on written submissions without witness examinations.

The reforms also include giving legal information and support to residents who want to appeal a municipal decision. Decisions will be written in plain language and made public, said Attorney General Yasir Naqvi.

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Two TTC Toronto transit workers fail new drug and alcohol testing protocol

New policy came into effect May 8, with 51 tests to be performed this week
Random drug and alcohol testing of more than 10,000 TTC employees started on Monday
 
The very first worker to be tested under the TTC's new random drug and alcohol policy was found to be impaired, the TTC confirmed on Wednesday. Later in the day, a spokesperson said another employee failed a drug test.

A judge recently upheld the TTC's decision to require employees to take random drug and alcohol tests, despite attempts by their union to block the policy.

The worker who was found to be impaired, who is not an operator, blew more than 0.04 on a breathalyzer test, according to Brad Ross, executive director of communications at the transit commission.

​"We are incredibly disappointed at this, but it does affirm our belief for random drug and alcohol testing to drive down the number of instances of impairment that we've seen rise over the last couple of years," he said.

The worker has been suspended with pay, pending the result of their drug test which is due back in two to three days.

The TTC did not immediately provide further details about the second worker that failed a drug test, but a statement is expected later Wednesday.
Thousands of employees to be tested

More than 10,000 TTC employees are subject to random drug and alcohol testing. In this first week of the new policy, there are 51 tests scheduled, with "about seven or eight" taking place each day, Ross explained earlier in the day.

The TTC considers anything over 0.04 as impairment, whereas the 0.02 to 0.039 range is called a "policy violation." Under provincial law, driving with a blood alcohol level over a 0.08 is considered a criminal offence. The "warn range" is between 0.05 and 0.08.

When it comes to the drug test, Ross says the TTC isn't made aware of what drug an employee may test positive for — only that they have passed or failed the test.

"We are not interested in what people do on their own time, recreationally. If they smoke a joint on the weekend, that's of no interest to us," he added. "It becomes an interest to us when they're at work and they're impaired at work."

Ross says the testing is also acting as a deterrent, encouraging people who may have dependencies to come forward and seek the help they need through various programs the agency offers.

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Facing $343M budget gap, Toronto could freeze spending in 2018

City staff is recommending Toronto freeze its budget this year, an idea that has the mayor's support but has left some councillors sounding the alarm.

Toronto's budget committee will meet later this week to discuss a new report that calls for all arms of the city to hold budgets where they were in 2017.

To balance its books — something it's required to do by provincial law — the city needs to find some $343 million in savings, even if it increases residential property taxes by two per cent.

Mayor John Tory, speaking at a news conference about the future downtown relief line, said he supports the idea of starting the months-long budget process by taking a "really hard look" at what the city's spending.

"A lot of people are having to make do with the same amount they had last year," he said, adding he thinks those people will be happy to see the city doing the same.

Last year, Tory called for a 2.6 per cent across-the-board budget reduction, although many of the proposed cuts that departments floated were rejected. Tory said he hopes the city can again find a way to hold the line on spending without cutting any services.

Coun. Gord Perks, a fierce critic of last year's budget process, tweeted this year's plan will be a "disaster" for the city.

"How can we ask other governments to pay more for housing, daycare and transit when we freeze our own spending?" he wrote.
TTC, TCH, police will require biggest investments in new year

Operating expenses are expected to increase by $499 million this year, the city report notes, with the TTC, Toronto Community Housing, and police requiring the biggest new investments.

Coun. Janet Davis, who fought against proposed child-care cutbacks last year, echoed Perks's comments online.

"Yes, the province and feds should pay more, but we have to as well," she wrote.

Every department at the city will be expected to come up with its own plans to meet the target.

"Cost containment, service efficiency, modernization and service level changes as well as revenue strategies are required," the report notes.

The departments will also be expected to report on the "equity impact" — the effect of budget restraint on those it would affect most, including vulnerable populations — of any changes they bring forward.
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City of Toronto may stop Yonge subway extension if province doesn't fund downtown relief line, mayor John Tory says

       
    Mayor John Tory says the TTC may stop planning work on extending the Yonge subway north if the province doesn't commit to helping fund the future downtown relief line.

Tory, speaking Tuesday at the corner of Gerrard and Carlaw Streets, which sits along the relief line's proposed route, said he's puzzled by hesitation at Queen's Park to commit funding for the project, especially as Ontario has provided $150 million to help study it.   
           
The line could open by 2031, but Tory says that timeline is entirely dependent on getting all three levels of government to pay for its construction.

That timeline is important, as studies have found that Line 1 will be running at full capacity at that point.

"This new line will be the next major step to relieve crowding on the Yonge line," Tory told reporters.

Currently, the project remains in the planning stage, with city staff hoping to get a Class 3 cost estimate and schedule for the line by 2019.

More planning work has been done on the Yonge subway extension, which will connect Toronto and York Region, but Tory says the city and TTC may have to put that project on hold — especially because it's expected to increase riders on the already crowded Yonge line.

At Queen's Park, provincial Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca pointed out the city's own reports say there's a considerable amount of work that still needs to be done on both projects, and that the government has been supporting that.

Del Duca said his government "is investing more in public transit in the City of Toronto than any other provincial government in history," and said he expects talks on future projects to continue.

Later, Del Duca issued a news release accusing Tory of "playing politics" by threatening to delay transit projects.

"The mayor isn't helping anyone, especially his constituents who want transit built in Toronto," the statement said.
Tory vows city will find a way to pay its share

Previously, the province has pointed out that Toronto hasn't committed its own money to building the relief line, however Tory says it will.

"We will sort out our contribution," he said, adding he had hoped his road-toll plan — blocked by the province earlier this year — would have paid for it.

The mayor had been pressuring the government to commit more money for transit and social housing in the lead-up to its recent budget, which he says lets the city down. He said the city can't afford to stop planning transit projects given Toronto's expected growth.

"We will build and we will build and we will build," he said.

"We are committed to building a system that will catch up."

Tory's executive committee is set to debate the next steps for the relief line and Yonge subway extension at its meeting next Tuesday. 

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