Ontario

Next year, Ontarians are set to spend roughly one out of every five days in an election. The federal writs are due by the fall, and Ontario premier Doug Ford is expected to call an early election to get ahead of a police investigation into the Greenbelt scandal and to campaign against the federal Liberals, instead of the Conservatives, who are expected to soon replace them.

There are certain affinities between Ford and Trudeau, however – or perhaps unintended flattery by way of imitation. Both favour sending pre-election bribe cheques to voters. In October, the Ontario government announced it would send cash to residents in the new year, with $200 “rebates” going out “to support families facing high interest rates and the federal carbon tax.” In November, Trudeau announced he’d do the same – $250 cheques, in this case – alongside a GST holiday on a number of consumer goods from Dec. 14 to Feb 15. But while the GST break is on, the cheques are being held up in the House of Commons.

The federal government will not subject Ontario’s Highway 413 to an environmental review, clearing the way for construction on the project to begin as soon as 2025.

Environmental Defence, an advocacy group, tried to urge the review forward in October after Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives introduced a bill that weakened Ontario’s environmental oversight of Highway 413. The charity made a formal request to federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, who was mandated by law to respond by mid-January.

The latest request for that federal oversight was, to some, a last hope for stopping the project before shovels hit the ground.

But on the Friday before Christmas — with the governing Liberals in turmoil following the resignation of former finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland and a controversial cabinet shuffle — the federal government quietly posted a notice online, saying there will be no review.

“Ontarians are being let down by the federal government’s decision to not put back in place a federal impact assessment for Highway 413,” Gray said. “It is now impossible for federal decision-makers to understand how to best mitigate cumulative impacts on the environment, and to understand species at risk and conditions downstream.”

There are 29 federally-listed endangered species along the highway route. Among these are aquatic species in need of protection, such as the silver shiner and the redside dace, Gray noted.

Evidence strongly indicates the redside dace minnow may no longer exist in the wild in Canada, if the highway is built, Gray said.

“The federal government has a responsibility under the Species at Risk Act to ensure the survival and recovery of federally protected aquatic species,” Gray said. “Allowing this highway to move forward would destroy the remaining habitat of these endangered species.”

The group says environmental assessments, when conducted properly, prevent the government from falsely claiming that a project is safe.

Unfortunately, Ford had already jumped into the fray with both feet firmly in his mouth.

Ontario’s premier got Trump’s attention with a threat to cut electricity exports from Ontario to New York, Michigan and Wisconsin. A Ford spokesperson emphasized this could affect up to 1.5 million households.

While that sounds significant, let's put Ontario’s exports in context: the gargantuan eastern U.S. grid has 700 GW of generating capacity, while Ontario’s exports to that grid represent less than 0.3 per cent of that total. If Ontario stopped exports, the province would lose up to $700 million annually in revenue and further idle its generating capacity, or worse, waste off-peak electricity it can’t do anything with, while the U.S. has large resources to rebalance.

Ford’s tit-for-tat threat opened a door we don’t want opened. The idea of using energy as a cudgel is unbelievably terrible for Ontario when we look at how energy is supplied to the province. Ontario has far more to lose if the U.S. slashes energy supplies to Canada than the other way around.

Third time this year, overnight when it was empty just like before

Imagine being so mad at a building

After The Canadian Press published news of the unannounced expansion plans last year, two former conservation officers spoke out about the pens based on their experience investigating them in the years after the Harris government tightened the rules.

Rick Maw and Wayne Lintack said the dog sport is cruel to the captive prey and well-meaning regulations are impossible to enforce.

The two said the industry has long been rife with problems, including the illegal catching and warehousing of coyotes that are then fenced in as prey for the dogs. They also uncovered a coyote trafficking ring.

On April 2, 2006, conservation officers fanned out across southern and central Ontario for a series of raids. They seized nearly two dozen live coyotes and laid hundreds of charges. The criminal case eventually fell apart because it took too long to get to trial, but the province shut down a train-and-trial area where coyotes had been found packed in a barn.

Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish recently generated headlines when she stepped down from her local police services board, calling the city’s escalating police budget “out of control.”

Desmond Cole visits her office to discuss her resignation and the alternatives to policing.

https://archive.is/MQeVa

Cycle Toronto has launched a Charter challenge against the Ford government’s new law that could remove three Toronto bike lanes.

The charity, along with two cyclists, Eva Stanger-Ross and Narada Kiondo, is seeking an injunction from Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice to prevent the removal of bike lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue.

The advocates have argued tearing the bike lanes out goes against the Charter’s guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person.

If the lanes are removed, “many thousands of Toronto cyclists will be forced to cycle in lanes shared with motor vehicle traffic” resulting in “heightened risk of injury and death,” Cycle Toronto argued in a statement of claim.

Gig delivery workers will be at particular risk because the nature of their work requires them to use the roads whether or not there are bike lanes, the cycling charity noted.

Injured workers said the move is unfair and that the WSIB’s surplus is money rightfully owed to them — not their bosses.

The provincial government announced the WSIB rebate in late November. It is a repeat of a policy Ontario Premier Doug Ford rolled out prior to the last provincial election in 2022. Ford is widely expected to call an early election next year.

The report argued the agency has used practices such as “deeming” to reduce the amount owed to injured workers. Through this practice, a construction worker hurt while earning $25 per hour could be “deemed” fit by the WSIB to work a lower-paid job, like grocery store clerk. This practice reduces the level of income support the WSIB provides to an injured worker, even if the worker has been unsuccessful landing a clerk job after hundreds of applications, the report said.

A construction business with 50 employees could receive as much as $46,000 as a result of the rebate, according to a provincial press release.

With the recent rising cost of living and high cost of inflation “we’re in the worst scenario we’ve seen to date,” said Lisa Needham, nutritionist at WDGPH, who wrote the report. This is locally, provincially and nationally. In 2019, 12.3 per cent of people were living in food insecure households locally and in 2023 it was 23.4 per cent.

A family of four on Ontario Works (OW) would have negative $145 left after monthly expenses since 58 per cent of the family’s income goes to rent and 47 per cent goes to purchasing food as part of the nutritious food basket.

For single person households in the example scenarios “we see really scary findings. We see that they would require another $500 to $750 a month to afford those two basic expenses let alone anything else,” said Needham.

Money for monthly expenses is still short for those in the Ontario Disability Support Program. A single person would see 103 per cent of their income go to rent and 32 per cent to food. This leaves them short by $511 at the end of the month. A single, pregnant person is only marginally better off with 100 per cent of their income going to rent and 33 per cent for food. This leaves them short of $502.

The Doug Ford government spent three times as much on advertising last fiscal year compared to the year before, with more than 60 per cent of that funding going toward partisan advertising.

This is “the most the government has ever spent on advertising in a year,” the province’s auditor general wrote in her annual report released Tuesday.

Between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024, the Progressive Conservatives spent at least $103.5 million on ads. A good portion of that — about $43.2 million — was spent on the “Let’s Build Ontario” campaign, which included television advertisements in “expensive time slots,” including during NHL games and the Super Bowl.

Auditor General Shelley Spence reports that those “It’s Happening Here” ads, which say that “more people are working than ever before” while touting Ontario’s economy and way of life, cost about $18.8 million as of March 2024. The ads began running in early 2023 and continue to be aired.

These ads were particularly controversial given their high-profile airing times, with opposition parties criticizing the government for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on television ads promoting the PCs’ accomplishments.

Liberal MPP John Fraser has argued that it was not a good use of money, especially as the province undergoes an affordability crisis.

Premier Doug Ford’s office was intimately involved in the Ontario Place redevelopment process, which was “not fair, transparent or accountable,” the province’s auditor general wrote in a blistering report released Tuesday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/34012957

— Brampton has become the first city in Ontario to endorse the Plant Based Treaty and make “a plant based approach as a part of the city’s climate plan.” The move means they join 33 towns and citiesworldwide, including Rainbow Lake in Alberta, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Edinburgh, in calling for a global Plant Based Treaty to be added to the Paris Agreement.