October 4th, 2007 Andrew Cash
To topple a leader
Tory’s faith flub makes Don Valley Wynne’s to lose
By Andrew Cash
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Kathleen Wynne is supposed to do a quick blitz for votes in this Thorncliffe Park high-rise, but instead, on the 15th floor, she stops at the door of a young construction worker.
“If your age group doesn’t vote, that means someone old will vote in your place,” she says as her handlers pry her away.
Wynne’s daughter rolls her eyes, amused. “Oh no, Mom, were you lecturing that guy?” Mother and daughter banter humorously back and forth as they sprint down the stairs.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Education, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics | No Comments »
September 27th, 2007 Andrew Cash
McGuinty’s taxing courage
Preem’s stirring defence of health tax shows tax rebellion has faded
By Andrew Cash
What’s worse, a government that breaks a dumb promise or a government that implements one? I would have been happy if Stephen Harper had broken his very dumb promise to cut 1 per cent of the GST. I’m okay with Dalton McGuinty breaking his promise not to raise taxes after the Mike Harris wrecking crew saddled the Libs with a $5 billion deficit.
Tax has always been the four-letter word politicians don’t use in polite company. But after last week’s leaders debate, that may be changing. During the televised showdown, we heard McGuinty not once but several times refuse to say that he would repeal a tax. That’s new.
Most pols are only too happy to out-slash the other guy, but it has always been a head-scratcher when political parties say they can both cut taxes and improve services. Neo-cons used this canard throughout the 90s, but today it’s only John Tory and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation who believe it. The rest of us aren’t buying.
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July 19th, 2007 Andrew Cash
PORTLANDS power play
Residents walk out of consulting committee charging Energy Centre kept them in the dark
By Andrew Cash
Laundry isn’t the only thing being hung out to dry this summer in Smogtown. Take Toronto’s east-end neighbourhoods, which have always been our industrial ashtray.
In the bad old 80s, residential backyards in south Riverdale had to have their lead-laced soil removed, and the Commissioner Street incinerator was blithely burning garbage.
And while we can’t be sure that the dust on Riverdalian stereo speakers isn’t still laced with lead, locals also have to deal with the Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant to the southeast, a grand contributor to the generally crappy local air quality.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Environment, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics, Toronto | No Comments »
July 5th, 2007 Andrew Cash
In knots over ribbons
Mayor’s decal flip-flop shows contempt for his backers
By Andrew Cash
Who knew the broom David Miller famously held aloft in 2003 as a symbol of his mayoral mission, would be made not of sturdy wood but of something much more pliable.
It’s an issue that urgently needs addressing, given the mayor’s shocking flip-flop June 20 in which he defended support-our-troops decals on emergency vehicles only 24 hours after urging their removal in September.
If Miller can crack so publicly on a symbolic issue like this, what kind of stuff does he bend to in the back rooms?
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June 28th, 2007 Andrew Cash
Indian in us all
The elephant in the room of my family history is same one haunting the Canadian family
By Andrew Cash
There must be an aboriginal guy out there with the same name as me.
That’s my initial reaction to an invitation I receive in the mail to participate in a Statistics Canada survey on the living standards of native Canadians.
And in fact there is an Aboriginal guy with my name. Me. But it takes the disembodied voice of the StatsCan official to convince me of the fact. “Why are you sending this to me?” I ask the polished voice on the other end of the phone line.
After all, I’ve never identified myself as Aboriginal. Sure, my paternal grandmother was half Mohawk, born on Tyendinaga near Deseronto. But what am I doing on this list?
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Canadian, Human Rights, Now Magazine, Politics, Race Relations, Religion | 1 Comment »
June 21st, 2007 Andrew Cash
Anglican love knot
By Andrew Cash
Leaving his tiara at home, chris Ambidge is going to miss Pride this year for the first time in two decades. Instead, he’s going to parade in altogether different attire, working the floor of the Anglican Church of Canada’s general synod, meeting through Monday (June 25).
As president of the Toronto chapter of Integrity, an international org of gay and lesbian Anglicans, Ambidge will go to Winnipeg to persuade his fellow church people that the sky won’t fall if his Church allows the blessing of same-sex marriages.
“The Anglican Church baptized me, and they’re stuck with me just as I’m stuck with those the Church baptized whom I oppose,” he tells me. “But I am getting impatient, because I’ve worked on this for 20 years. We now have same-sex civil marriages in Canada, and civilization has not fallen apart.”
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May 31st, 2007 Andrew Cash
McGuinty’s Arnie act
Why is it easier for a Republican to be green than a Liberal premier?
By Andrew Cash
Who says coincidences like this only happen in novels? At the very moment when enviro orgs are putting the heat on the McGuinty Libs to pass a private member’s bill modelled after one in California that’ll let us know if the Shreddies we’re buying contain carcinogens, in pops the governor of said state.
Arnold Schwarzenegger reminds us that it may be easier for a Republican bodybuilder to be green than a Liberal premier. Despite the fact that Bill 164, the Community Right To Know Act, has passed second reading and an all-party committee, don’t assume it’s passage is a slam dunk.
Spearheaded by NDP enviro critic Peter Tabuns, the bill would force companies to list cancer-causing agents on product labels. It would also create a comprehensive and user-friendly online pollution inventory so Ontarians can find out which toxins are emitted in their communities and what risks are associated with them.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Environment, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics | No Comments »
May 17th, 2007 Andrew Cash
Shabazz shemozzle
Uproar over New Black Panther leader looks bad on everybody
By Andrew Cash
Toronto the surreal. A radical black youth group asks a white Jewish lawyer to help them get a permit for a Queen’s Park rally at which the keynote speaker will be a purported anti-Semite.
As speeches pierce the humid midday haze on May 15 with zingers like “Multiculturalism is genocide” and references to the Ontario government as a “white supremist racist government,”a couple of white guys hand out flyers promoting a rally in support of jailed Amercian black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, an event endorsed by, among others, a group called the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians.
God, I love this city. And yet I leave the Black Youth Taking Action’s Education Not Incarceration rally, which goes ahead at Queens Park with portable mics despite losing its permit, feeling ill at ease.
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May 3rd, 2007 Andrew Cash
Seeing red over ribbon
Should our public vehicles flaunt Support Our Troops stickers?
By Andrew Cash
The Harper government may be running for cover from the storm of controversy, but most of our troops in Afghanistan don’t have a duck-and-hide option.
The fact is, the Afghan mission is a mess, and Joe and Jane Soldier are bearing the brunt. Who among us isn’t deeply saddened by the news of ever increasing numbers of uniformed Canadians killed or seriously injured in the war.
But having said that, what does a Support Our Troops bumper sticker actually mean?
It’s a question that arises courtesy of Toronto’s fire and emergency services, which have decided to put yellow-ribbon Support Our Troops stickers on every ambulance, emergency service vehicle and fire truck in the city. On one level, there’s always been an affinity between between emergency workers and Canadian Forces.
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April 26th, 2007 Andrew Cash
A smog alert on Earth Day?
By Andrew Cash
When Earth Day meets smog, does anybody hear? Apparently not.
Even as I order my first pint of the patio season and celebrate a glorious day, I try to ignore the evidence: itchy eyes, sore throat.
Winter is finally over, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let minor health concerns ruin the party. But the Danforth’s perpetual weekend bumper-to-bumper car rally is giving me and my two-year-old the season’s first dose of sun-baked exhaust.
So when a friend e-mails me later to let me know that at the exact hour I was one with my urban environment, smog readings in T.O. were bad enough to issue an air advisory, it makes sense. What doesn’t is that the province’s air quality watchdog took a pass on letting citizens know.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Environment, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics, Toronto | No Comments »
