Toronto Mayor John Tory believes the provincial government should implement a vaccine passport and mandate vaccines in certain workplaces.
Speaking to CP24, Tory said he was very concerned about the recent increase in COVID-19 cases and said the Ford government needs to act.
“The bottom line is somebody has to come up with some kind of a plan and I’ve said logically I think that’s going to have to be the province,” he said.
“We cannot afford to have a kind of a patchwork quilt of chaos where York, Durham, Peel and Toronto and different employers are doing things differently. People are going to be incredibly confused and I think that poses a danger.”
Tory believes the right path forward is to implement a similar policy as the University Health Network (UHN).
“The UHN hospital model where it says get vaccinated or get tested seems like a fair thing and gives people a choice.”
Tory also said it was “fine” that the Trudeau government may require vaccination for federally regulated industries. On Thursday, Trudeau tapped Canada’s top public servant to look into mandatory vaccinations for federal employees.
In Toronto, 81% of eligible residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. 72% are fully vaccinated.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has repeatedly said his government will not make vaccines mandatory for healthcare workers and that a vaccine passport will create a “split society.”
For the past year and a half, COVID-19 has had a mental vice-grip on Canadians. Will we ever be in a situation where Canadians aren’t obsessing about the virus?
It looks like we’re almost at that point, as a number of provinces are dropping public health restrictions and letting Canadians return to normal life.
Time and time again we’ve been told to “trust the science” and “trust the experts.” But what happens when these so-called experts turn out to be partisan donors and wannabe politicians?
Dr. Joe Vipond has been promoted as the voice of reason by the legacy media. He pushes for more extreme lockdowns, he undermines public health recommendations when they go against his own personal opinions, and he even went as far as calling for a “general strike.”
What the legacy media isn’t telling you is that Vipond is a wealthy NDP donor. He’s likely one of their top donors.
Did anyone at the news rooms at CTV, Global and CBC bother doing a simple background check before giving this guy credibility and a huge microphone to blast his alarmism, fanaticism and authoritarian lockdown message across their airways? Or did they know he was an NDP donor this whole time?
Candice Malcolm says the legacy media doesn’t do journalism. They do activism, and they pretend their fellow activists are The Experts that you must trust and obey. Tune into The Candice Malcolm Show!
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government is considering making the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for government employees and those working in federally regulated industries.
“It’s time for people to get vaccinated,” Trudeau said during a press conference with Quebec Premier François Legault on Thursday.
“That’s why I’ve asked the clerk of the Privy Council, who is responsible for the federal public service, to look at mandatory vaccinations for federal employees.”
Trudeau also said mandatory vaccines could apply to federally regulated industries such as First Nations bands and services, airlines, banking and telecommunications.
This is the first time Trudeau has indicated support for a form of mandatory vaccination. While the majority of Canadians have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, approximately 20% of Canadians remain unvaccinated.
According to an Innovative Research Group poll, 60% of unvaccinated black Canadians expressed vaccine hesitancy, compared with 55% of white Canadians and 44% of non-Black visible minorities.
At the same press conference, Legault also announced that his government would be implementing vaccine passports, claiming Quebec is on the cusp of a fourth wave requiring such a response.
Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan have all rejected the idea of a vaccine passport, though Manitoba has adopted a similar program.
On August 10th, Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation (PFR) will propose to ban all sports teams from using “Indigenous-themed logos and team names” by “non-Indigenous users” in city facilities.
In a presentation to the city’s Aboriginal Affairs Advisory Committee, PFR Interim Director of Client & Business Services Kevin Carr says the move is in line with directives by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC).
“To promote a positive and inclusive experience in City of Toronto facilities and to protect the dignity and well-being of Indigenous communities, the City of Toronto prohibits the display of any Indigenous-themed images or names by non-Indigenous user groups, and discourages the display of Indigenous-themed names or images on team uniforms and personal belongings by non-Indigenous users,” a proposed “next steps” clause reads.
As an example of two team names identified as “being of concern” for Indigenous content were the High Park Braves and the Willowdale Blackhawks. According to Carr, both teams have changed their names to Toronto High Park Little League and the Willowdale Hawks, respectively.
“As of July 2021, there are no Indigenous-themed images or names being used by non-Indigenous user groups in PFR sports facilities,” writes Carr.
True North reached out to the City of Toronto for comment on what threshold officials would use to consider an organization to be “non-Indigenous users” and received the following reply.
“Our commitment – as stated in the report – is promoting a positive and inclusive experience in our facilities and protecting the dignity and well-being of Indigenous communities. The proposed policy change, affecting no existing Toronto teams, is a straightforward way to honour this commitment,” Toronto media relations officer Alex Burke told True North.
On May 13, 2019, the OHRC issued a letter on the so-called “harmful impact of Indigenous-themed sports logos” in city facilities.
“The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) recently intervened in an Application before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) which alleged that the use and display of Indigenous-themed logos and team names in the City of Mississauga sports arenas was discriminatory,” wrote OHRC Chief Commissioner Renu Mandhane.
“The OHRC is now contacting municipalities in Ontario to ask that they follow suit. This is in keeping with the OHRC’s mandate to identify, prevent, and eliminate discrimination, and to promote human rights within the province using a range of powers under the Human Rights Code.”
The issue of Indigenous-themed sports names and depictions has also received international attention in the recent past. Following the widespread George Floyd protests in 2020, the Washington Redskins were forced to change their name and logo to a temporary name, the Washington Football Team, after 87 shareholders and investors pressured the organization over alleged racism.
The federal government is giving a First Nations community $500,000 to implement unwritten, traditional laws on its territory.
Justice Minister David Lametti gave the Shuswap nation near Kamloops on Aug. 3, to “celebrate (the) efforts and revitalize (the) legal traditions of the Indigenous community.”
The grant will “implement Secwepemc laws in the Shuswap Nation” and promote “the practical application of Secwepemc legal traditions pertaining to lands, natural resources and citizenship,” said a Department of Justice statement.
It seems unclear how these laws will be enforced since Tribal Chief Wayne Christian told reporters that the laws were not written down. Christian claims the laws are “embedded” in Indigenous “oral history” and “written in the land.”
“Governance of the territory was done not in a hierarchical sort of top-down approach,” Christian said. “It was done based on our family groupings, and our families rule the land and govern the territory and manage the territory, the animals, the fish, everything, through that process. So, when we talk of governance, what we’re really talking about is our families.”
Support for this project goes together with the Government of Canada’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Call to Action 50. In Budget 2019, the government first announced $10 million to promote Indigenous law initiatives across Canada over five years.
In Budget 2021, the government again pledged further support, spending $18 million over five years to Indigenous law initiatives and $4 million to revive the Law Commission of Canada, an independent body that gives law reform guidance to the government.
“We need to reconstruct who we are as a people and how we can embed our legal traditions as part of the process,” Christian said.
The 2007 implementation of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People has begun to “open up that door to really identify that Canada is a tri-judicial country,” according to Christian.
In the past six months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has handed over hundreds of millions of dollars in affordable housing money to Toronto with no checks and balances.
The two announcements – Jan. 15 and July 29 – gave Toronto $335-million in Rapid Housing Initiative money for 773 “affordable homes.”
In reality, they will be mostly tiny modular housing units of 325-square-feet lumped together in a multi-residential building.
Simple math puts each “affordable home” at $433,376 just to construct, which does not include the dollars needed to provide supports such as harm reduction, mental health, wellness and employment counselling – facts not mentioned by federal minister Ahmed Hussein, Toronto MP Adam Vaughan or Mayor John Tory at the two highly promoted announcements.
Government-subsidized “affordable” housing, as I’ve been saying for years, is not the least bit affordable – especially for taxpayers.
But there’s something even worse than tossing barrels of money at Canada’s largest city prior to an election call–with seemingly no fiscal oversight.
The Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) program mandates that the homes be constructed within 12 months. On the surface, that seems like a good way to make sure the city (which operates at a snail’s pace) gets things done.
But it’s not the least bit fiscally efficient.
As has repeatedly occurred since the program was announced, the bureaucrats have used the tight timelines to sole-source the work as well as to overpay for buildings and for the construction itself.
The official mantra is that city officials had no choice but to sole-source the services required because of the “emergency” due to COVID. They continually maintain that COVID has left people without housing even though more than $200-million has also been spent housing people in fancy hotels like the Novotel on the Esplanade.
Take the first 99 units of modular housing built in downtown Toronto and in Scarborough late in 2020. City officials claimed they needed to sole-source the job to Horizon North – based in Vancouver, B.C. – because of pressures from COVID and the need for immediate housing.
Abi Bond, executive director of Toronto’s housing secretariat, came to Toronto from Vancouver in early 2019, where Horizon North was used for their modular housing builds.
As I quickly found out there were other Ontario suppliers who could have built the same pre-fab units at 2.5 times less the cost. At 350-square-feet, Horizon North’s off-the-shelf design cost taxpayers $600 per square foot.
But excuses were just that — excuses. After a tendering process lasting much of last fall and which closed Nov. 30, city officials decided to give the second phase to NRB Modular Solutions — which is Horizon North under a new name.
One supplier said his company didn’t make the city’s Roster of Approved Service providers and was never able to find out which manufacturers made the list.
“So much for transparency in the spending on this critical, but extremely expensive, program,” he said.
Meanwhile, supposedly feeling flush from their pot of RHI funds, the city paid $94.9 million to buy an entire building at a prime location in downtown Toronto (877 Yonge St. for those who know the city) in April of this year.
The building – which tragically forced all of its senior residents out in 2019 and sat empty for more than a year– is to be converted into 252 affordable homes.
The whole transaction has been extremely secretive.
But according to real estate and corporate documents, the building was transferred to a numbered company for $2 on May 3 of this year. Not $2 million. No. Two dollars.
That numbered company – 2692518 – is KingSett Capital, one of Canada’s leading private equity firms.
Documents also show that the $94.9-million was four times the building’s 2016 appraised value of $24.1-million. The city paid $513 per square foot during the height of the pandemic.
That’s not all. Extensive renovations are underway on 127 of the units, the work completely sole-sourced. The city’s executive director of the Housing Secretariat Abi Bond refused to give the budget – indicating doing so would compromise the tendering process for the next 125 units.
Toronto’s bureaucrats and politicians seem not to care what they spend to get the job done in a semi-timely manner (all of the builds have been delayed so far).
They constantly claim, highly disingenuously, that no Toronto tax money is going into the construction. What they mean is no property tax money.
As we know, there is but one taxpayer.
But when the tap is flowing from our debt-ridden federal government, with precious little oversight, it doesn’t matter to our politicians or bureaucrats how much gets wasted or what connections get the jobs.
What does matter is that the government has something to show at election time. “Your tax dollars at work!”
With the Tokyo Olympics in full swing, the debate surrounding transgender athletes has heated up to an all-time high but according to a recent poll, it’s clear Canadians oppose the participation of male-born transgender athletes in women’s sports.
This finding comes from a new poll commissioned by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI).
According to the poll, 56% of respondents believe it is “right” for men and women to compete separately from each other. 18% believe it is “wrong” that there are separate gender categories.
Further, 62% of Canadians believe it is “unfair” for transgender athletes who were born male to compete in women’s sport events whereas 15% believe it is “fair.”
The MLI poll was analyzed by Canadian pollster Conrad Winn. Winn believes governments and decision makers need to pay close attention to the findings of this poll.
“Governments do countless things that affect lives – from health and military spending to taxation and roads. But there are few things that resonate with the average person more than sports, sex, and gender,” said Winn.
“Sports administrators and government leaders need to pay attention to polls that reflect what people may care about. These opinion research findings are worth considering as policy leaders search for the right answers.”
In an MLI webinar regarding the poll, University of Manchester Developmental Biologist Emma Hilton said that “females need a protective sports category because quite frankly, without a protective category, females wouldn’t win anything.”
“There are tens, hundreds of thousands of physical differences between males and females and obviously these lead to functional and performance differences,” said Hilton. “These performance differences create athletic gaps. Males can run 10% faster, they can jump 20% longer, they can throw 50% further, they can lift 65% heavier, and they can punch 160% harder than females can.”
In the Tokyo Olympics, the first-ever transgender Olympic athlete Laurel Hubbard competed in weightllifting. Hubbard is biologically male, identifies as a female and was able to compete against other women.
Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole blasted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as “appalling” following a report by UN Watch which claimed that over 100 officials with the organization promoted anti-Semitic content.
“This report is appalling. As Conservatives have been saying for months, UNRWA needs to address this recurring problem in their schools and remove employees who incite anti-Semitism and hate against Jews. This cannot be allowed to continue,” tweeted O’Toole on Wednesday.
UNRWA describes itself as a humanitarian organization that provides access to education, health care and other services for Palestinian refugees. The organization has faced repeat accusations of anti-Semitism in the past with regard to its educational curriculum.
According to UN Watch’s report which is titled Beyond the Textbooks, the NGO discovered 113 “instances of incitement” against Jews by teachers and staff, some of which celebrate and promote anti-Semitic violence.
Among some of the most egregious examples of Jew-hatred by UNRWA include a Gaza math teacher Nahed Sharawi “who shared a video of Adolf Hitler with inspirational quotes to “enrich and enlighten your thoughts and minds.”
“Sharawi also posted classical anti-Semitism depicting Jews as scheming thieves,” the report writes.
Another UNRWA West Bank teacher posted anti-Semitic conspiracies which depicted “that Jews control the world, created the coronavirus and seek to destroy Islam.”
According to official UNRWA policy, the organization has a zero-tolerance for racism and discrimination.
“Around the world, educators who incite hate and violence are removed, yet UNRWA, despite proclaiming zero tolerance for incitement, knowingly and systematically employs purveyors of terror and anti-Jewish hate,” UN Watch director Hillel Neuer said in a statement on the report.
“We call on the governments that fund UNWRA to take action to stop the vicious cycle of generations being taught to hate and violently attack Jews.”
In 2018, US President Trump cut nearly $300 million in planned funding for UNRWA after finding the operation “irredeemably flawed.”
In comparison, over the past year, the Trudeau Liberals have committed upwards to $90 million to scandal-ridden organization.
The Nova Scotia NDP will introduce permanent rent controls and build 1000 new affordable housing units in four years at an annual cost of $39.6 million.
The NDP received immediate pushback from Atlantica Party (AP) leader Jonathan Dean who told True North, “it is depressing but not surprising to see [the NDP] trot out the old-fashioned rent-control government intervention cliché.”
The announcement came in an August 3 media release in which the NDP criticized the Liberals for building “fewer than 200 new affordable housing units and…eliminating temporary rent controls leaving people vulnerable to skyrocketing rent increases.”
The NDP’s housing promise is an integral part of their campaign for the upcoming August 17 provincial election. A recent poll conducted by Mainstreet research found that the NDP has 22% support, behind the Progressive Conservatives (30.3%) and Liberals (42.4%).
Nova Scotia NDP leader Gary Burrill claimed that “rent control is the best solution to ensure people can stay in their homes while supply increases.” Dean disagrees, saying that “Mr. Burrill’s statement is contradictory since rent control destroys supply, supply will not increase and upward pressure on rents will be greater. If you own a packet of land, why build affordable housing or rental units if rent control exists to limit your profits and create hassles with bad renters? Better to build condos or something else. Where is the supply increase?”
Halifax’s current vacancy rate of 1.9% is the second-lowest of all Canada’s major cities. Fraser Institute Economist Livio Di Matteo explained in 2019 that the two main reasons Canadian would-be renters are facing low vacancy rates is because of “rising demand and tight supply. And rent controls only exacerbate the situation.”
Rent control “is good for politicians, good for current renters and bad for everyone else, especially people needing accommodation – it is a typical lazy political position that is bad for Nova Scotia overall – this is the type of bad political decision-making we want to eliminate,” said Dean.
AP worries that the artificial nature of affordable housing and rent control leads to problems such as saddling “landlords with unreasonable regulations.” AP instead advocates for a “common sense approach to affordable housing.”
“If there is a shortage of rental units and affordable housing, then AP will press cities to alter the municipal codes, so it is profitable to build them,” said Dean. He wants to “get the free market involved…simplify building codes, make rental codes more owner-friendly, encourage more private ownership, allow very low-cost mini-apartments, semi-dorm style living, pod sleepers, and very tiny homes, lower municipal charges and taxes.”
