Toronto Renters Forum

Nobody tells me anything... apparently there is some sort of 'meet the candidates' event happening tomorrow evening at Jack Astor's at 580 Progress Ave. in Scarborough... Scarborough Town Centre maybe? Just NE of Kennedy and Ellesmere?? I have never been to the STC... no, that's wrong - I went there once to buy pond supplies and we would pass it I think, on the way to the zoo.

The meet the candidates event is hosted by something called "Connecting GTA".

It's apparently free but there's limited seating so you have to register to get a wristband etc. Actually what they give you is something to show to the usher using your mobile device. Lot of assumptions there.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/601531596197

Doug Ford was adamant at a press conference this afternoon that was streamed by Global TV news via Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj9VUiRIke0) The current Ontario Science Centre location is dust and the entire attraction will be moving to Ontario Place on the lake shore.

Say you're pleased!



...and kiss good-bye to any hope of restoring the environment in that neck of the Don Valley woods.



Roman K. • "admin" at 25 Problems dot com

I support and welcome the general idea of taking a stand and sharing research etc., but it would be a lot nicer if “RenovictionsTO” had a posted *privacy policy*. Ergo don't be like these landlords and city councillors who think they are somehow exempt from common sense.

Just as an example, on their Report page (renovictionsto.com/report) they are asking a lot of stuff... but there isn't much of an About page or Contact information etc. No testimonials or endorsements? Just saying. 

Related: there was a rare mention of renovictions alongside a Tory policy... er, statement by the minister last week. See this Canadian Press item - www.thestar.com/politics/2023/04/05/ontario-to-beef-up-tenant-protections-housing-minister-says.html

City planners held another virtual “community consultation” in Ward 16 last evening - this time it was regarding a revised plan by the Menkes group to build around the Foresters building  on the SE corner of Don Mills and Eglinton. Lots more towers may be going up there, transforming the area and not always for the better.

Councillor Jaye Robinson has called the process that surrounds these things (virtual consultations) “daunting”... I think that's putting it mildly. Example screenshots... in the first one my participation in the meeting ended abruptly; note the "privacy statement" which - wait for it! - has more to do with Northern California than Toronto Canada. I think the second one is a reference to a proposed build on the golf course in Flemingdon Park... Marian Prejel is a skilled presenter but here she's working in the restrictive space of the planning office's AIC.





It's hard to get a count but it looked like maybe 25 people participated in last night's session. Absolutely the #1 takeaways were public transit and the lack of any affordable housing in the Menkes plan. And Yo! Developers! Hands off our mature trees!

The bizarre Cisco "webinar" (sic) format also prevents you from networking with your fellow citizens. One participant strongly cautioned the planners against using A.I. techniques to convert audio from the meeting into text, suggesting a preference for manual transcription. I have never, ever seen one of these things transcribed or even summarized, on a councillor's or education trustee's web page.




The March 27 “planning townhall” (sic) in Ward 16 was lively in terms of lots of people wanting to engage city and TDSB officials, but the issues were grim nonetheless. Just as an example besides inflation and the tight housing market, people who live near the C.P.R. were still quite concerned about the Mississauga train crash!

I posted a bit about the meeting on my 25 Problems (dot com) board. More to follow.

If you're not up to speed on the train crash and the current Office of Emergency Management see '1979_Mississauga_train_derailment' in Wikipedia English. You may also want to look up the relationship between former CPR boss E. Hunter Harrison and the big U.S. roads like Norfolk Southern. I am not making this up.

Here's the background application behind this weekend's (April 1-2, 2023) protests around St. Mary's Street which is SW of Bloor and Yonge in downtown Toronto. It's a twenty page PDF file.

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2021/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-171277.pdf



Did you know that you can infer movement and animation out of some of this data - the city and developers supply CAD files in a format that can be read on-line by Trimble's SketchUp program.



Note that I'm a newcomer to the game... I may sound like I know what I'm talking about but it took me five weeks to even begin to get a handle on the the document set for the application (by Osmington Gerofsky Development Corp.) to build a 50 storey skyscraper condominium on the lot where I live - which is literally across the street from the Science Centre.

I spoke with the one of the chief planners a week ago, at a meeting organized by the local councillor. He (the planner) agreed that the A.I.C. (a set of web pages related to the documentation set around development proposals) needed work.

Modelling or not, the closest condominium buildings operate as a sort of semi-gated community. The notion of opening up an entire city block to "bike" and pedestrian paths (how do those two mix exactly?) a few hundred yards from the C.P.R. seems ill advised.

Those "canlii dot org" pages are strange - or perhaps I'm missing something here.

Typing in "xyz" as your search string can return literally hundreds of hits; in this case "bedbugs" delivered about 400 from the first link and 300 from the second one. Worse, the first field returned is an alphanumeric file labelling designation, not a "newspaper headline" or other, more recognizable, piece of information.

NB. One of the linked... pages in the thread takes you in a different, but still rather extreme direction in terms of the presentation of the contents of a list.

Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 4, Parkdale-High Park) was on the CBC radio news at noon, perhaps echoing themes from the Ward 16 meeting - mental health crisis, housing etc.

And there was apparently a ruckus at Queen's Park on Wednesday morning re: mining and northern development - tempers running high re: Doug Ford's “legislative bulldozer”, and people ejected from the chamber.

My hat is always off to folks who take a stand when the ministers of the day spout rubbish  ...attached, pic goes back several years and yes, that is an I.S.A.C. (the Income Security Advocacy Centre) staff member calling the honourable member a liar! She was promptly escorted out. (The staffer not the Minister.)

I love the guy who appears to be cleaning his glasses.

The Standing Committee on Social Policy meets Monday at Queen's Park. I glanced at “Queen's Park Briefing” for the first time in a month. It looks like they are still in business - see the Toronto Star web page (slash "/news/canada/2023/02/09/qp-briefings-editor-in-chief-reporter-quit-in-protest-after-ford-story-fight.html") and other, similar items from about 5 weeks ago.

QPB was also mentioned in Toronto Life's cover story about the feud between Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett in their March issue.

QPB's web page does not appear to have a visible privacy policy. It's the most "locked down" site I've seen in quite some time.