Why's there a massive pile of ice in Downtown Toronto? Blame Drake | CBC News Somewhere inside a massive formation of ice blocks in a downtown Toronto parking lot lies the answer many hip-hop fans have been waiting for: the release date of Drake's forthcoming album.

Tepid take: if Drake can take over a parking lot for some silly stunt, then that lot should damn well have housing on it
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

It's Kandavel so I would guess parking lot is first priority.

Scarborough Community Council - June 5, 2025 YouTube video by Toronto City Council

I think my favourite is a 7-storey apartment on a site where the building sat vacant for years, no one came to either public meeting and he wanted to defer and muck around with it anyway even though he "supported" it. (SC23.2 moved without recommendations but eventually passed at Council).

This whole statement is so telling. Ford has spent a long time pretending to care about government spending, despite spending more than the Wynne government. It's incomprehensible to him that anyone might think beyond "spending bad" and care what the government is actually doing with the money.

This isn't true. But, supposing it were, I would not call cutting corners on research, staff and other things needed to govern effectively in order to "save up" your expense account money for a plane "frugal."

Cable car, obvs.
More seriously, there's an area behind King's Cross tucked away from the streets that's redeveloped and then you can wander down the canals for a bit. Can get all the way from Granary Square to Regent's Park but that's maybe more time than you want to spend if you're limited.

Yes, passed by Council 39-6, although after many attempts at amendments.
secure.toronto.ca/council/agen...

If you can stop people from voting with another party then you've broken confidence motions entirely. I know that it's not as common in Canada to see backbench MPs vote against the government but it does happen and that's a good reminder to majority governments that they're still vulnerable!

Unfortunately, now that the province has stopped charging for vehicle registration, I think the city would have to try to get that info from the province and set up their own system. They used to just tag it onto the provincial system but now there's no mechanism for that.

Toronto, as always, ruined this for everyone by asking for a bunch of extra tax powers, getting them, promptly cancelling the vehicle registration tax, then taking in money the land transfer tax in good times before complaining about its volatility when tides turned. Then asking for more tax powers.

A rendering of a boxy midrise against a bright blue sky. Underneath, a slogan says "It's not the HEIGHT of the tower. It's the DEPTH of the hole."

Ummm

Guys, the NIMBYs appear to have discovered AI. This graph hurts my soul. Why don't the bars align with the years that they claim? 😭 the-big-idea-company.onemob.com/p/slqkouj948...

New bakery opened this weekend - doesn't even have menus up yet. Full of latte-sipping midtown elites, none of whom appeared to be soulless.

Between this, the Greenbelt and Bill 28, we see that Ford will reverse some bad calls with the right messaging from the "right" people. Much respect for everyone leading these pushes, whether they end up successful or not. Cynical doomposting on social media gets more likes but accomplishes nothing.

A shoutout to the media, who take a lot of flack on every social media platform. You did good.

Democracy still kind of working.
Got to keep writing and calling about FOI and speed cameras though.

This is such a wild thing Toronto does. It‘s not that residents of a new condo go to the back of the line for permits to park on the street — they are explicitly banned from getting them. The curb belongs to house-owners

I doubt it; you already have to give your address to attend virtually. But I'm down to try. My preference would be to stop letting councillors open meetings with speeches. There's huge variation in the tone across the city and some are quite alienating for anyone not in the councillor's in-group.

An important question would seem to be, back when we had virtual meetings, were we building better buildings containing the housing that we needed? Too many politicians put this question second to "Did we have enough meetings for people to complain in?"

Several councillors have pretty strongly implied that virtual meetings are bad because they get "infiltrated" by outsiders and developer plants. How do they know? Well, because they were suddenly hearing opinions from people that they hadn't heard from before.

Of course there's some change just due to the relative alignments of Tory and Chow but you can look at almost any other councillor and the change is much smaller. Here's Nunziata, for example. (Both vote records courtesy of the Council Scorecard by worthwhile subscription to @graphicmatt.com)

His voting pattern changed pretty significantly when Chow was elected mayor and he began trying to position himself as the leader of the opposition. Most obvious on bike lanes, but also somewhat on policing, the TTC and, more recently, housing.

Saving this for my next discussion of shadow policies with Toronto City Planning.

I think the US tendency to distrust government led to a preference for basic black-and-white rules, to minimize people (esp. government) judging grey areas

What's new in recent years is the willingness to suggest that even the written rules are too grey and thus the President could chuck them.

Do we do throwback Sundays?

Oh, it's in the replies to the original post I see. I should have known.

Is Ontario's renewable energy turnaround too little, too late? | #onpoli YouTube video by TVO Today

I mean, you're not that for off: youtu.be/UocUd4I28ps?...

What is Hostile Vehicle Mitigation? HVM is a set of measures – like bollards, barriers or road design, used to stop or slow down vehicles to protect people, buildings or public space from intentional or accidental vehicle attacks.

Reviewing the City-provided info before doing the Yonge TOmorrow survey and learning the phrase "accidental vehicle attacks." How's your day going? www.toronto.ca/wp-content/u...

Submitting my own clue and guessing "one more than is there already."

Obviously we should buy the one that Peter Mansbridge keeps trying to sell me in online ads. Isn't that how all countries make national defense procurement decisions?