Ryan Bird's blog

One Session Ends, A New One Begins.....

The Ontario legislature was prorogued today.

It's nothing like what we've seen in Ottawa though. Unlike the two-month break that MP's had when Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued parliament, MPP's will have a long weekend. A new session will begin on Monday afternoon with a throne speech. The Premier wanted to avoid the backlash that the Prime Minister faced when he prorogued.

Of note, at the end of this session, a bunch of us reporters had some fun. When the Speaker adjourned the legislature, we threw a bunch of paper at MPP's. There's actually a story behind it. It's a parliamentary tradition for reporters to mark the end of the session by throwing papers onto the chamber floor. While the paper used to be bills that had died on the order paper at the end of the session, this time it was E-health freedom of information documents. Yeah, I thought that was funny too.

Back at Queen's Park

Okay, so I haven't written in a while. My apologies. I've been settling in here in my new gig at Queen's Park.

Provincial politics have been pretty much as you'd expect over recent weeks. The opposition parties are still trying to get their message out about the HST and are trying to find new ways to explain to Ontarians that it's going to cost them more.

For it's part, the province is trying to get it's message out that they've cut personal taxes, will be sending out transition payments and have put in place a new tax credit. All to offset the added cost of a combined provincial and federal sales tax, which kicks in July 1st.

Memories go up in flames

When I first arrived at this morning's fire at the All Saints Anglican Church in Whitby, I knew it wasn't good, but the building looked completely intact and I figured that it would be easily rebuilt. That is, until I looked at it from the side, instead of the front. A portion of the roof had collapsed, leaving charred beams behind. What the flames didn't destroy, the collapsing roof, smoke and thousands of litres of water probably did.

It's sad enough to see something like this happen to the 143-year-old Whitby landmark, but it's even more sad when you find out that police are calling it suspicious. It wasn't exactly hard to tell why they were calling it that, considering that you could clearly see a large red gas can underneath one of the side windows of the church. To be clear, the Ontario Fire Marshal's office is investigating and will have the final say on whether it was arson or not, but it sure looks like it.

It was cool.....

The last time I was at Maple Leaf Gardens it was for a Leafs-Nordiques game. In fact, that's the only Leafs game I've ever been to. I may not be the biggest hockey fan, but I have to say that it was pretty cool (I know I should say something more intelligent, but "pretty cool" comes to mind) when I walked into the Gardens this morning. Sure, there was no ice in it, but to stand at what would have been centre ice and look around, I just felt the history.

 

From Stanley Cup hockey games to historic concerts, I made sure to take a mental snap shot of the arena where they all took place. This, before it's turned into the Ryerson University Sports and Recreation Centre and a Loblaw's grocery store.

Speeding and Meatballs

So my story this morning had to do with the constitutionality of Ontario's stunt driving law. I was speaking with Toronto Police Sgt. Tim Burrows about news that a second Ontario judge had ruled that the law was unconstitutional. (The Attorney General says it's still constitutional by the way)

This case was in Newmarket, where a young woman was facing 6 months in jail after being clocked at 157 km/h on the 407. As I understand it, because the stunt driving law, like speeding, is one where you can't really argue that you didn't know you were going that fast, you can't defend yourself against it, despite the possible jail time. With that in mind, the judge, citing a ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada from more than 20 years ago, threw out the charges.

I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea whether it's constitutional or not, but I think there's some value in this legislation. I think something more than just the speeding charges are needed when dealing with people driving at more than 50 km/h over the speed limit.

I Want Theirs!

Okay, I know it's easy to do, so I'm going to do it. I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and bash the TTC. Not really the TTC, but the poor planning years ago that left the city scrambling to improve the system today.

 

This isn't really a new problem, but it was top of mind, not as I rode the TTC, but as I rode the New York City transit system a couple of weeks ago. My fiancé and I were in NYC for a few days and not only used New York's MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority), but also used New Jersey Transit and PATH trains.

H-1-No-Fun

So I was at Metro Hall this morning. It's one of the ten H1N1 flu clinics that will be open today in Toronto. The clinic opens at 1p.m., but when I got there around 5:30a.m., there were already about five or six people in line. A couple of them got in line at 4:30a.m.! That's 8.5 hours BEFORE it even opens. I should point out that when I left Metro Hall around 9a.m., there were probably a couple dozen people in line, so essentially, a number of people could have slept in and been just fine getting in line later on. While a bit excessive, I can understand wanting to beat the lines of last week, which were long to say the least.

I'm Guilty!

Okay, I'm guilty. I have been known to text-and-drive. In my humble opinion, I'm quite good at it, but that's not the point. I shouldn't do it, but that little red light keeps flashing. I can't NOT read it.

Recently, I've just been handing my blackberry over to my fiancée to type messages on my behalf and that's worked well...when she's actually in the car.

In fact, and I feel dumb admitting this, I was messaging someone on my blackberry this morning, about 20 minutes after filing my last report about the new law that says you can't do that. I wasn't trying to be a rebel, I just completely forgot. Admittedly, when I realized it, I just held my blackberry lower to the floorboards so no one could see me.