Category: Semple Saturdays

And, relatedly, should ads for hard liquor be allowed on this street corner?

@noel.semple7

Should hard liquor banner ads be allowed on this neighbourhood corner?

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Text:

One of the biggest questions we face as a society is, how can we make capitalism work for all of us and not just for the capitalists? Some people honestly believe the answer to that question is “we can’t.” But I disagree, because if you look back through human history, all of the times and places where it’s been best to live as a human being are those in which capitalism has been combined with regulation, redistribution of income and social programs.
Capitalism is a goose that lays golden eggs, but government has got to make sure that that goose doesn’t bite people and has got to make sure that the golden eggs are enjoyed by all of us and not just by a privileged elite. This, incidentally, is a major theme of my new book, The State of happiness, which is coming out this fall.

I was thinking about this today when I was driving by this strip mall at the corner of Bloor and Kipling
here in beautiful central Etobicoke because the landlord has rented out space on the fence that goes around the strip mall to these advertisers.

So there’s eight advertising banners that have been attached to the fence here. And advertising and the regulation of it is a small but an interesting part of this bigger question of how we make capitalism work for all of us. Advertising has a healthy function in a free-market, capitalist economy because it lets consumers know what’s available and it promotes competition, which in turn leads to lower prices,
higher quality and more choice. And that’s why advertising or “commercial speech,” as it’s known to lawyers, is protected in many cases by our Constitution. But governments also have the legal right and the moral obligation to regulate advertising and in some cases to forbid it.
I’ve talked on this channel before about the need to ban ads for internet gambling, which is a dangerous, highly addictive product which targets young people. And I think our government is asleep at the switch
if it thinks we can just have unregulated, free-for-all advertising for that particular product.
I think these billboards at 3810 Bloor street west are an interesting case study for healthy and unhealthy advertising. Four of these banner ads advertise businesses which are actually in the plaza. And they let us consumers know what’s available and they help our local small business entrepreneurs thrive.
But two of these ads are very different. First of all, they’re for liquor, which like internet gambling, is a addictive product.

And more importantly, they are here right in the middle of the neighbourhood. And yet they do not promote or let us know about our local businesses. They are for selling things where the profits are going to be captured by large multinational corporations. And I think if we’re looking for a place to draw the line for what type of ads, we should be allowing on a street corner. We could start by saying that anything for local businesses is okay, but if you’re advertising some consumer product that’s is gonna be sold elsewhere where the profits are gonna go elsewhere and the only real value of it is adding a little bit of money for the landlord’s bottom line, especially when it’s for something dangerous and addictive like alcohol, then, that would be the type of banner that we should not necessarily allow.
And so I’m gonna look into this. I’m sure there’s laws and bylaws about this and I’ll keep you postedon my efforts to see why this is allowed and if perhaps it’s something that should be removed.

Like my kids this summer!

@noel.semple7

We need more Canadians making their own jobs and making jobs for others. Like my kids are doing this sunmer!

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Text:

Last week almost 50,000 people applied for 5,000 jobs at the CNE, and then thousands showed up in person for this in-person job fair.

And it’s a tough summer for young people looking for work. Ontario’s youth unemployment rate is 16.2% ,which is one of the highest in the country. To make that situation better, we need more hiring but we also need more entrepreneurship.

And this is where I take off my Ontario Policy guy hat and put on my proud father hat because both of my kids, who are teenagers, created their own jobs this summer.

My daughter who is 18 was walking around the neighbourhood and noticed that there are a lot of lawns that seem to need help, a lot of people who need to seem seem to need help with weeds in particular.

And so she started a weed pulling business. She just printed up a bunch of these signs. And within a week or two had all the clients she could handle and she just goes there and picks weeds for 20 or 25 bucks an hour, and it’s great.

Meanwhile, my son who is 13 is out right now selling soft drinks in parks. He’s also collected golf balls and sold them back to golf courses, and he’s cleaned people’s garbage bins for money, and he’s also working on selling a website development services to local small businesses.

So this type of thing, Entrepreneurship and business formation, is something where Canada lags behind some other countries and the United States in particular.

And I don’t know exactly how the government can help make people more willing to start businesses and create jobs for themselves and then go on to employ others. But if we could narrow that gap and create more of an entrepreneurial culture and mindset among Canadians of all ages, then we would go a long way towards building the economy that we need to create a great life for everyone here.

Dad of school shooter sentenced to 15 years. Fair, or no?

@noel.semple7

Dad of school shooter sentenced to 15 years. Fair, or no?

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcription:

Yesterday, in the US state of Georgia, Colin Gray was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment after a 2024 school shooting that left 4 people dead, which seems about right until you read that Colin Gray did not shoot anyone. He didn’t tell anyone to shoot anyone, and he had no idea that there was going to be a shooting at all.
It was his son, 14-year-old Colt Gray, who committed this atrocity, and Colt Gray was sentenced earlier this week to life imprisonment. Colin, the dad, was sentenced yesterday because he had failed to recognize and respond appropriately to some red flag behaviors from his son, and because he had given his son a hunting rifle at Christmas and failed to take it away like he really should have after some of those red flag behaviors from Colt.
Was this bad parenting?
Absolutely.
Should it be punished?
Absolutely.

But I just can’t see how 15 years could possibly be a proportionate penalty when people who commit actual murders, both in Georgia and in Canada, are often sentenced to 15 years or less. And if the system is not going to be proportionate, then it’s not going to impose time that suits the crime.
But what about deterrence?
Do these stiff penalties cause all parents to pay more attention and reduce the chance that they’ll ignore red flags the way Colin Gray did?
It doesn’t seem like it will.
Deterrence is real. People actually do avoid breaking the law because they don’t want to get punished. But if something is already illegal and it already has a serious penalty attached to it, all of the studies
suggest that ramping the penalty up further is not going to increase deterrence. If you want to increase deterrence, you’ve got to increase people’s perceived risk of getting caught. You’ve got to make sure that The punishment follows quickly and certainly after you are caught, and often you’ve just
got to help people avoid the illegal behavior in the first place when they don’t want to be breaking the
law either, but they may be careless or they may just not be focused on what’s necessary to stay on
the right side of the law.
I think that sentences like 15 years for careless parenting come from the gut. And they come from a deep, real human sense of fear and anger and desire for revenge after a horrible crime takes place.
And those are natural and virtuous human emotions. But everything the government does needs to come from the head and from the heart, not so much from the gut. We need to be taking steps that are actually going to minimize as much as humanly possible the chance of these things happening going forward.
And that means getting smart about deterring crime.
It means helping people stay on the right side of the law, and it means investing in a social safety
net and in our schools so that when kids fall through the cracks because their parents have screwed up, we’re not all put at risk because there’s other caring professionals who are there to catch that person before they fall through the cracks and become a threat to the rest of us.
Everything the government does needs to be evidence-based and rational, and these human emotions and responses need to be honoured and taken seriously, but they can’t drive policy because we’ll end up not only with punishments which are frankly grossly disproportionate and cruel and unusual, but we’ll end up with criminal justice policy that does not keep us safe in the long run.

Vibing, On Hold with Rogers

@noel.semple7

Telcos make HUGE profits, won’t hire enough people to answer customer calls … time for a law requiring better service standards??

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcription:

This beautiful sound is the sound of me on hold with Rogers for 43 minutes trying to get them to answer a call about why our internet’s not working.
It’s the middle of a weekday. This is a company that made $5.6 billion in profit in the last quarter, and they can’t hire enough people to answer calls.
In Spain, there’s a law now that requires tech companies and telecoms to answer service calls in 3 minutes.
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

A Turning Point in Ontario Politics?

@noel.semple7

Will September 3 be the beginning of the end of the Doug Ford government?

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Why is Brad Bradford, supposedly the public safety candidate for Mayor of Toronto, picking a fight with the police?

@noel.semple7

Why is Brad Bradford, supposedly the public safety candidate for Mayor of Toronto, picking a fight with the police?

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

OMG I’m in Sankofa Square and it turns out it’s not a dangerous wasteland like Brad Bradford said

@noel.semple7

OMG I’m in Sankofa Square and it turns out it’s not a dangerous wasteland like Brad Bradford said

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

@noel.semple7

School makes us stronger 💪

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Three children killed by a speeder at this intersection last year. New data confirms that speeding and traffic deaths way up Toronto after speed cameras were ripped out last year. Thanks Premier Ford!

@noel.semple7

In memoriam for the three children killed by a speeder at this intersection last year. New data confirms that speeding and traffic deaths way up Toronto after speed cameras were ripped out last year. Thanks Premier Ford!

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

@noel.semple7

Can’t we do better than this pigeon-infested, ceilingless tunnel ar Islington TTC, where people are expected to travel and work all day? I’m going to find out.

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

@noel.semple7

What I learned from calling the TTC about the ceilingless pigeon feather tunnel at Islington

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

@noel.semple7 Better Buses for the ‘Burbs: my idea featured in Toronto Star this week #IfIWereMayor ♬ original sound – Noel Semple

I had a fun day on the bus, and waiting for the bus, and trying to get through the pigeon poop to the bus!

@noel.semple7

A tour of urgent central Etobicoke infrastructure needs… the billions being wasted on Doug Ford’s Mistakes by the Lake could do a lot more good spread across the province!

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcript:

They say that everyone who makes it to the top eventually forgets where they came from, and forgets the people who helped them rise.

It’s just a question of when.

And this neighbourhood, Central Etobicoke, is where Premier Doug Ford of Ontario came from. It’s middle class suburbs like this across the province that gave him his electoral majorities.

But people around here are starting to wonder whether the Premier has, in fact, forgotten the people who put him where he is as we watch this extremely expensive obsession of the Premier’s with downtown Toronto waterfront mega-projects.

So $2.2 billion of public money is being spent on the Ontario Place luxury spa and the shrunken Science Centre. And here I’m standing at the Wedgewood Park community pool, which as you can see has no water in it and is completely closed.

It will be closed until late June, even though there’s plenty of days like today, which are in the high 20s in June where lots of kids would like to be using this pool and adults too.

And of course, if you’re trying to sign your kids up for swimming lessons at any time, good luck because they’re generally full. Now, of course, the pool is a municipal project, but the city does not have the money to open these things more. And the province has no problem interfering in municipal jurisdiction when it wants to change something.

So why can’t some small portion, some tiny portion of that 2.2 billion go instead to open our neighbourhood pools?

Here’s another example of neglect that I find pretty depressing. So this is the old Etobicoke school board building. It’s this cool architecture they call this brutalist architecture.

This used to be the school board headquarters for Etobicoke, back when Etobicoke was its own city. Then, of course, Etobicoke was amalgamated into Toronto by a conservative government, and we lost our local school board.

And then most recently another conservative government has taken over the Toronto District School Board and this building has just been allowed to go completely to seed.

You can see the stairs have fallen apart so badly that they’ve had to be blocked off so no one can use them because they are a serious hazard, and the landscaping is not being kept up, things are overgrown and you know there’s a big pothole over here as well.

These should be our civic jewels. Good things should be happening here. The government should be taking care of them instead of just taking them over and then letting them fall apart, so they’re eye-sores and do no good to anyone.

This whole district is called Etobicoke Civic Centre and it was a City of Toronto building for a long time. The City of Toronto is now moving its staff out of here, and a lot of people are asking whether anything great might be done with this site once the city moves out. Perhaps top of the list would be a new healthcare facility.

There are over 200 hospital sites across Ontario. We have zero hospitals or hospital sites in Central Etobicoke. There’s 75 community health centres across Ontario. Again, we have zero community health centres in central Etobicoke. And we have a a high population of retired people; we have a lot of people with high health needs, and yet we are simply not getting investments in health infrastructure in Central Etobicoke.

And I think I know why: it’s because the people who represent us even though they are very powerful- Premier Ford living in Central Etobicoke, the Minister of Infrastructure representing Central Etobicoke — simply take this area for granted and don’t think they need to prioritize investments here when they could be spending that money on the waterfront instead.

Alright, one more example for you. So this is the Etobicoke Olympium and it’s terrific. This is a world class swimming facility and a gym and a rec centre. The problem is that this was built in 1976, and it’s the last significant recreation centre that was built in a Etobicoke Centre, 50 years ago.

Just last year there was the possibility of having a recreation centre built in the riding at Eglinton near Royal York but the MPP and the Premier and our Councillor teamed up to get It cancelled.

They said they didn’t like the location, but there’s been no talk whatsoever of having that built in another location (in the riding). And this (Etobicoke Olympium) was built when Etobicoke was much smaller than it is today.

And you see in Mississauga and in other parts of Toronto and the suburbs, beautiful new recreation centres opening up so kids can learn to swim and adults can use the gym and all this stuff.

And we are just not getting that in central Etobicoke. It’s like we’ve been forgotten or the people who are supposed to be speaking for us and fighting for us are just taking us for granted.

So we’re stuck in the past.

Maybe when you get to be as powerful as Doug Ford is right now, nothing smaller than a huge mega-project by the lake — like a 2.2 billion dollar spa or a jet runway or a convention centre on Lake Ontario — maybe nothing smaller than that is big enough to seem important to you.

But for the people who actually live in the communities of Ontario, it’s the little things that make a difference. And until we can get our pools open on hot days and have health care facilities where we need them and, you know, opportunities for our kids to learn to swim, let’s put the priority where it belongs and tell these people who are supposed to be representing us that they need to do better.

@noel.semple7

Toronto Pearson airport is closer than you think! Let’s use the infrastructure we’ve already paid for, instead of wasting money paving over the waterfront and islands.

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcript:

Expanding the Toronto Island airport for big jets is a bad idea for a bunch of reasons. But for me as an Etobicoke guy and a taxpayer, a big one is that it’s a waste of money, given that we’ve got Pearson airport right here with oodles of room to expand, and it’s a lot closer to downtown than a lot of people think.

So I took the 900 Express bus here from the Bloor line. It took me 20 minutes. And driving from Pearson Airport to Union Station downtown can be as quick as 24 minutes depending on traffic. More importantly, it’s only 28 minutes any time of the week on the Union Pearson Express.

The Ford government says we’ve got to expand the island airport to attract tourists and businesspeople to Toronto. But can you find me a single tourist or business person anywhere in the world who’s saying, I’m thinking of coming to Toronto, but you know what, 24 or 28 minutes is just too far from downtown, so I’m just gonna go to Chicago instead.

It doesn’t make sense.

Speaking of the Union Pearson Express, we, the taxpayers of Ontario, spent almost half a billion dollars building this train just 10 years ago to get that 28 minute guaranteed service from Pearson to union.

It’s very expensive to build public transit in Ontario. Once we built it, we should get the most out of it. We should use it, we should expand the capacity of this train. They could just run a few more cars on it, increase the frequency, it would be very cheap, and expand Pearson to meet whatever unmet demand there is for air travel in Toronto, instead of paving over more of the waterfront and destroying a beautiful spot on the Islands, just to replicate something that Pearson’s doing already very close to the city.

Premier Ford and his Minister of Infrastructure, Kinga Surma, represent the two Etobicoke ridings that are right next door to Pearson Airport. And there once was a time when cabinet ministers would kind of “bring home the bacon” a bit, and make sure that needed infrastructure projects in their home ridings were funded.

That’s definitely not happening in Etobicoke because the Premier is obsessed with building things on the downtown waterfront, whether it’s the luxury spa or this convention centre on the lake or the shrunken science centre, or now this idea of paving over the islands to put jet runways.

So if you want value for taxpayer money, and if you want what we’ve already built at such enormous expense to be used intelligently instead of more money being wasted on vanity projects, then demand a better provincial government.

@noel.semple7 Banning internet gambling ads in Ontario: a setback yesterday, but also a path forward… #onPoli #Etobicoke #ProblemGambling ♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcript:

We all want our young people to thrive, but there’s disturbing evidence that young people today don’t feel the sense of hope and security that young people did in previous generations. 

And some of the threats confronting our young people like AI and climate change and Donald Trump seem like they’re beyond our ability to control. But some of the threats that our young people face can be dealt with and can be controlled if we have a government that just cares to try. 

And one of those threats is online gambling ads. So these ads are everywhere in Ontario, and they are quite effective in hooking people on this highly addictive product and sucking money out of their pockets and undermining their ability to care for themselves and for their families. 

But it’s within the power of the Ontario legislature to ban internet gambling ads and stop this cycle of exploitation. And we had a bill before the Ontario legislature, Bill 107, which would have done exactly that. Unfortunately, on Friday, it was voted down. Every single MPP in the governing Progressive Conservative caucus voted against it. 

But it was widely supported not only by the Ontario Liberal Party, but also by the NDP and the Greens. It’s no secret why the Ford government supports the current state of affairs. Some people are getting very, very rich, and those people are well-connected. And protecting people from the harm that comes from this industry is secondary. 

There’s a lot of talk from this government about “protecting Ontario,” but when there’s a chance to do something that actually would protect Ontarians from all of this money being sucked out of our pockets into these mostly foreign corporations, that’s not the priority, not when there’s people who want to make money and a chance to help them do that. 

But the nice thing about Private Members’ Bills is even when they fail, they often become the basis of future government policy. And with this Private Member’s Bill in particular, the person sponsoring it is Lee Fairclough, who is also running to be leader of the Ontario Liberal Party and then Premier of Ontario. 

So if you like this idea of actually putting our young people first and protecting them from harm, then I encourage you to take a look at Lee Fairclough’s campaign. It’s early in the process, but it seems to me that she’s got the right set of skills, and intelligence, and dedication to listening and following evidence to make policy, that could make her a formidable Premier of Ontario.

@noel.semple7

Front Porch Food Drive!

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcript:

In places like Central Etobicoke, there’s too many folks don’t have enough to eat, but there’s also a lot of folks who have a little bit more than they need and are generously willing to donate. Food banks, everyone knows, are that link between people who can donate and people who need food to have food security for their families.

Food banks are terrific. Everyone should think about donating to their local food bank. But physically doing the logistics of donating food to a food bank is tough for some people. It can be complicated to remember to fill your bags with food and take them to the drop-off spot an it might also be kind of a physical strain for people to carry a lot of cans of food somewhere if they’ve got them to donate. 

So that’s where the Front Porch Food Drive comes in, and this is something we’ve done at my church here, St. George’s on the Hill Anglican, for the past few years, where we go around our neighborhood, and we’ve distributed this year seven hundred and fifty bags with flyers asking neighbors to donate, fill the bags with food. 

And today, Mother’s Day afternoon, we drive around the neighborhood, picking up the stuff that’s been left on porches and bringing it. Our target this year is two thousand items. We’ve got incredible volunteers like Ruth in this picture, who’s bringing this bag of food from a house, and in this picture, we’ve got James and Carol, who filled their trunk and their backseat with food. And, we also have Malcolm. Malcolm, what did, what did you get up to today?  

Malcolm: Picked up bags.  

Noel: Okay. That’s right. So we got [laughs] everyone pitching in, and we are now going to head back down to the basement and see what the scene looks like down there. And here’s the sorting room where everything gets categorized as protein, fruit and veg, or carbohydrate, and placed on these tables, and we keep track of everything that comes in.  

All right, so we’re done sorting, and we’ve got five hundred and fourteen protein items and five hundred and eighty carbs and three hundred and thirty-six fruit and veg and three hundred and eighty-two miscellaneous for a grand total of one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two non-perishable food items for the St. James food basket, and had a great time doing it. 

@noel.semple7

I miss my train commute 😢. Should the government fix the existing train problems before spending big on high-speed?

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcript: Standing behind me is an old friend who’s not part of my life anymore, which is sad. I’m in Windsor, Ontario, where I’ve taught law for the past 12 years now at the University of Windsor. I live 350 km away in Etobicoke.

For the first decade of my job here, I took Via Rail train 73 train once a week during the university term.

And it was great. It was scheduled to arrive here at 3:45, and my civil procedure class started on Tuesdays at 4:30.

So I had a folding bike that I was able to get out here, unfold the bike, and get across Windsor for my class. It was a great commute, and it looked like it was about to get better in 2024 when Via started rolling out these new “Venture” trains that it bought.

Prior to these trains the ones we rode on were built actually in the 1950s. The new ones are a lot more comfortable in a lot of ways and very attractively, they have bicycle storage. So I thought I’d be able to start riding a full size bike instead of a foldie, which would have made my commute even better.

And it looked like it was gonna be terrific until October of ‘24. In October of 2024, these trains started becoming consistently 15 to 45 minutes late. The train today (Thursday May 7) was over a half an hour late, arriving in Windsor.

And that wasn’t enough time for me to get to my class and I can’t be late.

So I’ve been driving my car here from Etobicoke, during the university term, since late 2024.

So what happened in October 2024? Well, to understand that we’ve go to back up and realize that VIA rail is a passenger train company, it’s a federal Crown corporation but it does not own most of the railway tracks on which its trains run.

Most of its tracks are owned by CN rail, which is a privately held corporation, and CN as the track owner has the right to regulate the trains that run on it. In 2024 CN decided that these new Via Rail trains are too light to consistently trigger the level crossing safety arms.

If you’re driving across a train track you’ll see the arm go down and the lights light up and the bells start ringing. So CN is basically saying these trains are too light to make that happen. They’ve issued an order saying that via has to slow these trains down to about 70 or 80 kilometres down from 150 or 160 km, every time they go across a level crossing between Windsor and Quebec City, which means the trains are always late.

Via disputes this they say that there’s no problem and the trains trigger the level crossings just fine and they can’t figure it out. They are in Court they are litigating in the Quebec Superior Court and also in the Federal Court.

Eighteen months in, there is no end in sight. They’re deep into documentary discovery and it looks like, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions will be spent on lawyers, and then eventually a resolution to this dispute will come out of the court.

But in the meantime, everyone who relies on this train to get somewhere by a particular time, like if you’re commuting to a job, is pretty much out of luck.

I don’t enjoy the drive, and I feel a little bit guilty about the carbon emissions, but I’m also actually saving a lot of money by driving. It’s quite astonishing that the price to take this train from Toronto to Windsor and back

it was about $210, which is almost twice as much as it costs in gas to drive here [and back]. So I buy the carbon offset so I don’t feel so guilty and I save money, which is really weird that the public transit option ends up costing so much more than just driving a car by yourself down all that highway.

I think there’s some lessons here for the federal government, which is now talking about a huge new high speed rail project. And that might be a great project, but I think the devil’s in the details and in particular, it’s crucially important that this new rail project, do better than Via rail is doing right now. That is a matter of having a train which sticks to its schedule and is also affordable for people.

The big idea in Canadian politics right now is “build, baby, build,” build more stuff, build more infrastructure and that’s great, but we’ve got to make sure the stuff we build actually works once we get it built.

And more specifically, when it comes to this dispute between Via rail and CN which is making this train and all the other Via trains on the corridor late, I think the federal government needs to be a little bit more hands-on.

I don’t think this is the sort of thing we can just leave to these corporations to sort out through litigation cause it’s gonna take years and cost millions. I think the federal government needs to get its hands dirty and work on getting this into arbitration or mediation.

They’ve got a certain amount of leverage over both Via and CN but if we’re gonna have a public sector which spends taxpayers money we’ve got to take accountability and responsibility for making sure it works.

I think this is a great opportunity for the federal government to show that it’s willing to do that, which will in turn build public support for the high speed rail project and you know, maybe get me off the road and back onto the rails where I want to be.