Category: Semple Saturdays

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.