[PHOTO] Truck in alley off Dupont

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto pot outlets ordered to shutter in 3 days"

This news, reported by the Toronto Star's Betsy Powell among others, is--broadly speaking--good. I like the idea of marijuana dispensaries, but I also like the idea of regulating business.

The city is warning Toronto landlords they have three days to shut down the retail marijuana storefronts operating on their premises or potentially face stiff fines for bylaw zoning violations.

“We’re giving property owners an opportunity to remedy the issue first,” Tracey Cook, executive director of the city’s licensing division, said Thursday. The city’s goal “is not just to go out and hammer people,” it’s to ensure property owners comply with the rules, she said.

Toronto police and bylaw enforcement officers delivered 20 notices to property owners on Wednesday and continue to serve warnings to other landlords with pot shop tenants. Cook estimated there are at least 75 marijuana dispensaries currently operating in Toronto.

They are all contravening bylaws because only federally licensed marijuana growers in industrial areas of the city can legally produce pot for medical patients, she said.

“The fact of the matter is the law is the law as it is written today and it is our responsibility to enforce it appropriately.” The federal government’s plan to legalize pot is still months away.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• blogTO notes this weekend is going to be warm.


• Centauri Dreams looks at moons of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt.


• Dangerous Minds looks at some photos of American malls taken in the late 1980s.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes a white dwarf that stole so much matter from its stellar partner to make it a brown dwarf.


• The Dragon's Tales notes Greenland may not have been particularly warm when the Vikings came.


• Language Hat tells the story of one solitary person who decided to learn Korean.


• Language Log writes about Sinitic languages written in phonetic scripts.


• The Map Room Blog shares a map showing how New Orleans is sinking.


• Marginal Revolution suggests Brexit is not a good strategy, even in the hypothetical case of a collapsing EU. Why not just wait for the collapse?


• The New APPS Blog notes with concern the expansion of Elsevier.


• The NYRB Daily notes the perennial divisions among the Kurds.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer wonders what's wrong with Bernie Sanders.


• Towleroad looks at the impending decriminalization of gay sex in the Seychelles.


• Understanding Society looks at the work of Brankovich in understanding global inequality.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Crimean Tatars are no longer alone in remembering 1944, and looks at the unhappiness of Tuva's shrinking Russophone minority.

[NEWS] Some Friday links

• Bloomberg looks at Argentina's push for renewable energy, reports on Rosatom's interest in developing South Africa as an entry into the African nuclear market, writes about China's opposition to anything remotely like separatism in Hong Kong, and looks at Poland's demand for an apology for Bill Clinton critical of the new government.


• Bloomberg View notes the importance of honest statistics in Brazil, and calls for American arms sales to a friendly Vietnam.


• CBC notes new Conservative support for a transgender rights bill and reports on how Ontario's climate policy will hit Alberta's natural gas exports.


• Gizmodo notes Portugal has just managed to power itself entirely on renewable energy for four days.


• The Inter Press Service describes the Middle Eastern refugee crisis.


• The National Post looks at a proposed New York State ban on declawing cats.


• Open Democracy reports on Norway's EU status via a left-leaning Norwegian, looks at the life of Daniel Berrigan, and notes the emergent Saudi-Indian alliance.


• Universe Today describes the circumstellar habitable zones of red giants.

[URBAN NOTE] On Conrad Black's tax issues

The National Post carries Linda Nguyen and Alexandra Posadzki' Canadian Press article looking at how Conrad Black is fighting two liens placed on his Forest Hill mansion, currently up for sale.

Conrad Black is fighting two liens that have been placed on his Toronto mansion that claim he owes more than $15 million in unpaid taxes.

The former media mogul filed a notice of application Wednesday with the Federal Court for a judicial review of the liens.

The liens were filed against Black’s home on May 6 and May 10, alleging that he owes taxes from 2002, 2003 and 2008.

The Canada Revenue Agency claims that Black is in arrears in the amounts of $12,307,717 and $3,513,877.

In his notice of application, Black claims the national revenue minister used information that contained “material omissions and inaccuracies” and wasn’t “full and frank” when applying to the court for the liens.

[URBAN NOTE] On commuting by air from Niagara to Toronto

The Financial Post's Kristine Owram describes how, for the well-off, regular air flights might make Niagara a commuter's suburb of Toronto.

The chairman of the Niagara regional council recently met with Porter Airlines CEO Bob Deluce and pitched him on the idea of making the Niagara District Airport into the airline’s “service centre and aircraft parking lot.”

Alan Caslin, chairman of the Niagara regional council, recently met with Porter CEO Bob Deluce and pitched him on the idea of making the Niagara District Airport into the airline’s “service centre and aircraft parking lot.”

“Not only that, but there’s an interesting twist here,” Caslin said in an interview. “The twist is that if you did in fact use Niagara District Airport as an overnight parking lot, the first flight in the morning could be a commuter flight to Toronto Island.”

Caslin argues that this would appeal to a lot of commuters who are tired of dealing with the clogged highways in the Greater Toronto Area.

“If you know anything about the traffic that come into Toronto from Niagara, from Hamilton and surrounding areas, you know that it would be shorter to drive from Hamilton or even Burlington down to Niagara and take an eight-minute flight (to downtown Toronto),” he said.

[URBAN NOTE] "Bombardier shifts production in bid to speed up Toronto streetcar deliveries"

The Toronto Star carries Ross Marowits' Canadian Press article noting how Bombardier is juggling production at different sties to try to deliver Toronto its streetcars.

Bombardier is hoping to get its Toronto streetcar contract back on track and prevent delays at two other Ontario transit projects by shifting production among four sites in Ontario, Quebec and Mexico.

The company will relieve pressure in Thunder Bay, Ont., by shifting light rail projects for Metrolinx in Greater Toronto and the Kitchener-Waterloo region to its facility in Kingston, Ont.

Thunder Bay also makes bi-level cars for GO Transit and is completing a Toronto subway contract.

The plant in La Pocatière, Que., will lend a hand by taking on work transferred from an operation in Mexico where there have been quality issues. A second production line for the TTC streetcars will be added at a location to be identified at the end of May.

[. . .]

The changes will result in the layoff of 60 workers in Thunder Bay, unless it becomes the home of the second streetcar line. However, it will preserve 60 jobs in Kingston once production of metro cars destined for Kuala Lumpur ends later this year. Up to 50 workers will be hired in La Pocatière, which is making Montreal subway cars.

[URBAN NOTE] "New office towers without jobs to fill them won’t help Montreal"

The Globe and Mail's Konrad Yakabuski describes problems with Montréal's boom in office towers.

Last fall’s inauguration of Cadillac Fairview’s Deloitte Tower on the southwestern edge of downtown Montreal seemed like a reason to uncork the champagne, ending a 20-year drought in new office construction in what remains Canada’s second-largest commercial property market.

It also marked the escalation of a war for tenants between real-estate rivals Cadillac Fairview and Ivanhoé Cambridge – and by extension the huge public-sector pension funds that own them – in a market with a double-digit vacancy rate and underwhelming job-growth prospects.

Deloitte moved into the tower after vacating 185,000 square feet in the 55-year-old Place Ville Marie, or PVM, the iconic Ivanhoé property that anchors the downtown core.

Cadillac Fairview is planning two more office buildings near the Deloitte Tower – in an area dubbed Quad Windsor, surrounding the city’s Bell Centre – as part of a $2-billion development that includes two condo towers bearing the insignia of the Montreal Canadiens. The condos are so popular that the developer just decided to stack 12 more floors on top of the second tower’s originally planned 37 storeys.

While all this activity promises a property-tax boon for the pro-development administration of Mayor Denis Coderre, and cheers locals envious of a Canada-wide building boom that seemed to have bypassed Montreal in recent years, it is also raising fears of a growing glut that could drain the existing downtown core of its vitality as tenants are lured to newer buildings on the fringes.

[URBAN NOTE] "External factors setting Vancouver's housing costs, university study finds"

The Globe and Mail's Rosemary Newton reported last month about the extent to which Vancouver's housing costs are driven by external factors.

An analysis of vast amounts of City of Vancouver data by two Simon Fraser University researchers has found that the factors that typically prompt increases in housing prices in most cities only explain a tiny part of the picture in Vancouver.

Saeed Soltani and Bita Shadgar, students in SFU’s big-data masters program, examined more than one million records from the city’s open data catalogue. Records analyzed dated from 2006 onward and consisted of property tax reports, North American crude oil prices, exchange rates between U.S. and Canadian dollars and mortgage rates.

“Our main goal was to find out the correlation between main factors that impact housing prices in all parts of the world with housing prices in Vancouver,” Mr. Soltani said. “The interesting thing is how little impact the main factors have on housing prices in Vancouver.”

The typical factors thought to play a strong hand in changing housing costs, according to Mr. Soltani, include demographics, economy, interest rate and government policies. Of the data the researchers pulled, these main factors only appeared to play only a 25-per-cent role in increased housing costs, he said.

“There’s a 75-per-cent external factor that’s setting the housing price in Vancouver,” he said.

[URBAN NOTE] "How Toronto’s Newly Proposed Wards Will Shake Up the City"

A graphics-heavy post at Torontoist by Sean Marshall looks at how new wards in Toronto will alter the city's politics.

Despite major population growth, concentrated in only a few parts of the city, Toronto’s ward boundaries have not changed since 2000, when the number of city councillors was chopped from 56 to 44. Sixteen year later, councillors in downtown Toronto and central North York are overworked. Not only must they represent a disproportionately larger population, they must keep track of numerous building applications, support more local business improvement areas, and work through great neighbourhood change. Wards 20, 23, 27, and 42 are the most underrepresented at City Hall; Ward 42 includes the new Morningside Heights neighbourhood, while condominium construction have swollen the number of residents in Wards 20, 23, and 27.

Consultants retained by the City of Toronto have been tasked with reviewing the size and shape of Toronto’s wards, and providing a recommendation for new ward boundaries that will take effect in time for the 2018 municipal election. Back in August 2015, the Toronto Ward Boundary Review Options Report was released. This month, after consultations at public meetings and with sitting councillors, the consultants are recommending 47 wards, up from the current 44. The final report’s recommendation, released on May 16, is similar to the “Minimal Change” option in last August’s report, but there have been some minor tweaks to the ward boundaries. Each new ward will have an average population of 61,000, with a range between 51,800 and 72,000 (+/- 15%).

There's much more at Torontoist.