[PHOTO] Streetcars, west on King at Bay

[LINK] "Prime Minister Trudeau signs Canada-EU trade deal in Brussels"

Finally! The Globe and Mail shares the Canadian Press report about the good news.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European leaders have signed Canada’s free trade deal with the EU in Brussels.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, known as CETA, was reached after seven years of negotiation.

[. . .]

The Prime Minister’s Office says Trudeau spoke on Friday with European Council president Donald Tusk, who confirmed the texts of the deal, along with a side agreement known as the Strategic Partnership Agreement, had been approved for signature.

The deal’s supporters say it will boost trade by billions through cuts in tariffs across a broad swath of sectors including agriculture, pharmaceuticals and the auto industry.

The prime minister’s trip to Brussels got off to a bit of a bumpy start, with a mechanical problem forcing his flight to return to Ottawa about 30 minutes after it took off Saturday night. After more than an hour on the ground the flight left again and continued on to Belgium without further incident.

Canada will have to pass implementing legislation, which will move through the Commons easily because the Liberals have a majority of the seats. The European Parliament will also need to approve it, and EU watchers say this should not be a problem because there are enough votes behind the deal.

About 95 per cent of the agreement, including tariff reductions and the lowering of other trade barriers, can take effect after the European Union and Canada pass it. Barring unforeseen events, this is expected to happen in early- to mid-2017.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• blogTO lists ten zine artists of note in Toronto.


• Centauri Dreams reports on new simulations of gas giant formation.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos of Halloween partiers in New York City's West Village circa the early 1990s.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports that the system of HR 2562 may include a brown dwarf.


• Joe. My. God. notes that a Northern Irish party leader has vowed to block gay marriage because of Internet rudeness.


• Language Hat considers the complexities involved in translating the Odyssey.


• Language Log reports on how the Chinese word "daigou" might be infiltrating into English.


• Marginal Revolution notes the popularity of an Indonesian coffee shop known for its cyanide, and reports that East Asian men contribute little to parenting time.


• The NYRB Daily reports on a new exhibition about the Brontës.


• The Russian Demographics Blog charts references to Ukrainian separatists in Russia media.


• Window on Eurasia notes how some wish to abolish restive northern autonomous regions like Sakha, looks at how some Russian Orthodox activists wish to ban Halloween, and suggests Russia is isolated in its anti-Western sentiment.

[LINK] "Long, winding road from Senegal to Canada and back home for accused terrorist"

The Toronto Star's Allan Woods reports on a Senegalese accused terrorist with Canadian connections and his personal history.

As the child of a Senegalese diplomat, Assane Kamara was accustomed to finding his place in unfamiliar lands. In his 24 years, he had lived in Ivory Coast, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Madagascar.

But his privileged upbringing veered off course in 2014, prompting his worried mother to launch a search for her son, and leading her from the family home in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, to Friday prayers in an Edmonton mosque.

As she forced him to return home, a member of the Kamara family said that the questions swirled. What had become of the young man sent for an education at Quebec’s Université de Sherbrooke? Why had he cut contact with his family and moved to western Canada? And who were the devout Canadian Muslims he now counted as his closest friends?

In the months following the intervention, three of those friends — Samir Halilovic, Zakria Habibi and Youssef Sakhir — would flee Canada to try and join Daesh, the Islamic terror group in Syria and Iraq.

Today, Kamara sits in a Dakar jail facing terrorism charges that were laid in February 2016, based on allegations he had planned to join a jihadist group, Henry Boumy Ciss, a spokesperson for Senegal’s National Police, told the Star.

[URBAN NOTE] "As Mayor Tory hits midterm, no challengers in sight"

The Toronto Star's David Rider suggests that John Tory, arguably a latter-day Red Tory, is Toronto's inescapable future.

“I will work with the council that the people of Toronto elected tonight in moving Toronto not left, not right, but forward,” John Tory declared Oct. 27, 2014.

Two years later, halfway through what he hopes will be his first of two terms, it’s easy to find critics of the tax-averse mayor who launches pricey mega-projects unlikely to come to fruition before the next campaign in 2018.

It is difficult, though, to name anyone likely to beat him.

“I don’t see anyone at the moment who could challenge Tory — he has found a way to chart the middle ground,” says Adam Vaughan, the Liberal MP and former city councillor whose name arises when politicos talk about potential future mayoral candidates. “In Toronto, to win, to become the mayor, you need to be a centrist.”

Vaughan is focused, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s parliamentary secretary, on helping deliver a national housing strategy for cities. Attempting a return to Toronto city hall, he says, is “not on my horizon.”

Tory’s team, which celebrated his midterm mark at a private party Monday, has already started 2018 election planning.

[URBAN NOTE] "Another Scarborough Subway Boondoggle?"

Steve Munro is rightly scathing about the latest Scarborough subway controversy.

The Star’s Ben Spurr reports that the Glen Andrews Community Association in Scarborough has proposed yet another variant on the Scarborough Subway, and that this is supported by Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker and provincial Minister (and former Councillor) Brad Duguid. City Planning staff are already engaged in reviewing this proposal without any direction to do so from Council, according to Spurr’s article.

The scheme, nicknamed the “Big Bend” would enter Scarborough Town Centre on an east-west axis rather than the north-south route proposed by the TTC. It would veer east at Ellesmere and then make a wide turn bringing the route under the existing RT through the STC station area and continue to vacant space on the east side of Brimley. This open area would be used as the staging area for the tunnel construction akin to the sites on the Crosstown project at Black Creek and at Brentcliffe.

This would avoid creation of a staging area for the subway tunnel near Ellesmere and McCowan and limit the need to expropriate lands for the subway and a new station, but it would also leave the subway aligned in a way that would allow eventual westward extension to link with the Sheppard line.

Although this has been reported simply as a revised alignment, much more is involved in this proposal. Instead of twin tunnels, the TTC’s typical construction method, a single 12m to 13m bore would be used, one that could accommodate station structures within the tunnel and eliminate (or at least reduce) the need for surface excavation such as we have seen on the TYSSE station projects. The technical side of this scheme was put forward by Michael Schatz, Managing Director of engineering company Hatch (a portion of the former Hatch Mott Macdonald) which shows up from time to time as a consultant to the TTC and GO Transit. Whether this is an official company proposal, or a personal scheme, or some sort of “business development”, is hard to say. There is no reference to this proposal on the company’s website.

As for the politicians, De Baeremaeker in Council and Duguid behind the scenes at Queen’s Park have been meddling in the LRT/subway debate for some time. De Baeremaeker’s initial motivation appeared to be avoiding an election attack by a Ford stand-in challenging his dedication to Scarborough’s manifest subway destiny. Duguid’s role raises questions about who sets transportation policy in Kathleen Wynne’s government and just how much real commitment there is to any of the LRT schemes in Toronto beyond the Crosstown project now under construction.

At yesterday’s TTC Board meeting, De Baeremaeker was noticeably silent on this proposal, but instead focused on the need to get construction underway and end the delays which push up the project’s cost. (For a $3.6 billion project, inflation at 4%, the rate used by the TTC, adds $144m/year, or $12m per month plus the sunk cost of having the project team sit around working on alternative designs until Council makes a decision.)

This is not simply a case of looking at an alternative design for the STC area, but of reviewing the entire line. The larger tunnel would be dug at a different elevation, and the manner in which it would link to the existing structure at Kennedy, not to mention how it will co-exist with the planned eastern extension of the Crosstown LRT, must be worked out. Terminal operations for a pair of stacked platforms at STC also need to be designed if the TTC intends to run all service through to that point.