Is it legal to steal back something that was stolen from you?

Recently in the news: a guy finds his stolen bike and steals it back.

I wonder if that's legal?


He accosted the guy who was riding the bike and demanded that he hand over the bike.  I think, technically, that's mugging. If the guy riding the bike wasn't actually the thief and had just bought the bike on craigslist or something (he said his friend gave him the bike), he might have no idea it was stolen. And suddenly some guy drives up in a car and insists that he hand over his bike?

In this particular case, they were certain that it was the right bike because the serial number matched the police report.  But if he hadn't been certain, if he hadn't been able to check the serial number immediately, this could have been a mugging.

In the article, the police say he shouldn't have approached Bike Guy and should have called the police instead, citing personal safety.  But what's the actual legal status here?  Is it legal to steal back something that was stolen from you?  Is it legal to coerce, intimidate, or threaten someone into returning something that was stolen from you?  What if you break into someone's home to steal back what is rightfully yours?  And what if the guy on the bike wasn't the thief?  What if he had actually bought the bike on craigslist or something?  Is it illegal to have stolen property in your possession even if you didn't steal it yourself?

On the death of a TTC worker

This is what I blogged after a TTC worker died on the job in 2007. I think it still applies today.

Mind blown: "I have never spent a single moment of my life in fear of being sexually assaulted"

Mentioned in passing by Corey Mintz in his Fed column with Stephanie Guthrie:

No one has ever paid me less because I’m a man, and I have never spent a single moment of my life in fear of being sexually assaulted.

This blows my mind. I have spent every moment of my life in fear of being sexually assaulted, starting the day that I was 9 or 10 years old, saw the word "rape" in a newspaper article, and innocently asked my mother what it meant.

Fear of sexual assault isn't the dominant emotion at all times, of course. Most often it's shuffled pretty far down the pile, underneath things like "What's the best way to manage this enormous project I've just been assigned?" and "It looks smoggy outside" and "What else was hidden in the omnibus budget bill that hasn't come to light yet?" and "I should call my grandmother" and "When are the Cortland apples going to come out?"

But it's always present. I'm always aware of it, like how you're always aware that you might get hit by a car or lose your job or get cancer. So the idea of someone having never spent a moment in fear of being sexually assaulted is as mind-blowing to me as the idea of someone who has never, even for a moment, worried about losing their job.

Gentlemen: does this reflect your reality?

Apparently more women are using contraception in the US than in Canada

I was surprised to see on this chart on the situation of women in different countries that 72% of women in Canada are using modern contraception, and 73% of women in the US are.

This surprises me a bit, because, at least based on the news that makes it up here, the US seems to have more policies intended to make it difficult to get contraception and seems to lack some policies that we have that make it easier to get contraception. I would have assumed that, because of this, a slightly smaller percentage would be using contraception in the US.

The article doesn't define the concept of "women using modern contraception", so it's possible it might include male condoms being used by the woman's male partner. I haven't heard anything about making condoms difficult to access in the States, what I've been hearing is more about cost of and access to medical care, which would affect access to thinks like birth control pills, IUDs, diaphragms, etc.

It would be really interesting to see numbers on a) percentage of the population who wants to use more contraception than they're currently able to, b) proportion of unwanted pregnancies, and c) percentage of the population deliberately not using contraception (either because they're "trying" or because the particulars of their private life are not going to result in a pregnancy).

Why is Google encouraging people to move away from Web and towards apps?

I was rather disappointed that Google is discontinuing iGoogle, but outright shocked that they're suggesting using a selection of apps to replace it.

I use iGoogle to get an at-a-glance overview of what has updated since I last checked. I can see the subject lines of any new emails in my inbox, the titles of new articles in my Google Reader, the headlines of news articles on topics for which I have google alerts set up, the current weather and whether there's a thunderstorm alert, plus a few fun things like word of the day and joke of the day and daily puppy. Checking whether anything needs my attention takes about 5 seconds and can be done anywhere with internet access (at home, at work, at a friend's or relative's house, and on my ipod anywhere where there's open wifi).

To do this without iGoogle, I'd have to log into Gmail and Google Reader separately, scroll through Google Reader (and mark anything I wanted to read later as unread), get my news alerts delivered to my email and open each email separately - it would probably take at least 5 minutes to verify whether there's anything that needs my attention.

Using apps would not only be less effective, but it would also be detrimental to Google's primary mandate of indexing and making accessible the world's information because, as I've blogged about before, information contained in apps is ungoogleable. It seems to me that goggle would want information to be on the web and accessed through browsers, because then it can be indexed and searched. Information on a website accessible through a browser can easily be accessed by people with mobile devices, but information in an app is in a silo and can only be accessed by people with specific devices.

I can't imagine what Google is thinking with this decision. It seems like blind trend-following, and I can't see any benefit to them or to us.

The other problems with the catcalling construction workers sign

Recently in the news: a construction sign suggesting that the construction workers are going to harass passers-by.

1. I think it's unfair to the workers to make them work behind a sign like that. Essentially, they're forcing the workers to work all day behind a sign labelling them as "Hi, I'm so pathetic I can't even handle the normal everyday situation of seeing someone of the opposite sex walk by!" That is a massive insult to the many many many construction workers who are perfectly capable of conducting themselves like normal human beings. If I were a worker in this situation, I'd be protesting the signage and also looking for another job.

2. Some people have complained that the sign was taken down, saying that the complainers lack a sense of humour. I think this is beside the point, because the sign is essentially advertising. Its point is "We'll have new stuff here soon! Check back and see what it is!" In essence, the purpose of the sign is to make its audience want to come back. But, in reality, the sign is making some of its audience want to stay away, because it gives them the feeling that the space is less safe than they thought it was. So regardless of whether the sign is actually funny (although, as John Cleese has pointed out, a piece of humour is only funny when the audience thinks it's funny), it is counterproductive as a piece of advertising. If the tool you're using is making things worse, you switch to another tool. It's that simple.

I'm surprised that the bullied bus monitor video is surprising

I'm not surprised by the level of cruelty shown in the recent video of a middle school bus monitor being bullied. What surprises me is that so many people are surprised, and that the bus monitor was unprepared for this situation.

I want to be perfectly clear: I am not in any way suggesting that the kids' behaviour was even remotely acceptable. I am not in any way suggesting it should be shrugged off just because it's so common, and I'm not in any way suggesting that the bus monitor should have to be exposed to that behaviour.

It's just that, even before this video, if you said to me "A middle school bus monitor is a job that exists. Would you do that job?" I would have answered no. And the reason why I would have answered no is a) I would expect the behaviour of middle school students on a school bus to be very much like what is shown in that video, b) I would assume the bus monitor's job is to stop them from behaving that way, and c) I have no idea whatsoever how to even begin doing that. And my basis for these conclusions is the fact that I went to middle school and took the bus.

I'm very interested in the experiences of the people who were surprised by this. Did they never take the school bus? Did they somehow have a bully-free middle-school experience? (If so, how?) If I could figure out a way of asking without sounding assholic, I'd also want to ask what the bus monitor expected to happen, and why.

But, in any case, I'm glad this video has raised awareness among those who, for whatever reason, weren't aware that this is the reality of middle school buses, and I hope it reaches some people who are able to change the situation. I hope it gets the instigators in trouble (without getting the other kids who happened to be on the bus in trouble - when I was in middle school the whole bus would get in trouble, which was doubly punitive for those of us who weren't involved because not only were we trapped in a bus with dickheads, but we were also being punished for being uninfluential in the vicinity of dickheads). And I hope Ms. Klein is able to use the money raised to enjoy a nice peaceful retirement and never have to ride on a school bus again.

On "policing femininity" in sport

In a move critics call “policing femininity,” recent rule changes by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, state that for a woman to compete, her testosterone must not exceed the male threshold.

If it does, she must have surgery or receive hormone therapy prescribed by an expert IAAF medical panel and submit to regular monitoring. So far, at least a handful of athletes — the figure is confidential — have been prescribed treatment, but their numbers could increase. Last month, the International Olympic Committee began the approval process to adopt similar rules for the Games.

South Africa is ground zero of the debate. An estimated 1 per cent of the 50 million people here are born “intersex,” meaning they don’t fit typical definitions of male or female.

For female athletes, this may mean they were born with hyperandrogenism, a disorder in which they have hormone levels similar to those of a man.

Sometimes, the distorted levels result from conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome, which causes a hormonal imbalance in the body, while other cases are pure hermaphroditism, where women are born with some male reproductive organs.

Many elite athletes have bodies outside the range of what is typical. They might be taller than usual (basketball) or shorter than usual (gymnastics), or have unusual bodily proportions (e.g. Michael Phelps), or have a high ratio of muscle (weight-lifters) or a low ratio of fat (distance runners). I'm sure many athletes also have cardio or lung capacity that is far better than the human norm. If their hormone levels are naturally occurring, they're just another physical atypicality that makes people especially well-suited to their particular sport.

If they're going to police hormone levels and force athletes to artificially alter their hormone levels or withdraw for competition, they should also be policing things like unusual height or proportions or lung capacity. If they insist on hormone levels being within a certain range of the human average, they should insist on that for all physical characteristics.

Plastic bag braindump

1. "But Whole Foods doesn't use plastic bags and they do fine..." The experience of an individual store not providing something is not indicative of the experience of its unavailability in the entire city. It's easy to plan for one store in your many errands not having bags - if you misestimate, you can always get an extra bag from another store. But it's far more inconvenient, and your planning has to be far more perfect, if you can't get another bag, at all, ever, from anyone.

Analogy: most shoe stores will put an extra hole in your sandal straps if you ask them to. I once went to a shoe store that didn't have the tool to do that with. No big deal, my regular shoemaker was willing to do it for free. However, the relative inconvenience of that one non-hole-making shoe store is not indicative of the impact of banning that shoe-strap-hole-punching tool from Toronto city limits.

2. "Shopping without bags is easy! All you have to do is get these bins and keep them in your trunk..." Not if you don't have a car it's not. Since the stated reason for eliminating plastic bags is environmental, all discussion of the matter should focus on the carless trip chain, which benefits from things like light weight and waterproofness and handles and not having to carry big bulky sacks around all day just because you might want to stop in and pick up a couple of things after work. Making it more difficult to live without a car would be even worse for the environment - especially since this is Toronto, where there are many high-density neighbourhoods with shops within walking distance or public transit of homes. And, because I'm frustrated by how often people are promoting a car-based outlook in the name of environmentalism, I'm instituting a new rule: everyone who says it's easy to do away with plastic bags and then cites a car-based example is banned from using a car on their next comparable shopping trip.

3. "But I don't like plastic bags. I have sooo many of them and I don't even like them!" So why do you keep taking them? I've seriously seen this multiple times - people who actively embrace a ban because they feel that they have too many plastic bags in their own home. I don't like those awful "reusable" bags and already have more of then than I'd like, so I don't take them any more, not even when they're being given away for free. I also don't like cantaloupe. Or tampons without applicators. Or bubble gum. So I don't buy any and say no thank you if they're ever offered to me for free. It's really rather simple. Just because you have trouble saying "No thanks" or not reaching out and accepting what is thrust in your direction is not a good basis for a ban. "And sometimes they get holes in them!" So do shoes. And underwear. And "reuseable" bags for that matter. That isn't a good reason to stop (and ban!) their use.

4. "This is a failure of leadership by Rob Ford." No, it isn't. Don't get me wrong, I have no fondness for Rob Ford and would love to seize a chance to criticize him, but it's not his job to make council not vote stupidly. It's council's job to not vote stupidly by virtue of being remotely competent adults. In fact, because we don't have a party system at the municipal level and voted for our councillors on the basis of a non-party system, it would be morally wrong and a betrayal of voters for the mayor to whip the vote. (I know he attempts to do so from time to time; that is something you can cite when looking for examples of poor mayorship.)

5. Would the cost to retailers make it worth adhering to the ban? Some media coverage (e.g. the first letter to the editor here from C.R. Ihasz) has mentioned that paper bags are significantly more expensive to retailers than plastic, and some coverage has mentioned that some retailers have already ordered and paid for enough plastic bags to meet their anticipated needs for the next 12-18 months. I haven't seen anything about what the consequences of providing plastic bags after the ban would be, but it seems like the sort of thing that would be punishable by a fine. It might be more cost-effective to retailers to continue providing plastic bags in violation of the ban, and just accept any fines as the cost of doing business.

Also, paging C.R. Ihasz: I would like to know the name of your store so I can direct some of my business there.

6. How will this affect farmer's market farmers? When I purchase soft, easily squishable produce (peaches, strawberries, etc.) from a farmer's market, I have them put the Foodland Ontario basket in a plastic bag and carry the bag around by the handles. That protects the fruit from being bruised or smashed as much as possible while keeping it clean and easy to carry. But when I buy harder, sturdier produce (apples, carrots, etc.) I have them take it out of the basket and just put it in a plastic bag. The basket isn't necessary to keep the fruit from bruising or smashing, and it's lighter to carry that way. The farmer keeps the baskets I don't use and fills them up again the next week. But if the farmers can't provide plastic bags and we have to do our market run with reusable bags, then we'll have to keep all our baskets to keep the fruit as segregated as possible in the reusables (or else the apples will bruise the peaches and the carrots will burst the berries.) I'd be using twice as many baskets under these circumstances, which means that my farmers would have to buy twice as many baskets (which are surely significantly more expensive than bags.) Plus, I have no use for the baskets once I get my food home, so that's something even bigger and bulkier going into the waste stream in addition to my usual one plastic bag a day.

7. What about retailers who reuse plastic bags? Some small businesses I patronize (i.e. owner-operated, only one or two employees) don't have their own plastic bags. If I need a bag for my purchase, they give me a bag they used when they bought something at a store, or promotional bags given to them by their vendors. Including these in the ban may would be ridiculous.

8. Legislate handles! If it turns out that City Council isn't able to undo this ridiculous over-reaching ban and retailers are left only able to provide us with paper bags (which would actually increase my household waste footprint, because I have no further use for paper once I get them home so they'd go straight into recycling while I still throw out one plastic bag a day full of food waste), City Council should pass a law requiring all bags to have handles! At least that would solve the logistical problem of an errand trip chain with multiple stops. It's true that a handle requirement would be far beyond the scope of what City Council should be legislating, but so is an outright ban.

Spiting Rob Ford: ur doin it wrong

Dear Toronto City Council:

I totally get wanting to stick it to Rob Ford. I'm no fan of the man myself. He came into work early on his very first day to cancel Transit City, which (as I explained to him in email shortly after his election) would hurt me more than any other government policy enacted in my lifetime. With that action, he lost any further benefit of the doubt I might have given him, and, before we even get into policy quality, I'm not above enjoying a little flicker of schadenfreude every time he's defeated.

However, by banning plastic bags in Toronto, you've just ensured his next election victory.

What you've done is introduced an inconvenience that people will notice every day, and that Ford opposed. Every single time someone ends up buying more groceries than they planned for; every single time someone opens the hall closet and their stash of those bulky annoying "reusable" bags that it's never actually convenient to use falls on their head; every single time someone needs to get shoes repaired, go to the farmer's market and buy clothes all in one trip; every single time someone runs out of garbage bags because they keep forgetting to buy garbage bags because they've never had to buy garbage bags before in their life because their grocery bags have always done the job, this irritant you've introduced will come up and slap them in the face.

As we know, Ford appeals to voters who don't closely follow the details of municipal politics, who don't have (or don't care to have) a broader view and are more likely to vote on things that affect them personally and directly. We saw this in the last election, with people swayed by groundless claims that a subway could be built quickly and cheaply, or by the prospect of saving a measly $60 a year on vehicle registration tax (an amount so negligible that they wouldn't even notice if $60 were pickpocketed from their wallet over the course of a year.) If spin and catchphrases and negligible cost savings could win him an election, imagine what a tangible daily irritant will do!

There are many things you could do to spite Rob Ford that will also make life easier and more fun for Torontonians. You could restore the library and bus services that were cut. You could build more bike lanes. You could extend Pride funding. You could build all of Transit City in its original form.

Or you could solve this whole plastic bag debacle by requiring stores to give away biodegradable plastic bags. As I've blogged about many many many many many times before, biodegradable bags would make environmentally optimal behaviour effortless. You don't have to remember to bring your reusable bags, you don't have to remember to buy garbage bags. You just go to a store and buy stuff without thinking about bags, and they give you a biodegradable bag. Then, when you get home, you reach for the nearest plastic bag to use for garbage, and it's biodegradable. You'd have to go out of your way to put plastic into the landfill. And, as an added bonus, it would spite Rob Ford because he's not so very into the City telling businesses how they can do business. You could also do so by extending the organic waste collection program to highrises, which will spite Rob Ford by costing money to implement, and do way more to address your ostensible goal of reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfills than a plastic bag ban would.

What do urban planners do in the private sector, and why is this even an option?

From an article about why urban planners apparently don't want to work in Toronto:

He calls his interview in Toronto a “positive experience;” even so, he was smart to go back to Lotusland, where he works as a planner in the private sector, and as president of the Council for Canadian Urbanism.

and:

Councillor Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina), a noted planning wonk, says Toronto’s lack of investment in its planning department turns off applicants.

“Every good young planner jumps ship because it’s better pay, better hours and more respect from clients if they work in the private sector.”

What on earth do urban planners do in the private sector? Why and how does private sector urban planning even exist? How can a private company plan a city? Doesn't urban planning inherently need to be done by the people with jurisdiction over planning the city?

It seems to me that private-sector urban planning would be analogous to a company whose business model is to barge in and tell people how they should renovate their houses. But, since these things exist, clearly I'm missing something. Can anyone explain to me why and how private-sector urban planning exists?

While The Men Watch is a flawed concept

Recently in the news: something called While The Men Watch, which purports to be sports commentary for women who aren't into sports.Some argue that it's sexist because it assumes that men are watching sports and women aren't, but there's an even bigger flaw in its core concept:

The flaw is the idea that you need special programming just because your partner has appointment television that you're not interested in.

Most people are competent adults with more than enough things that they have to do and want to do. If your partner is watching something on TV that you're not into, it's not like you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs. All the things that you have to do and want to do still exist.

For example, yesterday after work I made some very yummy pasta with asparagus and alfredo, watched a couple episodes of HIMYM (I'm catching up on the series lately), read the newspapers, caught up on my twitter feed and my google reader, sent a message of support to Eddie Izzard and checked out what kind of press he's getting after having to abandon his latest marathon challenge, watched the new Springsteen video, chatted with a friend and admired her latest baby videos (My Favourite Little Person, who is now six months old, can eat corn on the cob despite not having any teeth!), stripped the bed and washed the sheets, indulged in some fanfiction, enjoyed a few chapters of the Eve Dallas book I'm currently rereading, and played Sims a bit. No big deal, just a regular at-home evening, unwinding from the workday.

And all of that is exactly what I'd be doing if I had a partner watching a hockey game in my living room. And all of that is perfectly targeted to my needs and interests. Why do they think they can do better? Why do they think we think we need them to?

Opposition to a casino in one's own neighbourhood is a public space issue

In the news today: a poll showing that people are more likely to oppose a casino if it's in their neighbourhood.

The media is generally interpreting this as either NIMBYism, or as a sign that people don't want gambling to happen near them.

But I don't think that's the whole story. I think it has more to do with the physical structure of a casino and its interface with the streetscape.

I have the impression that the casino they're talking about is meant to be rather large, to draw tourists from all over and also to host live performances. Casinos are traditionally designed to be windowless, so gamblers are less aware of the passage of time. So this has me (and, likely, your average citizen) picturing a big windowless box with a giant parking lot - a dead zone without eyes on the street replacing what is currently a bustling street full of shops and patios.

That sort of thing doesn't fit in most Toronto neighbourhoods. Most of our streets are already full of homes and businesses where people live and work and shop. When we picture a casino in our neighbourhood, we wonder what healthy, thriving buildings that we use every day would have to be torn down. I blogged before about how I find myself hating a development that plans to tear down businesses that I use all the time, and this is for a developer who's building a condo in my neighbourhood - exactly what I'm in the market for! Imagine how much more opposition would come to tearing down things people use all the time to build a casino, which most people use very rarely, if ever.

The locations being discussed for a casino (Ontario Place, Woodbine, etc.) are already separate from the streetscape and the day-to-day functioning of neighbourhoods. Either there's enough space to build it without tearing anything down, or they'd be replacing one tourist-magnet entertainment complex with another tourist-magnet entertainment complex. It has no impact on most people's day-to-day lives.

But if you take the hypothetical scenario into the respondent's neighbourhood, suddenly an implicit part of the question is "Do you want to replace some existing functional aspect of your neighbourhood with a casino?"

Asking people if they want a casino in their neighbourhood is akin to asking if they want a racetrack, or an amusement park, or a zoo, or a football stadium, or an airport, or a large hadron collider. If you say no, it isn't necessarily because you're opposed to any of these things as general concepts. It may well just be because you're already full.

How does the Crown have access to people's mental health diagnoses?

A series of cases occupying the country’s highest courts has cast a spotlight on Crown attempts to probe the personal backgrounds of prospective jurors, potentially undermining the sanctity of the jury system.

[...]

The most contentious case involves a 2007 murder trial in Barrie, Ont., where the Crown was privy to private, background information about the mental health, age and driving records of many of the 280 citizens in the jury pool.  

Important question: how did the Crown come about information about people's mental health? That's medical records.  Does the Crown also know that I have GERD?  Does it know that I had strep throat at xmas?

And here's why everyone should be worried about it, even people who have never sought mental health care: in my experience with mental health care, I didn't just talk to my mental health care provider about the specific issues that are in the DSM.  I also talked to them about my parents' personality traits and my partner's sexual proclivities and the pros and cons of being friends with my friends.  So if mental health information is somehow available to the Crown, any information about your interpersonal relationships with anyone you might know who has sought mental health care should logically be available by the same means.

Teach me about the Canadian Forces drug plan

Reading this article, the following description of a drug program the Canadian Forces is considering cutting struck me as odd:

Within government, officials have expressed concern for years about the rising cost of the wildly popular Viagra program, which saw members limited to six of the little blue pills a month — at a cost of between $15 and $22 per pill.

The article gives the impression that the Canadian Forces have a Viagra program that is separate from their ordinary drug plan.  Is this actually the case, or are the numbers quoted above just what happens when you apply the ordinary drug plan to Viagra?

In any case, I think it's inappropriate for Viagra (or any other drug) to get special treatment.  It shouldn't have a special program, it shouldn't be specifically cut back.  Choices of specific medications should be between doctor and patient, and drug plans should cover what the doctor prescribes.  To prioritize or pick on specific drugs because they make someone's inner 12-year-old snicker makes you no better than Arizona. 

Things They Should Invent: give the collections of closed government libraries to Google

Apparently they're closing government libraries.  Which is a problem in and of itself, but more distressing is that some of the collections might get thrown out:

Transport Canada's library is now closed, too, with seven workers informed Monday their jobs are obsolete. They will now spend months packing up and told CBC News much of the collection will soon be in the trash.

[...]

Some archives are being tossed because there is no central library and so many departments are closing their libraries.

Solution: any materials that would otherwise be thrown out should be given to Google. 

Yes, giving public assets to a private corporation is generally not a good practice.  However, if they are otherwise going to go into the trash, giving them to Google will at least preserve the information.  It won't be properly catalogued like in a library, but they can scan and index it like they do with Google Books, and at least it will be searchable. 

They could also probably be convinced to index the English and French versions of documents in parallel, since that will add to the corpus they use for Google Translate (which definitely needs the help - I recently saw it translate "Bill Cosby" as "projet de loi Cosby"!)

From the point of view of Google, this would be a major donation, so I'm sure the government could negotiate an agreement whereby in exchange for the donation Google commits to indexing it and making it searchable and accessible to everyone.  It would cost nothing, and protect our public assets rather than destroying them.

The Queen's hats

When I was younger, I thought the Queen looked disproportionately frumpy, by which I mean that, even taking into account her age and the styles of the day and her need to dress conservatively, she looked frumpier than she should given all these factors.  But in the past decade or so, I stopped thinking this.

Looking at this retrospective of her hats, I realize why.  Brimmed hats are much more flattering on the Queen than brimless hats, but it seems she's only started wearing brimmed hats in the past decade or so.

Based on what I've read of the Queen's fashion strategy, this is probably for utilitarian purposes. She wants people to be able to see her, and a brimless hat shows her face much better.  Unfortunately, it also adds a dozen years and makes her look mean.

However, in the past decade or so, the royal milliners seem to have solved the engineering problem of designing a brimmed hat that still shows enough of the Queen's face so she can be photographed.  Well done, but I'm kind of surprised that it took 50 years to achieve that.

How to cool the Ontario housing market without hurting ordinary people

Recently in the news: Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney wants to cool the housing market.

This made me think of subsection 6(2) of the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act, which states:

(2)  Sections 104, 111, 112, 120, 121, 122, 126 to 133, 165 and 167 do not apply with respect to a rental unit if,

(a) it was not occupied for any purpose before June 17, 1998;

(b) it is a rental unit no part of which has been previously rented since July 29, 1975; or

(c) no part of the building, mobile home park or land lease community was occupied for residential purposes before November 1, 1991. 2006, c. 17, s. 6 (2).

Section 120 of the ORTA applies to the guideline rent increase, which means that properties that were built or started being rented out after 1998/1975/1991 (as applicable) are exempt from the rent increase guideline, and the landlords can raise the rent by however much they want.

So to cool the housing market, they should either remove this exemption, or place a time limit on it like there was in 1992.

From the point of view of an ordinary person hoping to break into the housing market simply to purchase a place to live in, the problem with the housing market is investors. They have lots of money and go in buying up condos en masse to rent out and perhaps later flip, taking them away from those of us who need to be prudent and evaluate a unit from the perspective of "How would I feel about pouring my life's savings into this and living here for the rest of my life?"

If the exemption from the guideline rent increase is eliminated, rental properties will be less attractive investments. It wouldn't make them completely unattractive investments, but a limit in how much you can increase rent where no such limit existed before should cool the market a bit by making investors more cautious.

But this will not make condos any less appealing to ordinary buyers looking for a home for themselves.  It will simply take some of the investors out of the market and leave more units for the rest of us.

It will also have the advantage of improving long-term affordability of newer (and therefore better-quality and more energy-efficient) rental housing, thereby making better housing more accessible for everyone.

Who are these people and why do they live in Toronto?

“I know Rob Ford. He is a far more tolerant individual than many of the people attacking him. Ford’s problem isn’t homophobia, nor does he have a hidden agenda to take away gay rights. His concern is that his participation in a Pride event, particularly the parade, will tick off his political base. But Ford needs to remember his base consists of a lot more people than social conservatives.” - Adrienne Batra, former press secretary

The precedent of the Mayor of Toronto participating in Pride is over 20 years old.  If there are in fact people who are so vexed by a mayor doing this part of the mayor's job that they wouldn't vote for that person for the job of mayor, why are they still living here?  Nearly everywhere else has a smaller, quieter Pride (and there are probably still some smaller towns that don't have a Pride).  Surely they'd be more comfortable elsewhere?

How M 3-12 is setting back all of society

The real problem with M 3-12 is encapsulated in this image:

I've recently been working on my primary client's two most important projects of the year.  There are some awkward-to-translate phrases that keep popping up, and I'd really like to reflect and brainstorm on them and come up with something that sounds smooth and idiomatic in English to improve my client's credibility in the eyes of the English-language audience they're trying to convince.

I heard on the radio this morning that Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney thinks the housing market needs to be cooled.  My shower gave me a few ideas that might actually cool the housing market without harming ordinary citizens and would solve some other problems that exist in the Toronto housing market at the same time, and I really want to get that refined and blogged.

I've been reading about various strategies used in schools today to make kids less inclined to bully, and I think some of them might not work and might actually do more harm than good.  I want to sit down and work on explaining my child-self's visceral "That won't work!" using my adult articulateness and post it here so the people with the ability to change anti-bullying programs can google upon it and keep it in mind when refining their programs.

But I don't have the time and mental energy to give to all these things, because I have to give that time and energy to fighting for the same scope of medical care that was available to my mother when she was my age.  My mother!  Who is old enough to collect CPP!

When reading the first few paragraphs of this post, you were probably thinking "So what? That's nothing special.  Everyone has ideas that they want to work on and perfect."

And that's my point exactly.

Everyone has a few ideas in their head that they want to work on.  Most people probably have more than I do, since I'm so far on the introvert side of the scale.  We think about these ideas, let them fester, brainstorm, journal, talk them over, try things out, and eventually arrive at something that's new or innovative or an improvement on the status quo or otherwise helps make our little corner of the world better.  That's how society progresses.

But now that we suddenly have to put all this time and energy and effort into a tedious rehashing of what was settled a generation ago, we have less time and energy and effort to put into the new and improved and innovative.  And this is slows down the progress we make as a society.

Simple demographics show that the majority of Canadians are potentially affected by or care about whether abortion is available when needed.  Even if you are one of the few who isn't affected and doesn't care, you can still see how it will slow us down to have so many people have to drop everything and focus on the old and redundant.

 With some regularity, the news reports that Canada has to improve its productivity and innovation.  How can we be expected to do this when those in power keep forcing us to rehash the same old thing?  This is detrimental to everyone, regardless if they'll ever need to end a pregnancy.