Ontario

(By Daniel Caudle / CTV News)

(By Jeff Pickel / CTV News)

Opposition leaders call for resignation of housing minister, for decision to be reversed

I got an email I had assumed was a scam but it's not asking me to click any links or do anything beyond contacting one if many law offices.

It just says there's a class action lawsuit against life labs regarding a data leak and that I've automatically been included.

Buy how did this legal group get my email? Is this how class action lawsuits work now I'm just tossed into them?

I suppose I could contact one if the lawyers the email mentions but did anyone else get this?

Update: spoke with a family member who also received this. They also have a lot of experience with these. His advice was to ignore it. If they win check back on how to claim a few bucks.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/2995708

The report, makes a definitive link between the Premier’s Office, the housing minister, a central political staffer who drove the project, and developers who benefitted from the deal.

The end result: the owners of 15 parcels of land removed from the Greenbelt will see the value rise by $8.3 billion, according to the auditor general.

This may be off-topic, but please be kind.

I'm moving back to Ontario this month from the UK and will want to buy a mid-range TV (50" or so). Where do people go these days? There must be alternatives to Best Buy.

The Ontario government has spent about $7 billion less than planned this year, according to the province’s budget watchdog, including about $1.6 billion less in healthcare largely due to a tapering of its COVID-19 response.

In a report released Wednesday by the Financial Accountability Office (FAO), officials say that unaudited spending through to the end of March 31, or the 2022-23 fiscal year, totalled about $187.1 billion.

This is about $7.2 billion below planned spending. The FAO said this money can be used to reduce the province’s deficit and net debt.

As such, the office projects a small budget surplus in 2022-23 of $37 million.

Jeffrey Novak, Acting Financial Accountability Officer, told reporters Wednesday the underspending is “a little bit higher than average.” He noted that the average over the last four years is about $5.9 billion. However he also said that last year the government’s underspending was below average.

“This is a $2.2 billion improvement compared to the Province’s deficit projection of $2.2 billion in the 2023 Ontario Budget, tabled on March 23, 2023,” a statement reads.

“The difference between the two forecasts largely reflects more up-to-date information available to the FAO, which includes more recent spending information.”

The report found that all sectors spent less than planned, with areas like “other programs” and “health” leading the way.

Just over $1.6 billion less was spent within the health sector this fiscal year. A large portion of this was funding for population and public health to the tune of about $416 million, which the FAO notes was driven by about $341 million less for the COVID-19 response program.

This includes, Novak said, things like COVID-19 testing and the impact of the vaccine rollout.

“It was those kind of factors that were lower than the previous year,” he said.

The province also spent about $435 million less for “health services,” which includes about $279 million for the operation of hospitals and $137 million for home care.

The province also transferred just over $2.7 billion from its contingency funds to various other programs.

Ontario Liberal Finance Critic Stephanie Bowman released a statement calling the underspending “fiscally irresponsible.”

“This underspending has a direct impact on our lives: it is felt when the local hospital ER is closed, when children do not get the classroom supports they need, and when people are on the streets because this government is failing to provide housing and mental health supports,” she said.

“This government pretends that they are broke so they cannot be asked to fix what is broken. Every quarter the FAO proves them wrong. The people of Ontario deserve transparency in our public finances, and they deserve a government that works for them.”

A spokesperson for the Office of the President of the Treasury Board told CTV News Toronto in a statement that "FAO opinions are not representative of actual government spending."

"In the past five months, the FAO has changed its outlook on health spending three times. Just over a month ago, the FAO said we're overspending on health care, postsecondary education, and other program sectors by billions of dollars. Now, it says that we are underspending on those same sectors by millions," Christopher Martin-Chan said.

"Our government will continue with our responsible, targeted approach to build a strong Ontario."

Final audited accounts are expected to be released in September.

We get a lot of posts about news in this Ontario community on Lemmy.ca, let’s get some variety!

By Stefanie Davis / CTV News

By Kierstin Williams / APTN News

By The Canadian Press. Don’t forget to vote!

The province said it’s focused on “maintaining stability for taxpayers” and the “postponement does not have a financial impact on municipalities.” (By Kenyon Wallace, Diana Zlomislic / Toronto Star)

Non paywall link: https://archive.ph/2023.07.25-023057/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-launches-review-of-tdsb-handling-of-allegations-from-principal/

The Ontario secret trial came to light last week, when the province’s Court of Appeal ruled publicly on the accused person’s appeal of their conviction and sentence.

(COLIN PERKEL/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

OPINION: A new report calculates how much you’d have to make per hour to afford rent. The result is an indictment of all levels of government

DriveTest.ca website even says the camera shouldn't be used for assisting, but this guy seems to want her to look at the tracing drawn by the rear camera to calculate the positioning and the turns she's supposed to make. That sounds crazy to me. Should she look for another instructor? She was recommended this one by colleagues in her ESL school. This is for the G2 road test by the way.

Edit: I get that it's useful to have the camera, but I guess what you are missing is that she's not learning how to do it, she knows, she wants to know how to do it in the way the G2 tester expects her to do it.

(Ian Bailey / The Globe and Mail)

(Jordan Fleguel / CP24)