Some in this city believe they’re the “envy” of the rest of Canada.
City bureaucrats will fan out across Toronto this summer to analyze the angle of the sun at different times of the day, measure the amount of direct or reflected sunlight and assess the “quantity and usability” of shade in parks, playgrounds and pools.
The “shade audits” are part of a pilot project authorized by city council this week that could soon result in Toronto regulating shade.
HEADLINE:”Dermatologists warn of doctor shortage as skin cancer rates rise”
BURIED DEEP IN THE ARTICLE:”We’re not saying don’t have fun out in the sun,” she said. “Go kayaking, play tennis but protect yourself.”
– CBC http://tinyurl.com/5qrcjh
HEADLINE:”Deadly skin cancer rates rise among young women”
IN THE STORY:”a trend that might be related to an increase in the use of tanning parlors” – Vancouver Sun http://tinyurl.com/5k5ktr
“The occurrence of skin cancer has been increasing in Canada at a fairly constant rate over the past 30 years.” HEALTH CANADA http://tinyurl.com/6p6opk
While rates are in fact increasing, it is not near to the hysterical level reported by the MSM.
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Crummy schools, crumbling infrastructure, closing or curtailing of public facilities, an utterly incoherent and business-hostile planning process (converting industrial lands to condominiums is fine, but where will the businesses go? Outside Toronto, that’s where), a Mayor who eats up vast amounts of City Council time and energy going after law-abiding gun owners, and the reaction of council members is …
Oh look! Not enough shade! We need a Shade Audit, and a Standing Shade Committee, and a Shade Policy and Design Mandate, and a Shade Equity Ombudsman to ensure that skin cancer rates are equally distributed regardless of race or ethnic group…
How about reminding people to use sunscreen? How hard would that be?
If my business wasn’t so tied to the financial sector, I’d leave this stupid town (and some day, I will). Any chance the insurance companies would relocate HQ to Alberta? Or would Albertans even want us? Probably not — why would, say, Calgary want a bunch of pushy bourgeous socialist migrants with enough money to contaminate their politics? **SIGH**
These would not be the same statists who rail against high rise development because it blocks people’s right to sunlight. No, I’m sure not.
…mushrooms.
Something about mushrooms.
This is a study regarding mushrooms growing in Toronto right?
This would be really funny if it wasn’t such a dumb-ass, typically leftie idea which serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Like, what’s the problem??????
Toronto’s parks are a disaster: weedy and garbage-strewn, with drunks sleeping it off on benches, so why would the bureaucrats give a good gol darn how much shade its citizens can sit under?
Natch, cleaning up Toronto’s parks isn’t on the agenda, just more salaries for TO’s bureaucratic parasites to carry out some useless shade surveys: no doubt, they’ll hire their own kids and grandkids to do the job.
Oy vey. More of my money going down the Moron Miller Sinkhole.
“…based on the number of children that typically play in an area…”
“…children using its parks…”
First we have to regulate transfats and junk food in schools because of the obesity epidemic — because the current generation would rather play video games or watch TV than play outside. Then we have to regulate shade in the parks they don’t use. Makes perfect sense.
“Three found dead in vehicle in west end ” (sprayed with bullets) Maybe they should not worry about the sun and build bullet shades
When one builds a bureaucracy, ya gotta feed it.
Those thousands of hungry mouths lined up at the public trough HAVE to be doing something, or at least be seen to be doing something.
If you build it, they will expand it.
City council has, of course, looked at all of the studies that show daytime shade reduces the rate of skin cancer across all demographics, right? …right?
City council has, of course, looked at all of the epidemiological studies in Toronto that show that Toronto’s skin cancer rates are sunlight-clustered in Toronto, right? …right?
City council has, of course, looked at all of the studies that show the critical balance needed between Toronto solar insolation profiles and the desired ratio between over-exposure to sunlight leading to skin cancer and the minimum daily requirement to maximize vitamin D production in multiracial demographics, right? …right?
City council has, of course, looked at all of the studies that show the critical balance needed between Toronto solar insolation profiles and the desired ratio between over-exposure to sunlight leading to skin cancer and the minimum daily pineal gland requirement to maximize circadian physiological balance in multiracial demographics, right? …right?
City council has apparently decided that managing children is no longer a parental function and that sun exposure should be regulated by the kid’s parents. Oh, wait, yeah, illegal firearm use in Toronto, city council has decided that parents don’t have an obligation to police their offspring in Toronto.
Then why is the city wasting money? All David Miller has to do is the same thing he does whenever failed parental responsibility raises its head in Toronto:
a) Blame the US.,
b) Blame citizens that don’t have kids,
c) Blame the citizens that don’t have kids in other provinces.
d) Make statements like “nobody needs to not have kids in our cities. I hate non-kid parents. The federal government needs to ban all non-kid parents in Canada.”
Some of these people are heavily invested in tin foil hats. These will ultimatley be the cure all for shade, sun and cancer.
Forget freedom of choice: I guess the next phase of this hairbrained plot is to decide how many kids can be tethered to each tree. I notice in many parks and schoolyards that the kids–silly them!–often decide to play in the sun, e.g., on the basketball court or baseball diamond, etc., rather than under a tree. We can’t have that now, can we?
Miller and his crew are brain-dead fascists!
Three more people shot in Toronto this weekend. That means Mayor Miller of Left will pop out before the cameras to call for a ban on handguns then pop back into his hole until next shooting.
That city has run the gamut from Toronto The Good to Toronto The Good Gawd What’s Happened?
They can certainly look to the Liberals for a lot of blame. They’re responsible for bringing in misfit immigrants and proliferating ghettos.
How about an IQ audit of Toronto City Council?
LOL loukout!
Isn’t it the same city where you can’t plant a tree younger than nine to ten years old, otherwise it just dies, because of the pollution?
Should ban kids under ten from the parks as well then, I mean really it’s for their well being as well, no?
/yes, yes of course.
ops, sorry LOOKOUT, hit send before preview…my bad.
I remember seeing a graph one time of the rate of skin cancer directly compared to the sales of sun screen and they rose in exactly the same way over the last 30 years. It’s not hard to imagine the so called “sun screen” is actually causing skin cancer. All the sun screen does is mask the symptoms of being in the sun too long (sun burn) so you can stay out in it much longer than you should be. It’s not actually screening anything as all that sun is still hitting your skin and being absorbed, it just doesn’t burn. (kind of like taking pain killers to mask a serious problem) Just my opinion on why cancer rates are going up so fast. By the way, what ever happened to the ozone layer thing they pushed so hard for so many years? Never hear a word about it anymore.
Wow, ldd, I never thought of that! Yes, ban all kids from parks and, le voila, problem solved!
Mind you, after wasting yet more of the taxpayers’ hard-earned $$ and finding the shade quotient isn’t working (duh), that’s probably the next step in their program.
What asshats.
These “shade audits”, while laudable, won’t solve the problem soon enough to save many innocent sunshine victims.
It’s time for a complete ban on sunshine. (This will help with “global warming” as well.)
Why won’t the Prime Minister act?
There have been several major studies in the last few years that have shown that the lack of vitamin D, which is produced from sunlight, in northern latitudes is a significant contributor to numerous illnesses.
It is not unhealthy to get sun exposure. It is a necessity, and Canadians, on average, do not get enough sun exposure, including kids.
These councillors are doing more harm than good.
This is great news. It means that the city of Toronto is so well-managed – garbage collected, pot holes repaired, buses clean and efficient, etc. – the councilors have the time to turn to other matters. Yeah, right.
Stupid beyond belief…
Even by Toronto standards
And they set the stupidity bar pretty high!!!
Yesterday I was listening to the radio and some guy was babbling on how it was bad to hang and dry your clothes outside. It’s the pollen don’t you know.
Now I don’t know about you but if I had it together
hanging my clothes and bed stuff out to dry outside would be the only way to go as a matter of fact we do some stuff.
Whoever these people are they are going to disinfect themselves into the grave. Their immunes sytems won’t be able to fight off an imagenary cold never mind something big tough and real.
Governments with far, far too much money and a belief that their holy calling is to save the commoners from themselves. Democracy does not guarantee freedom, it has to be combined with limited government.
The Toronto city council is
1. a waste of skin
2. a cancer on this country
That is the main skin and cancer problem in Toronto.
Consider that the most at risk from the suns rays are the fair skinned kids. Since are almost none of them left in the GTA, I don’t see the point.
If they want to do something nice for the current swath of kids in Toronto, they could start with camel rides in the parks. Just to make all the new immigrant families in Toronto feel more at home.
They have shade, it’s called “smog”.
Sunscreen, apparently, is bad for you. Skin is porous. So, the chemicals which ensure you don’t burn are absorbed into your system as toxins.
Now, maybe the asshats at City Council could look into THAT. (Though I imagine more than a few of them have stocks in pharmaceuticals– justification for the “just use a condom” sound bites in our schools courtesy of public health nurses.)
VOTE.THEM.ALL.OUT.
Why doesn’t Millar just ban UV?
Uh huh lookout, soon TO kids will be tethered to leftist designed ergonomically approved x-box/trike or bike contraptions, complete with fake trees, flowers and plants all INSIDE a nice modern facility! Yep the little kiddies will be bathed in leftist approved lighting mediums of dim florescent lights to protect them from the real world, er I mean the evilness of the rest of us damed sun loving capitalists.
And all the little kids will be organized and categorized by skin colour, just to prove how progressive “we” all are.
We must be having an epidemic of children dying of skin cancer in Canada…Better hope cbc doesn’t see this, we’ll be in for another five years of “pandemic” the sky is falling crapola.
Anyways, IMHO, obesity is gonna kill more of these ‘kids’ than skin cancer will.
And where does this cancer-causing sunshine come from?
Most of the day, it comes from the south!
That’s right, George Bush wants to kill Toronto’s babies, whether its with handguns or sunshine.
Well I happen to agree with this study and the city of Toronto. This study was long overdue and it should be obvious to all that the city fathers and the citizens of Toronto have been out in the sun to long. It is also quite oblivious to me that cataracts caused by excessive sunlight is responsible for the hazy vision of their surroundings. It must be like the desert for these people, mirages everywhere, hallucinating, reality dehydration, take this seriously as those elected and the city staff are poofessionals.
“where you can’t plant a tree younger than nine to ten years old, otherwise it just dies, because of the pollution?”
I’d think you were kidding, but having lived out west for a fair number of years, i’m well aware of the loony mythology that surrounds the hated Trawna.
I suppose it’s only fair; i still laugh about seeing a tumbleweed in downtown Regina.
I used to be proud – and I mean truly PROUD – to be from Toronto. I thought we had avoided the problems of American cities – the ghettos, the crime, the transport, etc.
Now.I am just ashamed.
Hey, this otto be a piece of cake after the way Miller solved TOs gun problems!
And if he doesn’t solve it, then he can blame BushHitlerHarper and ride to power in the next election on shade fearmongering rhetoric.
Open 24/7 daycares on subway platforms. Two birds, one stone.
“Why doesn’t Millar just ban UV?” because then only criminals will have UV. /sarc
Perhaps a UV registry, revenue neutral of course.
Toronto born and bred, happily escaped to the land of the sane people 24 months ago. I am ashamed and embarrassed of my hometown. I knew there was no hope when his blondess was a shoo in for the last election. Couldn’t get outta there fast enough.
Message to Torontoians: there IS life outside.. try it!
Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, who represents suburban Etobicoke, said there are many children who live in high-rises in her ward and have no other places to play other than in parks. She said that makes safeguarding their future health a public health issue.
Hey, Gloria, the kids have to cross streets with traffic to get to the park, are you going to study and fix that too? And, don’t leave out a poison ivy and sidewalk cracks count either.
See what happens when you elect the most inane of Parent Teacher Assoc. types to public office. Someone made the observation somewhere that stuck with me that when you feminize a culture you leave it open to be eaten by the next nasty macho male warrior culture. Look no farther than the Euroweenies’ decline and the real chance that the Islamists will conquer them in due time.
The US Congress is riddled with these moronic busybody types. Dumb broads like this bring are the rest of us females down.
And yet the irony is that there are regulations that limit the amount of shade a building is allowed to cast, used to limit building height, generate setback provisions etc.
Just plant some more trees in more parks…generically that is a good idea. A little late to be conducting the audit. Should really be a summer job for some geography or urabn planning students…get em cheap to gather data. Using city bureacrats…EXPENSIVE….and why they are bragging about it, I bet every other city in the continent has data about tree shade in all its planning documents…..
OR we could just ban Toronto……problem solved!
“While there is no cost attached to the preliminary shade audits of the pilot project, a city report states funds could be required down the road if canopies and structures must be built: “Future financial implications may result”
Brace yourselves, Torontonians, this is going to cost you big time. That last sentence,”future financial….etc.”, is the only one that counts.
Why do they need shade with all the thick smog?
I was there on friday, and it was terrible!
They even have “smog alerts” on the buses.
…hope they take into account lunar eclipses.
Wouldn’t be complete study, we also need to know how many times there will be a lunar eclipse in Toronto.
(I’m really biting my tongue here…)
..Dang! Someone beat me to it.
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070825230530AAFAmbD
The partial eclipse officially starts at 4:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, and after a few minutes you’ll notice a bite beginning to be taken out of the top of the moon.
Over the next hour, more of the lunar disc disappears until by 5:52 a.m. Eastern the earth’s shadow completely covers it, the beginning of totality.
By now, the sky will have brightened considerably and you’ll be able to see the ghostly eclipsed moon only with greater and greater difficulty. Over the next few minutes you’ll lose it in the brightening dawn sky.
After that, it’s anti-climax.
Is there no end to stupid. With ground breaking research telling those in cold climates to get “more” sun … the idiots in Tarana are looking for shade. It’s been reported for a good 3 years now that we in the cold climates need more sun, not less:
http://www.harvardvanguard.org/info/news/mind/GStone_mb_0704.asp
ldd, how about Bubble Kids: hermetically sealed bubbles around each one to protect them from everything?
But I think I like MaryM’s idea better: ban Toronto. Maybe Mayor Miller will go for it!
Kate, Ezra’s had a death threat made against him- use Binks’ links here:
-Red Alert–
Be alert, neighbor.
“It’s naive to think that if we put all this infrastructure in our parks they won’t be impacted by the rays of the sun,” said a right-of-centre critic, Councillor Karen Stintz.”
So refreshing to know that “common sense” is defined in a Toronto paper as “right-of-centre”.
Bubble kids and Shade audits… hmm. Does have a similar tone to it. LOL
Somewhere in there someone must be laughing their butts off at this, I mean besides us.
What about those naked paraders? They do it every year in the sunniest month of the year here.
Can they be banned for setting a bad example for the kiddies? So much skin exposed to the oppressive occupying sun?
No? Sh*t. Was hopping…
And what about all those weekend party-ers! Sex with strangers is risky and dangerous, can also result in children who will then be at risk of skin cancer. Might as well as ban strangers too.
Well Lookout as you stated MaryM has it, just ban TO. Personally I’d throw in QC la la land as well. 😉
http://ezralevant.com/2008/07/guy-earle-comedy-benefit-updat.html
This is true.
the topic was Gay and Lesbian issue,
apparently some one, May one of the lesbian
Threat the Ezra Levant site
At 10:30 PM said in the comment