If Toronto councillors had $1 billion, they’d be digging, reported the Toronto Sun April 16. Improving the city’s transit infrastructure and service, specifically extending the TTC’s subway system, was the most popular choice for how to spend a billion dollars if it landed in Toronto’s lap. The councillors wanted to see the subway reach York University and Steeles Avenue. York University bus routes are packed every day with students and a subway would ease traffic and allow the area to intensify development along the route, up Keele Street to Steeles, councillor Karen Stintz said.
Osgoode wins international mooting competition
York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School has beaten 136 universities from 42 countries at a prestigious international mooting competition – the first Canadian institution to do so, reported The Globe and Mail April 16. The six-day contest, held in Vienna last week, involved teams of law students making legal arguments in simulated commercial arbitration cases. “The competition involved elite US schools like Harvard and Columbia,” Osgoode Dean Patrick Monahan said.
A study by Monahan was also cited the same day in a column by the Globe’s Jeffrey Simpson, about filling two Supreme Court vacancies. According to the study, Charter claims have succeeded 52 per cent of the time since January 2000, compared with 34 per cent in the 1996 to 1999 period. Monahan’s study showed that departing justices Louise Arbour and Frank Iacobucci were among the court members most receptive to Charter claims. They both sided with the majority, for example, in the court’s stunning five to four ruling upholding the courts’ role in supervising remedies, a responsibility previously considered the prerogative of governments, wrote Simpson.
On air
- A study by Moshe Milevsky, a professor with York’s Schulich School of Business, shows that people who take short-term mortgages actually save money in the long-run, reported CBC Radio’s “Radio Noon” in Montreal April 15.
- Rachel Turkienicz, a York education professor who is also with the Centre for Jewish Studies, discussed what is fuelling recent hate crimes, on CBC TV’s “Canada Now” in Toronto April 15.