Last Thursday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision upholding a search of a drug dealer’s garbage bags is sensible and reflects a genuine concern for a balance between liberty and law enforcement, wrote James Morton, adjunct professor in York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, in the National Post April 14.
When the rights of accused are at stake extreme positions are common. Some argue that police efficiency ought to trump rights – if you have nothing to hide why should a search bother you – while others make extravagant claims for privacy rights ignoring the fact that crime itself limits freedom in society. The court took a middle ground and protected privacy while allowing for law enforcement, said Morton.
Former prof and mayor documents high cost of suburbia
In his highly informative new book, The Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s Sprawl, former Toronto mayor and York professor John Sewell examines the local history of suburbia and includes facts and figures that in themselves tell a fascinating, if damning, tale, wrote the Toronto Star April 14.
His is a story of land-use policies so ineffective they have allowed developers to squander much of the most desirable real estate in the country…. In this way, Sewell points out, "low-density development has imposed much higher capital and operating costs than more compact development…in the order of $1 billion per year in the GTA, or more than $1,000 per family per year for those living in the fringes."
In a photo caption, the Star wrote Sewell’s book picks up where his 1993 volume, The Shape of the City: Toronto Stuggles with Modern Planning, left off. This meticulously researched book began life as a series of lectures given at York University in 2005 and the following year at the Gladstone Hotel. As fearless as he is informed, Sewell has never been known to pull a punch, wrote the Star.
Non-contact hockey gathers steam
Alison Macpherson, a professor at York University’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science who researches childhood injuries, said kids under 15 shouldn’t be bodychecking at all, wrote The Toronto Sun April 14 in a story about a new no-contact hockey league. "The position taken on bodychecking in the medical community is that it should not be introduced until kids are at least 15," Macpherson said.
- Macpherson also spoke about bodychecking in hockey on television stations in Terrace and Dawson Creek, BC, April 13.
On air
- Bernie Wolf, economics professor in the Schulich School of Business at York University, spoke about a recent report by the Canadian Auto Workers union on AM640 News April 13.
- Alan Young, criminal law professor at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, took part in an on-air discussion about prostitution on CP24-TV’s “Legal Briefs” April 13.