Decision brings Pan-Am Games one step closer to York, says Star

The good news for fans of Canadian football in and around Hamilton is that the new stadium proposed for the Tiger-Cats will be just that, a football stadium, wrote the Toronto Star July 29.

Track & field is not going to be part of the Hamilton experience for the 2015 Pan Am Games. Backers of both proposed sites for the stadium recognize that a multi-lane track around a Canadian Football League field, which the Ticats want no part of because of the attendant lack of intimacy, is a non-starter.

This all means track & field will be moved back to Toronto and York University remains the leading candidate. There or Downsview. Either place a new, small, stadium is required

Track, soccer, possibly swimming – away from the U of T’s Scarborough campus, where soil remediation alone could cost upward of $150 million – and cycling are among sports facing venue changes for the Pan Ams, said the Star.

Rogers isn’t being predatory, says Middleton

Competition in Canada’s wireless network took another twist this morning with the launch of Rogers’ flanker brand dubbed Chatr and a confirmation that Mobilicity intends to make good on its threat to take the wireless giant to court, wrote the Toronto Star July 29. Mobilicity lawyers are preparing to launch legal proceedings against Rogers and intend to file a complaint with Canada’s Competition Tribunal.

Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, said based strictly on what should be free market principles, Mobilicity shouldn’t have a case. “What giants do is try to maximize the different markets they compete in,” said Middleton. “This is not predatory, unfair stuff where they are picking on the little guy.”

Corporate ‘democracy’ is politicizing corporate structures, says York prof

Corporate and securities regulation appears to be moving rapidly towards a more shareholder (rather than director) centric governance model, wrote Edward Waitzer, Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corprorate Governance in York’s Osgoode Hall Law School and the Schulich School of Business at York University, in a column about changes in securities rules in the National Post July 29.

The immediate issues are the impacts of this trend. For one, the politicization of corporate governance has become a preoccupation for boards, arguably at the expense of other significant issues. Another is the fact that the process is now fuelled by a thriving cottage industry that has evolved around shareholder voting. This raises concerns about the separation of voting from investment decision-making, the delegation of the former to proxy advisory firms and the manner in which that process may serve to exacerbate short termism in corporate decision-making (measuring performance in, at best, annual cycles).

Somewhere along the line (in our rush to pile on new corporate governance standards) purpose and process have become divorced. The irony is that, even as we impose ever-increasing accountability requirements, public distrust in the efficacy of the system continues to escalate, wrote Waitzer.

Osgoode grad enters race for Cobourg mayoralty

Martin Partridge (LLB ’87) stepped up to the starting gate at 11am Wednesday when he filed his papers in the office of municipal returning officer Lorraine Brace in Victoria Hall, wrote NorthumberlandToday.com July 29 in a story about municipal elections in Cobourg.

“I believe Cobourg is at a crossroads,” Partridge, 62, said in an interview. “Cobourg is a beautiful, well-run town, but it has expensive tastes.”

Partridge has a degree from York’s Osgoode Hall Law School. He spent 23 years in the computer industry, starting out at IBM and ending up owning a software company before he went to law school in the 1980s.

On air

  • Alan Middleton, professor of marketing in the Schulich School of Business at York University, spoke about the success of the latest Old Spice commercials, on 680News radio in Toronto July 28.