Welcome to the Canadian National Multilingual News Group (CNMNG). This is a project made possible through funding by Canadian Heritage. CNMNG aims to gather news researched and written by a corps of Canadian-based journalists/writers from the country’s multilingual community groups. The overall goal is to inform, analyze and critique the issues of the day in a professional manner and to provide that to publishers and editors active in the ethnocultural-multilingual press and media whose experience provides them with a perspective that is sensitive to news relevant to their own language group.
TORONTO – Trustee elections at the Toronto Catholic District School Board: the three candidates Frank D’Amico, Daniel Di Giorgio (two outgoing trustees), with another candidate, Gianfranco Cristiano, will host Saturday, October 8, from 2pm to 4pm, at Cataldi in Keele Street, Toronto, a “Meet and Greet”, to meet with the electorate.
TORONTO – The message sent by Ontario Premier Doug Ford to the non-teaching staff enrolled in The Cupe is unequivocal. “Please don’t strike, don’t force my hand,” he said today during a press conference in Hamilton.
TORONTO – Some MPs will say and do anything to get attention in the House of Commons. It is a crowded field. Most of them (myself included when I was there) have precious little to say that is of interest to the handful of people who may be watching the debates. Do not misunderstand, they actually do some fine research and delivery on topics of material impact on legislation.
TORONTO – Google against Bill 11. And even Bill 18 doesn’t seem so good. We are talking about the two bills of the liberal government that would force the web giant to promote Canadian content (Bill 11) and to share its entries with the publishers who provide the news (Bill 18).
TORONTO – If the federal elections were held today, the Conservative Party would get more seats than the Liberals: and Pierre Poilievre would become the new prime minister of Canada. (more…)
TORONTO – The fall in real estate market prices in Toronto continues. In September, the average cost of a home fell by 4.25%, marking the first year-on-year decline since the brick value began to decline last winter.
TORONTO – Everything increases: grocery, gasoline, mortgage payments and loans. But there are two things, only two, whose price has remained unchanged (or even has gone down) in recent months: bananas and marijuana. (more…)
TORONTO – Two suspects arrested while the hunt for two others continues. Today during a press conference at its headquarters the Toronto Police updated the residents of the city on the ongoing investigation into the growing wave of violent car thefts. Sometimes, drivers are even thrown out of their car. “One can only imagine the trauma of people whose vehicles are stolen by violent individuals waiting for them in parking lots, at traffic lights, even in the driveway of their home, who ambush them – said Inspector Rich Harris – with their actions they cause a heavy psychological impact on the victims”.
TORONTO – The pandemic is far from over: Covid-19 is growing again also in Canada, as in other countries: Italy, for example. And that “shouldn’t come as a surprise,” as McGill University genomic evolutionary biologist Jesse Shapiro put it. ““Even just based on waning immunity, the time since the average person had their last infection or their last booster, a wave was expected,” Shapiro told various news agencies. (more…)
TORONTO – No surprises. An overwhelming 96.5% of members of the Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU) voted in favor of a strike. This was stated today during a conference in Queen’s Park, the president of the union representing guardians, early childhood educators and school administrative staff Laura Walton. Now, Walton said, the negotiating team can return to the negotiating table “with a clear indication of the level of member support for cupe’s proposals.”
TORONTO – A finale shock: exiting the scene, the Covid-19 Science Advisory Table – set up to deal with the pandemic and dissolved in September – painted a gloomy picture of the state of health in Ontario. Unequal distribution of access to primary care throughout the province, lack of data and serious general communication problems, inability to contact family doctors, exhausted health personnel. A disaster, in short. (more…)
TORONTO – One listens to radio, I imagine, for background [sometimes relaxing] noise. Occasionally, the radio personality and the production team behind the program on air strike a chord. Recently, on my drive in to work, the host of Radio 1010 expressed incredulity at the system’s response to the Oakville teacher who made gigantic prosthetic mammary glands famous by wearing them to a shop class.
TORONTO – Toronto Deputy Mayor Michael Thompson and former Ottawa Senator Don Meredith (in the pics above) will face sexual assault charges.
TORONTO – The toxic, dysfunctional environment at York Catholic District School Board appears to have been resolved, at least for now. Tuesday, after months of push-back, the Chair of Board entertained a Motion to discuss allegations of discrimination and ethnic-based harassment against five trustees of Italian background as a breach of Conduct.
Police is looking for a driver who walked away after fatal Highway 400 crash happened around 3am in the southband lanes near the exit for Rutherford Road in Vaughan.
TORONTO – Ontario plans to extend the life of the major Pickering Nuclear Generating Station and is looking to see if it can keep the plant running for another 30 years in order to fill an expected energy shortage. Energy Minister Todd Smith said he had asked Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to keep the plant running beyond 2025.
TORONTO – Thank God for Publishers who still allow their writers to exorcise their personal demons on their pages. Otherwise, there would be no venues for data free opinions and dissemination, if not fertilization and cultivation, of hateful stereotypes.
TORONTO – House prices in Canada may soon fall further. A report by Re/Max Canada predicts a decline of 2.2% in the last months of this year. And the causes of this downward trend according to real estate agents are to be found in rising interest rates, record inflation and global and economic uncertainties.
TORONTO – It’s true: the world has changed and that news “travels” online. But it is equally true that newspapers (those made of paper) resist. And the community ones, like our partner Corriere Canadese, manage to “hold out” as much as the mainstream ones. (more…)
TORONTO – Over 170,000 Ontario residents, during the first six months of the Covid pandemic, found themselves without a family doctor. This is what emerges from a study, conducted by Unity Health Toronto and the non-profit research institute ICES. The number of family doctors who stopped working doubled between March and September 2020 compared to the same period the previous year.
TORONTO – The federal government has lifted all restrictions for Covid-19 at the borders, meaning that travelers will no longer have to provide proof of vaccination when entering Canada and will not be required to wear masks on planes and trains.
ROME – An overwhelming majority of the Center-right, both in the Chamber and in the Senate. With an army of deputies and senators for Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. It is the new framework of the Italian Parliament, which emerges radically changed by the last political elections. (more…)
TORONTO – This expression, of debated origin, but popular in the 20th century English lexicon, was used to “defer responsibility for some task or action to some unspecified other person”. Italians have placed their trust in Giorgia.
ROME – Her political history begins thirty years ago in a Roman section of the Fronte della Gioventù (the Youth Front of the far-right party MSI) where she arrives and, simply, knocks on the door. It is 1992 and she, Giorgia Meloni, is 15 years old and attends the linguistic school “Amerigo Vespucci”. She does not come from any “lineage” of the Roman right but, like so many of the ones who embraced political militancy in those years, she comes from a particular family situation: her mother, Anna, is separated, and also has another daughter (Arianna), and she does the most varied jobs to get by. All three live in a 45 square meter two-room apartment, a spartan home, without a sofa and with a single table where they can do their homework, eat and rest their elbows to watch TV. Giorgia and Arianna sleep on a mobile bed, “one for the head and one for the feet”, located in the corridor. (more…)
ROME – Everything as expected, or almost: even if as we write only exit polls are available, the crushing victory of Fratelli d’Italia, the first party, is already evident – according to the data of La7 – with a percentage included between 23 and 27%. (more…)
TORONTO – Rains, winds and storm surges very violent. Houses dragged by the waves, roofs uncovered, trees torn apart, wires of light knocked down, debris at every corner.
TORONTO – If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then the comical, burlesque picture of the Halton Public District School Board (HDSB) transgender teacher may turn out to be a proverbial game changer in parental choices for schools.
TORONTO – The Covid vaccine does not convince parents. The number of children under the age of five who are vaccinated against the virus in Ontario is even lower than the relatively small figure that many experts expected. Despite being available for two months, about 6% of the youngest age group have received the first dose.
TORONTO – Almost four years after the legalization of cannabis in Canada, today the federal government announced that the revision of the Cannabis Act will start: very late, therefore, since it was supposed to take place almost twelve months ago. (more…)
TORONTO – Fewer young owners, more Canadians for rent, more condos. This is the picture that emerges from the 2021 national census of Statistics Canada.
TORONTO – According to the 2016 Census, York Region has the highest concentration of Canadians who self- identify as being of Italian origin, 38% in the city of Vaughan alone. Most of them send their children to the schools administered by the York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB). The Board currently is governed by ten trustees evenly split between five trustees of Italian background and five who are not (including a member of a visible minority).
TORONTO – The constitutional rights of public sector workers engaged in negotiation are not violated by Bill 124 which imposes a wage cap in Ontario.
TORONTO – Food skyrocketing, just when the inflation is cooling: + 10.8% for shopping at the supermarket in August compared with a year ago, an increase that hasn’t been seen since 1981. Therefore, if inflation is down at 7,0% is largely thanks to the drop in the price of gasoline and nothing more.
LONDON (UK) – After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, calls to start a process to cut the umbilical cord that binds Canada to the British Royal House are becoming increasingly insistent.
TORONTO – The Halton Catholic District School Board election may turn out to be a test of the legitimacy of our electoral system, everywhere in the province. It is no exaggeration. Concerned parents are beginning to react to what they perceive to be a theft of their Constitutional right to have a say in what is being taught to their children via school boards.
TORONTO – He didn’t make it. The international student seriously injured last Monday in the shooting at MK Auto Body Repairs has died.
TORONTO – If one did not know it, the Municipal Democracy Index (MDI) confirms that our democratic institutions at the local level are crying out for serious reform, if not an injection of civic commitment. In 2021, out of a total of 150 possible points on the MDI scale, only eight (8) municipalities of the thirty-two (32) measured in Ontario received a passing grade of 75 or better. Neither Toronto nor Vaughan was among that acceptable group.
TORONTO – He spent more than two hours at the Tim Horton in Mississauga before pulling the trigger at Andrew Hong, the policeman who unaware of what was about to happen, entered the venue for a quick lunch. There, however, the Toronto police officer who was in Mississauga to give a motorcycle training course at the request of Peel’s police, found death.
TORONTO – September 13, twelve days before a national election in Italy, the New York Times broke a story about Russian plans to interfere in Western democratic governments. It referenced an Intelligence report citing an allocation of $300 million USD to buy senior politicos. The “project” (an old tried and true American CIA tactic) has apparently been in existence since 2014, covering twenty nations and four continents.
TORONTO – “Last week, Canada lost the only sovereign that most of us have ever known”: these are the words Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (in the pic above) said, today, during the official commemoration of Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away last week, in the House of Commons which met extraordinarily for the occasion. (more…)
TORONTO – After the initial shock at the cold-blooded killings of Toronto Police officer Andrew Hong and mechanic Shakeel Ashraf (in the pics above) on Monday afternoon, new details about the killer begin to emerge although the reason for the murders remains a mystery.
TORONTO – It might sound like bad news, but it’s actually good: most Canadians have contracted Covid-19 since Omicron and its highly contagious sub-variants first appeared. Virtually two out of three Canadians have caught the coronavirus. And the news is good because, according to experts, this, added to the massive vaccinations made, generates broad immunity or, in any case, greater protection against the more serious forms of Covid. (more…)
TORONTO – What happened on Monday in the GTA seems to have come out of Quentin Tarantino’s imagination but, unfortunately, it is not a movie: a gunman entered a Tim Hortons in Mississauga, killed a policeman who was having lunch with his colleagues and then he fled to Milton where he went inside a body shop, killing one person and wounding three others, ending up killed in a firefight with the police. (more…)
TORONTO – In the 1960s, frequently referred to as the golden age of popular music in Western societies, there was no shortage of songs whose lyrics aimed at having the listeners reflect of the ‘human condition’ and the wistful failure of ideologies to produce the Utopia they espoused. It was not all grim.
TORONTO – The challenge is now before the Superior Court of Justice where hearings began today for controversial Bill 124, the law passed in 2019 that limits salary increases to one percent per year for Ontario public service employees and general public sector workers, including nurses and teachers.
TORONTO – Great party organized by the Carpenters District Council of Ontario at the Paramount Event Centre to celebrate Tony Iannuzzi, Executive Secretary Treasurer of the carpenters’ union, who has retired. All the executives of participating locals were present for the evening, starting with president Mike Yorke who co-chaired the event.
TORONTO – This is not his first attempt at elected office. The first time was preparation round, he says. Given the complexities associated with the Italian electoral system, especially as it pertains to becoming elected as a representative of the Italian Diaspora in the Italian Parliament, many random factors have to fall into place to secure election, not least of which is the position of the party whose colours in the electoral premises of the electorate in Italy.
TORONTO – I am not a monarchist. However, I swore allegiance to the Crown, Canada’s Head of State and Guardian of our Constitution, when I was inducted into Cabinet as a Privy Councillor. My reactions to the passing of the venerable Queen Elizabeth II are conditioned by that.
TORONTO – Another weekend of blood. Three dead and seven wounded are the toll of various shootings and stabbings: from Etobicoke in North York, from downtown Toronto to St. Catharines.
***This project is made possible in part thanks to the financial support of Canadian Heritage;
