ETA Canada News

The Buttonville Municipal Airport, northeast of Toronto, is closing its doors in celebration of its 60th birthday. Buttonville, which has trained thousands of citizens pilots, disappears into the dark side of history at the end of November when it is pushed by land and building development companies.

It is located on the corner of Highway 404 and Markham 16th Avenue, 30 km from downtown Toronto.

The Aviation School of Seneca College used this place as a training ground for 45 years before moving to Peterboro.

After that, the Canadian Flyers College took over and used it, but raises both hands due to lack of income. The closure of Buttonville is a huge disappointment to would-be pilots. Many of the commercial pilots who have worked here now work for airlines such as WestJet, Porter, and Air Canada.

Buttonville was also a base for police planes and ambulances, and many businessmen used it to rush in and out of Toronto.

There are also light airfields in Oshawa and Brampton. Some residents near the airport welcomed the news. In January, a small plane crash-landed on 16th Avenue between Woodbine and 404.

The plane ran off the runway and barely took off. There were no casualties, but residents complained that they were sometimes worried because of the heavy air traffic.

The airfield land was owned by the development company Cadillac-Fairview.

As auto theft is rampant in Canada, insurance payments are increasing astronomically, and the damage is reaching the level of a ‘national crisis’. According to the daily Globe and Mail on the 6th, the ‘Fair Association’, a non-profit organization specializing in insurance crime investigations, said in a report on car thefts that the insurance industry lost more than 1 billion dollars due to insurance claims due to a sharp increase in car thefts nationwide last year. The loss in the previous year was $700 million.

“There is no question that car theft in Canada has reached national crisis levels,” said Terry O’Brien, the association’s president. “Canada’s auto theft is committed by criminal organizations both domestic and foreign,” he said.

Auto theft is highest in Ontario and Quebec, each rising nearly 50% last year.

In Ontario, auto theft increased by 48.3 per cent in 2018 compared to the previous year, so insurance claims in the first half of 2019 surpassed all of 2020, the report said. It was found that the targets of the crime were mainly new sports utility (SUV) models produced after 2017.

Toronto and Montreal are hotbeds of car theft gangs because they are densely populated metropolitan areas, the report noted. It was analysed that the two areas are easy to use for crime because they are adjacent to the port of Montreal, a representative automobile export port.

An official from the association explained, “If the car theft surges, the burden on consumers suffering from rising prices and housing shortages will inevitably increase.

Before the spread of the new coronavirus infection, the Coal Harbor fireworks, which were popular for Canada Day in Vancouver, have been cancelled this year as well. Since 2019, it has been cancelled due to the new corona, and it is not expected to be resumed now.

The biggest reason is the increase in costs, which exceeds $200,000.  The fireworks are part of Vancouver’s Canada Day event, and last year the event was renamed Canada Together instead of Canada Day.

The daytime Canada Together event will continue, with more details coming soon. In response to this, Vancouver Mayor Ken Shim told CTV News that it was “very disappointing” and that he would like to work with the parties concerned so that the fireworks can be resumed in the next few years.

In Metro Vancouver, cities such as Surrey and Burnaby are launching fireworks at their Canada Day events. The Honda Celebration of Light, held at the end of July every year in Vancouver, has been revived since 2022.

On the 18th, the City of Vancouver announced the FIFA World Cup 26™ Official Host City Brand. “As we prepare for the opening of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, we are thrilled to introduce Vancouver to the world,” said Vancouver Mayor Ken Shim in a statement.

This is just the beginning, and we hope that everyone in the city, state and country will join us in celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” A total of 16 cities will host the World Cup 2026 in the three countries. Each city is developing its own FIFA World Cup 26™ official brand for this tournament.

The City of Vancouver explains that the new design is a dynamic logo that expresses majestic mountains and watersides, and a vivid colour inspired by nature. From now on until 2026, many places in Vancouver will display this design, creating excitement. “With the announcement of Vancouver’s official host city brand, we feel we have taken another step forward for our big event,” British Columbia Premier David Evey said in a statement.

According to estimates by the BC Tourism Board announced by the City of Vancouver, the economic effect of hosting the World Cup in Vancouver on the tourism industry will be $1 billion over the five years following the Games. Vancouver and Toronto will host the 2026 World Cup in Canada.

The venue in Vancouver will be BC Place. From 2026, the number of participating countries will be expanded to 48. Vancouver 2026 World Cup Official Slogan: We are 26, we are Vancouver!

A 6-year-old girl suffered minor injuries from a coyote bite in Burnaby’s Deer Lake Park around 10:15 am on May 14, according to the BC Conservation Officer Service. The coyote said she was there after the incident until the girl’s parents drove her away. Park Rangers and Federal Police were unable to find coyote after rushing to the scene.

The BC Conservation Officer Service and the City of Burnaby are preventing recurrence by displaying signs and patrols. On May 10, around 8pm, a 2-year-old child was bitten by a coyote at Lions Park in Port Coquitlam and suffered minor injuries. Police were able to locate the coyote and was killed.

Subsequent investigations revealed that the coyote was eating food that was not found in nature. In the wake of the two incidents, conservationists have urged people not to feed wild animals and have said they will take enforcement action if necessary.

At the John Fisher Junior Public School, a public school in the midtown area, a police investigation was launched on suspicion that three staff members locked a 6-year-old black male student in a storeroom-sized room for about 30 minutes.

It all started on March 2nd, when the student’s mother was isolated in the back of the classroom by a support group called “Parents of Black Children.” I protested that I was there.

Parents of the class started a signature campaign to protect the teacher, and 35 people, including black parents, have already participated. It seems that many parents feel that they should not deny the teachers’ enthusiasm and positive attitude toward their work. After the report, two more students said they had been trapped. A few days later, the school dismissed the three suspected teachers, claiming that “an investigation found no evidence of imprisonment.”

Last year, Toronto received 10,000 noise complaints. Most of the noise was from bars, nightclubs, and concert venues.

The city intends to set zones to control noise, but there are many cases where the rules are ambiguous, such as when restaurants become nightclubs only late at night. Especially in a two- or three-story apartment building with a restaurant on the first floor, the noise is so loud that some people can’t sleep until midnight. In 2020, there were 6,821 complaints, but by 2021, there will be 9,822 complaints.

Surveys have shown that this number is much higher than noise pollution caused by construction work. There are limits on how loud and time the heavy machinery used in the construction can be put out, but there is also a view to further controlling noise from bars and nightclubs.

As a result of the Toronto Vacant Home Tax, which was implemented for the first time this year, 2,100 of all housing units were found to be vacant.

According to a spokesperson for the City of Toronto, 96% of Toronto’s approximately 775,000 homeowners have filed a vacant rent return. The City of Toronto has sent vacant house tax bills at 1% of the current property value to owners of vacant houses and unreported owners (considered vacant).

Experts are of the opinion that “there are not as many vacancies as expected” regarding the results of this report.

“This low vacancy in the first year means Torontonians generally do not leave their homes unoccupied,” Professor Murtazar Haider Tedrogers told the media. In Toronto’s housing market, which needs hundreds of thousands of homes, this level of vacant housing will not improve the supply shortage.”

Toronto Metropolitan University Professor Sheris Verda also positively evaluated the system, but said, “The fact that there are few vacant houses shows that most of Toronto’s houses are ‘in-house’, whether rent is cheap or expensive. Vacant rents are just one piece of the policy puzzle to address a range of problems, and we ultimately need to build more rental housing.”

The vacancy tax was modeled after the vacancy tax introduced by Vancouver in 2017 as a measure to encourage investors to rent or sell homes that are not in use.

In 2020, there were 1,755 vacant homes in Vancouver, of which 49% were converted to occupancy the following year after the introduction of the vacant rent tax. Vacancy tax is levied on houses that are vacant for more than six months in a year, but it is mandatory to report the state of occupancy even if the house is not vacant. Cases where the landlord has died, is in a hospital or long-term care facility, is undergoing major renovations or renovations, or is in the process of legal transfer of ownership are exempt from taxation.

The Vancouver Pride Society has announced that the 2023 Vancouver Pride Festival will be extended by one day to two days, offering more activities and entertainment.

This year’s Pride Festival will be held on August 5th and 6th. The annual Pride Parade will be held on the 6^th of August. This year, the route will be revamped, starting at Davie Street and Denman Street, then continuing along Beach Avenue and Pacific Street before arriving at the new festival venue, Concord Community Park. The distance of the parade was also reduced from 2.7km to 3.1km.

The society’s president, Madison Holding, said the new route was designed with access and space issues in mind. It will be easier to participate,” he said.

The Pride Festival started in 1978. Among them, the parade is a big event in Vancouver that attracts about 100,000 spectators, and it will be resumed in 2022 due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection.

The recent sustained high temperature and dry weather have fuelled raging, out of control wildfires in western Canada. are pointed out as the cause. In Alberta the state of emergency has been declared by the provincial government due to forest fires across the country, and 25,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate.

“There have been 110 wildfires to date, burning 122,000 hectares of land,” Premier Daniel Smith said on the 6th. Moreover, large wildfires are spreading to the northwest of BC and Saskatchewan, and 33 of the fires are out of control. The fire department is putting out 6 helicopters, heavy equipment, and ships to put out the fire, but the fire is seldom caught due to dry weather and strong winds.

In Ontario, 79 firefighters were dispatched. In Canada, wildfires are common in western regions. Two years ago, large wildfires broke out in about 300 places in BC, and the provincial government declared a state of emergency and evacuated about 33,000 residents.

Four years ago, in 2019, a fire in northwest Alberta forced 4,000 residents to evacuate. In 2016, a massive wildfire occurred in the Fort McMurray area, reducing a tenth of the city to ashes and causing billions of dollars in damage.