1 SOME JOKE ABOUT PEAK HOUSING, SUMMITS, ET AL Mayor Michael Fougere took to the stage at this week’s housing summit to announce that he plans to establish some kind of special committee on housing, a development nobody could have predicted and which is sure to have a definite and immediate impact on the totally fucked housing and rental market in Regina right now. Plus apparently “[Fougere] also announced he will host another housing summit next year to revisit the rental housing issue.” Yaaay! Okay, sure: in his defence, Fougere has committed to bringing the vacancy rate from one percent up to three percent by 2017, and the committee will be charged with streamlining our bylaws so that it’s easier to build and rent housing, both of which are good things. Now they just have to come to pass.
2 MY AMBITION AS A HUCKSTER Speaking of conference summit networking whatevers: Brad Wall is in Pittsburgh right now, promoting Saskatchewan’s carbon capture technology. I wonder if he has the legal right to even bring it up. Ha ha, just jokes!
3 YOU GO, GIRL The Toronto Sun ran a transsexual Sunshine Girl for the first* time in its history and, in a refreshing turn from a Quebecor-affiliated outlet, the editor’s response was literally, “She’s cute and we ran her photo.” In other words: Whatever, who cares! It’s pretty cool how chill the paper’s being about it, and it’s also obviously really funny reading the comments from Sun readers experiencing serious inner turmoil over the whole thing. (*Note: Apparently editor-in-chief James Wallace claims the Sun has run transsexual Sunshine Girls before without anyone noticing, which, alright, cool, dude! But Bangladeshi immigrant Amelia Maltepe is the first one to be recognized as such and is so matter-of-fact about the whole thing that she deserves serious props. Go Amelia!)
4 FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff paid off the $90,000 in housing expenses of ambulatory thumb and terminal bootheel-licker of the powerful Mike Duffy, because of course he did. “Mr. Duffy agreed to repay the expenses because it was the right thing to do. However, Mr. Duffy was unable to make a timely repayment. Mr. [Nigel] Wright therefore wrote a cheque from his personal account for the full amount owing so that Mr.Duffy could repay the outstanding amount,” Harper’s spokesman Andrew MacDougall apparently had the balls to tell the press. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of questions, but my main question is how on earth Senator and former primetime TV host Mike Duffy didn’t have $90,000 to slap into his chequing account, but civil servant Nigel Wright did?
5 B.C ELECTIONS [RELEVANT CLIP] B.C. Liberal leader Christy Clark is now the premier of a majority government in B.C., surprising the shit out of everyone, as the fact that she lost her own seat came as a given. For further analysis, check out the contrast between the URL and the headline on the National Post’s story, and also remember that “Oh yeah, the suburbs.”
6 AND NOW, 20 AMAZING QUOTES FROM GUY FIERI’S NEW MEMOIR “It was a lightning bolt of an idea in Flavortown that pranked the un-prankable mayor, Guy Fieri.”
