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Toronto's smog crisis

 
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The Toronto smog crisis is the longest-standing chronic component of the Toronto respiratory health crisis. It dates from statements issued by Dr. Sheela Basrur, Director of the Toronto Medical Board of Health, in 2000, that 1000-1500 people per year were dying prematurely in Toronto from smog. This is higher than the average for North American cities. 70,000 such premature deaths per year occur in the United States.

Throughout the 1990's, Toronto's higher urban density and the nearby coal-burning plants operated by Ontario Power Generation corporation (wholly owned by the government of Ontario) has caused a steady ramping-up of the deaths, mostly due to asthma, bronchitis and increased susceptibility to such dangerous diseases as tuberculosis, influenza,, and later SARS.

As one 2003 letter to the WHO put it:

"The Provincial government does not appear to understand the systemic relationships between its health care, education, and social assistance systems. Consequently, it has made policy decisions resulting in unanticipated increases in demand for health services."

For example, Ontario repeatedly over-ruled smog control measures advised and taken by officials in Toronto, such as laws against truck idling, or transit expansion to remove cars from the streets. It even permitted trucks running generators for bright neon billboards to move slowly through downtown streets. More recently, they have almost completed the approvals for the Portlands Energy Centre without foring it to under go a full environmental assessment as requested by the Mayor and numerous Provincial and Federal representatives. This is particularly troubling to Toronto as it was in the process of developing a Sustainable Integrated Energy System prior to the Province of Ontario barging in and over ruling the plans of local government.

Ontario has no discernable energy policy with the Liberal Party Minister of Energy Dwight Duncan using one breath to say "I can't protect consumers from the fact that natural gas is runnning out" (Toronto Star, August 9, 2004) and in his next breath inviting natural gas plants into Ontario.

Torontonians have experienced worsening frequencies of asthma, bronchitis, and other acute illnesses - making the related Toronto hospital crisis worse, through 2001, when the Toronto Atmospheric Fund was, effectively, gutted after Basrur's announcement, activists who sought to act on Basrur's recommetions fired, and some smog deaths reclassified. It was a spin:

Toronto's smog crisis  

The city was, at the time, seeking the 2008 summer Olympic Games which it lost ironically to Beijing. There was a strong motivation for both cities to avoid perception of respiratory health problem that would affect athletes' performance or health, or tourism, a major source of revenue for a host city. Thus a public health crisis was reframed as a mere public relations crisis, rather the way China dealt with human rights, as a mere obstacle to global prestige. This sociopathic similarity became obvious later:

The two cities were linked inexorably due to another incident challenging human respiratory health: As of the outbreak of SARS in April 2003, Being, China, the City of Toronto and Province of Ontario, Canada were no longer able to maintain the fiction that their cities were safe for human lungs. It became clear that there was a general Toronto respiratory health crisis of which smog, a large homeless population and a new disease were only components. The spin for Toronto failed, disastrously.

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