Photo: "Time to haul ass." by cl-s, member of the blogTO Flickr pool. ~ See it bigger ~.

What's happening in the GTA:

Say goodbye to fresh, local peaches and cream cobs, and say hello to frozen nibblets shipped in from Timbuktu. Urban sprawl is quickly depleting arable farm lands surrounding Canada's largest city, at a time when people are aiming to eat more local. You know what they say about hindsight...

A report by a think tank (that largely opposes our involvement in Afghanistan) claims that the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan will cost the federal government $28billion by 2011 - a heck of a lot more that what Harper's Conservatives have estimated. Another report comes in at $22billion. Will this be money well spent during a looming global recession?

Listeria is proving to be one resilient microorganism at Maple Leaf's Toronto plant. Ongoing screening has found that 4 of 5000 products tested positive for Listeria. None of the affected product was shipped. The news comes shortly after we learned that the CFIA sat on their hands with lips sealed for several days before going public on the first major outbreak.

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Toronto Police has laid the first ever "drugged driving" charges under news laws that came into effect in July. And there's already some good discussion about the implications.

The TTC employees have ratified a slighter sweeter deal than what was rejected back in April. They got their (in my opinion, totally ridiculous) clause that ensures that they get higher pay than their counterparts in any of the suburbs, and skilled workers got a 35cent/hour premium wage increase.

I've always wondered why there were often cars parked in areas off-limits to the public (for example, behind security fences and near the subway tracks at Kipling station). It turns out that TTC employees are allowed to improvise and park their cars where we aren't - even where no parking signs are posted. Makes sense, I guess.

And there's trouble brewing at the Toronto Zoo. Board members are dropping like flies in the lizard exhibit.