Don’t hit me - that was the only family-newspaper-acceptable headline I could think of for this heads-up, straight from Ward 15 (Eglinton-Lawrence) Councillor Howard Moscoe, who also chairs the city’s Licensing and Standards Committee.

Tomorrow (being Thursday July 3) Moscoe is planning on bringing a motion that will literally open doors at large retailers across Toronto. Those doors being the ones leading to washrooms, that the Ontario Building Code demands that large retailers provide for their customers.

Moscoe, one of Toronto Council’s more senior members, has lately been steamed that his favourite pharmacy doesn’t offer any commodal relief for himself and the other seniors that frequent the place.

“I guess they want to sell extra Depends,” he groused.

Earlier this year, he’d been publicly musing that the city should require public washrooms in the big stores, and was delighted to discover that the province had beat the city to it many years ago.

So tomorrow, Moscoe  will be trying to amend the city’s property standards bylaws to make it “crystal clear that they have to provide a signed, public washroom.”

Oh, chuckle if you must, strong-bladdered whipper-snappers. But as Moscoe points out, public washrooms are not some silly luxury.

“For people with young children, they absolutely require washrooms. And as for seniors… well as you get into your golden years you have to visit the washroom more frequently. At my age, I never pass a washroom. It’s a fundamental issue of human anatomy - the right to tinkle.”

More on this story as it develops…

… because you might get something that you didn’t ever really want.

Case in point for the Ward 29 (Toronto Danforth) councillor, right-of-centre opposition notable and former deputy mayor: Staff Report EX20.1 on the May 5, 2008 Executive Committee Agenda, “Enhancing Streets to Homes Service to Address the Needs of People who are Street Involved, Including Those Who Panhandle.”

This report is a direct answer to Ootes’ request, made at Executive Committee last year, that the city please do something about panhandlers asking for coin in the city’s downtown core. Ootes argued that panhandlers ought be kept from those areas, and he was joined by various downtown business owners who said the same thing.

Enter Phil Brown, Toronto’s top shelter bureaucrat, with a solution that’s a little more… in keeping with the culture at City Hall. The bottom line: spend about $5 million more a year to help a population of 400 or so people who panhandle - most of whom, as it turns out, are desperately poor men, on average 38 years old, and who have been on the streets for as long as 20 years taking in about $25 a day.  There will be no area bans on panhandling that doesn’t break any other laws, no public relations pushes to urge people not to give coins to panhandlers. Just some help, through an expanded Streets to Home program.

Ootes, as you might imagine, was less than ecstatic. Reached at home Friday after the press briefing to which he did not seem to have been invited, the councillor admitted that, absent a working fax machine, he hadn’t been able to peruse the report. But on hearing the gist of it, he said:

“Throw more money at it that’s going to solve our problems? I don’t think so. I’m all for the Streets to Home program. I think it’s been effective in many instances, but this report focusses on the so-called legal panhandlers which are the passive ones. It doesn’t address the illegal ones because they leave that for the police to deal with it. I don’t know what this is going to do to solve the problem other than spending more money. I think what is needed is for people to stop giving to panhandlers and the mayor needs to say that: stop giving to panhandlers.”

My partner just called, and told me she caught some kids on our lawn, picking up old coffee cups left behind by the snow.  When one of the more law-abiding of the little neat-freaks pointed out that they were on private property, my partner opened the window and hollered ‘Thank You!’

Of course, it was the 20 Minute Cleanup at work.

So if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to go out and get me some litter…

Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) Councillor Rob Ford has taken a lot of heat this week for that thing about the “orientals” and the “dogs” and the “sleeping by their machines” and the “they’re taking over” comment. So much so that you’d think that everything the good councillor had otherwise been maintaining a respectful silence through the March meeting of Toronto Council.

Not so, not so.

For instance, just before Councillor Ford started talking about the hard-working folk of the Pacific Rim, he took on the thorny question of what value religious holidays:

“Some people are bringing up religion. We’re all of the same religion ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to money. I’ll guarantee that. I know that for a fact. Okay? We have so many different cultures so many races, so many religions, how can we start saying one day’s more important than the other? How about the Jewish holidays, Muslim holidays? Christian holidays? I may be a Christian but you gotta respect everybody’s holidays now.”

Or a day earlier, when Toronto Council was debating whether to allow condominiums to be built next to the St. Basil’s church off Bay Street, against the wishes of parishoners:

“It’s frustrating. When people say there’s nothing that can be done I disagree. I guess people can ignore the residents that oppose it now but at election time I hope they understand and remember what happened today. That’s the only thing that politicians understand is votes.”

And after the parishoners gave Ford a hearty round of applause, and Speaker Sandra Bussin was on her way to shutting them down and then councillor Ford:

“And we need a new mayor! And we need a new council!”

Usually, Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) Councillor Rob Ford can be counted on to serve as Toronto Council’s right-wing conscience - if that conscience is an angry one prone to inappropriate outbursts.

Not so today, when council turned its eye to the idea of letting stores stay open on holidays. Ford, a dyed-in-the-wool free marketeer, was a font of sunshine and joy. However, being Rob Ford, he still managed to be an inappropriate one.

While explaining in expansive detail why he thought stores should be able to stay open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the councillor from the west end of the city turned his eyes east. East to the “Orient,” as he described it.

“Those Oriental people work like dogs,” said Ford, to a stunned-silent city hall. “They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines. That’s why they’re successful in life… I tell you. Oriental people. They’re slowly taking over.”

It was Ward 33 (Don Valley East) Councillor Shelley Carroll who corrected the delighted Councillor Ford.

“If I could remind Councillor Ford - in the words of Margaret Cho, ‘carpets are oriental. People are Asian.’ Just for the record.”

And if I might make the point: dogs are nothing like Asian people, or indeed any other people. Even in flights of doubtless kindly-intended rhetoric.