News Bites
Some of last week’s top headlines.
IgniteUTM sweeps UTMSU Spring 2026 Elections
Students have elected all five IgniteUTM candidates to head the University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU)’s next Executive Committee. The victors include Adam El-Falou for president, Xingyi (Freya) Gao for Vice President (VP) Internal, Tiffany Da Silva for VP Equity, Dana Al-Habash for VP University Affairs, and incumbent Rajas Dhamija for VP External, according to the UTMSU’s unofficial election results.
Students also elected 11 of the 23 Division II Board of Directors candidates, including Xinhe (Cecilia) Wang, Cynthia Tong, Marcus Lee, Joud Al-Habash, Nabeeha Shamim, Sierra O’Brien, Saad Hussain, Maryam Zeeshan, Suleyman Yusuf, Jana Al-Mallah, Ya (Gloria) Gao. Onoasi Odo-Effiong secured a Division III Part-Time Director at Large seat unopposed, leaving one seat vacant.
Voter turnout was 12.3 per cent, representing a four-year low in UTMSU spring elections, according to The Varsity.
ICCIT students launch seventh volume of Vision
On March 19, the directors of Vision hosted an exhibition in the Maanjiwe Nendamowinan Grand Hall to celebrate the launch of the annual publication’s seventh volume, titled “Journey.”
Throughout the exhibition, attendees mingled with some of Vision’s 42 members amid displays of enlarged illustrations, photos, and writings featured in the magazine. Guests were also welcome to peruse physical copies of the hefty 104-page production and watch two short documentaries that Vision made specifically for Journey.
Volume seven marks the first volume since Vision opted to rebrand itself from a journal to a magazine last year. “We wanted to come together to compile the stories of students’ voices, a theme that would feel personal and transparent to them,” writes Executive Creative Director Mariana Ramirez-Zablah in her preface to Journey. “We wanted to highlight both the struggle and joy of what it means to be human and a young creative.”
The digital version of the magazine is available for free on Vision’s website at vision-group.ca/volume-7. Vision is funded by the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology.
PCs push forward with school board takeovers, ticket resale regulations, defunding consumption sites, and excluding cabinet from FOI laws
Over the past few weeks, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative (PC) government has announced a flurry of new measures.
Among the most controversial recent policy changes is the proposal to change Ontario’s freedom of information laws so that cabinet ministers’ and staff members’ records will be kept secret. Premier Ford has defended the move as necessary to “protect ourselves against the Communist Chinese that are infiltrating our country.” Opposition Leader Marit Stiles criticized the move and Ford’s arguments while speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park last week, saying, “Well, this is bullshit.”
The Ministry of Education recently assumed control of the York Catholic District School Board and placed the Peel District School Board under its supervision, citing concerns about management and financial sustainability, according to the provincial government’s website. This brings the total number of school boards under provincial supervision to eight. The Ministry brought all of these boards under its supervision within the past year.
Over the next few months, the province will end funding to seven supervised drug consumption sites across Toronto, Ottawa, Niagara, Peterborough, and London, according to CBC News. Instead, Health Minister Sylvia Jones says the province will support those with addiction in these communities with abstinence-based Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment Hubs, according to Ontario Newsroom.
As Toronto gears up to host the FIFA World Cup this summer, the Ford government hopes to amend the Ticket Sales Act, 2017, to “make it illegal to resell [live-event] tickets for profit,” according to Global News. The PCs previously scrapped a plan carried over from Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals in 2019 that would have capped ticket resale prices at 50 per cent above original value, calling it “unenforceable.”
The government is set to release its 2026 provincial budget on March 26.
