Members of the Canadian Armed Forces marched in the Toronto Pride Parade yesterday, the first time that they have done so. This confirms, once and for all, that the massive international homosexual conspiracy does in fact attempt to recruit youth to their lifestyle. (Also, there is an enlistment bonus if you are willing to be gay in Afghanistan while carrying a rifle.) So, remember all that money Jim Flaherty promised to municipalities to help with......

Ontario considers electronics recycling fee. The proposed fee, already in operation in other provinces, would get tacked on when you purchase electronic items and would pay for provincial electronics recycling centres. It's a simple, feasible solution to a problem we need to deal with, and we have evidence it already works, so six months from now it will likely be the focus of a maelstrom of public debate as people declare that an extra......

TTC does end-run around Toronto Preservation Board. The TTC wants the right to redesign 63 of its 69 stations. Heh. We have 69 TTC stations. Never noticed that before. Heh. Ontario budget released. The budget contains small business tax cuts (not as large as Jim Flaherty would like) and small amounts of additional spending on infrastructure in public service (not as much as Howard Hampton would like). In short, it is the classic Liberal budget......

Federal finance minister Jim Flaherty emphasized that today's budget will be "frugal" in anticipation of an economic slowdown in the coming year. To demonstrate the concept in symbolic terms, Flaherty had an old pair of shoes resoled instead of buying the pair of new shoes traditionally associated with budgets. Flaherty also announced that he's saving money on undergarments by going "commando," although to be fair that gesture is more about sexiness than symbolism. A......

A three hour Blackberry outage affected millions of people across North America yesterday, leading to much wailing and handwringing over the temporary unavailability of a technology that didn't even exist ten years ago. Truly we are a nation of whiners. The Toronto Maple Leafs braved the cold to hold an unannounced outdoor skate at Withrow Park yesterday, where they were cheered on by 300 local grade-schoolers. Following the warmup, the kids formed a pickup......

The last time we looked at accessible pedestrian signals (APS), those chirping and cuckooing crossing indicators for the visually-impaired, it was with some surprise at the city's claim that it simply couldn't afford to install APS at more than a handful of intersections each year. Instead of allocating enough money to improve availability of a fairly basic service to visually-impaired residents, the city instead looked for corporate sponsors to pick up some of the......

In this occasional feature, two Torontoist staffers face off to debate an issue that is important to our city. We invite our readers to join in the debate in the comments section after the post. For the first time since amalgamation, City Council has been presented with a budget that doesn't require a new round of hand-outs from Queen's Park in order to balance. The price of this achievement is high. Along with new land-transfer......

David Miller delivered a balanced budget yesterday, thanks to higher property taxes, some fabulous new tariffs, and a one-time infusion of $150 million from the the provincial government. According to Miller, the property tax increase of 3.75% is in line with his commitment to limit raises to the rate of inflation (1.9% in Toronto last year), evidence that the mayor is either math-illiterate or assumes that everyone else is. Transit expert Richard Soberman will......