Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently engaged in a federal by-election campaign. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a behind the scenes glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician. This is my last Campaign Confidential before E-day, yet I'm hesitant to pen any "final thoughts" knowing how much can happen in the final week of a campaign. It's been a bit of a strange campaign. On the......

Everyone's favourite appropriately-named party leader hasn't been having a great time over the past few months. Ever since John Tory's upsetting dual loss in October's provincial election, the vultures have been circling over him. Both established and grassroots party members have been calling for Tory's head, and they'll finally have a chance to oust him at the Progressive Conservative Party's General Meeting at the end of the month. The anti-Tory camp's main argument is, simply......

Provincial Conservative leader John Tory, battling to stay employed in the face of disaffected fellow partiers who want to hold a leadership review next month, says in a letter on his website that he has travelled the province listening to members and coming up with ideas to address their concerns. The Tories are lucky; a leader who also had a job as an MPP probably wouldn't have time for stuff like that. Provincial education......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. Even before November's provincial election, Kathleen Wynne was a force to be reckoned with. As the Liberal Education Minister,......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. By all accounts, John Tory is an individual of impeccable character and integrity who planned to restore civility to......

Almost half of all Toronto-area residents are foreign-born. This is the first little tidbit released from the 2006 census, which the government is doling out as if it were a movie trailer or something. (Will Smith versus zombies: probably more entertaining.) Bank of Canada lowers interest rates. A weakened loonie will allow Canada's manufacturing sector to compete more efficiently in international markets, by which we mostly mean the United States. Conservative insiders will meet tonight......

Microsoft has agreed to buy 1.6% of Facebook for $240,000,000, giving the social networking site a valuation of around $15 billion. The deal is good for both parties, with Bill Gates finally hanging out with the cool kids, and 23-year-old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg getting to throw an awesome kegger. John Tory has officially backed away from the faith-based schools funding issue that may have cost him the provincial election. Seems kind of silly......

To no one's surprise, yesterday's Ontario election (read our liveblog of the results here) was a big victory for the status quo, with voters giving the Liberals another majority and soundly rejecting Mixed Member Proportional voting. Dalton McGuinty was pleased, having given his acceptance speech the day before the election, while John Tory, having lost bids to become mayor of Toronto and Premier of Ontario, needs only an unsuccessful run at the PM-ship to......

"It's hard to beat the system / when we're standing at a distance / so we keep waiting / waiting on the world to change." - JOHN MAYER How Do You Get To Massey Hall? I don't know, I only came close. I can at least tell you that practice has nothing to do with it. I'd practiced my speech a lot. Last night I was invited to represent my party (the Green Party of......

Mayor Miller was in Etobicoke yesterday, trying to convince the people who regularly vote in Ford, Holyday, Nunziata, et al. that new taxes are a necessity. It went about as well as you'd expect. In an effort to boost turnout, Elections Ontario has put some advance polls in supermarkets. We hoped to write something sarcastic, but upon further reflection, this is a really good idea. John Tory has essentially killed his public-funding-of-faith-based-schools proposal, promising......

Premier Dalton "Surplus? What surplus?" McGuinty showed that he does listen to David Miller when he echoed the mayor's "One Cent" campaign in a letter to Stephen Harper, which asked the PM for a penny of the GST to fund Ontario's disintegrating cities. Why are our our politicians always sending letters to each other? What century do they live in? "Please ensure that the footman delivers this correspondence to the downstairs maid before afternoon......

GTA "bubble boy" has new hope after new experimental gene therapy. The donor: a very surprised Jerry Seinfeld. Dalton McGuinty challenges John Tory to explain where Tory will find $1.5 billion in budget cuts. Which is a good point, and begs the question why he didn't ask that, you know, at the debate. Shocking: Stephen Harper promises tax cuts. The government has a nearly $14 billion surplus this year, but it looks like Toronto......

Marcel Marceau dead at 84. Torontoist hadn't heard anything. (Rimshot!) John Tory wants to let corner stores sell booze. He says local brewers and vintners are getting a raw deal, and he's got a point. After all, when you go into your local corner store, think of the wealth of independent chocolatiers you have to pick from when you want a candy bar! George W. Bush shuns global warming summit. In other news, sky still......

Right now, if you turn on your TV to channels 2, 3, 6, 8, 15, 24, 62, or 104 (presuming you have cable), you will see the leaders of the provincial political parties having at each other. Or, more accurately, you will see Dalton McGuinty, John Tory, and Howard Hampton having at each other. You will not see Green Party of Ontario leader Frank de Jong having at anyone. As they like to do,......

The price of oil scaled new heights yesterday, climbing up over $80 US for the first time ever. That's good news if you're an oil company, but bad news if you're a regular folk who likes to go places, or do things, or eat stuff. McDonald's Canada is going upscale. Influenced by popular chains such as Starbucks, the fast-food giant will renovate its restaurants to make them more "comfortable," creating cosiness with leather chairs,......

Policy Monday is a weekly feature during the lead-up to the provincial election where Torontoist will dive into the mean and gritty world of public policy, turning a critical eye at a specific area of the policies and machinations of the four major provincial parties. Photo by Metric X from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. One of the biggest election brouhahas over the past few months has been the issue of faith-based schools. Ever since John......

John Tory says any religious schools must stick to the Ontario curriculum or lose their funding. Thus, creationism would not be allowed to be taught as science. That having been said, non-religious faith-based teaching (like "the invisible hand of the market can fix all economic problems" or "one day the working class will rise up and create a proletarian utopia") is fine! Luciano Pavarotti is dead at 71. The opera star finally succumbed to pancreatic......

With music download trends showing that the coveted male 18–24 demographic is more interested in the music of their ancestors than anything current, music store HMV is dropping CD prices on oldies like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. HMV hopes that the move will convince young men to abandon the web and start stealing from retail stores again. Ontario Conservative Party leader John Tory says that, if elected, he would save $1.5 billion in......

NASA is embarrassed after a Toronto man found an error in their climate reporting. The new data mean that the warmest year on record in the US was 1934, not 1998, and skeptics have seized on the story as proof that the whole "global warming" thing is a hoax. Upon hearing the news, the newly navigable passage through the Arctic Ocean immediately refroze. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is shuffling his cabinet. The move will......

Just what sort of rabbit is John Tory planning to pull out of his hat? If elected this fall, he claims he will help make Toronto’s cash crisis disappear. Torontoist just wishes someone would make this danged heat wave disappear. Illustration by Kevin McBride.......

Did you know it was really hot yesterday? Because it was. It was really, really hot yesterday. Thank god for the Toronto Star or Torontoist might not have noticed, what with the relaxing in the air-conditioned basement and all. Registered Nurses of Ontario express their opposition to the Canadian Medical Association's two-tier healthcare proposal. Good point made: that wait times (a.k.a "the nightmare of all proponents of private medicine") have been shrinking in the last......

Don't drink more than one pop a day, or you're at greater health risk! Serious pop drinkers have a 45 percent greater chance of developing metabolic syndrome; a bunch of health factors that increases your chance of heart attack, stroke and diabetes. (It doesn't even matter if it's diet!) The health experts then looked at you pointedly and said "well, maybe you should be drinking juice or green tea or something healthy. Yes, you. The......

The Star reports this morning about U of T political science student Evon Reid (pictured). Reid applied for a job at Queen's Park as a media analyst earlier this month and was waiting to hear back when an e-mail from Aileen Siu, a part-time contract employee (whose contract is probably about to end prematurely), landed in his inbox on Friday morning. Siu's e-mail simply read: "This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before."......

Pope Benedict XVI asserts that Catholicism is the only true church. The document he approved states that other Christian churches are "defective" and not true churches. Pope Benedict also plans to bring back the Spanish Inquisition and witch burnings later this year. Canadian Olympic Committee wants Toronto to try yet again to get the Olympics. Because if lackluster support for bringing the Olympics here twice wasn't enough the first two times, surely the third time......

Once upon a time, governments worked together to create ambitious and expensive projects like, say, public transit. Then came the 1990s when funding was summarily cut off. Since then, we've seen funding restored in dribs and drabs, the half-implementation of several ideas (we're looking at you, Sheppard subway!), and the odd difficult move forward (the St. Clair ROW). We've also seen the creation of the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, but since no one seems......

Save Our St. Clair, the group that fought against the St. Clair right of way has reared its head again. The group has backed four candidates whose wards run along the route of the right of way. Three of them are incumbents (Palacio, Nunziata and Michael Walker). John Sewell who's running against the right of way's strongest defender Joe Mihevc gets a strong thumbs up from SOS. The three main mayoral candidates seem to still......

Health Minister, legislative pitbull and name caller George Smitherman is responding to Stephen Harper's open endorsement for John Tory by challenging him to a cage match. Actually, Smitherman only challenged the current Ontario Conservative leader to run in Toronto Centre. But seeing how Smitherman won with over 51% of the vote in 2003, doubled the PC candidate and the unpopularity of the Conservative party in the riding, Tory might actually fare better in the ring.......

It appears as if most Canadians got what they wanted last night, with the Conservatives achieving a minor minority and PM Paul Martin effectively resigning. Over the past six weeks (the first two, we were convinced of another Lib win), Torontoist has spoke out against getting too cozy with the Cons - and we spoke this for good reason. First, some of the CPC platform is a little redonkers; mainly considering time and money parameters.......

By now, most everyone in the city knows of the single most unfortunate event in Toronto this year: On Boxing Day, while shopping, 15-year-old Jane Creba was killed by errant gunfire. Six other innocent bystanders were also wounded. Just as any other human being in this city - or rather anyone else privy to this story - we feel deeply affected by this. And, as it should go without saying, our utmost sympathies to any......

Toronto-St. Paul's Conservative candidate Peter Kent loves his press releases. He sends quite a lot of them out, and a lot of them seem to work. As reported in this week's eye, Mr Kent, if nothing else, is getting the conservative adgenda out there. By that, he must mean this, his latest press release. Here's the gist, in case you don't want to read his opening sentence: Remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denying the......