Many fast-food chains and grocery stores are reintroducing tomatoes to their menus after the American tomato salmonella outbreak last week. Officials for the stores said that they waited until everybody had forgotten about the salmonella thing before bringing back the tomatoes, and that in future they hope to make us forget about bad things faster. Howard Hampton confirmed this weekend that he will not seek re-election to the NDP's provincial leadership next March. Hampton......

Today is tax deadline day, and if the Canada Revenue Agency says you owe money, pay now or get nailed with penalties. If the government owes you, wait for it or head down to the LCBO and take it out in wine coolers (provincial portion only). The debate over legislating TTC workers into essential servitude may happen, but not for a while. Rather than being discussed now, the matter has been referred to executive......

Don't panic, but food prices are rising. Turns out that oil becoming an inelastic commodity, collapsing fish stocks, climate change affecting crop growth, and increased demand for food in China and India as they grow richer makes food more expensive! Who could have foreseen this happening? Oh, right, lots of people. Speaking of oil becoming an inelastic commodity, gas prices are going to skyrocket this summer and continue climbing for the foreseeable future. When......

People work hard for their money, but don't make their money work hard for them. It's time to fix that. The last Wednesday of every month, Saverist whips your income into shape with smart, practical advice. Photo by Dipp from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The deadline for income tax returns looms with only 34 days left to file. People dread doing their taxes, but the fear is irrational: most people have already had the tax......

Photo by jpghouse. The incentive to spend money is enormous: there’s always a bigger latte, a newer iPod, and a better apartment waiting around the corner. Saving money is laborious and—let’s face it—boring. Unfortunately, easy access to credit and rising property values have turned the West into a population of grasshoppers, just starting to get a taste of the financial winter coming. Although the new federal budget has underwhelmed, the government has provided an......

Premier Dalton McGuinty has fired off a whiny letter to the PM complaining about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's public criticism of Ontario and its tax laws. Flaherty, who apparently counts all time lost when he's not psychologically bitch-slapping his governmental inferiors, responded by calling McGuinty a "big stupid crybaby." Time to start prying out grandma's fillings—the price of gold hit a record high of US$984.95 an ounce in London this morning, and experts predict......

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......

Former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto was assassinated yesterday in a bloody suicide attack that killled at least 20 other other people. Anyone thinking that this news isn't sufficiently Toronto-centric should hope that the destabilization of this nuclear-armed extremist-incubator state doesn't have much direct impact on Toronto, because if it does it's likely to be in ways that are not at all fun. Climate change remains in the news––Environment Canada have declared the dramatic and......

With self-check-in a success at airports around the country, Air Canada is preparing to implement a system that would see passengers check and tag their own luggage. Coming in 2009: who wants to learn how to fly a plane? In spite of fears that we might not be as greedy as last year, yesterday stores were jammed with eager bargain hunters seeking shiny stuff. The crush is expected to continue through the rest of......

The half-wit OCAD student who planted a fake bomb at the ROM on Wednesday has turned himself in to police and been charged with mischief and common nuisance. Ha, closing a major thoroughfare, wasting the time of hundreds of police and emergency service personnel, and forcing the cancellation of an AIDS gala—what a lovable scamp. The death rates at Canadian Hospitals have now been made public in a report from the Canadian Institute for......

In an age of hipster irony and shirts to match, the Joy T-Shirt Project and its slogan, "Wear the World on Your Heart," seem impossibly sincere. But the "we're all connected" paradigm rings true: each shirt features the face of a real person—not Paris or Perez, but Sonya from Toronto or Sabry from Algeria, or one of over a hundred others in the online catalogue—hand-drawn and silk-screened over the wearer's heart. "It's more than just......

Photo by afiler. "What are you doing tonight?" asked a friend of ours Monday afternoon. "Well," we said, "we're going to an event called 'Caribou Country: Our Shield Against Global Warming.'" "You lost me at Caribou," our friend replied. We're told that environmental issues are at the top of everyone's mind, but anecdotal evidence suggests that that attention may be narrowly focused. This new environmentalism, it seems, is all about carbon: emissions, taxes, and......

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has announced that the rich pay the lowest tax rates of all income groups. Heather Reisman, Jim Balsillie, and everyone who lives on the Bridle Path celebrated this by heating their gigantic mansions with a fireplace full of money and cackling. Maniacally. Dalton McGuinty is adding to economic fear-mongering by claiming that the rising loonie is hurting Ontario’s economy and that interest rates should be lowered. Meanwhile on......

Toronto gets a C+ on the annual Smog Report Card. Most of the blame for the low grade goes to the city's financial crisis, which is stalling transit improvements and other environmental initiatives. The rest of the blame goes on YOU. Yes, YOU. In the back. Don't try to point to the person sitting next to you! You horrible polluter, you! Speaking of smog: oil prices hit a record high. This in response to......

The Entertainment District got a little more entertaining early Monday morning as an innocent bystander was wounded in a wild movie-style shootout involving at least four gunmen. Mayor David Miller called for a crackdown on gun smuggling as part of his strategy of blaming all problems in Toronto on forces outside of his control. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled tax cuts yesterday, including corporate and personal income taxes reductions and a one-cent drop in......

City officials to David Miller: don't tax booze. They reasonably pointed out that consumption taxes don't work when people can just drive thirty minutes to evade said taxes. In response, Miller pouted and ran up to his room, refusing to come out for dinner. Loonie opens trading today at a buck and four cents U.S. The reason for the most recent dramatic rise is, apparently, a combination of the groaning American economy and rising......

Will the province take over the TTC? Apparently such rumours are all the buzz in political backrooms. Which are kind of like political bathrooms, except that the backrooms have no toilets or sinks or indeed any serious practical use, which is why they feature so prominently in government. Torontoist's suggestion, from its own backroom: let Pizza Pizza take over the TTC. Then we would at least get Rip-Off Charity Pizza Days more often. Jim Flaherty's......

Mayor David Miller passed a compromised version of his contentious land transfer and vehicle registration taxes yesterday. The taxes will raise only about $175 million of the $414 million estimated budget shortfall, and will add about $3,700 to the price of the average home. "I think it's a vote of confidence in Toronto," said the Mayor inexplicably about the plan to layer more costs onto taxpayers in a city with a hollowed-out manufacturing base,......

City Council is going to be crazy today. We highly recommend you watch. (Click here for the online feed.) The chambers are going to be packed to capacity, with the overflow relegated to watching the proceedings on the screen in the rotunda. This does not happen often. It will be loud. It will be hectic. It will be exciting. Both the pro-tax and anti-tax groups are encouraging supporters to flood the meeting. This will......

If you loved (or hated) MasterCard skating to the rescue of Toronto's outdoor rinks this winter, you'll love (or hate) one of the city's other sponsorship innovations: traffic signals. Yes, Toronto allows—encourages—corporations to pay for the installation of audible pedestrian signals (APS) at the intersections of their choice. In return, companies receive free advertising space at each location declaring their largesse and the city's poverty. Asked about the practice of allowing private companies to......

There has been a lot of debate recently about how and to what extent corporations should be allowed to fund community initiatives. City Hall is currently ablaze with lobbying and ambivalence as we draw nearer to City Council's vote on land transfer and vehicle ownership taxes, a decision that could easily blow the door open to more private sponsorship of community services and public space. Meanwhile, over three hundred volunteers from twenty companies, including......

David Miller has enlisted the aid of a team of hired guns to find savings in the municipal budget. Their recommendations should arrive in time to incorporate into the 2008 budget, but too late for Tuesday's vote on controversial new taxes. City Council is optimistic that the group, whose members include Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, Templeton "Faceman" Peck, "Howling Mad" Murdock, and B.A. Baracus, will be able to solve all our problems. Karen Butler-Lynch was......

Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize. And then Ann Coulter's head exploded. Dalton McGuinty proclaims "Family Day" stat holiday in February. This...wait, did he actually keep a promise this time? Wow. Ontario economy projected to only grow 1.8% in 2008. You know what we need to get our economy humming again? Mass production of a car that runs on dandelions. I am just saying. David Miller says the election shows that city residents are......

New laws will officially criminalize identity theft by making it illegal to gather personal information which can be used for criminal purposes. Fun fact: if your identity is stolen online, the chances of the crime ever being investigated or prosecuted are practically zero. Surf safe, kids! Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton did a little preaching to the choir yesterday when he told a crowd of supporters that Canada's banks should "stop whining and start paying......

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......

A note to Torontoist readers from an artists' group with some impressive collective activist-power: NO CUTS TO OUR ESSENTIAL SERVICES because it's tough as hell to swim in empty pools On WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH, 4-6 p.m. we are calling on ALL MEMBERS OF THE ARTS COMMUNITY AND ANYBODY ELSE to convene at NATHAN PHILLIPS SQUARE to make it clear that we will not tolerate cuts to our essential services and that we support the......

Just over an hour ago, the TTC concluded its meeting to discuss and vote on measures to deal with its budget shortfall. Based in part on the results of its survey––which, in spite of widespread distribution, received only 17,000 responses––the Commission members voted unanimously in favour of raising fares over cutting service. With the exception of the new jump in Metropass prices, the cost increases per fare are relatively modest and around what most were......

Toronto factory worker finds World War II-era hand grenade in a box of used clothing. The bomb squad was called in. If Torontoist had found the grenade, though, you know we would be all like, "Hey! Free hand grenade!" Facebook declares breastfeeding pictures to be "obscene content." It's cleverly following the example of Livejournal in caving to uptight moralistic fuckwits. Dalton McGuinty promises to freeze taxes. Again. Despite all the new-spending promises he's made in......

With some 2,212 responses in just under two weeks, our TTC survey is done, and the complete data is in the hands of Michael Anders, the TTC’s Market Research Director. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the organization will be holding a special meeting in Committee Room 1 at City Hall to discuss their next steps, and Anders has told us that they "will be prepared to discuss [Torontoist's] findings" (whatever that means!––either way, Torontoist will be in......

Reader Cy Goldsbie (yes, relation) sent us the above photos of a box that popped up in St. Clair station over the weekend. Marked "DEPOSIT PUBLIC CONSULTATION SURVEY HERE," the box is at the "end of the southbound platform tucked into the alcove of the non-working elevator." (In other words, they're about as conspicuous as what Joe Clark calls the TTC's "intentionally hidden online complaints form.") So what's the deal? At the TTC's emergency......