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Just to clarify: this isn't about whether Ford was right to accept donations for his football charity from lobbyists. Instead, this is about whether Ford violated conflict of interest laws when he neglected to recuse himself from the debate and vote on the integrity commissioner item relating to...

He clearly broke the law but the penalty is out-of-step with what voters are likely to accept. And also: this ultimately about a guy raising money for a football charity. The average person is going to find it hard to condemn the guy for that. I don't like this play at all. Best case, Ford is...

Council meets on March 15 to discuss transit on Sheppard. It's been mostly confirmed at this point that the panel will recommend a return to the light rail plan. http://toronto.openfile.ca/blog/curator-blog/curated-news/2012/sheppard-extension-will-be-lrt-if-sheppard-committee-has-its-way

Here's a thing:

Bang on. The most obvious indicator of Webster's loyalty is the report that finally leaked -- I'd guess through Karen Stintz's office -- which details why subways on Sheppard aren't economically viable. That report was written in March 2011, then suppressed by the mayor. Webster made no move to...

You're making assumptions about Webster's personality that don't really hold up. He was never much of a game player. He's straight-arrow to the core. Had Ford compromised or been politically savvy enough to get council to endorse his underground-only transit plan, there's no doubt that Webster...

You can't excuse this kind of thing, but Ford went to the polls with his scandals well-publicized. A plurality of voters were cool with endorsing a man who once told a woman at a hockey game that she should be raped and then shot. Ford's issues will come back into the light in a couple of...

Toronto's drive to get a fair share funding model from other orders of government was thrown off course when the city elected a mayor who believes the city has a spending problem and not a revenue problem. Fun hypothetical: if the previous council hadn't secured an $8.4 billion transit...

The big point coming out of this will be the cost -- firing Webster simply because he supports the transit direction *adopted by council* could cost close to a half a million dollars. That figure could be much higher if Webster opts to pursue a wrongful dismissal suit. Unless the commission has...

Has that been confirmed? There was talk at one point a couple of weeks back that the city was dragging their feet and wanted to wait to open the park until 2013.

Shelley Carroll is a suburban councillor. She's a capital-L Liberal but she's got cred with council's NDP bloc. She's got a lot going for her going into 2014.

Apparently Forum Research also polled on three one-on-one mayoral race scenarios: Ford vs. Shelley Carroll, Ford vs. Vaughan and Ford vs. John Tory. Results were never released publicly, but the Star's David Rider heard from sources that they found that Ford would lose all three races. Against...

Headways will be wider by design when the new streetcars arrive. Headways of 15 minutes wouldn't be acceptable on any of the existing streetcar routes, though. Line management at the TTC is a major issue. It's insane that anyone with a smartphone running an app that uses NextBus to display...

My suspicion is that the advisory panel will endorse an extension of the subway to Victoria Park. From there, there may be an argument to eventually extend another 3km to Agincourt GO, which is a logical terminus point from a network perspective.

It'll be fixed as part of the West Don Lands development.

Some relevant charts from the 2012 Economic Dashboard, just released this week. http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/ed/bgrd/backgroundfile-45047.pdf (PDF) Office Vacancies - 416 vs 905 ICI Permits - 416 vs 905 Lots of other good data in that PDF as well.

The mayor and his brother are talking about launching a campaign called "Save Our Subways." If gweed and other posters still have access to saveoursubways.ca, you may want to update it to include a message indicating that you are not affiliated with Rob Ford.

I agree that the union deal could help Ford's popularity but it's a headline that's inevitably going to get swallowed up by this transit stuff. Timing didn't work well. As far as the terms of the deal, it basically stands as a wager: the mayor thinks he can save the city more money through...

Below 50 in Scarborough and Etobicoke should be very alarming for those in the mayor's office. He's shed support everywhere.

Road pricing is good because by itself it will ease some congestion, while also raising revenues. More generally, I'd want to look at either a payroll tax or a sales tax. A payroll tax set at 1%ish of a company's payroll would help Toronto recoup some of the costs that arise from 905...