A campaign called Fair Student Fares is about to get what it wants out of the TTC and Metropasses won't be increasing in price by quite as much as expected. TTC chairman Adam Giambrone has informed Spacing that he will be introducing a motion at the November 17 TTC meeting calling for post-secondary education students to receive the same discount that high school students receive. Giambrone also told Spacing that he will propose the TTC staff report recommending the price of a regular adult Metropass increase to $126 be reduced to $121, thereby maintaining the ...

Toronto lawyer Patrick Brown sent out a mass e-mail this evening warning of troubling developments for non-drivers (people without auto insurance) in new regulations being proposed for the insurance industry by Ontario's minister of finance, Dwight Duncan. I haven't had the opportunity to do research on the new regulations beyond reading what's in today's newspaper, which brands the regulation as financial relief for motorists. I'm providing the e-mail here for your information and discussion. This morning I attended a stakeholders meeting with the Ministry of Finance regarding the new changes to auto insurance. It is now on the news. The present law reform is not fair to cyclists, public transit users or pedestrians. Today I specially asked whether the reduce benefits being proposed will apply to innocently injured cyclists, pedestrians and transit users. The answer was "yes". The system here in Ontario is complex to say the least, but I will try to simplify as best I can the issue below. When anyone (including cyclist, pedestrian car driver) is injured or killed by a bad driver (even a drunk driver), they will have various benefits available to them.  These include various things to help them get better. Medical benefits, rehab benefits, attendant care etc. With the new changes introduced today, many benefits are being drastically reduced.  However, the justification for such a reduction is "consumer choice".

After the St. Clair Right of Way was approved, Toronto Environmental Alliance activist Gord Perks told me that nothing worth doing at City Hall takes less than five years. In light of that wisdom, the seven years it has taken to get a billboard tax into City Council's committee process seems about right. On Wednesday, Planning and Growth Management committee will finally consider a tax on billboards and a new signs by-law that makes it harder to get a new billboard approved in most neighbourhoods while ramping up the fines on illegal billboards to make them unprofitable. The tax and by-law are being advocated for by the umbrella group Beautiful City Alliance, which includes artists and public space activists that range from the Scarborough Arts Council and the Art Gallery of Ontario to IllegalSigns.ca and Toronto Public Space Committee. (Spacing is also an endorser of Beautiful City, and I am personally involved in the campaign.) While the by-law and tax provisions are good but not great, there are some important changes that need to be made by the Planning and Growth Management committee when it considers the issue at its meeting this Wednesday. While John Lorinc made some suggestions on Spacing Toronto this morning, the Beautiful City Alliance disagrees with them because his main proposal (BMX/skateboard infrastructure) could, in fact, be accommodated in Beautiful City's proposal without limiting access to arts funding for youth, if that's what youth prefer. Plus, there are two vital issues that need to be addressed to ensure any new programs or infrastructure are funded.

This past weekend, newspaper headlines were warning Toronto that 2010 would be the year that the city budget is cut to pieces. As the Globe reported, city staff have been asked to present to top city bureaucrats budgets that factor in a sustainable and permanent five per cent cut to their operating budget in 2010 and a further five per cent cut in 2011. In total, the city hopes to find almost $350 million in savings. While the perception that waste is abundant at city hall permeates the body politic, if city council ends up approving a package of cuts that totals the reported $343 million, public services are going to be markedly reduced. As Jackson Proskow of Global Television reported via Twitter today, staff are using service levels from this past summer's strike as a prospective operating model when forecasting scenarios for a -10 per cent scenario. But the point of this post isn't to talk about those cuts. There will be plenty of time for that next month when agencies, boards and commissions start to approve their operating budget submissions that get sent to decision-makers at city hall. This is just to contextualize a decision city council made this afternoon.

"Where's John Tory?" might sound like a dumb question given that the man hosts a radio show five times each week but the prospective mayoral candidate hasn't popped up in any significant way since the day David Miller announced his retirement. Don't think that's an accident, and if you've heard those rumours that the former Rogers CEO isn't running, don't fall for that misdirection play either. This game of hide-and-seek is meant to keep politicos and the media talking about whether or not Tory is running instead of the more substantive questions about his candidacy. The Tory campaign strategy, being led from all accounts by Liberal war room vets Warren Kinsella and Bob Richardson (who were also strategists on Tory's 2003 campaign team), has been to lay low for as long as possible, knowing that their candidate would start as the front runner with about 30% support. Having watched Barbara Hall go from shoo-in to also-ran in the 2003 race, the Tory campaign wants to avoid for as long as possible being the primary target of all other contenders in 2010. That strategy, which kept Tory's name in every discussion without him having to say a word, was working out as expected until George Smitherman decided that he was serious about vying for the job.

In a media scrum yesterday after David Miller announced he would not seek a third term as Toronto's mayor, Adam Vaughan talked about the "kick me" sign politicians agree to wear while in office in the context of why calling it quits after seven years is an honourable decision. To take that analogy a bit further, whether out of human decency or a social contract of sorts, the press corps at City Hall kicks often but almost always above the metaphorical belt line. However, in her column today, Sue-Ann Levy went straight for the family jewels by calling Miller a coward for telling the city he wanted to spend more time with his wife and children. Though anyone who has watched Levy and Miller spar during media and social events knows the two genuinely dislike one another, the same could be said of Miller and Denzil Minnan-Wong. Yet even Minnan-Wong acted with grace in acknowledging the familial sacrifices that Miller has made for Toronto. Agree or disagree with Miller on substantive issues, Levy couldn't have been less classy than she was in calling Miller a coward for voicing his desire to spend more time with his family after six years in the mayor's office and 15 consecutive years in politics. However, the gross hypocrisy in this is that Levy was quoted in the National Post about the toll politics can take on family following her recent foray into politics, even when, in her case, there are no children involved and her political career had lasted all of seven weeks.

Flanked by family, friends, his staff and media, an emotional, passionate and feisty Mayor David Miller announced that he will not seek a third term. Saying that he decided in 2003 he would not run for a third term because of his obligation to his family, Miller noted that he had to tell people he was running so as not to appear a lame duck mayor. Miller said that he accomplished every major policy objective he had laid out in the 2003 and 2006 elections and running for a third term would be about himself more ...

The City of Toronto announced that a special meeting of Toronto City Council will take place on Firday at 10am to approve paying for two-thirds of its upcoming streetcar purchase. The City had hoped that the federal government would pay one-third, as the provincial government has committed to doing. Tomorrow's meeting will authorize the TTC to make the streetcar purchase while the city continues to work on a funding arrangement with the federal government. Whether that federal funding will ever come through is still questionable. Spacing has learned that the federal ...

If you're hoping Mayor David Miller will lose the 2010 mayoral election, polling firm Environics has bad news for you. Torontonians are mostly satisfied with their municipal government. According to a poll conducted for GTA municipalities and obtained by Spacing, 57 per cent of Toronto residents are "satisfied" with the work of their municipal government. The report, conducted by Environics, says that figure is consistent with a November 2008 poll, indicating that Toronto's political landscape is stable as we head toward the next election. For those on the right jockeying to be ...

Update: 12:20PM According to the National Post's Allison Hanes, the money for the Sheppard LRT is not, in fact, part of the federal government's stimulus program and is instead from the Build Canada Fund, which has been maligned frequently by municipal politicians for its endless red tape. Spacing has also learned that the TTC will receive the money it has already spent preparing for the beginning of the Sheppard line construction from the provincial government through Metrolinx. Although Spacing has been given the impression that there is not a significant amount of money allocated to Sheppard ...