Toronto's Kensington Market is getting some protection: A decade after the city first started looking into it, Toronto city council has now officially designated the neighbourhood a heritage conservation district. 

The Ontario election campaign is in full swing — which you may have noticed because of an unsolicited text message from PC Leader Doug Ford. Here's a quick look at how the race unfolded during the first full week of campaigning.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are promising a radical expansion of the GO Transit network if re-elected, but many doubt a line cutting through midtown Toronto will ever materialize.

As the spring fair and festival season grows closer, small businesses and vendors in London are being warned to ensure the events they see advertised online are legitimate before handing over deposits.

Councillors moved motions on expenses big and small as they sought to add or remove items from the 2025 budget for the City of Hamilton. At the end of Friday, city staff said the proposed average property tax increase went from about 5.7 per cent to about 5.6 per cent.

Since opening in 1943, Sully's Boxing Gym has been the training ground for many champion boxers, including Muhammad Ali. Now, a new batch of champions-in-training have seen great success at a local tournament.

When a Gracie Abrams fan recently petitioned to have singer-songwriter Dora Jar removed as the opening act for Abrams’ European tour, it sparked backlash and conversation about fan entitlement. Experts say the relationship between fans and artists is changing as social media blurs boundaries.

The Romanian and Indian families who drowned during a human smuggling run into the U.S. in 2023 were transported close to the Canadian-U.S. border by an organized crime network the RCMP was already building a case against. Court documents outline the complexities of the network.

Two major provincial party leaders have promised to transfer responsibility for Ottawa's light rail system to Metrolinx if elected, but some experts in Toronto are warning that they've been trying to claw back authority from that same agency.

A man has been arrested in Guyana and brought back to Canada to face charges after he allegedly assaulted a woman and stabbed a girl in Scarborough years ago, Toronto police say.

Business and economic leaders from across the London region met Friday with the city's mayor ahead of his tariff-focused trip to Washington D.C. next week with provincial officials.

A paramedic who took a homeless man to hospital after an alleged group attack in downtown Toronto says she didn't immediately realize he had been stabbed.

The defence for Ottawa lawyer James Bowie — accused of criminally harassing a woman, trying to get her to obtain a firearm for him, and threatening to kill an ex-client in the woman's presence — says that while there's no doubt Bowie engaged in "unflattering" behaviour, none of it was criminal.

PC Leader Doug Ford is back on the bandwagon for a tunnel along the length of the 401 across Toronto. Saying it is a  “serious” plan that will “get Ontario drivers moving again,” so far Ford has not alluded to the cost of the project. He envisions a tunnel running from Brampton and Mississauga in the west to beyond Markham and Scarborough in the east. The plan calls for transit lanes as well. In a stement, Ford is quoted as saying, “A new expressway under Highway 401 will be a gamechanger for our province, securing good-paying jobs for thousands of Ontario workers and adding billions back into our economy as we fight gridlock on our most congested highway.” This comes after  the party talked earlier this week about adding dozens of new GO stations, including a GO line that would cut across the middle of Toronto.

Both NDP leader Marit Stiles and Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie have announced their plans to increase the number of family doctors in the province. Stiles said Friday that an NDP government would spend $4.05 billion over the next four years to make sure that every Ontario resident has a family doctor.

Yesterday Crombie announced a four-point plan to connect every Ontarian with a family doctor within four years.

Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said Friday that his party would cut income taxes for those making less than $65,000 a year. He said at the same time that he would raise taxes on those making more than $220,000 a year.

Meanwhile the latest Abacus Poll shows the Ford PC holding onto a commanding lead in the 10^th day of the campaign. The latest figures show the PC’s at 46 percent, The Liberals at 24, the NDP at 21 and the Greens 5 percent.

Toronto could see between five and 10 centimetres of snow this weekend starting late Saturday afternoon, and city officials say its crews and equipment are ready.

Councillors came to Friday’s 2025 budget session with a laundry list of motions that they hoped would impact the budget. Many of them reflected the ideological rifts that are increasingly on display with this council. Some of the suggestions included:

A motion by John Paul Danko to cut money out of the city’s enrichment fund. The fund is a grab bag of grants given to community groups, arts groups, and non-profits. The fund was created to stop individual councillors from dishing out pork barrel cash to favorites and instead have a formal process with an evaluation process. Danko’s motion was aimed chiefly at Ward Two Councillor Cameron Kroetsch who has come to council several times with proposals for community grants that would be funded out of area rating funds, and other pools of funding that don’t involve tax dollars. Danko argued  that there’s no need to put extra money in the fund since councillors seem to be finding their way to pots of money on their own. His motion was ruled out of order.

A similar motion by Danko to cut funding from groups who encouraged encampment residents to resist shelters, as well as groups that are suing the city was ruled out of order. Cameron Kroetsch and Dundas Councillor Alex Wilson proposed that the $12 Million budget increase for the Hamilton Police service be denied. The motion triggered a spirited response from Councillors Danko and Spadafora.

In the end Only Kroetsch and Alex Wilson supported their motion. Even councillors Maureen Wilson and Nrinder Nann who called for defunding police in 2020 voted for the police budget.

The city poet escaped the axe on a tie vote which only amount to an expenditure of $10,000, but which several councillors said had taken on a symbolism of its own and was one of the most frequent issued raised by constituents when they complained about taxes.

Councillor Mark Tadeson came up with an idea involving the mega millions the city spends on capital projects. He noted the budgets submitted for these projects usually contain a 10 to 12 percent contingency. Why not reduce that contingency amount by two percent and work hard to stay within that budget he asked? That idea couldn’t be decided on the spot but may come back for consideration.

A number of the items that were ruled out of order can come back for consideration at  a regular council meeting. They were ruled out of order on the basis that since they did not have a direct bearing on the 2025 budget that they could not be discussed at a budget meeting.

The Bay Observer will be back with more highlights from Friday’s Budget meeting

The main Ontario party leaders have now laid out their plans on how to get primary care to millions of people without a family doctor.

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Gatineau Mayor Maude Marquis-Bissonnette are pushing upper levels of government to revisit interprovincial tariffs.

CBC Hamilton wants to hear from you about what's at stake this election and the issues you care about most.

It won't be a first when Kansas City and Philadelphia square off in the Superbowl on Sunday. What will be new is that Eagles safety Sydney Brown will become the first Londoner to play in the big game.

The federal government has restricted Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek's chatbot from some of its mobile devices and is recommending other agencies and departments follow suit.

PC Leader Doug Ford is pledging to push forward with plans to build a tunnel under Highway 401 to tackle gridlock in the Greater Toronto Area, with a price tag that is yet to be determined.