Two-timing political ad actor looks unlikely to be hired again. A new commercial from the Ontario Liberals portrays a series of regular folk, including a laid-off worker type now struggling with a part-time job. The same face was featured three years ago as a grizzled Bay Streeter telling Tim Hudak to take a hike on behalf of the Working Families Coalition. But actor union rules say you don’t have to disclose parts you played more than nine months ago.

Patrick Brown’s identity politics are that he’s not a Liberal. “Neutrality is not enough,” tweeted the Ontario PC leader about the Quebec niqab ban. “If feds won’t lead Canada, and this racist law passes, Ontario must support a Charter challenge.” Justin Trudeau said that it’s not his job to criticize this law.

HQ2 fan fiction approaches the denouement. Toronto isn't doing anything super thirsty to try to lure Amazon to town (unlike Ottawa, with its hockey cheer, or Calgary, with its chalk marks), but the premier's business adviser, Ed Clark, trumpeted that the company would save $1.5 billion a year if it came. Who else is going to fill all this office space?

Lyft sounds ready to head to Toronto. On the heels of announcing that its Sidewalk Labs will be building a smart city around here, Alphabet confirmed a billion-dollar investment in Lyft, making the ride-sharing app's move north of the border sound even more inevitable. Meanwhile, the city is three months behind on delivering its promised one-year review of life with legalized Uber—whose new chief brand officer, Bozoma Saint John, recently passed through to try and correct some lousy optics.

Massey Hall arrives to fill Yonge Street’s sonic void. The lack of a consistent musical presence on the strip gets lamented with each historical recognition—or the former Hard Rock Café space that's soon being filled with self-checkout machines. But Massey Hall is promising main-floor seats that retract to make a mosh pit, plus both medium and small-sized performance spaces to be built inside its forthcoming south tower:

Gentlemen’s Expo is desperately trying to navigate this changing age. The fifth annual trade show dedicated to marketing the patriarchy has been promoted with the hashtag #BeBetter, and with an aesthetic that owes a debt to Hugh Hefner. What it surely wasn’t counting on was a woman racking up the retweets for feigning annoyance with such wokeness. Maybe there’s no way for this event to avoid stepping on any third rails:

Gord Downie corporate grief emissions get half-defended. Hudson’s Bay didn’t return the Canadian Press's request for comment about a deleted Downie tribute featuring HBC stripes. Chevrolet Canada, meanwhile, stuck up for its salute on the grounds that it didn’t say his name or show a car.

Word of the moment

THAT SMELL

Councillor Mike Layton confirmed that a bad odour wafting around downtown was organic fertilizer sprinkled on sports fields, after a day of it evoking Lynyrd Skynyrd.




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