26 Sep 2014 | Comments
Following up on this morning's post on candidate's past campaign contributions, we are releasing a list of candidates who are running for city council positions and where the candidate's name appears to be listed in the City of Toronto's Lobbyist Registry System:
Note that these results are based on a name, address, or phone number match with a record in the City's Lobbyist Registry System. Records may indicate a prior or current registration: please search the registry for more information on the specific activities. If you believe that there is an error in the information listed above, please let us know.
According to the Office of the Lobbyist Registrar site, the office's responsibilities are to:
[To] promote and enhance the transparency and integrity of City government decision making through public disclosure of lobbying activities and regulation of lobbyists' conduct.
The office defines "lobbying" as follows:
In general, lobbying consists of activities that can influence the opinions or actions of a public office holder ... lobbying is communicating with a public office holder on a range of subjects including decisions on by-laws, policies and programs, grants, purchasing, and applications for services, permits, licenses or other permission.
There are two types of lobbyst listed above. Here is how they are defined by the city:
A consultant lobbyist is someone who — for payment — lobbies on behalf of a client (another individual, company, partnership or organization).
An in-house lobbyist is an employee, partner or sole proprietor who lobbies on behalf of their own employer, business or organization.
26 Sep 2014 | Comments
Do you believe money plays a role in politics? Do financial contributions highlight relationships?
That's for you to decide! To help you make your own assessment, we're releasing aggregated data on candidates currently running for Toronto city council who made a campaign contribution during the period of 2010 to 2013.
The table below pulls together public data that is available from the City Clerks Office, Election & Registry Services, available from the Toronto open data portal, and shows those individuals who:
made a financial contribution or equivalent in goods/services to any election campaign between the period of 2010 to 2013. This dataset identifies those who contributed a combined amount of $100 or more to an election campaign. The disclosure of this information is authorized under the Municipal Elections Act, 1996.
We've added this information, as well as contributions from the 2006 election period, to each of the candidate pages here at Every Candidate.
We'll let you do the analysis and look for the patterns. Let us know what you think.
Please note that this information is based on name matches only. As always, if you see an error in the data, please let us know.
You can download the raw data here.
25 Sep 2014 | Comments
The following table breaks down the 127 candidates for Toroto District School Board and shows how many are running in each of the 22 school wards.
There is an average of six candidates running for each position. There are 10 individuals seeking the seat in school ward 18, Scarborough - Southwest.
Incumbents are running for re-election in 77% of Toronto's school wards. There are five wards where no incumbent is running.
In the table below you can follow the links to examine the school board trustee candidates for each ward in more detail.
You can download the raw data here.
24 Sep 2014 | Comments
Just in case you didn't catch the big news yesterday: the tireless folks at Women in Toronto Politics launched their incredible Position Primer yesterday. Just stop reading now and go have a look -- it's amazing.
If you're still reading, we can tell you that it's an incredible resource for Toronto residents who are keen to compare candidates running in their ward on key issues. Candidates had to keep their responses short, which is the real innovation here: Bite-sized, side-by-side comparison.
We like the project so much that we've added a link directly from Every Candidate's ward pages to the matching ward page on the Position Primer.
On a side note, Every Candidate crashed the Position Primer launch party last night (actually, we were invited, I swear) and had the opportunity to meet and congratulate some of the fine folks who were involved. Once again, congrats on an amazing project!
24 Sep 2014 | Comments
Much to its surpise, Every Candidate got to hang out with CBC's Matt Galloway yesterday morning.
If you, like Every Candidate, find the idea of getting up before noon frightening and didn't catch the segment on Metro Morning at the terrifying hour of 7:25AM, here it is for all of your listening pleasure:
You're welcome.