Rob FordLess than a year after sweeping in to office, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford finds himself in deep trouble.

Polls suggest his popularity is plummeting, key allies are deserting him and his plan to slash city spending by closing libraries and slashing public transit is meeting fierce opposition.

That might explain his administration's meagre budget cuts announced Tuesday, which equate to only one-third of one per cent of Toronto's total annual budget of $9 billion.

Ford was elected with a clear mandate to cut the "gravy" at city hall.

The cuts announced Tuesday, however, are a mere drop in the bucket relative to his goal to cut $740 million from the city's expenses.

The mayor put a positive spin on the cuts — claiming to have spared beloved services and found $28-million in "service adjustments," as well as another $65-million in possible cuts that were referred to during this fall's budget discussions.

"This is a huge victory," the mayor told reporters after the vote. "Childcare saved.

"What was up with McGuinty's hand movements?" became a common question in the twittersphere during last night's leaders' debate in Ontario.

Throughout the debate, the usually taut Dalton McGuinty answered questions while making demonstrative gestures with his hands.

The Globe and Mail's Stephen Wicary tweeted: "McGuinty's hand gestures are SNL worthy. Reminds me of Dana Carvey's Bush the Elder."

Watch the video:

"If Dalton McGuinty proved anything tonight it's that he would make a great third-base coach," wrote University of Victoria political scientist Emmett Macfarlane.

The right-leaning National Citizens Coalition blogged, "Premier Dalton McGuinty's constant hand movements reminded me again why he is all for windmills and green energy. He talks like a windmill; with both hands working intermittently just to keep him upright."

On Wednesday, Liberal sources told The Star McGuinty's hand gestures were part of his plan to demonstrate, especially to women voters, that he still has a

The Ontario election leaders' debate Tuesday ended like most other debates do with no knock-out punches and with each party claiming victory.

The Tories were the first to release a post-debate response titled "Tim Hudak Wins Ontario's Leaders' Debate."

"During the debate, Hudak exposed Dalton McGuinty's failed record on green energy as well as his record of wasting a billion dollars during the Liberal eHealth scandal," it stated.

"Tim Hudak also pinned McGuinty down on his record of increasing taxes on Ontario families asking that, given Dalton McGuinty's record of breaking promises and increasing taxes through the HST, health tax and eco-tax, why would anybody believe McGuinty now."

On their website, the Liberals posted a release about what people are saying concerning the debate. The post leads with this quote from Tarke Fatah of Newstalk 1010: "You heard it hear first: a Liberal majority on October 6, 2011. Hudak, you blew a 10 per cent lead and your party will need a new leader."

Premier Greg Selinger One week before the Manitoba election, a new poll indicates health care is the number one issue in the province followed by crime.

The poll gives the opposition Conservatives a sliver of hope in an election they're not expected to win - tough on crime policies, after all, are are a Conservative staple.

Provincially, Manitoba politics is mostly a two-party show, with the governing NDP Leader Greg Selinger facing a challenge from Progressive Conservative Leader Hugh McFadyen, a lawyer and former chief of staff for the province's last PC premier.

Throughout the past week, the Tory leader has been speaking about shedding Manitoba's "crime capital" handle.

Manitoba has the highest homicide rate in Canada and there's been an increase in arson and organized crime.  Winnipeg has either led or been very near the top of the Violent Crime Index since it was introduced four years ago.

"After 12 years of Greg Selinger and the NDP, violent crime is out of control. The alarming headlines that have

Canada's justice minister, Rob Nicholson, said "this is just the beginning" when he unveiled the Harper government's infamous 100-page omnibus crime bill last week, and he likely meant it.

As the government used its 166-seat majority to impose closure on debate Tuesday to get the monster bill into the Commons justice committee for witness hearings, it was hard to imagine what could be left.

The bill, which throws together nearly a dozen crime bills the Conservatives had on the Commons plate when Stephen Harper cut Parliament short for the May election, seems to address every remaining pet peeve Harper and Nicholson had left over, following an endless string of earlier crime bills since they first won power nearly six years ago.

There are new mandatory minimum sentences, even for growing six marijuana plants for the purpose of trafficking, which would include handing just one joint over to a pal, higher maximum penalties for crimes, tougher sentencing for young offenders, more publicity

The prime minister's parliamentary secretary has waded in to the Ontario election campaign.

Over the weekend, Conservative MP Dean Mastro commissioned a poll because he felt a local newspaper underplayed the popularity of the local Progressive Conservative candidate.

The Globe and Mail reported Peterborough This Week newspaper published a poll showing Liberal Jeff Leal had a 45.5-per-cent share of the vote compared to 28 per cent for his PC candidate Alan Wilson.

Mastro disagreed with the poll so decided to conduct his own.

"I was deeply concerned that publishing numbers in the fashion as presented on the cover of a weekly large circulation paper could significantly suppress voter participation," he told the Globe and Mail.

"The methodology was not released and the responses could have just as easily been provided by six-year-olds as registered voters."

Conveniently, Mastro's poll, which he publicized on Twitter, has both the Liberal and PC candidates in a dead heat at 34 per cent

British PM David CameronThe federal NDP are joining a worldwide cause to battle a trend toward conservatism around the globe.

A senior NDP official disclosed to The Hill Times the party is working towards a memorandum of understanding with left-of-centre parties in the U.K. and Australia that will allow them to share information and strategy as they attempt to showcase alternative solutions to the global financial crisis.

Brad Lavigne, principal secretary to NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel, cited British Prime Minister David Cameron's speech to Canadian Senators and MPs in the House of Commons on Sept. 22 as an example of how closely Stephen Harper, Cameron and other Conservatives are working as they push forward proposals to address global economic unrest, focusing on government cuts and debt reduction as solutions.

"As they're developing their relationships over the last while, closer and closer, so too we now seek to establish closer links with our sister parties in other countries," Lavigne told The Hill

Mark CarneyThe CEO of American banking giant JP Morgan Chase launched a tirade against Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney in a closed-door meeting in front of more than two dozen bankers and finance officials.

Carney seems to be the most unlikely of targets given how Canada's banking sector came through the 2008/09 banking collapse relatively unscathed.

The Financial Times reported the exchange Friday was so heated, Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, emailed Carney after the meeting to try to smooth relations.

The outburst was the result of ongoing tensions between bankers and international regulators over the Basel III measure, a proposed financial directive that would require all banks to hold larger capital buffers.

Jamie Dimon and other bankers have argued authorities are moving too quickly, choking the profitability of financial firms at the same time governments are calling on them to boost lending to fuel the economic recovery.

Carney dismissed that argument in a speech to