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Mayor David Miller, whose goal is to make Toronto North America's greenest city, has turned in his Toyota Prius - sent to the shop with electronics problems - for another hybrid car, this one made by ailing General Motors.

Mr. Miller, who has been chauffeured to events in a Prius since his 2003 election, says his new Chevrolet Malibu hybrid, while assembled in Kansas, uses the most Canadian-made parts of any hybrid. The switchover happened in the last few months.

"The Prius was having some problems, and I wanted my new car to have as much Canadian content as possible," Mr. Miller told reporters last week. "The Malibu's a great car. I'm very pleased with it. There's over 30 parts suppliers in Southwestern Ontario that supply parts to it. And it's working very well for us."

OOTES EARNS BIKER AWARD

As a member of the right-leaning faction at the clam shell, Councillor Case Ootes (Ward 29, Toronto-Danforth) knows that victories are rare.

But since 2005, he has had success fighting for the rights of the city's oppressed hog-riding minority, winning battles to earn motorcyclists free on-street parking and access to some of the city's high-occupancy vehicle lanes.

The city's public works committee received an award from the Canadian Motorcycle Association last week to recognize those moves, which were approved by city council.

Committee chairman Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre), and a left-leaning ally of the mayor, plans to hand the plaque to Mr. Ootes.

"It was his initiative," Mr. Baeremaeker said of his colleague. "This is a big building with lots of public policy initiatives and this one might not have seen the light of day were it not for Case."

TIME ON YOUR HANDS?

Councillor Howard Moscoe (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) has rekindled his campaign to promote Canadian English in city documents.

What rankles the former junior high school teacher is that on city computers, Microsoft Word software defaults to American usage, as in the noun licence spelled with an s.

"I feel strongly about my Canadian identity," said the long-time local politician with a history of hobby-horse initiatives. But on this one he is dead serious.

"If governments in Canada can't promote Canadian English, who will?" he asked.

Mr. Moscoe said he examined the Canadian usage (or not) of all three levels of government, coming up with 84 words rejected by the software program. According to his research of eight Canadian spelled words, such as rigour instead of rigor, he found that city documents used American spellings 11 per cent of the time, compared to 3.6 per cent by the province.

He now plans to appeal (yet again) to the government management committee next month to take action, in hopes they will direct staff to make the necessary requests of Microsoft.

"We have a responsibility to hold on to what we have in terms of being Canadian," he said.

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