Terms

What this covers

The Public Gallery reports on Toronto city hall from the public record. These terms cover everyone who uses publicgallery.app. By using the site you accept them, and if you do not accept them, do not use the site.

The site is free to read

Everything published here is free. No story, councillor record, meeting page, or archive page sits behind a sign-in. If something is public today it stays public.

You can read, quote, and link to anything we publish, as long as you say where it came from. What you cannot do is republish our writing wholesale as your own, or copy the site in bulk by automated means. If you want bulk access, write to us and ask instead.

Accounts

An account is free and optional. What it holds and why is on the privacy page, which forms part of these terms.

You reach your account through a sign-in link sent to your email, so anyone who can read that mailbox can reach your account. Keep it secure. Email hello@publicgallery.app if you think someone else has access.

You can delete your account yourself, at any time, from your account page. We may suspend an account that is being used to attack the service or to harass someone.

What we stand behind, and what we do not

This section matters more than the rest, so it is written plainly.

What we stand behind. We report from the City of Toronto’s own published record: agendas, decisions, recorded votes, and meeting video. Every fact we publish about a council decision traces to that record, and we link to the source so you can check it yourself.

We do not originate claims. We do not assert facts about a decision that the record does not support. Where our summary and the City’s record disagree, the City’s record governs and ours is wrong. Tell us and we will correct it. Where a language model wrote a summary, a headline, or a score, we say so on the page, and how scores work explains the rest.

What we do not promise. We do not promise the site is always available, and we do not promise our coverage is complete. We cover part of council business, so silence here is not evidence that nothing happened. Council schedules change without notice, the City’s systems change without notice, and meeting video and captions are sometimes unavailable.

We are not your advisor. Nothing here is legal, planning, financial, or lobbying advice. What you decide to do after reading is yours to decide.

Editorial independence

Nothing buys influence over what we cover or how we cover it. This part binds us rather than you.

• Nobody gets advance sight of anything before it is published.
• There is no channel to request, alter, delay, or suppress coverage, and no such request will be actioned.
• We will not make the free site worse in order to make a paid service look better.

If you think we published something inaccurate, you have the same route as anyone else, which is to write to us with the record.

People named in our coverage

Elected officials, filed candidates, and city staff acting in their official roles are named, because their public conduct is the subject.

Members of the public who speak at a meeting are not named by us, are not given pages, and are not made searchable. Where we publish a transcript of a public meeting, it is the record of that meeting as spoken, and we do not alter it.

A paid service is coming, and it is not here yet

We are building a paid service for organisations that need to track council business. You cannot subscribe to it today, and nothing on this site is behind it. When it launches it will carry its own agreement, shown to you before you pay, and these terms will be updated in the same pass.

Ending it

You can stop using the site whenever you like, and delete your account from your account page. We may suspend or end access if these terms are broken, or for conduct that attacks the service. Where the problem can be fixed, we will say so first.

Changes

We may change these terms. The effective date at the top tells you when the current version started.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of Ontario have jurisdiction.

Our posts on X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

We publish our coverage on our own accounts on X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube as well as on this site. Those posts are our reporting, and what we stand behind, our editorial independence, and how we treat people named in our coverage apply to them as they apply here. Each platform has its own terms, which govern your use of it.

A tool on our own server publishes those posts through each platform’s official interface, and only The Public Gallery uses it. The tool uses the YouTube API Services, and by using it, its users agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service. What the tool handles, and what it does not, is on the privacy page.

Contact

The Public Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Write to hello@publicgallery.app.