The Capital Tea is an independent Ottawa news page — @thecapitaltea — covering the last 24 hours in the capital every morning: city hall and the projects reshaping the city, transit and weather that actually affect your day, events and pop-ups worth leaving the house for, and the occasional bit of well-sourced gossip. That's the tea.

We are a small independent outlet, not affiliated with the City of Ottawa, OC Transpo, or any political party or level of government.

Every news item and event on this site links to the source it came from. Our rules:

• Primary sources first. City of Ottawa and Engage Ottawa, OC Transpo's own alerts, Environment Canada, the NCC, venue and organizer pages, team and league sites, and official releases.
• Aggregators are not verification. A listing on an events aggregator never counts as proof. If an official page doesn't confirm it, it doesn't run.
• Claims are labelled as claims. When a public figure states a figure their own ministry won't confirm, we report the confirmed number and label the claim — see the Civic Campus item in the October 29 brief.
• No invented anything. No made-up prices, attendance figures, quotes or timelines. Prices appear only when an official page publishes them.
• Submissions are tips, not stories. Videos and tips sent to us are verified against a real source before anything is published, and contributors are credited unless they ask to stay anonymous.

We fix errors in the open: the item is corrected, the correction is noted on the page, and the original source trail stays visible. We have already pulled items before publication when official sources contradicted early listings — including an event whose widely-listed date turned out to be wrong by three weeks.

Spotted an error? Send it through the Send the Tea page with a link to the correct source and we'll check it the same day.