Not all washrooms are created equal, or so the Canada's Best Bathroom contest would have us believe.

The contest is a northern spinoff of the hugely successful America's Best Bathroom contest, which has been showcasing the best public commodes in the country for nine years. The Canadian edition, which is sponsored by cleaning product maker Cintas (without any hint of irony, we think), yesterday announced the five finalists culled from more than 100 nominations, three of which are Canadian restaurants.

Spice Route and Mildred's Temple Kitchen in Toronto and Cactus Club Cafe in Vancouver are all up for the honour, three restaurants that presumably believe the digestive process is just as important as the consumption of food. Also nominated are the restrooms at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and Vancouver's Shangri-La Hotel. It's now up to the Internet voting public, who have until Aug. 31 to decide which washroom is Canada's best.

Voters are urged to consider two criteria, says David Brandt, director of media relations for the contest. "First, each finalist has to be impeccably clean. And second, they should be memorable, which could mean anything -- luxurious, quirky, the products of people who want to have fun with their restrooms."

The latter certainly describes Mildred's Temple Kitchen. On Valentine's Day this year, the restaurant gained notoriety for encouraging its customers to have sex in its single-occupancy, unisex restrooms by placing condoms and copies of the Kama Sutra in stalls.

But the restaurant hopes there's more to differentiate their washrooms than that. "There's an industry joke that people do that in every bathroom in the city," says Mildred's guest services manager Maeve Gallagher. "The promotion was just another joke, part of our twisted sense of humour. But we're intent on turning around the reputation of our beautiful bathrooms."

Indeed, the contest recognizes the murals in Mildred's Temple Kitchen, which were painted by Montreal artist Alice Jarry. Spice Route, meanwhile, is lauded for its garden views, while the Metro Toronto Convention Centre gets the thumbs up for its hands-free technology (and, we suspect, because it's the only one on the list to have hosted Obama lately).

While the restrooms at Mildred's have been the butt of more than a few jokes this year, the contest is not all fun and games -- it's actually kind of important.

"We're sitting on a pile of research that shows a relationship between having clean restrooms and customer satisfaction or, really, the bottom line," Brandt says. In fact, the contest's website states that 95% of respondents in a Cintas study wouldn't return to an establishment with unclean restrooms.

And though her response is less scientifically exacting, Gallagher agrees. "We want our customers to be comfortable no matter where they are," she says. "We think a good, clean bathroom is representative of the kind of service the restaurant provides."

Hopefully, the people of Canada agree, too. The winner will be announced in September, and will receive Cintas's coveted Canada's Best Restroom plaque to display proudly above its urinals for years to come.