103 Hours

This week in The Incline:

• Nearly there

• Coffee chats

• Concerning concerns from real concerned taxpayers

• West coast, best coast?

  • We’re in the home stretch now. Only a few more day …

Nearly there

Things can change fast in an election campaign.

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022, Keanin Loomis was hosting a campaign town hall at the now-shuttered Afrolicious restaurant on James Street North. It was during that event that he said Hamilton, as a municipality, “needs to get out of housing. We need to do that in [the] long run.” He noted that municipal partners like Indwell “could do a better job” with CityHousing than the City of Hamilton does itself.

The comments set off a firestorm. Then-MP Matthew Green took to then-relevant social media platform Twitter to say that Loomis either knew non-profits couldn’t handle managing the massive CityHousing portfolio “and doesn’t care or doesn’t know this and doesn’t understand poverty in Hamilton.”

Local activists sounded the alarm about the possible offloading of a civic resource. The Bratina and Horwath campaigns began blasting messages about how Loomis was out to privatize government services - a point underscored by warnings from the Hamilton and District Labour Council that Loomis had, as head of the Chamber of Commerce, engaged in “anti-worker advocacy” by opposing minimum wage hikes, not to mention his cringey social media posts mocking striking workers and students protesting for lower tuition in Quebec.

While Loomis quickly clarified that he had no plans to “divest” from social housing, he also gave an interview on CHML 900 saying “I will defend people who have profit motives…it’s definitely important.”

Mainstreet began polling Hamiltonians the day after Loomis’s comments. When it was released on October 19, it showed Horwath with the backing of 34 percent of Hamiltonians, compared to 29 percent for Loomis and just 12 percent for former mayor and MP Bob Bratina.

That was the first poll since late July, which showed Loomis and Bratina in a statistical tie for second. Over three months, Loomis had more than doubled his poll numbers and replaced Bratina as Horwath’s main competitor.

Skittish progressives who were frustrated at Horwath’s quick jump into the municipal election after the provincial vote, were intrigued by Loomis’s fresh brand of pragmatic urbanism, and were becoming less worried about a Bratina 2.0 mayoralty were suddenly faced with a complicated decision: go with the flawed, but time-tested leadership of Horwath or take a risk on Loomis, who may or may not want to get the city out of the business of providing social housing?

Twelve days later, Hamiltonians made their choice. Fewer than 2,000 votes out of the 142,000 that were cast separated the triumphant Horwath and the humbled Loomis.¹

It wasn’t just the housing comments that did in the Loomis campaign. But they certainly slowed his momentum at a critical time, forcing him to respond and defend, rather than advance and expand. Those 12 days were absolutely crucial for the campaigns.

By that point, Bratina had taken himself out of contention, slowing down his appearances dramatically after he contracted COVID in late September. Horwath was able to roll out a string of impressive announcements and solidify her support with labour, while making strategic nods to the development community. While Loomis was defending his positions and trying to hold onto progressives that had been turned off by the housing comments, Horwath was strengthening her fortifications.

Announcements, endorsements, last-minute canvassing pushes, rallies, events - these are the kinds of things a campaign needs to absolutely nail in the last two weeks of a race to really have an impact. And that’s hard to do when you’re on the back foot.

We’re 103 hours away from the close of polls in this election. And, so far, the campaigns have been keeping things nice and steady. There have been a smattering of endorsements, some soft announcements, and some strange ads targeting…a local MP? But we haven’t yet seen anything so earth-shattering that it can entirely upend the campaign in these last few hours.

Can anything big happen to really change the shape of this race? And, after last week’s elections in British Columbia, are there any clues as to what we can expect next Monday?

Let’s take a look.

Coffee chats

We haven’t really seen anything that dramatic happen during this campaign. Each of the camps have been measured, consistent, and focused.

The last of the Spec’s profiles of the three main contenders dropped yesterday without making too much of a splash. Reporter Jon Wells brought each of the three to their favourite breakfast joints in town to have a one-on-one chat and showcase a more human side of the people who have the best shot at occupying the East Wing of the second floor of 71 Main West after November 15.

Horwath - who brought Wells to a coffee shop in Mac’s Innovation Park - spoke openly about the online hate she gets, her property dispute with her ex-partner, and her belief she’s the one who can keep Hamilton’s momentum going.

Loomis - speaking from Rosales Diner on Dundurn - discussed a difficult childhood, how he fell in love with Hamilton, and his optimism about the campaign this time around.

Cooper - from the Donut Diner on Stone Church East - expanded on his Pentecostal faith, his experience in the corporate world, and his “hobby” of helping conservative candidates across Hamilton.

But his interview with Wells ends on a chilling note. Cooper says he only wants a term or two if he wins, because that’s all he’d need to completely reshape Hamilton in his ultraconservative image.

“I tell people, give me Hamilton for four years - you won’t recognize it.”²

Yikes.

On the endorsement front, the mayoral campaigns are starting to make a bigger and bigger deal of who’s backing them.

This week, Cooper’s campaign put out a slide deck of the endorsements he’s secured, highlighting how former MPP Paul Miller, former mayor Bob Bratina, past Ward 8 candidate Sonia Brown, and former MP Scott Duvall are throwing their weight behind his conservative campaign.

While the names sound impressive from the surface, it’s important to remember that each of these figures is controversial in their own right. Miller was booted from the ONDP caucus after allegations of Islamophobic activities and placed fourth as an independent candidate in the 2022 provincial election. Bratina’s mayoral comeback the same year crashed and burned, leaving the former superstar of local politics with just over 12% of the vote and not a single election day poll won. Brown and Duvall both ran in the Ward 8 by-election against Cooper, earning 1.2% and 1.15% of the vote respectively (literally 12 votes separated the two). Cooper was Brown’s campaign manager in 2022 and the two seem to have mended fences to present a united front this election.

One of the most consequential of Cooper’s endorsements comes from former Ward 14 (when it was still the rural ward of Wentworth) councillor Robert Pasuta. During his time on council, Pasuta was seen as a reliable moderate, voting with his conscience and taking time to study the facts before coming to any definitive conclusions. He was thoughtful, pragmatic, and measured in his leadership, which was a refreshing counterbalance to people like Bratina, Sam Merulla, Terry Whitehead, and David Mitchell in the 2006 to 2010 term of office.

But at a campaign event in rural Hamilton, Cooper announced that Pasuta was not only backing his campaign, but would serve as a “rural action representative” in the mayor’s office if Cooper wins. Calling amalgamation a “failure” and claiming rural Hamilton is used only as a “funding source” for downtown vanity projects, Cooper said Pasuta could be a sort of “City Hall liaison” for rural Hamilton.³

Cooper is using the tried-and-true method of fanning the flames of urban/rural division. Go to rural Hamilton, tell the people living there that the Westdale elites and the Durand snobs and the woke downtown social engineers and the liberal St. Clair latte sippers and the socialists in Strathcona don’t care about the real people who make this city work and that it’s time for them to take back City Hall and restore the wrongs caused by amalgamation (with absolutely no mention of who forcibly amalgamated all these communities into Hamilton).

Former Mayor Fred Eisenberger called Cooper out for his comments, saying he was using “divisive rhetoric”.³ But Eisenberger actually backed up his opposition by throwing his support behind Loomis. In the last election, Eisenberger was quietly supportive of Horwath’s campaign, but has since switched tracks to stand with Loomis. The frontrunner also again got the endorsement of former Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, which was announced slightly before Eisenberger’s.

The mayor’s campaign hasn’t widely publicized her backers, but, according to her website, she’s earned the support of towering figures in the community like Evelyn Myrie, Dr. Gary Warner, Denise and David Christopherson, and one of my political mentors, Chris Charlton.

Instead of promoting these crucial endorsements, the mayor’s campaign has been targeting Loomis with social media ads. These negative posts are little more than screenshots of Loomis’s ill-advised tweets from 14 years ago and a photo of the frontrunner looking more than a little frat-ish, complete with sunglasses and a Henley shirt beside the words “Not a man of the people” in Loomis’s own campaign font and colours.

Not the approach I would have taken. I would have paired some inspiring announcements with heartfelt video endorsements from the aforementioned people who carry a substantial amount of weight with many in the community for their years of dedicated service to the city through advocacy, education, and leadership.

But you do you I guess.

Still, it’s better than the posts that have been appearing (and being quickly deleted) in neighbourhood Facebook groups in town. Some rather…overzealous supporters of a Ward 2 council candidate have been trying to undermine the campaign of incumbent councillor Cameron Kroetsch by, among other things, highlighting the old tweets coming from his staff and the people who signed his campaign nomination form.

As I discussed earlier this month after my name was published in the Bay Observer on a list of “assorted local woke godless radical Marxist socialist communist deviants” (satire), I am one of the people who signed Kroetsch’s nomination form.

So, to get out in front of the story, I’d like to take full ownership of my old Twitter posts. I haven’t used that platform since November of 2023 (because it’s a hive of white supremacy and hate), but here are screenshots of the remaining posts and reposts I have on the platform. I’m sorry to anyone who was harmed or offended by my insensitive, immature, and upsetting posts. I have so much learning to do.

Digging up the old social media posts of a member of council’s staff and then using them in an “attack ad”-style post is a weird thing to do. I can only see that being relevant if the member of staff said something genuinely hateful or horrible (which neither of the posts used are in any way).

Rather than focusing on the strengths of their candidate and the ideas they’ll bring to the table, the people making these posts are feeding the narrative that many of the Ward 2 council candidates are running out of spite and resentment as opposed to running because they genuinely want to improve their community. That’s a terrible look for a campaign with so little time left to convince undecided voters to make the effort and cast a ballot on Monday.

Concerning concerns from real concerned taxpayers

One of the biggest things to drop during this last little sprint of the campaign has been the last-minute avalanche of third-party spending targeting…umm…MP John-Paul Danko?

Angry residents across the city have taken to social media to complain they’re being spammed with AI-generated messages telling them to stop “Danko’s Rain Tax”, which isn’t a thing.

I need to pause right here to do a quick Stormwater 101 because it’s absolutely essential to understanding this whole thing.

In 2028, there will be a change to how water bills work in Hamilton.

Right now, if you pay a water bill in Hamilton and live within the existing urban boundary, chances are there are charges on there that say something like “wastewater fixed charge” and “wastewater discharge” fee. That’s your contribution to our existing sewer infrastructure that deals with both wastewater (the icky stuff you don’t want in your house) and stormwater (stuff that falls from the sky, onto your property, and then runs off into the public sewer system).

Those fees aren’t covering the costs of maintaining our sewer infrastructure. With all the new suburban development happening, less and less stormwater is being absorbed naturally by the earth and is, instead running off into our sewer systems. They’re getting overloaded and, with our massive infrastructure deficit, they aren’t getting the repairs and upgrades they need.

warning: more math ahead

So, starting in 2028, the city is going to change how it bills for the services you use. That “wastewater charge” you get on your water bill will go down by around 20% on average (if the city’s math is right) and there will be a new “stormwater” fee added to your bill, which will be $200.75 a year or around $16.73 a month.

Here’s a very basic graphic:

The average of my past three “wastewater fees” was around $43.50 a month (combining the fixed fee and the discharge fees). If it goes down 20%, I’m looking at around $34.80 in wastewater fees and another $16.73 in stormwater fees, for around $32 a month. So instead of the $522 a year I’m paying now, my new separated fees will be around $618. But the city will also be offering large “Rain Ready Rebates” for residents who want to invest in ways to reduce their water use and the strain their homes put on our shared infrastructure.

The fees become much higher for the largest contributors to the problem, namely large industrial, commercial, institutional, and agricultural operations that have massive paved sections of their properties.

The goal here is to get the largest contributors to invest in more sustainable stormwater management systems and to get residents to think about how to set up their properties in such a way that does not overburden our fragile sewer systems.

The city’s right-wing political establishment has been trying to brand these changes as a “rain tax”, making it seem as though everyday Hamiltonians will be handed a bill every time a drop of water falls on their homes because of a brand new tax. But this is an adjustment to the existing billing system to secure a sustainable revenue source for critical infrastructure that keeps failing. So calling it a “rain tax” may serve a political agenda (namely one that gets Hamiltonians to vote against this new funding model and starves the city of real sources of income, necessitating further privatization of civic infrastructure, all so their corporate buddies with massive paved lots on what were once floodplains can continue to keep more of their profits to themselves), but it doesn’t reflect the reality of our situation.

Some third party advertisers are really, really pissed about this upcoming billing change.

People across the city are getting messages from “real” Hamiltonians, calling on behalf of “concerned taxpayer Dennis Weyer of DankosRainTax.com”. These totally real and not at all computer simulated humans claim their property taxes have increased 32%, their water bills have shot up by half, and “now I’m hearing about Danko’s rain tax…we’re gonna get taxes for rain falling on our driveway.” The super legit and completely above-board “people” in the messages then urge the people who still answer their phone to “vote for a candidate who’s committed to stopping” the completely made-up tax.

Those candidates, according to their website, are:

• Jason Farr (Ward 4)

• Matt Francis (Ward 5)

• Tom Jackson (Ward 6)

• Esther Pauls (Ward 7)

• Terry Whitehead (Ward 8)

• Brad Clark (Ward 9)

• Jeff Beattie (Ward 10) - except he’s an MPP now and not running in the municipal election

• Ivan Luksic (Ward 10)

• Mark Tadeson (Ward 11)

• Fred Bennink (Ward 12)

• Lorne Lieberman (Ward 13) - which they’ve spelled “Liberberman”

• Mike Spadafora (Ward 14) - which they’ve spelled “Spatafora”

The AI that wrote this trainwreck of a website only got 25% of their list wrong. Good work, computer!

It is important to note here that the website says the listed candidates “have no affiliation with this website.”

The website is a jumble of AI slop, misleading claims, and bizarre quotes attributed to no one in particular. Well, except one quote up at the top, which reads “Common sense took a holiday on stormwater taxation issue”. That grammatically questionable quote is attributed to John Best at the Bay Observer.

All across the site are claims that they are simply offering “independent advocacy and satire”, though one of the prerequisites is that satire is funny. This site is a joyless carnival of misinformation and grievance, caked with visually assaulting colours and dull AI-generated images.

But it isn’t the only website opposing the imaginary “rain tax”.

Residents have also reported getting flyers that urge them to “Stop the Danko Tax Hikes” from Christopher Collins at ConcernedTaxpayersOfHamilton.com.

Collins, who the Spec reports as being a resident of Woodbridge, Ontario - 75 kilometres to the northeast of Hamilton - seems to be as concerned about these “Danko” taxes as Dennis Weyer. The two told the Spec they just so happen to “feel the same way” about this upcoming water billing change.⁴ Collins again reiterated this to the CBC yesterday.

Each website claims to be providing its own form of “independent advocacy”; the “Dennis Weyer” site says it offers “independent advocacy, commentary, and satire”, while the “Christopher Collins” website provides “independent advocacy, opinions, and commentary”.

Good thing they specified that, otherwise a casual observer of both their websites might, I dunno, come up with the silly idea that they were all part of a coordinated, dark-money, astroturf campaign backed by powerful political players and right-wing operatives in the city to strategically engineer an ultraconservative city council that will do the bidding of moneyed interests instead of residents, cutting off a revenue stream for infrastructure upgrades and allowing the complete deterioration of the city all to ensure the maximization of profits to a small number of companies and developers who have absolutely no incentive to change their building patterns or business practices at the present moment and would like to keep it like that so they can go on extracting from our communities while only providing the bare minimum in return.

And that would be very silly, right?

I mean, it was just a complete coincidence that, according to the ICANN domain registry, “ConcernedTaxpayersOfHamilton.com” was registered at 10:34 AM on October 14, 2026 and “DankosRainTax.com” was registered at 12:57 PM on the exact same day and that both sites use the same Lithuanian AI-centred webhosting platform.

Because the two campaigns are just independent advocacy on this very specific issue.

On a completely unrelated note, here are screenshots of their websites.

These completely independent third-party campaigns are running hard against John-Paul Danko, who is the Liberal MP for Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas. The sites make frequent reference to “Danko’s record at City Hall”, use quotes from Danko, and make references to the MP leading some kind of “rain drop army”.

John-Paul Danko is, of course, not running in this municipal election. His wife, HWDSB trustee Dawn Danko is a candidate for Ward 8 councillor. Dawn Danko has never voted for any new municipal taxes because, as a school trustee, that’s outside her jurisdiction.

Neither site includes the name “Dawn Danko” anywhere. Only Dennis Weyer’s “independent advocacy, commentary, and satire” site even acknowledges Dawn’s candidacy, and that’s only through a boring AI-generated image of the Danko’s in raincoats while pieces of paper reading “Danko’s rain tax $$ stormwater fee $$$” fall around them. The photo does not label the Danko’s, instead carrying the caption “Generated satire image”.

Excellent work, totally legit concerned taxpayer Dennis Weyer.

Christopher Collins’s site ConcernedTaxpayersOfHamilton.com makes no mention of Dawn Danko. But his other site, “DankosRecord.com” does.

That site - nearly identical to the other two and created the day after the other two sites were - focuses exclusively on Dawn’s vote to end the School Resource Officer program at public schools in Hamilton. It then blames an increase in violence towards educational support staff, falling test scores, the HWDSB’s deficit, and uneven suspension events on the vote. It includes the bolded quote “Children were harmed in this decision,” which is attributed to a “concerned taxpayer of Hamilton.”

The net for this anti-Danko campaign has been cast wide. The flyers calling on residents to “Stop the Danko tax hikes” appear to be focused on Ward 8, but Collins told the CBC he’s also been advertising in Stoney Creek.

The AI-generated robocalls have no geographic focus and have been going out to people across Hamilton. Posters on the r/Hamilton subreddit reported getting them around 8:00 PM on Monday the 19th, with calls going to people well outside of Ward 8.

Across the board, commenters have pinned the ads on Ward 8 candidate Terry Whitehead, as did commenters on similar posts about the solicitation on Facebook, with some noting the similarities in branding between campaign materials from the Whitehead camp and the “Danko Rain Tax” flyers they’ve been getting.

There’s nothing officially connecting the third-party ads and the Whitehead campaign. And it would be very, very challenging to find proof of any coordination without confirmation from the candidate and the advertisers. Collins told the CBC “no candidate ever directed or funded my advertising,” when asked if he was working on behalf of Whitehead. Of course, that doesn’t answer the question. A candidate might hire a firm to “do communications” for their campaign without directed what the firm did or directly pay for the advertising. But that’s all just speculation.

One has to ask why two completely unknown figures - one of whom lives in Woodbridge - would create nearly identical campaigns, complete with AI-driven websites, phone calls and Canada Post direct mailers, all to try and undermine a city council candidate in Ward 8 by misrepresenting a policy her husband championed three years ago and maintaining another website pinning the blame for our strained education system on one vote she took in 2020.

Is this to support an opposing candidate in the race? Is it a clunky attempt to try a “Trudeau NDP Carbon Tax”-style line that can be used as a wedge for right-wing candidates across Hamilton? Is it for some other nefarious purpose?

Sure, it might benefit Whitehead or ten Brinke or any of the other candidates in the Ward 8 council race. But we have to remember that there’s been a feud between Rob Cooper and the Dankos for years, with the mayoral candidate blaming the councillor-turned-MP’s support for the Vacant Unit Tax for creating homelessness in Hamilton, as well as serving as the campaign manager for his main opponent in 2022.

Danko made a habit of making enemies left, right, and centre in town with his exhausting social media habits, his inscrutable ideology, and his responses to resident concerns with the same tone as an undergrad in the back of a philosophy tutorial who says “umm, actually” whenever his female peers share their perspectives on a reading. He’s a polarizing figure in town.

But he’s not running in this election. Dawn Danko’s campaign is her own. The attack campaign equating a vote for Danko (Dawn) with a vote for Danko (John-Paul) is sexist, sloppy, and seriously unethical. Dawn told the CBC that, if people think the ads are a-okay, then “that’s very revealing of their character.”

I seriously doubt we’ll find out the real meaning behind these ads before election day. But I’m fairly certain that this campaign, as well-funded as it is, won’t have a sizable impact on the outcome of Monday’s vote.

Like the farce that was the “Concerned Hamiltonians” saga, this dark money campaign is just another pit into which Hamilton’s wealthy right-wing elite will dump their money to settle personal scores, focus on personal enrichment, and make our civic democracy just a little bit worse for their own personal gain.

West coast, best coast?

Last Saturday, Vancouver held their municipal elections. Like us here in Ontario, municipal elections in British Columbia are held on the same day in October every four years.

Only, this year, they’re holding their municipal vote at the same time as a poorly-timed snap provincial election. There was concern that the overlapping elections would confuse voters and drive down turnout. But the results showed that the opposite was true.

Turnout in Vancouver jumped 7 percentage points. Across the province, local turnout was up. As was, it would seen, the appetite for change amongst the voters.

The mayors of Surrey, Delta, Fort. St. John, Kamloops, Langford, Langley, Maple Ridge, New Westminster, and Port Alberni were all defeated while incumbent mayors in Kelowna and Victoria faced extremely tough re-election battles.

And, in Vancouver, the city has decided to come for Hamilton’s title of “City that really doesn’t like their mayors serving more than one term” by kicking out their conservative mayor Ken Sim and replacing him with Pete Fry of the Vancouver Green Party.

Vancouver’s left had an incredible night, winning the mayoralty, 9 of 10 city council seats, and every seat on the city’s parks and school boards. There’s now just one right-wing elected official in all of Vancouver.

Since 2014, Vancouver has gone from having a centrist mayor to a centre-left mayor to a hard right mayor back to a centre-left mayor. They’ve changed the ideological orientation of their council in nearly every election, creating whiplash for the poor municipal bureaucrats forced to entirely refocus their priorities with each incoming government. Their politics is so confusing that it was one of the first things I wrote about when I started writing a newsletter in 2023.

There are two ways to take the results from Vancouver.

The first is that the right-wing tide has crested and is already starting to fall again. Years of punitive policies, culture war talking points, and general outrage have exhausted voters who want a return to real ideas and meaningful action, even if that action costs money or takes a while to show any results.

The CBC credited Vancouver’s general left-leaning politics for helping elect Fry, alongside his optimistic and hopeful campaign and the strength of his campaign organization. Left-leaning candidates can make a real impact when they run hopeful campaigns and offer real solutions that make it to the voters because of their on-the-ground campaign volunteers and their overall communications strategy. That’s got to be good news for any progressive candidates in Ontario worried that the politics of outrage might swamp their campaigns of optimism.

The second way to take the result is that voters are just generally pissed these days. The system isn’t working like it should. People are getting left behind, prices are rising, and it seems that, sometimes, our elected officials aren’t listening or taking the action we expect them to take to make life better. Voters are angry as disorder, dysfunction, and disinvestment, and will take it out on anyone seen to be supporting the status quo.

Municipal politicians, by the very nature of the role, often seem to be the cheerleaders of that same broken status quo. It’s hard to get excited about economic development strategies when you can’t afford gas. It’s all well and good to talk about speeding up planning approvals but rent still eats up half your monthly income. Infrastructure investments over the long term are fine to talk about, but doesn’t exactly get someone fired up after they’ve hit 50 potholes on their hellish commute home.

Progress takes a while in municipalities. Local government isn’t intended to run at breakneck speed. So, when things aren’t noticeably improved in four years, voters get mad and demand change. And, if a compelling enough candidate comes along offering that change, they’ll swap one leader out for another.

The results from Vancouver don’t really tell us much. While they tired of their right-wing mayor, we’ve had moderate local leadership that hasn’t really engaged in the same kind of culture war nonsense Sims did out west.

Progressives can take solace in knowing that people are still willing to vote for a forward thinking option. But everyone should be cautious; maybe those votes were against the way things are rather than for how things could be.

We’re in the home stretch now. Only a few more days until Hamiltonians go to the polls and select a new city council. Let’s hope we take some lessons from Vancouver about what a right-wing council can do and how the civic left can run a winning campaign. Otherwise, we’re in for a tough for years.

As Cooper told The Spec: “give me Hamilton for four years - you won’t recognize it.”²

1  _{Matthew Van Dongen. “Loomis backtracks on city housing remark” Hamilton Spectator, October 14, 2022 (Spec archive link - Paywalled); "". “Record spike in advance voters seen” Hamilton Spectator, October 18, 2022 (Spec archive link - Paywalled); Scott Radley. “We need to get over the developer thing” Hamilton Spectator, October 18, 2022 (Spec archive link - Paywalled); Matthew Van Dongen. “New poll puts Horwath ahead, but Loomis is closing the gap” Hamilton Spectator, October 19, 2022 (Spec archive link - Paywalled).}

2  _{Jon Wells. “Mayor’s race: Former corporate ‘hired gun’ Rob Cooper is out from the shadows and he wants to change Hamilton” Hamilton Spectator, October 20, 2026 (Spec link - Paywalled).}

3  _{Nathan Bawaan. “‘Rain tax’ robocalls aimed at Hamilton Mountain council candidate reach confused residents citywide” Hamilton Spectator, October 21, 2026 (Spec link -Paywalled).}

4  _{Laura Sebben. “Mayoral candidates propose plans for rural Hamilton communities” Hamilton Spectator, October 22, 2026 (Spec link -Paywalled).}