…but first, a word from the Sewer

A penitent note before this rather brief Thursday edition of the newsletter.

I made a mistake in my Monday profile of Ray Mulholland. When writing about his 1987 run for Ward 5 alderman in a by-election, I noted he lost and that election “would be the last time he would seek higher office.”

Well, turns out I missed a whole other by-election Mulholland ran in three years later.

d’oh.

After David Christopherson was elected to the provincial legislature in 1990, there was a by-election for his vacated aldermanic seat in Ward 4. Mulholland ran in that contest and lost quite handily to Dave Wilson, who would hold the seat until 2000 when he was defeated by Sam Merulla. The circle of life except it ends with a hyena eating Simba.

I do my best to get all my facts in order before publishing a newsletter. But I dropped the ball there. I made that mistake because that edition was deeply researched - but that kind of research takes time. My self-imposed timelines make it challenging for me to do the work I’d like to do and double-check all the facts to make sure things are in order. Honestly, pretty sloppy for a researcher.

Forgetting a by-election is a huge and concerning wake-up call to a political scientist/historian/geographer/nerd/cat dad. Let the flagellating begin!

I’m joking. Mostly.

This newsletter is a passion project that I could easily spend 110% of my time on, but it only brings in a little money from those amazing readers who send me tips on occasion. While I have been encouraged to start charging for portions of the newsletter or start a subscription system for bonus content, I’m uneasy with that for two reasons. The first is that I think we should be able to access content with as few paywalls and barriers as possible. Call me utopian (and you’ll get a lecture on the origins of the term and variations on what St. Thomas More actually meant when he created the word), but a democracy should be built around access to information for all - not just those with enough resources to pay for it. The second is that adding content is both risky (what if not enough people want to pay for it and it strains me financially even more) and could create a situation where I spread myself so thin, I don’t get to provide the detailed insights people have come to expect.

So, in the interim, I’ll have to really start working on other projects that are far more likely to bring in some money. Because, as much as I love being engaged in our democratic project like this, I still have bills to pay, debt to service, and cats that just 👏 won’t 👏 stop 👏 eating.

Leaving out a whole chunk of someone’s political career is a reminder that my ambition, capacity, and available time don’t always align.

I’ll be reorienting my priorities a little going forward. I’d love to cover more things that happen in town and spend days writing long pieces about the minutiae of municipal affairs and the Ford government and whathaveyou. But, until such time as that can cover all the bills, I’ll have to reassess where my priorities lay. I don’t know exactly what that means right now, but I’ll spend a little time thinking about it.

I’ve updated Mulholland’s story with the omitted information, which you can check out here if you haven’t already read it.

Okay, on with the show.

Eight to two

On Monday, I published a lengthy look at the legacy of three of Hamilton’s longest-serving elected officials. Each of these men - Father Kyran Kennedy, Dr. Harry Paikin, and Ray Mulholland - all served over forty years in office and all had their own unique impact on the office of trustee, the community they served, and the city overall.

But, at the beginning of my piece, I discussed the process of replacing Mulholland, which was being discussed at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) meeting that very evening. My prediction was that the trustees would “almost certainly” decide to appoint someone rather than hold a by-election.

As if to spite me personally (I get it, I’d want to spite me too), the HWDSB trustees voted eight-to-two in favour of holding a by-election for the now-vacant office of Ward 4 Public school trustee. The estimated cost of holding a by-election is around $200,000.

lol.

Democracy costs money. Let’s just get that out of the way. Elections are expensive because we need to pay people to make sure they’re done right, get information out to the public, print ballots, keep voters aware of what’s happening, and ensure we have a fair and free count. I don’t accept complaints about the cost of elections because the alternative is a system where you can’t really complain.

The question is whether this is the right instance for an election. An appointment can ensure the community’s voice is represented - particularly if the person being appointed has a track record of advocacy in that community - and, at the general election, the community can have their say on whether that person has done well or if they’d like to pursue a new path.

Best I can tell, the last by-election for an HWDSB trustee was in March of 1990 after Ward 4 trustee Ruth Van Horne stepped down to take a paid job as the board’s collective bargaining agent. In that by-election, Sandy Hill, who finished just 97 votes behind Judith Bishop in the 1988 election for Ward 1 trustee, was victorious, beating out eight other candidates for the seat.1

Voter turnout was just 7.2% and, at a cost of $50,000, the Spec calculated that it cost $32.74 per vote cast in the by-election. That beat the turnout for the previous trustee by-election held in Ward 3 in 1987, where turnout was 5.1%, but it still wasn’t a great showing. Not exactly a compelling mandate from the people or a vote of confidence in our democracy.

Many of the candidates in that race complained about how expensive the election was and how disinterested people were in the campaign. But, as then-alderman David Christopherson told the Spec: “By calling an election they knew that the price of democracy is expensive…But if they decided to appoint somebody, people would be jumping all over them saying they are being denied their democratic rights.”2

Just five weeks later, when the Catholic board decided to appoint a trustee to a vacant Ward 2 seat rather than hold an election, a letter to the Spec said just that, with the writer noting “An appointment can only cheapen the position of trustee, a position that influences the children of our community…We need [trustees] very much, and thus we should be given the opportunity to vote for them.”3

So the first trustee by-election in 24 years will happen sometime in the next few weeks. The turnaround on that will be intense. Nominations will have to open and close, voters lists will have to be drawn up, polling stations will have to be selected, and advance voting will have to occur with lightening speed. Buckle up, Ward 4, you’re in for one hell of a ride.

Over in Halton, their school boards are much more enthusiastic about by-elections. But the public response to them is not exactly inspiring. In 2007, there were only 625 votes cast in a by-election for Burlington’s Wards 1 and 2 trustee on the Halton Catholic board.4

Last May, the Public voters in Burlington’s Wards 1 and 2 voted in a trustee by-election for a vacancy on the Halton District School Board (HDSB) where, again, turnout was very, very, very low. Only 6.1% of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot.

In that most recent by-election, Burlington gave people the option of voting online. If Hamilton decides to go with all in-person voting, expect turnout to be even lower.

Herein lies a potential problem.

Trustee elections are already low-information contests. It can be hard to get people to pay attention to school issues. Some of the only folks who care about trustee elections are far-right extremists who want to use the platform provided by the trustee’s office to rant about trans people and teen sex and police in schools and vaccines and a host of imagined culture war complaints. If only 5% of the population comes out to vote, it could be easy for an extreme right culture warrior to prevail.

We know the city’s hard right is organizing. They’ve been relentlessly beating the drums of war for years now, threatening to run candidates against every councillor slightly to the left of Milton Freedman. Now, the right-wing populists on the fringe are very different than mainstream right-wingers, but they could benefit from the general culture of unbridled and directionless rage that has come to define our current political moment.

Regina, which has municipal elections scheduled for this fall, is experiencing this right now. A shadowy right-wing group called the Regina Civic Awareness and Action Network (RCAAN) is backing seven school trustee candidates who have ties to anti-Semitic, conspiracy-oriented, dangerously anti-queer groups like Action4Canada and the people behind the recent failed One Million March for Children that, as Luke LeBrun of PressProgress noted, “missed its target by between 999,975 or 999,950 people or so.” The candidates backed in Regina claim they want “education over indoctrination” but, in reality, are terrified of difference and want to make schools and public institutions so hostile to queer people that we all slink back into the closet.

The far-right fringe tried to take over the HWDSB in 2022. Their efforts were thwarted because of the hard work of progressive candidates and Hamiltonians of all stripes banding together to say no to extremism. Even still, candidates like Michael Peters in Ward 2 took 21% of the vote, Marie Jackson in Wards 5 & 10 and Amy Cowling in Ward 7 took 30%, Larry Masters in Ward 13 took 32.5%, and Catherine Anne Kronas - the head of the New Blue Party front-group “StopWoke.ca” - took 41% in Ward 15. In a low-information, low-turnout election, a far-right candidate might come out on top.

It will be imperative that forward-thinking folks (preferably with some connection to public education) in Ward 4 - between Ottawa Street and The Red Hill Valley Expressway, from the Escarpment to the Harbour - consider their own campaign for trustee or, at the very least, asking around to see who is interested in running. Uniting behind one compelling, competent, community-minded candidate who is excited to get working to help all students, regardless of their sexuality, identity, religion, race, or background, will be key to ensuring we don’t see a far-right extremist elected because of apathy.

Stay tuned for more updates on the by-election as they come in.

Eight pennies for your thoughts?

Ward 8 councillor and ostensible Liberal Party supporter, John-Paul Danko took to social media on Tuesday to add his two-cents to comments made by Premier Doug Ford on Monday.

While in Coburg, Ford was asked what his government was doing about the +1,000 people on the social housing waitlists across the mostly rural Northumberland County between Oshawa and Prince Edward County along the north shore of Lake Ontario. Instead of providing an answer, he took the opportunity to tell people experiencing homelessness to get a job.

His exact words were:

Ford, a multimillionaire who inherited a label company from his father, also took the opportunity to tell Ontarians that building more highways and banning bike lanes will help alleviate congestion, without providing any proof, studies, or evidence. For the people.

The comments were swiftly condemned by folks working in the housing, homelessness, and social service sectors because “get a job, you bum” is less a policy than an enthusiastic endorsement of societal failure.

The next day and entirely unprompted, Danko provided his take on Ford’s comments. In a post on X/Twitter, Danko said that Ford’s comments will “resonate with a huge number of #HamOnt taxpayers.”

His post isn’t an endorsement or a critique, nor does it really add anything substantive to the conversation.

As expected, those brave souls from the golden days of #HamOnt Twitter who are still on the platform took Danko to task for his comments.

Danko - who just days ago posted he had been cleared by the integrity commissioner in the (by his count) 7th Code of Conduct complaint against him relating to, among other things, his public comments about homelessness - did not respond directly to these challenges. Instead, after council voted in favour of the sanctioned encampment at the Barton/Tiffany lands, Danko posted about how the city is working toward providing shelter space and “[sunsetting] the current Encampment Protocol” even though “encampment supporters continue to hold #HamOnt parks hostage through their legal challenge”, all above apocalyptic photos of encampment fires.

File that under “examples of healthy democratic dialogue”, whydontcha.

There are two ways to respond to Danko’s posts. The first would be to address the substance of the post.

In response to his pseudo-endorsement/vague referencing of Ford’s rhetoric, one could point out that, immediately after Ford made those comments, the interim Executive Director for the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, Meg McCallum, told CTV that, “Ten per cent of people who are in Ottawa shelters are actually employed, and they just can't find housing that they can afford.”6 It isn’t that everyone who cannot find shelter is unemployed. It’s that it is so expensive to find accommodation in Ontario’s cities that people are forced to live in their cars, crash on people’s couches, or set up tents in parks because people demand services provided as cheaply as possible while rejecting the idea that the state should have anything to do with homebuilding.

You there, peasant! Fetch me my burger and deliver my Amazon package post haste! You want housing, you say? Too bad! You should have thought about that before you became a peasant!

Or, closer to home, we could point to a July article in the Spec - an article that Danko was quoted in - that profiled a person receiving a disability pension who lived in an encampment because she had been renovicted. Hers was just one story of countless others of people on low or fixed incomes who now live in parks because of a failure by each level of government to fund social housing, forcing vulnerable people to rent from private landlords without any sense of security or guarantee that, as their incomes stay the same, their rent won’t increase or their landlord won’t decide to kick them out in favour of a higher paying tenant.

Or we could remind Danko that the median 2-bedroom rent on an apartment in Hamilton is $2,135. He should know this, because I’ve put that on my “concernedhamiltonians.ca” website designed to challenge those preposterous and ugly ads (many of which target Danko) that have begun appearing every weekend in the Spec again. Danko linked to that site (with my permission, mind you) in one of his monthly newsletters.

If we take that median rent and add about $150 a month for hydro and $100 for internet, we get a yearly housing cost of $28,620 (not including phones, gas bills, or other utilities). This is a very small-c conservative calculation, but it gives us some idea where we’re at with the cost of housing. If we accept the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s definition of “affordable housing” - that “housing is considered ‘affordable’ if it costs less than 30% of a household’s before-tax income,” - then you would need an annual before-tax income of $95,400 for an average 2-bedroom apartment in Hamilton to be affordable.

We could say that, while it’s easy and politically expedient to punch down at people experiencing homelessness, posts like his take up time and energy that could otherwise be spent addressing the financialization of housing, the overheated market, the insistence on privatized solutions to public problems, the complex factors that contribute to homelessness, and how wealthy, well-educated, property-owning over-40 politicians are so isolated from the majority of the communities they represent that they are unable or unwilling to see the humans struggling in their own communities as humans.

We could say that cheap slogans are no substitute for real policy.

We could ask for better representation.

That’s the first way to address that post. The second way is to ignore it.

Danko’s Tuesday missive is giving big “hey look at me” energy. It doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation, doesn’t take a definitive stance, acts as a kind of Rorschach Test of a post because of the incendiary language contained within, and follows a well-documented pattern of the councillor thinking that earning the support of 62% of people who cast a ballot - or 21% of all registered voters in Ward 8 - in 2022 entitles him to share flippant comments far and wide with impunity.

It’s the same tactic taken by some of the smarmier right-wing trolls on the internet who post purposefully incendiary comments to drive engagement. Or the half-real accounts on X that intentionally post insulting things to generate backlash which, in turn, pushes their content to the top of the feed. It’s the online equivalent of “all publicity is good publicity”. It’s the Tinkerbell effect. Look at me look at me look at me look at me look at me LOOK AT ME I’m important and if you don’t, I’ll disappear.

There’s a name for this kind of content: engagement bait.

While these kinds of posts usually try to hook you and then sell you something, Danko’s engagement bait doesn’t really serve a purpose.

There’s little in the way of political benefit from this kind of posting. I doubt he’s successfully list building and certainly isn’t inspiring the voters of Ward 8 with these posts. The issues are so niche, they don’t serve the purpose of bolstering a future run for higher office.

The posts aren’t an attempt to draw in an identifiable block of donors or volunteers. The city’s progressives are outraged every time he posts like this, but the city’s online political right is little more than a grab bag of sock puppet accounts all run by the same small group of unrepentant weirdos.

These posts aren’t even in service of building a following of loyal haters. There are a lot of online and media personalities who purposefully do this, like your Sylvain Charlebois’s and Sue-Ann Levy’s and Margaret Wente’s. One of the best depictions of this actually comes from pop culture. In the incredible Black Mirror episode “Hated in the Nation”, a detective is investigating the death of a shock columnist in the UK who was, in the moments before her death, reveling in the online hate she was receiving for mocking a recently-deceased disability rights advocate. Definitely go watch it, but the scene of her drinking wine and laughing while reading death threats on Twitter is pretty powerful and unsettlingly easy to imagine in real life. But people usually build a following of haters to try and make money. Publish something outrageous and people will click on it to see what the fuss is about. Your newspaper or outlet gets the ad revenue, you make the news for commenting on the news, and everyone walks away with a little more cash in their pockets.

Ultimately, Danko’s posts don’t really do any of that. They really just seem like engagement bait for baiting’s sake.

So, the question then becomes: is there any value in responding? Who benefits from these contextless interactions? And, importantly, is this doing anything to strengthen the foundations of our fragile local democracy?

Cool facts for cool people

• Some of the city’s Grindr bandits are still on the loose. In late August, a few folks in the city were attacked and robbed by people who misrepresented themselves on the queer social and dating app, Grindr. It is possible they’re operating from the east mountain, but nothing is very clear right now. Though three of the perpetrators have been arrested, the Hamilton Police Service believe there are at least three still out in the community. Rule-of-thumb when meeting up with strangers from the internet: try to meet in a well-trafficked public place and try to verify who they are before jumping into anything. And, if anyone has been victimized, contact people in your support network to access resources for help. While places like Toronto have drop-in centres and helplines run through groups like The 519 and the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance, Hamilton’s resources are harder to find. That’s something we as a community need to work on.