He’s alive!

I survived! Much to the chagrin of my many imagined enemies (read: the spectral political figures I have long, drawn-out debates with while in the shower, doing the dishes, failing to fall asleep, etc.), I managed to get through all my health stuff last week without much difficulty. The doctors say they have successfully removed the thing that was making it impossible for me to notice simple spelling and grammar mistakes so you want have two worri about bat anymere. Uh oh.

It has been a busy couple of weeks and I’m scrambling to complete a billion projects that I put on hold for a staggering 48 hours while I recuperated from surgery, so I apologize for the delay in getting this edition out. I wanted to take my time and not rush things too much.

Enjoy!

bleep bloop

Hackers: I’m in.

Today is day 20 of Hamilton’s great ransomware attack of 2024. On Sunday, we briefly lost the city’s website. Things like OpenHamilton have been offline even longer.

And a lot of people are angry. Like, really angry. Like, “yell at elected officials on the internet” angry. Like, “demand they stop taking time off and work around the clock to unhack the mainframe” angry.

Joey Coleman has called the city’s response “either bullshit or continued incompetence - likely both.” Laura Babcock took aim at council and the mayor, saying they’re all keeping “a low profile” amidst a cavalcade of crises. There have been tweets demanding councillors (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Do something. We voted you in to do things. If you don’t unbug these computers, you should promise you’ll give up vacation time or pay or a finger of your choosing. Get a Master’s degree in cybersecurity and do something!” Things are all getting a little heated.

So, let’s take a step back and try to figure out what’s really going on here.

Hamilton was hit with a “ransomware” attack. That’s where an outside party gains access to an organization’s internal servers and prevents them from accessing files using “malware”, which they will only deactivate or remove once a ransom is paid or a demand is met. Hence: ransomware.

Hamilton isn’t alone in this. The UK’s Royal Mail got hit with a ransomware attack last January. The “hackers” (I feel so old when I say that), who were identified as the Russia-based “LockBit” crew, demanded the equivalent of over $105 million to decrypt files.

The City of Dallas was hit in May of last year with a “Royal” ransomware attack. The (gagging sound) hackers accessed the personal information of municipal employees and their extended families. The Dallas Firefighters Association President told NBC that even his 10-year-old son’s personal information was accessed. In that case, the City of Dallas ended up paying $8.5 million US to get their stuff back.1

The BianLian cybercrime group claimed to have accessed personal info from Air Canada late last year. The entire territorial Government of Nunavut was shut down for a while in 2019 as they responded to a ransomware attack. And, closer to home, we’ve seen two large attacks in the past few months: the Bluewater/Chatham-Kent hospital attack saw the personal info of thousands of patients spilled onto the darkweb and the Toronto Public Library is still recovering from a ransomware attack last September that dramatically impacted service in Canada’s largest library system.

Generally speaking, organizations as large as the City of Hamilton have backup protocols. Sometimes all files are automatically backed up at the end of the work day or at a point overnight when people aren’t generally working, sometimes copies are made of files automatically, and sometimes people are encouraged to back up their own work in a bit more of a laissez-faire way.

This kind of cybercrime is growing more and more common. Cybercriminals have grown sophisticated and not everyone is at the same level of technological literacy. There will always be gaps that can be exploited and we have to make sure we’re prepared for events like this if they do arise.

Which is the issue here. I don’t know how prepared we are as a municipality. I don’t know what protocols are in place, what contingency plans have been activated, or how long restoring the system will take. I don’t even know if the city’s backup protocols are enforced effectively.

That, I believe, is where some of the anger is coming from. Hamiltonians feel left out of the loop and are feeling the very real impact of not being able to access some basic municipal services. There’s an expectation that we get the info and we get it now, especially in light of recent privacy-related events in Hamilton.

Last November, “one year since taking office” retrospectives were penned about Hamilton’s 2022-2026 council. Mayor Horwath was one of the key figures in these stories, talking about just how much she had learned about the inner workings of City Hall. She had been away from 71 Main West for 18 years, during which time the city had cycled through a few mayors and city managers and plenty of new departmental officials. “There were issues around how we deal with big problems,” she told the CBC. In the same article (that, full disclosure, I was quoted in), when asked about the city’s response to “Sewergate”, she gave this quote:

And here we are, au milieu d'un nouvel incident. While there isn’t a leak this time, there certainly is a…uhh…blockage? 

Once again, we find ourselves in a situation where the city manager is being, according to news reports:

But we are starting to get more information. A few days back, the city manager announced we had left the “response” phase of the action plan, and moved into the “recovery, restoration and rebuilding” part of the plan. The city has effectively safeguarded the existing system and is starting work on getting things back up and running. There’s an end on the horizon. Just where that horizon line is, though, remains unclear.

All that said, there will inevitably be an investigation into this event. That investigation will take time, but we will get a report. And, once we get that report, we’ll know more. But don’t expect that any time before mid-to-late 2025.

Don’t “@” me

There’s an old cliché that goes something like this: Hamilton is the biggest small town in Canada.

I could be walking down James North, sitting on a patio in Westdale, taking a bus up the Mountain, or going for a run down by the waterfront and bump into at least one person I know. Going out for a drink with one person means inevitably running into another one or two people you both know. Meeting a friend of a friend brings with it the chance that you’ve already had a conversation on social media about a topic of local importance. Hell, I remember an entire sushi dinner during which I was stared down by a former mayor from across the restaurant. Wonderful cucumber rolls, awkward experience.

In Hamilton, we all tend to be up in each other’s business. We know the drama, we know the connections, we know the big events. It is precisely because we live in a city where you know the friend of a friend before being introduced (or where a former mayor can make you feel observed because you were critical of him on Twitter, all while you’re inhaling tempura) that we come to expect answers.

We want to feel like we’re part of this city. We want to feel like the things we say matter and the conversations we have are respected and the opinions we have might influence policy. We want to pass by city hall and not see it as an imposing, walled-off citadel of bureaucracy. We want to feel like it is our city hall.

So when it seems like important details are being withheld, we just assume that there’s something wrong. “Why wouldn’t they be telling us what the plan is?” we ponder. “Why aren’t they telling us what’s going on?” we ask. “Why are we being left out?” comes the increasingly irate call.

Scott Radley’s latest opinion column discusses the hack.

He acknowledges that there are some details that the city wouldn’t want to discuss right now. Most people recognize the complicated nature of this; we want to strike a fine line between transparency and security in the midst of a crisis.

But Radley’s point is one that I actually agree with: this is the exact moment we need a leader.

While Radley makes the case that we need to hear more from council in general, I think there’s a different person who needs to step up. As cathartic as it might be for some to bully councillors, there’s one rather obvious person who should provide steady hands on the ship of state right now.

That person is the mayor.

While it is nice that the city manager has been filling Hamiltonians in on this issue, that’s not the person we elected to bridge the gap between the municipality and the people. The city manager filling us in on these details has about as much impact as hearing from a mid-level manager at a massive corporation tell us about their security protocols. Cool, nice to know, thanks for the info, but where’s the boss? Even if the process of fixing this mess is under the purview of the Office of the City Manager, the mayor is the city’s primary elected representative and should actively participate in the response to the crisis.

I have heard the case made that the cyberattack should be viewed as an act of terrorism. That’s a loaded term and might not exactly fit in this situation (the accepted definitions usually say something like “the use of violence against civilians in the pursuit of ideological aims” and this might be more gangsterism than terrorism, depending on who’s behind the attack), but the spirit fits. We’re in a time of crisis where all of us have been impacted by a small number of actors seeking to disrupt our lives to benefit themselves.

If this were something that hit the province or federal government, we’d expect the premier or prime minister to be on the news, giving us all the details. Remember the deepest days of the pandemic? Justin Trudeau’s moistness-focused press conferences, Doug Ford’s briefings where he’d awkwardly pull off his mask and say “folks”, John Tory’s hair-growth saga/behind-the-scenes midlife crisis event…these were instances where leaders assumed the challenging responsibility of keeping the public informed. Yes, they had public health officials and experts come along with them, but they reminded us that there was someone in charge who we could hold accountable. They reminded us that this is a democracy and that, in a democracy, we elect our leaders to lead.

A figurehead mayor

In the “one year on” article about the mayor I referenced early, I was asked for my take on her style of leadership. I told Samantha Beattie of CBC Hamilton that, “It seems to be that rather than providing strong leadership, we see the mayor take a backseat and be a little more cautious.”5

Sure, she had only been in office for a year, but I provided an assessment of what I had seen up to that point. The problem is, that’s still the case. Six months after my observation about her leadership style, we’re in the middle of a massive crisis, and we still have a mayor who is content to let everyone else drive the bus.

Progressive councillors are providing better leadership on the housing front (see: the response to Matt Francis’s “parking over people” play a while ago). Outside groups are providing better leadership on the environment and pushing back against Doug Ford’s determination to pave every stream in Ontario and on issues of labour. And, right now, the city manager - a person who is very new to the role and very unfamiliar to Hamiltonians - is filling the leadership gap on the cybercrime front.

Hamilton is a really big small town. People here are engaged, excited, and ready to get to work building a stronger city. We know each other, know who is involved, and know people in positions of leadership. Hamiltonians know Andrea Horwath. More and more, we’re beginning to realize she’s not going to be an activist mayor. Or a media-savvy mayor. Or a mayor of bold, new ideas. If she isn’t going to step up during this crisis, when will she step up? Should we expect another 2 and a half years of a figurehead mayor?

Because we’re all so tapped into what’s happening here, our disappointment is amplified. We expect better of our leaders because we know our leaders.

I don’t expect Mayor Horwath to drop everything and unhack the mainframe herself. But I expect her to assume the challenging task of filling Hamiltonians in for as long as this crisis continues. Even if she’s doing so with the city manager and other relevant figures.

Stand at a podium, give us the relevant facts to the best of your ability, and ask us for our patience. Just don’t expect we’ll give it if you, as our mayor, don’t ask.

Mac home

Ahh, McMaster. The ol’ stomping grounds.

Back in my day, I was very involved with undergraduate student politics. I served in various capacities with the McMaster Students Union (MSU). I was on the Student Representative Assembly (SRA), on the Executive Board, and ran for President of the organization way back in 2012. I ended up coming in third in a ranked ballot instant runoff, so my final total was 1,711 votes for a modest 26%. Yay.

In the time since, I’ve periodically checked in with the goings-on of the MSU.

I never understood why the actions of groups like the MSU and the McMaster Graduate Student Association (GSA) don’t get more coverage in local news. With 25,714 undergrads and around 5,363 grad students, the student population at Mac is just a couple hundred short of matching the entire population of Ward 1. If counted as a single constituency, it would be larger than Ward 11. They run businesses, fund a radio station and a newspaper, manage millions of dollars of student money, and have a noticeable impact on our local economy.

Mac is a big place. Mac’s students are a big part of our community. And it has been a big year for Mac.

Back in January, the MSU saw something that hadn’t happened in a very, very, very long time: a Presidential re-election campaign. The President of the MSU is generally someone who is in their final year of a degree. Successful candidates will move from graduation directly into a one-year full-time job as the leader of a massive student organization and get an intensive course in lobbying, governance, and university affairs. It’s a great role for someone keen on pursuing a future in politics and/or public service (honestly one of the reasons I sought the job). But Presidents almost always move on after one term. Leading a student union can be exhausting and that extra year gives folks a chance to get grad school applications together or find other employment beyond campus.

It was almost unthinkable in my time that an MSU President would ever seek re-election. A decade ago, the MSU was a bustling organization with countless ambitious members, each of whom wanted to make their mark. Being President wasn’t just about popularity; it was about finally being taken seriously and having a very real opportunity to genuinely improve the lives of your fellow students. At 21 or 22, to be given a chance to have your voice heard on tuition and programs and mental health concerns and keeping peace with the communities in which you lived and bus service and every other little thing that you finally sit up and take notice of for the first time in your life, is energizing.

So, to run for a second term was seen to be denying someone a chance to get their experience when you had already had yours. It was seen the same way Hamilton’s Mayor Charles Goodenough Booker’s announcement that he would seek a third term in 1919 was; to quote the Spec:

But I suppose, just as the folks at the Spec had to in 1919, it is important to adapt to the times. Just as it was growing increasingly difficult to accomplish everything one hoped to get done over the course of two one-year terms for mayors 105 years ago, so too must it be getting harder to implement a full platform in the MSU in just one one-year term. What some may see as gratifying personal ambitious, others might maintain is a well-reasoned attempt to secure the confidence of the voters in their continuing ability to provide results.

The 2023 President of the MSU was Jovan Popovic, a commerce student who ran on a platform of transparency, re-invigorating a campus events scene that had suffered under COVID, boosting support for campus athletes, and improving the situation for commuter students who drive to Mac. I would have campaigned vigourously against some of those things when I was involved, but that was over a decade ago and I had my chance. Still, a sensible platform for a sensible McMaster.

After a full year, Popovic was back, running for re-election on a very similar platform. The one exception being the addition of a “Bread and Soup” plank. The president proposed an on-campus soup kitchen which is so painfully grim. I mean, great initiative, but holy wow. Can’t believe it has come to this.

Popovic was re-elected in late January, but by a narrow margin. By the final round of counting, the incumbent president only had 52%, down from the 59% support he earned in 2023. But he hit the ground running, immediately moving a motion on the SRA to have the organization back a referendum on his proposal for a Mac soup kitchen. A $5 levy from every student would fund a soup kitchen (offering two different kinds of soup, including a daily vegetarian option) that would be open 8 hours a week during the school year. Again, nice idea, really sucks it’s come to this. Can’t stress that enough. Things are grim, folks!

At the same time, a group of students came together to put their own initiative on the spring election ballot (MSU Presidents are elected on a winter ballot in January, student reps. from each faculty are elected to the SRA on a spring ballot in March). The referendum asked students if they agreed “with creating an annual fee of $24.50 including HST, for a 12-month Hamilton Bike Share pass, with the option to opt-out”. The students behind that campaign were master campaigners. They skillfully created a healthy pros list (accessibility, sustainability, possible jobs for students, flexibility in the system) and even offered a possible “opt-out” for those with affordability concerns.

And so, on March 6 and 7, McMaster’s undergraduate students voted in the two referendums.7 With 94.5% support, the Bike Share Pass referendum passed. Popovic’s soup kitchen referendum, on the other hand, failed to meet the criteria necessary (at least 10% of the student body needed to vote) to be counted.

In the past few years, engagement on campus has been in a nosedive. We were thrilled when 50% of the student body bothered to participate in campus politics when I was there, but now, a re-elected president can’t even get 1 in 10 Mac students to open an email and vote to create a service that would only cost them an extra $5 a year. Gone are the days of a vibrant campus activism scene, as evidenced by the state of campus clubs; all four major political parties (five if you count the PPC, which I don’t) have no campus clubs and the only overtly partisan group is, exhaustingly, the campus Trotskyist initiative. No offence to my Fourth International friends, but like…ease off on the dogma and the “all out!” cries and the joyless newspapers, eh?

One of the biggest examples of how campus culture has shifted is in the way students party. Just 10 years ago, Welcome Week was the biggest event on campus, with faculty and residence representatives taking first year students under their wings, guiding people around campus, and participating in structured events meant to build community. There would be organized events at the different campus bars for big moments like Halloween, end of finals, and St. Patrick’s Day.

During COVID, many events were paused and ad hoc versions were launched by students off-campus. Of course, we remember how that all turned out.

So now parts of Westdale and Ainslie Wood are subject to the draconian “University District Safety Initiative” or “UDSI” during times of…heightened enthusiasm. For a set period of time, whole sections of our community are subject to “zero-tolerance” enforcement, increased police presence, and a severe restriction of basic civil liberties, all to combat unsanctioned parties that have sprung up in response to the retreat by university and student groups from the difficult task of trying to build community.

What’s worse, this year, the UDSI “zones” have been expanded.

In previous years, the UDSI safety zones included the northwestern portion of Westdale and what was awkwardly called the “Dalewood” zone, including those blocks north of the Rail Trail and south of Main West.

Now the “Dalewood” section has been expanded to become the “Ainslie Wood” section, encompassing nearly all of the community, going from 0.5 square kilometres to a staggering 2.7 square kilometres.

These supersurveillance zones include some of the lowest income and most marginalized Census Dissemination Areas in the entire city. To prevent students from having rowdy parties, we now have a case where the near-campus community is over-policed, without any consideration for how students and residents from different backgrounds, from countries without adequate civil liberties, or who have previously had negative experiences with the police might feel during this period.

I have long critiqued the UDSI. I believe a more effective, sustainable, and healthy response to the “nuisance parties” of 2021 would be re-imagining the near-campus community in a way that provides healthy outlets for socialization and community. Ainslie Wood is bereft of a sufficient number of places where people can just hang out, get to know one another, and kick back after a long week of studying. We need more “third places” in our communities to allow people opportunities to be among others in a positive way. Much of the commercial activity along Main West is car-centric, overly corporate, and unconducive to healthy community building. By creating a real complete community in Ainslie Wood, we can begin to address some of these concerns.

Similarly, by working collaboratively with groups like the MSU, we can redirect energy and attention into sanctioned events that are managed and overseen by responsible authorities. With over 25,000 undergrads on campus and few, if any, regulated events, we’re creating the ideal conditions for sleazy wannabe TikTok influencers to throw massive parties that well-exceed the capacity limits for their hastily converted post-war bungalows they share with 7 other students.

Instead of taking the wind out of their sails and creating the conditions where community can grow and thrive, we’ve thrown all our resources into policing the problem. Instead of creating third places, we’ve created temporary police states. Instead of working with students, we’ve further isolated and alienated them from the community. Instead of coming up with lasting solutions, we’re going straight for the most punitive approach.

I understand the politics of this issue. Residents of Ainslie Wood and Westdale deserve to have peace and security. They don’t deserve to feel like they’re prisoners in their own homes. They shouldn’t ever fear simply walking down the street at certain times in the year.

But we can’t achieve lasting peace through surveillance alone. We can’t ease the feeling of people being prisoners during rowdy parties by increasing the number of prison guards around them.

The better, healthier, more sustainable way to prevent the out-of-control party situation in west Hamilton is by doing the hard work needed to build community at and around Mac.

The students who successfully got the Bike Share referendum on the ballot understood this. And the overwhelming success of that vote should be a strong indication that McMaster students desperately want to be part of this community. What we need to do, starting right now, is reach out and work with students, not punish them with increased surveillance. McMaster students deserve to be included in this community, not treated like semi-paroled criminals just because of where they live.

Working to better include Mac students will make this whole city stronger. I fought for that while I was a student there and I’ll fight for it now, all these years later.

All in for the 45th

Canada’s 45th Federal Election is still… [INSERT AMOUNT OF TIME HERE] away. Yeah, the next election is technically scheduled for some time in October of 2025, but the tenuous “confidence and supply” agreement between the Liberals and NDP is subject to regular speculation of imminent collapse. A minority government means we could very well have an election called tomorrow.

Pollsters have been having a field day predicting the political annihilation of the federal Liberals, gleefully reporting about Trudeau’s “historic” levels of unpopularity, which have been helped along by his own admission that “my job is not to be popular”.

All this doomsaying has people asking: what’s up with Liberal candidates for the next federal election? The Hill Times, Canada’s newspaper for giant nerds (meant as a compliment) had an interesting feature a few days ago noting that only 89 of the current 159 Liberal MPs have been re-nominated. There’s a heavy paywall on that, but it is an interesting read if you get access to it.

The Liberals have a very rigorous nomination process. An incumbent MP can only be re-nominated if, since July 1, 2022, they’ve:

• Participated in 3 “Voter Contact Days of Action”

• Attempted 3,500 door-knocks or 7,500 phone calls

• Fundraised at least 65% of the “anticipated election expense limit” for the next election, and

• Added at least 40 “Victory Fund” donors to their electoral district association - the “Victory Fund” being a “custom monthly donation [that] is split between the national party and the riding of [one’s] choice”

Oh. Okay. Taking a page from the Democrat’s handbook in the US, I guess. Even ridings without incumbent MPs have a lot to do before they can even hold a nomination. Where the Liberals were in second (Hamilton Centre and Flamborough—Glanbrook, for example), the have to have at least 100 registered Liberal Party members. Any other riding, they have to have at least 50. And they have to show they went through a candidate search with a strong EDI focus (to be fair, that’s true of the NDP as well).

That’s a long list of tasks just to get re-nominated. Which explains why the Hill Times is reporting that only one of Hamilton’s three Liberal MPs is presently nominated. Surprisingly, it is Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas MP and cabinet minister Filomena Tassi. I’ve mentioned this before, but the rumour was that Tassi was not going to run again. It is interesting to see her re-offer, but, given the strength of the Liberals in HWAD, it makes sense; she likely had little trouble meeting the strenuous requirements set by the party for re-nomination.

The two other Liberal MPs in the Hamilton area - Hamilton Mountain’s Lisa Hepfner and Hamilton East—Stoney Creek’s Chad Collins - are not on the Hill Times list of officially re-nominated MPs.

Neither MP has really made a splash, despite both their ridings being extremely competitive. It will be interesting to see if either of them decides to step down in the face of a possible electoral shellacking. If polls are any indication (they’re only a small part of the puzzle, but still), Hamilton Mountain could be an NDP pickup while the federal side of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek might copy its provincial counterpart and slide into the Tory category.

So who else is “officially” running in the next federal election in the Hamilton area? Most parties haven’t started listing their candidates yet (many likely haven’t even started looking), so we have to turn to Elections Canada info for any real insights.

Hamilton Centre has one official candidate - the PPC’s David Speicher. Speicher, whose Elections Canada entry notes an address in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, won the PPC’s nomination back in October of 2023. A quick look through Speicher’s social media shows a pretty standard PPC candidate background: anti-mandate memes, photos with Convoy participants, sharing anti-trans videos, and some Rebel News reposts. He identifies as a molecular virologist and, on a self-published paper that claims to have found safety concerns with the COVID-19 vaccine (I’m no immunologist, but the paper’s methods look…suspect, at best), lists an affiliation with the University of Guelph’s Department of Pathobiology. Something Speicher does not mention is that said department is, in actuality, in U. Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College. Speicher is not listed as a faculty or staff member anywhere on the department’s website. But, still, that’s the Centre’s PPC candidate.

Hamilton East—Stoney Creek also has an official candidate - the Conservative Party’s Ned Kuruc, who was their candidate in 2021. Kuruc, who was the third-place finisher in Ward 3’s 2018 council race, has a fairly varied biography. He’s a civilian appointee to the Ontario Combative Sport Advisory Council (yeah, that’s a thing apparently), where his biography notes he used to own Iron Tiger Muay Thai and is currently wearing three hats: in addition to being a mortgage broker, he also owns an ATM company and a cannabis chain with two locations. Kuruc was acclaimed as the Tory nominee back in January, becoming the party’s first officially nominated candidate in the Hamilton-area for the next federal election.

Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Hamilton Mountain, and Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas will be highly competitive ridings, with the Tories and NDP holding pretty good odds to divide them up rather unevenly. As we get closer and closer to the window in which an election is possible, we’ll start to see more candidates pop up. It’ll be super interesting to see who each of the parties nominates this time around!

Cool facts for cool people

• The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) recently released a report saying that the number of homes valued less than $500,000 has “plummeted” since 2013. Womp womp. While 88% of properties were valued less than half a mil back in 2013, now, only 11% of properties are that inexpensive. What’s worse? 24% of properties are valued above $1,000,000. The affordability crisis in Hamilton continues to worsen as leaders seem entirely uninterested in any solutions that aren’t full-throated endorsements of the private market and the rapidly all-consuming financialization of housing. Fun!

• The Narwhal has a really wonderful piece up on the Schneider Woods in Wilmot Township. The 95-hectares of land off the Wilmot Line has been accessible to residents of Waterloo Region for 40 years. But the 94-year old matriarch of the Schneider family (yeah, the hot dog people) is eager to transfer the land to the Rare Charitable Research Reserve, a conservation-focused land trust up in the KCW Tri-Cities area. The donation was nearly complicated by local requirements for parking and traffic. But on March 4, the Wilmot council approved the transfer and additional traffic calming for the area. It is an awesome read from an outlet doing important work. Definitely give that a read!