Habitual hate in the Hammer

Before we dive into the main story this week, I think we should talk about what happened on Monday, July 28.

That morning, the Board of Health met in council chambers. Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch was in the chair, leading the new semi-autonomous body - made up of council, school board, and community representatives - through their modest agenda. Some folks from McMaster were slated to delegate regarding a project to improve healthcare accessibility, community members from Hamilton 350 were on the agenda to speak about the proposal for emergency heat relief, and the body was to deal with a motion regarding water quality testing at the beach at Binbrook Conservation Area.

A few minutes into the meeting, local journalist Joey Coleman reported that an “older white man walked into the Council Chamber and began a hateful, vitriolic rant containing anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, racist, and transphobic comments.”¹ It’s worth noting that a significant number of people in the meeting, either as a part of the committee or slated to delegate, were women, queer folks, and people of colour of varying backgrounds and faiths.

It is fairly easy to access Hamilton City Hall. Unlike at Queen’s Park or on Parliament Hill, added security isn’t present to simply enter council chambers. This is, in part, because of the lingering belief that municipal government is the level that’s “closest to the people”. Yes, all those institutions are, in a sense, ours, but Hamilton City Hall is where we go to file paperwork to open businesses, obtain wedding licences, and chat with councillors about issues that impact our day-to-day life. There are private security guards on site and their number and funding increases year over year, but it is possible to barely interact with them while watching or participating in a meeting of our local government. City Hall and, by extension, council chambers is meant to be accessible. That accessibility brings with it both opportunities and risks, the latter of which continue to mount with each passing day while the former fade into nothingness.

***

Monday’s incident comes two months after a similar event occurred at an Emergency and Community Services meeting where another older white man disrupted proceedings with a loud rant against diversity, equity, and accessibility. Early indications are that the very same person again disrupted council on Thursday, July 31, this time by barging into council to scream about people who are overweight before insulting Ward 14 councillor Mike Spadafora (who was chairing the meeting).

Monday’s incident also occurred just four days after the Hamilton Police Service published their 2024 Hate Crime Statistics. That report showed a 35% increase in hate events for a total of 297 reported incidents and crimes last year. Of last year’s hate crime stats, 79 events were directed toward Black Hamiltonians, 64 against Jewish and Muslim members of the community, and 45 were targeting gay and lesbian folks. And, remember, that’s just reported events. So many more go unreported everyday, as the groups targeted in these events generally have their own complicated history with the Hamilton Police Service. The police recognize this because, in their report, the HPS asked Hamiltonians to be more diligent in reporting hate crimes or bias incidents to them.

All good in theory, but in practice, many of us remember our recent history. Queer folks will remember back to Pride in 2019 when, amidst the worst violence ever to be seen at a Pride event in Canadian history - hate events perpetrated by unapologetic white nationalists, fascists, and people who actively want us gone - the HPS used the event to carry out another attack in their long war against anarchists, instead of holding those responsible accountable. Members of the community associated with anarchists were quickly arrested while a deeply disturbed Christian nationalist who was filmed beating people with a helmet was allowed to go free by the HPS. This allowed him to commit a similar crime in Toronto days later. He reportedly remains in Toronto, engaging in militant street corner ministry around the intersection of Yonge and Dundas, and maintaining less-than-clandestine social media accounts from which he cyberbullies people without consequence. The behaviour of the HPS has left deep, deep wounds in the community and has given fodder to countless right-wingers in the city to blame “anarchists” for everything from council policies to the infrastructure deficit.

The same day the HPS released their hate crime stats, Coleman published an article about an aspiring Ward 2 council candidate (because of his violent past, obsessive tendencies, and social media following, I’ll avoid using his name too much) openly admitting to breaking campaign finance laws.

Coleman later struck a sentence; reflecting on the person’s announced candidacy, the local journalist wrote: “This is great—he’ll bring a perspective to the race, and I’m sure he will run a good campaign.” This sentence was from the article after Coleman was informed about the prospective candidate’s long and well-documented history of violent abuse. An individual with the same name and place of residence is listed in court proceedings relating to at least 37 convictions for “harassment and uttering threats, theft of telecommunications, and assault with a weapon…[as well as a documented history of] extensive domestic violence, substance abuse, and a continuing pattern of threatening and abusive behavior toward partners as well as individuals in the community,” leading the judge in one of his 2017 trials to report that the individual is someone who is “predatory, lacks empathy for his victims, lacks insight into his offending behaviour and has been unaffected to date by interventions and dispositions in the criminal justice system”. Even before having this information, Coleman urged the candidate to “pause, reflect, and issue an apology – heck, it’s not only the right thing to do, it is good politics as well.”²

After striking the positive sentence, the candidate turned on Coleman, posting multiple unhinged attacks on the journalist. The candidate egged his 12,000+ followers - many of whom were likely drawn to his profile by multiple stories in local and national media reporting him as a neutral observer to accidents and assaults near his home - to target Coleman. They responded in force, mocking the journalist’s intelligence and integrity, and making patently homophobic jokes referencing Coleman and Kroetsch. This merely follows the candidate’s lead, as he has used unapologetic homophobia to attack Kroetsch for the past few years.

Multiple times a day, every day, the announced candidate uses his platform to rail against an imagined “woke agenda” and sic his chronically online followers on people who hold differing political views, people suffering from addictions and mental health crises, and people from marginalized backgrounds. Instagram, for their part, does nothing to stop this, happy for the engagement on the dying app.

***

After every hate incident in this city, the city’s public figures roll out their copy-and-paste responses.

"Hamilton is a city that values inclusion, diversity, and safety for all," said the mayor, while dangerous and hate-fueled candidates ready their council campaigns and while having, herself, run in a campaign where all-candidates debates were cancelled or restricted because of the presence of an avowed neo-Nazi in the race. “Hamilton is a welcoming city,” civic leaders say, while hate crimes increase year-by-year, while neo-Nazis openly train in parks, while queer folks take self-defence classes to protect against the inevitable. “Hamilton is better than this,” local politicians say, shouting overtop the unwell bigots who wander into public spaces and unleash their horrid little tirades, pushing the overwhelming majority of kind, decent people away from public spaces and real, meaningful democratic engagement.

None of this is to say the denunciations aren’t welcome. They’re both encouraged and encouraging, especially when so many leaders around the world avoid speaking out against hate, knowing the hateful make up a disproportionate segment of their electorate or that even the appearance of being “woke” is enough to turn off their more militant backers. But a denunciation only goes so far.

That’s why I was quoted in the CBC as saying Hamilton needs “a program to address the reason why people join white nationalist groups, to address issues like economic insecurity and to combat propaganda that radicalizes people online.”³

People aren’t born hateful. Hate is a learned behaviour, often when people are in times of crisis or are otherwise marginalized themselves. The anti-extremist activist Christian Picciolini speaks openly about how he was recruited into the neo-Nazi movement; he was lonely, isolated, and lacking a sense of identity when a predatory skinhead approached and began indoctrinating him. It took him years to get out of the movement and realize that he was only swept up by the far-right because they offered him the very sense of purpose and community that he had a tough time finding elsewhere. How many people like that are in our community or in your life?

But it isn’t just out-and-proud fascists recruiting lonely young men. The groundwork for the normalization of extreme views is being laid by an increasingly accelerationist right-wing that, day by day, works to destroy every guardrail that has kept this fragile democratic experiment going for the last few decades. There are some who try to “both sides” this, but the hard right has shown itself to be more dangerous and more effective than the hard left - and more willing to advocate for violence to achieve their aims.

Poor and working class folks are fed lies by cynical right-wing politicians eager to help their own careers - lies like “immigrants are taking your jobs”, “every person experiencing homelessness is a dangerous criminal”, or “gays are coming for your kids” - without proof, resting instead on a fear of the unknown. We see it happening every day as aspiring council candidates peddle conspiracies and falsehoods and rage to help their own careers, smiling for the camera and shaking hands as the city burns around them.

***

All is not lost. Far from it, really. Hate crimes and incidents are on the rise because the hateful are becoming more emboldened, but their numbers aren’t skyrocketing. They’re still an angry little minority. But they’re a minority that, under the current conditions in which we live, can grow and begin exerting more influence.

To stop the hateful minority from growing, we have to inoculate people against hate. We do that by both exposing people to difference and by using the political system to make life better for regular people. Teach people to search for the truth using a variety of resources, rather than rely on the loudest podcasters or the flashiest YouTubers. Give them a sense of connection to their community beyond home ownership or the vaguely defined status of “taxpayer”. Pursue bold and transformative policies that will actually address the hardships people face, rather than throw energy into more surface-level changes. We’re on the Titanic and it’s April 14, 1912, yet some people still think they’ll save the day by reorganizing the deck chairs and micromanaging the band.

The solutions to this problem are out there. We need to create mixed-use, mixed-income, mixed-cultural communities. Make neighbourhoods walkable so that people can wander to the store and meet people from varying backgrounds, rather then isolate themselves in a metal box where they hear and see only those things that reinforce their world view. Fund public education, public libraries, public lectures on issues of importance. Launch one of the largest and most ambitious civic education campaigns in history. Refocus our economic development strategy on small, local businesses and co-ops. Create community councils with real-world power. Make life affordable by easing the burden on regular people through a massive expansion of affordable housing, affordable or free transit, and affordable essential services.

We know these kinds of policies work. Just look at the incredible success of Zohran Mamdani in New York who, despite facing off against an incumbent mayor and an establishment favourite and enduring relentless attacks from the media still leads polling in the city’s upcoming mayoral election by a sizable margin. His platform gave people hope and did so by focusing on big issues - housing, transit, affordability. He was able to inspire people and not take the populist bait of adjusting his platform based on whatever fringe talking point they’re obsessing about at any given moment. While other ostensibly “progressive” politicians have begun following the far-right on issues like queer rights, Mamdani has remained a steadfast supporter of the community. He’s connected climate change to affordability and has energized renters with his focus on community-level solutions to the housing crisis.

These are the kinds of policies we have to pursue if we want to tackle hate. Connect people, give them a sense of meaning in their community, and show them that embracing our differences is a strength, not a weakness.

Sure, walkable communities and affordable housing and meaningful jobs won’t eliminate hate. But it can, and will, stop hate movements from growing and show people that there are more good, caring, decent people in their communities than not.

Hateful bigots are preparing council campaigns and terrorizing our civic leaders in council chambers. To stop them, we have to pursue policies that will bring people together and give everyone in our communities a sense of purpose. The denunciations of civic leaders are appreciated, but without a plan of action, their words will simply be drowned out by the bellowing cries of emboldened extremists.

Fourteen Fifty or Fight

Recreational Class Parks (now for sale)

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Ontario’s provincial parks. I grew up camping across this province. I’ve spent chilly mornings on the misty waters of Bon Echo, long summer days on the endless beach of Sandbanks, and brisk fall afternoons scaling the Mono Cliffs. Many of my earliest and happiest memories are of camping - spending humid nights in tents as thunderstorms rolled by overhead, learning about my family around campfires fueled by equal parts firewood and lost marshmallows, gliding across still lakes in the family canoe.

That love hasn’t faded. I still try to visit a handful of parks each year, slowly working toward my goal of seeing every single park in the province (checking Polar Bear Provincial Park off the list might have to wait until I can afford landing permits, a chartered flight, and, as the Ontario Parks site notes: “at least one week’s extra supplies” to be “prepared for any eventuality”).

One park I only recently visited was Wasaga Beach. It wasn’t a spot my family really considered when I was younger and, as I grew up, I mainly knew the town as a place where 19 year-olds could book hotel rooms on their parents’ credit cards and spend a week drinking and partying. But Wasaga Beach is more than just a teenage party hangout.

Wasaga Beach Provincial Park was established in 1959 during a period of massive growth for Ontario Parks. In the 1950’s, Progressive Conservative Premier Leslie Frost’s government launched the “Parks for the People” policy, aimed at protecting land and creating recreational facilities for all Ontarians to enjoy by expanding the number of parks from just six in 1954 to 82 by 1960.⁴ Wasaga became a fast favourite with Ontarians, who flocked to the sandy shores of the tiny town in droves over the next few decades. A 2002 Toronto Star poll of Ontarians on their favourite beaches in the province confirmed Wasaga’s dominance; Wasaga Beach won first place with a plurality of support from 15% of readers. The comparatively warmer Sauble Beach (a personal favourite) on Lake Huron and the historically queer Hanlan’s Point (another personal favourite) in Toronto tied for bronze with 11%.⁵  

Today, Wasaga’s 14 kilometres of beach welcome millions of visitors a year, with the park logging 5.6 million visits from 2020 to 2023 - over one million more visits than Algonquin Park, the largest and easily the most recognizable park in the province. But it isn’t just people; Wasaga’s protected shoreline provides an important habitat for the endangered piping plover, which nests along the eastern edge of the beach.

***

Last year, Wasaga Beach’s town council came together with an unusual ask. After debating how to improve the town’s tourism appeal, the council unanimously approved a motion from Mayor Brian Smith that called for a reconsideration of the province’s landholdings in Wasaga Beach. The idea was that provincial ministries and the town council would sit down and figure out how to boost tourism with a specific focus on taking land away from Ontario Parks and opening more of the beach to private, for-profit development. The initial idea floated was to create a distinct “Wasaga Beach Commission” that would aim to “protect” land, but not do so with the same rigidity as Ontario Parks. But the core ask was to transfer much of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park over to the Ministry of Tourism and Culture to “unlock” the beach’s potential and turn the town into what local leaders hoped would be the next Niagara Falls.⁶

The proposal languished for some time, only resurfacing as the province emerged from our unnecessary winter election and into the spring thaw. An initial announcement of a massive investment into the town’s tourism efforts was followed by a proposal to simply sell huge swaths of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park to the town for redevelopment, which a lawyer for Ecojustice called another Ford Government attempt to “dispose of park lands and public lands.”⁷

Environmental Defence points out that the plan would remove 60% of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park’s beachfront. Even more concerning, the advocacy group notes that Wasaga might only be the first park to go. The provincial government wants to make changes to the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, which requires a vote of the legislature on any attempt to remove large chunks of land from provincial parks. “Environmental Defence is concerned that the Provincial government intends to weaken the process requirements for removing Park or Conservation Reserve lands seeing as the current law would not itself need to be changed if its process requirements, including a Legislative Assembly vote on the park area changes, are followed,” the advocacy group wrote in a press release on the matter.⁸ Wasaga represents the opening of a new line of attack by the Ford government on Ontario’s public lands, services, and investments.

The 60% of the park the Ford Government proposes selling to the town includes much of the space where the endangered plover nests, as well as Nancy Island, an important historical site from the War of 1812.

The town government is thrilled at the prospect of controlling more of the beach, as it will help them realize their goal of turning Wasaga into “an iconic, four-season recreation and nature-based destination”. Mayor Smith claims that the creation of the park “left our economy hollowed out and our future uncertain” and that, returning the beach to the municipality for immediate tourist-oriented redevelopment would represent “taking back responsibility for our community’s future.”⁹

Conservation advocates, on the other hand, warn that this sale will do incredible damage to the beach and the surrounding environment. Development atop the beach’s dunes would leave the town exposed to angry Georgian Bay waves, wind, and floods during storms. And the municipality’s desire to mechanically rake the beach would likely hasten the extinction of the sand-dwelling piping plover. The town’s comments about protecting the beach aren’t inspiring confidence in the executive director of Environmental Defence, who reminded the Broadbent Institute’s media wing, PressProgress, that the town has “expressed opposition to it [the beach] being protected when they didn’t even own it.”¹⁰

Given the Progressive Conservative supermajority in the legislature and the party’s rather intense discipline, it is likely any proposed changes will pass easily. That may mark the beginning of a steady privatization of our provincial parks.

Mr. Popular

As the Wasaga Beach sale controversy began brewing, Abacus Data came out with a new poll showing that, if an election were held today, Ford’s Tories would win 50% of the vote. For context, the last time a party won and election and formed government after winning over 50% of the vote was in 1929, when George Howard Ferguson (the premier who abolished alcohol prohibition) captured 57% of the vote.

Earning 50% of the vote, according to poll aggregator 338Canada, would give the PCs an extra few seats in the legislature, adding to their already sizable majority. This poll is similar to a poll from the smaller firm, Palas, which came out in June, showing numbers not dissimilar to those we saw in this year’s provincial election. Indeed, Ford’s Tories have led in every single poll since the February vote, often by larger numbers than they won the election with, save for one small Mainstreet poll in June (where 41% of voters would cast ballots for Ford’s party, down from the 43% they earned at the ballot box).

Now, Abacus’ poll was conducted from July 10 to July 15. That was before the announcement about Wasaga and before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down the government’s attempts to meddle in municipal affairs by removing a few bike lanes in Toronto that personally bothered the premier. On the latter point, the judge in the case was blunt, stating that the government’s rationale was flawed and that “restoring lanes for cars will not result in less congestion, as it will induce more people to use cars…and will lead to more congestion.”¹¹  

But whether those things will impact Tory support is yet to be determined. The Abacus survey tell us that Ford remains the most popular party leader in the province, over half of respondents would at least consider voting PC, and that the Tories lead the Liberals by double digits across the province, even in Toronto. As David Coletto of Abacus notes in the analysis section of the poll, the perception is that Ford has shifted to “a more pragmatic, centrist governance model that seems well-attuned to the mood of the moment.”

The premier’s chummy behaviour with our new Conservative Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney (including a cozy little fireside chat at the Ford Family compound in Muskoka) has been cited as evidence that the populist crusader is “softening” his image and trying to appeal to a broader segment of Ontarians. Correlating this imagined “change” in his image and Ford’s net-positive “leader impression” (46% of people polled by Abacus had a positive impression, 33% a negative one, resulting in a +13% positive impression), one might assume that Ontarians are generally happy with the province’s wholesale adoption of the principles of Ford Nation.

But there’s something else in that Abacus poll that might help explain what’s been going on.

Oppo time

Last November’s Abacus poll found that Ford was sitting at a -8% for his “leader impression” - the least popular party leader in the province. The most popular was the NDP’s Marit Stiles, sitting at just +3%. Since the inauguration of the current American president and the launch of the trade war, Ford’s popularity spiked. He turned that 8 point deficit into an 13 point lead in just a few months. His hawkish “pro-Canadian” stance has earned him favour, even as his government’s policies do nothing to actually address the looming economic turbulence caused by the constant cycle of on-off tariffs.

What’s more, Stiles’ favourability has flatlined. Since becoming leader, she’s hovered around the 1-to-3% net positive rating. A plurality (30%) of Abacus poll respondents have a “neutral” opinion of her, while another 18% indicate they “don’t know enough about her to say how they feel”. Combine those two numbers, and nearly half of Abacus’ respondents simply don’t know Stiles well enough to make a decision about her. That could by why just 12% of the poll’s respondents said she’d be their preferred premier.

The NDP is trying to turn things around with their “All in for Ontario” tour, travelling around the province and holding campaign-style events featuring Stiles, MPPs, and local leaders. The tour stopped in Hamilton on July 31, featuring an all-female lineup of speakers at the Worker’s Arts and Heritage Centre. No local media covered the event and, unless you follow local NDP MPPs or the central party on social media, you likely did not hear about it.

Instead, the Spec ran a reprint of a Toronto Star editorial about Stiles, asking rhetorically “Can Marit Stiles save Ontario’s sliding New Democrats?” Party insiders say the NDP is in the throws of an “identity crisis”. The columnist spoke with people at an NDP event who said they want to see the party change instead of being a “relic, socialist kind of party”. She also spoke with Jack Layton’s son, Mike, who said Stiles is best when she’s forging personal connections which, he admitted, “doesn’t make headlines, but I think it has a lasting impact on people’s impressions.”

But the lines that close out the article are important. The columnist asked Stiles about the critiques of the party’s focus. The leader responded: “I want to give people a reason to vote. I want to give them a reason to hope again.”¹²

This, by itself, is promising. The shift is becoming more and more evident. Looking at the Ontario NDP website, the focus remains on Stiles, but the party’s commitments section is starting to talk about what they’ll do, not just what they’re against.

But that’s just in the headlines. The party has seven “commitments” listed: defending jobs and tariff-proofing Ontario, ending chronic homelessness, protecting renters, helping with grocery costs, family doctors for all, and two regionally-specific plans focused on where the NDP has the most seats. Doug Ford is referenced in the descriptions of four of the seven commitments, Donald Trump in one. Every single commitment’s description veers hard away from hope and, instead, reminds people of how miserable things are in Ontario. “Rent is more expensive than ever,” and there are “encampments in every single town and city in our province”, and people are so poor that they need to “make difficult decisions about what they can afford to put on the dinner table.” Woof, grim!

Even if there’s been some nod to hope, the NDP still focuses too intently on what’s wrong with Ontario, blaming Doug Ford for a host of issues that, yeah, he has some power to address, but that are so nebulous and abstract that people don’t often see the connection between X and Y. There isn’t a discussion about the deep systemic issues that will truly inspire people to get out an vote. In fact, some of the NDP’s solutions to the problems they’ve identified would simply build higher on the broken foundations that have caused so many issues already.

The NDP’s plan for transit? Expanding GO service and more funding for proposed higher-order transit projects. No discussion about the problems with Metrolinx, the inefficacies and sprawl-centricity of the GO network, or community concerns about public-private partnerships in transit construction.

The NDP’s plan for healthcare? Restoring cut services, creating centralized referral systems, stopping the privatization of home and long-term healthcare. No discussion about bloated and inefficient hospital boards and misallocation of resources in hospital administration.

The NDP’s plan for post-secondary? Increasing the per-student funding limit, reverse OSAP cuts, and establishing new Francophone universities. No discussion about the misallocation of resources in post-secondary, the bureaucratic bloat strangling institutions, the emphasis on job-training instead of overall learning, the drive for institutions to monetize and profit off everything that happens within their walls.

Not to say any of the NDP’s plans aren’t admirable. They absolutely would address some of the issues Ontarians face.

But if Stiles is keen on giving “people a reason to vote…a reason to hope again”, then the party needs to change its messaging and its focus. Use the premier’s actions against him and avoid mentioning him at all costs. He’s setting the stage; Stiles needs to steal the scene.

Ford threatens to split up Wasaga Beach Provincial Park for development? Show up in Wasaga Beach and hold a rally where the centre point is how you’ll expand the parks system. Ford prattles on about his nonsense tunnel under the 401? Hold a press conference beside a GO station talking about how you’ll reform Metrolinx, expand transit, and connect Ontarians while throwing something like a pledge from your MPPs to use transit as much as possible. Ford’s government fails to fund post-secondary while colleges conduct mass layoffs? Meet with a campus club/education workers union and hold an event talking about how you want to make Ontario an education superpower. For good measure, announce an NDP government will work toward universal post-secondary education in X number of years. Steal the spotlight, make big waves, keep the government on their heels. Make the media come to you and, when they do, use every opportunity to set the agenda with your own platform. Don’t act like the opposition; act like you’re the government-in-waiting.

With Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie outside the legislature and preparing for the all-out bloodbath that will be their convention this September (there’s an organized group trying to oust her), the NDP is the party best positioned to take advantage of the moment. As Ontarians, we need them to step up and be the alternative we can count on.

Doug’s coming for our provincial parks, starting with the fourteen kilometres of ecologically-sensitive and wildly popular Wasaga Beach. His 50% support in recent polls makes him think he can run this province like a king. If this carries on, the damage he does to our province might be irreversible.

Now is Stiles’ time to shine and be the leader we need. If she’s “all in for Ontario”, now’s the time to prove it.

1  _{Joey Coleman. “Man Disrupts Hamilton City Council With Hate-Filled Rant” The Public Record, July 28, 2025 (Link).}

2  _{"" “COLEMAN: Election Laws are Not a Conspiracy” The Public Record, July 24, 2025 (Link).}

3  _{Justin Chandler. “Hamilton mayor asks residents to report hate after CBC traces white nationalist 'active clubs' to the city” CBC Hamilton, July 20, 2025 (Link).}

4  _{“Expect New Attendance Records To Be Set In Provincial Parks” Hamilton Spectator, June 30, 1960 (Spec archive link).}

5  _{Josh Rubin. “Wasaga Beach - Ontario’s favourite” Hamilton Spectator/Toronto Star, July 13, 2002 (Spec archive link).}

6  _{Ian Adams. “‘Let’s set the stage for the next 50 years’: Wasaga Beach calls on province to change focus of provincial park” Wasaga Sun, August 28, 2024 (Link).}

7  _{Britnei Bilhete. “Proposed Wasaga Beach sale could set 'awful precedent,' environmentalists say” CBC News, July 26, 2025 (Link).}

8  _{Environmental Defence. “Ontario Plans to Sell 60% of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park Beachfront for Development” July 28, 2025 (Link).}

9  _{Ian Adams. “Wasaga mayor advocates for beachfront transfer to strengthen local community and economy” Wasaga Sun, August 1, 2025 (Link).}

10  _{Eric Wickham. “How Doug Ford Plans to Dismantle Ontario’s Most Popular Provincial Park” PressProgress, July 29, 2025 (Link).}

11  _{Julia Alevato. “Ontario court strikes down Ford government's plan to remove Toronto bike lanes” CBC News, July 30, 2025 (Link).}

12  _{Moira Welsh. “Can Marit Stiles save Ontario’s sliding New Democrats?” Hamilton Spectator/Toronto Star, August 2, 2025 (Spec link).}