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Hamilton isn’t Lost

On June 11, council will once again meet as the General Issues Committee. No agenda has been posted, but we do know one thing they’ll be dealing with: the Ward 8 council vacancy.

The west/central mountain ward has been without municipal representation since Friday, May 9, 2025 when the Canada Gazette announced that John-Paul Danko had been confirmed as the Member of Parliament for the riding of Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas. Since Section 29 (1.1) of the Municipal Elections Act prohibits an elected Member of Parliament from serving on a local council and Danko was the successful candidate in the April 28 election for the federal seat, Danko’s municipal seat was “made vacant” by the proclamation. Fun stuff.

Well, I’m only saying “fun stuff” because the archaic rules and regulations around government in Canada are interesting. I am so utterly disillusioned by Danko’s elevation to parliament - an institution that should mean something, but is increasingly populated by unthinking partisan lackeys, unrepentant bullies, and uninteresting self-serving populists and where things like Question Period have become “battlegrounds” rather than events that advance democracy - that little more than the policy portion of the whole affair even remotely qualifies as “fun”.

Council will have two options before them, as the vacancy occurred 326 days before the cut-off date after which seat can remain vacant (no seat can be filled through a by-election after March 31 during a municipal election year, which just so happens to be 2026 for us). The first option is a simple appointment, as council has done three times since 2010 (Ward 3’s Bernie Morelli → Bob Morrow in 2014, Ward 7’s Donna Skelly → Terry Anderson in 2018, Ward 5’s Chad Collins → Russ Powers in 2021).

The second option is a by-election. If council goes that route (which, judging by Joey Coleman’s reporting, is likely), then they’ll vote for a by-election by-law (now that’s fun to say) at the June 18 council meeting.

No notable folks in the community have made any concrete indication they’ll be seeking the seat, though one rumoured candidate - Ward 7 Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board trustee Dawn Danko - has ruled herself out this time around. The folks over on the r/Hamilton subreddit speculate (over two posts) that past municipal, provincial, and federal candidates Sonia Brown, Josh Czerniga, Kojo Damptey, or Monique Taylor, current Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board trustee John Valvasori or Mayor Horwath’s Chief of Staff Uzma Quereshi might run. The people on the Facebook group “Concession Street & The Hammer News” say little more than “Horvath bad” (no one has been able to tell me who this mystery Horvath is that everyone hates) and “no more NDP Party radical commie leftie pronoun socialists”.

That last point is important. No, really. Because it helps explain why my overall feeling about a by-election in Ward 8 is one of deep concern.

Let me explain why.

***

You may have noticed that I took last week off. Well, not “off” as though I were lounging on a beach somewhere, sipping cocktails and soaking up the sun. No, I was in relatively chilly Montreal, attending a conference as part of one of my work contracts that’s wrapping up (strong hint, if you have work for me).

The conference - The Canadian Vote Summit - is an annual event that brings together elections administrators, folks in civil society, political leaders, and academics to discuss how we can strengthen Canadian democracy. There’s a lot of talk about how to communicate with the electorate, how we can safeguard elections from interference, strategies to get marginalized communities out to vote, etc.

One of the keynote speakers for this year’s conference was France Bélisle, the former Mayor of Gatineau. Bélisle, the first woman to be mayor of Gatineau, was elected as an “outsider” in 2021 after a career in journalism and as the head of the local tourism board. She resigned around halfway into her term after enduring months of death threats, political instability, and intimidation from politicians and constituents alike.

During the conference, she noted that one of the biggest problems she saw with municipal politics today was a fundamental misunderstanding of how government works. One of Bélisle’s particularly profound comments was that her frustration grew from the fact that people simply didn’t understand the law, the process, and the capacity of a municipal government. Instead of saying “I disagree with your position and believe we should pursue a different approach”, her opponents would say “You don’t know what you’re doing and instead we should do [insert thing the municipal government isn’t actually capable of doing or allowed to do].” And those people were the ones gaining momentum.

People - particularly the loudest voices in some of our civic conversations - do not understand what a municipal government can, should, and must do. And yet, the most ignorant of a municipality’s powers seem to be the most confident in their ideas on how to improve it. It is an uphill battle for people in municipal spaces - and, frankly, anyone who has even a slight idea as to how a municipality operates - to simply explain the powers and limitations of municipalities in Canada even to those eagerly preparing themselves to stand for municipal office over the next year and a half.

Take, for example, the chaos that erupted at Wednesday’s council meeting. Two groups - one representing striking water workers and another advocating for those residents experiencing homelessness who have been removed from the side of the Niagara escarpment - disrupted the meeting to the point where some were dragged away by security. As reported by the Spec, the striking workers “interrupted proceedings to shout questions and demands at council members.”¹

Only one problem. Council does not negotiate union contracts. Municipal managers negotiate union contracts. Councillors, as supportive as they may be of the workers’ cause, are merely directors of the municipal corporation who have delegated negotiating power to hired managers.

On the encampment front, council rescinded the protocol after it - an imperfect, albeit middle-ground response to the housing and homelessness crisis that exploded during the COVID-19 Pandemic - was poisoned in the eyes of the public by militant right-wing populists who blamed the response to the crisis for the crisis itself. Those same militants - now running full steam into the 2026 municipal election on an anti-encampment, anti-establishment, anti-Kroetsch-and-Nann platform - scream endlessly about ensuring city council lets police do their job and “clean up encampments”.

City council establishes by-laws. City council sets policies. City council has some members sit on the rubber-stamp advisory that is the Police Services Board. City council did not legalize drugs or legalize trafficking or entice people experiencing homelessness to this city by passing a “sanctuary city” policy over a decade ago.

Councillors do not prevent, restrain, or prohibit police officers from carrying out their sworn duties to uphold the law. This is not the Victorian era where every copper in a ward is in the pocket of the machine-entrenched corrupt alderman who uses them as his own private army. Yet, to hear our community’s right-wing populists tell it, councillors not only have that power, but all that needs to happen is for the electorate to wake up, throw out the wokes, and allow us to return to the glory days of 1885 again when aldermen were manly men who, with the help of the bobbies, clean up crime with a billy club and a healthy dose of righteous rage.

Not only would councillors directly taking control of policing be concerning, it wouldn’t even be legal under provincial legislation. But legality isn’t what they’re concerned about. Much like the current American administration, these right-wing populists want as much power as they can get to reshape the state to better suit them.

But, more than that, it seems that the loudest voices in the room seem to be okay with not knowing how municipal government works. They’re content to leave the nerdy specifics to everyone else. And that’s because the specifics and the facts and the reality of the situation tend to get in the way of their central campaign tactic: pure, uncut rage. A mountain of rage, unbesmirched by ideas or policies. A campaign built by rage, for rage, serving the goals of rage.

And that, regrettably, brings me once again to the Bay Observer’s favourite contributor.

***

Hamiltonians may know Vito Sgro as the 2018 candidate for mayor who ran on a vehemently anti-LRT platform. Fewer will know him as the Liberal Party’s 2021 candidate in Flamborough—Glanbrook where he earned 35.5% of the vote. Even fewer will know him as a backroom Liberal Party organizer in the area for decades.

Sgro will almost assuredly be on the 2026 municipal ballot, likely as a candidate for Ward 2 councillor. But he’s also been opening reading from the right-wing populist playbook for a while, often times into the public record.

On May 26, this happened again, as Sgro had a piece published in the online tabloid The Bay Observer (more on them at a later date) entitled “Hamilton is Lost”.

The opinion column gives us a clear picture of what the city’s right-wing populists will run on: rage and retribution. It calls city staff “weak”, attacks council’s spending on a new concert venue, and breathlessly lists characteristics of social disorder, saying “If Councillors are not interested in the issues taxpayers really care about, they shouldn’t be running municipally.”

Sgro’s piece does not offer a single solution, a single shred of evidence, or a single thing that hasn’t already been screamed by some of Hamilton’s other right-wing populists.

Here, annotated for your enjoyment, is Sgro’s laundry list of complaints:

• Buildings collapsed across from Gore Park and staff “offered weak explanations”.

  • Yes, Vito, buildings did collapse. It’s called “demolition by neglect”. It’s a common tactic among Hamilton’s developers to ensure the most favourable conditions for their future redevelopment plans. I don’t blame you for not knowing, though. It’s not like any developers donated to your 2018 mayoral campaign or anything. Regardless, the municipality has stated clearly that private property rights trump everything else so, unless you’re calling on the city to expropriate those buildings, what’s your point?

• Council approved a $900,000 grant to a new concert hall. What if the church behind the venue doesn’t get other funding? What if “ethnic communities” (his phrasing) or faith-based groups ask for money?

  • If the other levels of government don’t come through, one presumes the initial grant from the city won’t either. And sure, let other groups apply. You just said it was bad that the city “let” heritage buildings collapse. Why shouldn’t groups ask for money to help preserve and use heritage buildings or other community spaces?

• “I am sick and tired of seeing the only true growth industry here being the social services industry.”

  • The stats don’t back you up on this one, Vito. From 2016 to 2021, the three largest growth “occupations” for Hamiltonians have been 1) Trades, 2) Applied sciences, and 3) Business and finance. That’s from StatsCan census data. If you split those occupations into finer categories, than the scientific group wins out, followed by health care. The “social services industry” is constantly being asked to do more with less, so where are you getting the idea that they’re the only growth industry?

• “The Chamber of Commerce, a once powerful organization 20 years ago, reduced to basically a social get-together group planning their next event.”

  • The Chamber remains active in all aspects of Hamilton’s civic life but, even if they weren’t, no member of city council can force the Chamber to be…more active? I don’t actually know what you want to see here. A city where residents are housed, have access to high-quality services, and feel engaged with the municipality is a city where businesses want to invest, which would benefit the Chamber. But you’re calling for austerity and deep spending cuts, which would harm the city’s economic development goals.

• “This city must stop its never-ending hunger for spending money, especially on useless, non-essential programs and causes. A properly run city must take care of police, fire, medical services, roads, sewers and other infrastructure.  It has to provide other vital services such city-wide transit, proper parks and sporting/educational facilities.”

  • Of the city’s 2025 budget, the single largest portion goes to the police, followed by infrastructure, followed by education transfers to school boards (because, remember, councillors aren’t also trustees), followed by fire services, followed by transit, followed by transportation, followed by housing services, followed by parks. So what “useless” programs should we cut? Are you going after social services, which ranks 12th on the city’s list of priorities? Maybe public health, which ranks 14th? The spending you complain about is on the programs you’re advocating for. You’re an accountant; make that make sense.

• Then he gets into what he’d like to see gone. The “Vacant Unit squad”, the Housing Secretariat, the Environmental Office.

  • These programs are small, small, small efforts to try and fix the problems you moan about. The Vacant Unit tax is intended to get housing online, the Housing Secretariat has already negotiated dozens of deals to have affordable housing built, and the Environmental Office is working to find efficiencies for the city and taxpayers alike. So how does cutting these small departments fix the problems you’ve identified?

• Then he complains about the cyber attack.

  • What about it? What would you have done differently to prevent the municipality from being targetted? If you’re a cybersecurity expert, how do we prevent that from happening again? Yes, we all deserve more transparency, even if just to tell us that information is being withheld because it’s sensitive. But the policies of the current council did not make the cyber attack more likely.

• “A tiny homes project for 40 units is $5 million dollars over budget where certain parties of the project are apparently involved in a law suit.”

  • I think it’s spelled “lawsuit”. Also, the program was a mayoral directive, slapped together in an impossibly short period of time, directed by staff. There will be an accounting for the failure there and staff should be held accountable for their actions. But what’s your point here? Without offering a solution, you’re just reminding people of a problem to get a rise out of them.

• “A simple park washroom taking over a year to rebuild from a fire that ended up costing over $1 million?”

  • That’s not a question. And the city’s insurance is covering it. Again, you’re an accountant. You should know this.

• Then: “Some councillors are trying to ban alcohol at tailgating parties but at the same time okay with safe injection sites and unsupervised drug use at parks and more recently, at the tiny shelter site.”

  • The alcohol policy was defeated. Supervised consumption sites were a provincial issue. The province has now pivoted to abstinence-only policies around drugs and policing users. And almost every councillor that was previously in favour of evidence-based solutions to addictions voted against the alcohol policy. So what’s your point? This is just copying Matt Francis’s media strategy in a less appealing way.

• “The streets of this city are probably some of the worst in the country…Barton Street (near Ottawa Street)…looks more like downtown Fallujah than a Canadian City.”

  • Weirdly dated and problematic comment aside, we know city streets are in bad shape. Previous councils (populated by the same right-wing populists who are backing your coming campaign) strategically under-funded infrastructure to keep the tax base artificially low to advance their own careers at the expense of a functioning city. Rather than being part of some fantastical Ba'athist plot to ruin the city, what we’re dealing with right now is the end result of good old fashioned municipal mismanagement.

• Then it’s just the usual anti-homeless rhetoric. Home invasions, “banging on cars”, damaging buildings, “leaving needles on public property, especially where children congregate, is not only wrong but immoral” [that sentence does not finish with a period].

  • Yes, I too am worried about the safety of children when they congregate. We all know youths love congregating. Again, breaking into someone else’s home is already a crime. Property damage is already a crime. The Ford Government is updating provincial policies to make drug use in public a crime (because it’s the province’s job to regulate that). Based on all that, what exactly are you complaining about? Because it sounds like you’re complaining that people experiencing homelessness exist. If that’s the case, what’s your proposal?

• “Taxpayers don’t need to be educated on some ideology they need reliable services, and all expenses should prove a proper value for money.”

  • Ahh, now we’re getting somewhere. See, few members of council ever “educate” constituents on “some ideology”. The current Ward 2 councillor tends to explain his policy positions and is often open in his critiques of the city’s right-wing populists and entrenched elites, though. This sounds a little more like Vito isn’t happy that Cameron hasn’t been nice to him. But that’s me speculating, of course. If we analyze this comment, we can see that Vito is working hard to uphold the status quo. The old notion that there isn’t “a Liberal or Conservative way to pave a street” which is an old establishment line meant to suppress progressives and prevent left-wing alternatives from being pursued.

Sgro’s piece proves that he’s mad as hell and, facts be damned, he’s going to do something about it! At the end, he signs off with this less-than-subtle comment:

“In the hope of this much needed change I will be deeply involved in the next municipal election. The question is…will you?”

sigh.

I, of course, am once again feeding the beast by even referencing his piece. But the piece offers a glimpse into the campaign Hamilton’s right-wing populists will run in 2026 and in the upcoming Ward 8 by-election. In many ways, Sgro’s piece lays out both the coming campaign, as well as giving us a look at a campaign that just happened - a campaign that will likely be replicated here in a few months.

***

At the beginning of the month, the UK held local elections in a few select municipalities across England. The elections - which featured political parties running for council seats - were devastating for the establishment Conservative and Labour parties. While the UK Greens and their centrist Liberal Democrats made gains, the big winner was the new far-right populist Reform UK Party, which won 677 seats and came to control 10 councils.

These far-right Brexiters were swept into office by a populist wave, even if they campaigned on impossible things like stopping migration to the UK and ending mental illness in children. What they will do, though, is DOGE-ify local government in the UK, doing what Musk and Trump have done to the United States by breaking everything so dramatically that they’ll eventually say their only option is to sell off what they broke to private corporations under the auspices of “fixing” the problems they created. They’ll also eliminate programs designed to promote equity in local workplaces, rip out bike lanes and ban “15 minute cities” (meaning they’ll make it harder for people to get goods and services in their own neighbourhoods), roll back environmental programs aimed at making air and water cleaner, attack queer rights, promote their own idea of “heritage”, and generally bring a spirit of anti-democratic combat to local institutions.

Things have been rocky for them, with scores of newly-elected Reform members of local councils resigning. It was apparent that many signed up to be protest candidates, assuming they wouldn’t win and balking at the idea of actually governing. Many others were recruited without any vetting, meaning some new elected officials in the UK have spoken sympathetically about Vladimir Putin, the KKK, and Hitler.

So things in the UK are a mess. What I’m worried about is that we’re headed for the same entirely preventable disaster. A bunch of right-wing populists like Sgro will run for office, fueled entirely rage, offering nothing but platitudes and vague promises to “clean up city hall”, and completely unprepared for the challenge of governing.

And the Ward 8 by-election will be the first test of this. By-elections already feature low-turnout. The Ward 7 by-election in which Danko first contested local office had a turnout of just 24%. With 22 candidates on the ballot, the eventual winner - Donna Skelly - assumed office with just 19.6% of the vote, a mere 92 votes ahead of Danko. A well-organized right-wing populist running on a rage-based platform could ultimately capture the seat and lay the groundwork for a winder extreme right takeover of council next October.

When I say that such a takeover is “entirely preventable”, I mean it. As I noted, the UK Labour Party’s share of the vote in their local elections dropped by about 15%. Their strategy was to tack to the centre and, in some cases, actively appeal to the kind of person they thought would vote for Reform UK. The Greens, on the other hand, marketed themselves as the “positive and progressive antidote to Reform”. The Greens have long positioned themselves as optimistic progressives, and their 2019 candidate recruitment campaign was called: “Stand For What You Believe In”. Rather than stoking the flames of outrage, the Greens focused on getting results for everyday people with realistic, evidence-based policies. When Labour started to cut programs, Reform hollered about waste while the Greens talked about investing in communities. When Labour came out against migration, Reform claimed the win while the Greens talked about making communities that work for everyone. When Labour offered the same old stale solutions, Reform blustered about the elites while the Greens gave progressives options they could get behind.

The solution here is simple. Smart, articulate, compelling progressives need to run for office on a platform of radical optimism and real-world policies. Right-wing populists will run on platforms of rage and retribution, offering people hollow solutions so they can win power and reshape government to suit their needs and the needs of their wealthy backers. Progressives can provide a better alternative by focusing on positive, workable results for people.

So I’m still concerned about what will happen with the Ward 8 by-election. The right’s got a good shot at taking the seat because they’ve been laying the groundwork for it and their general 2026 campaign for years. But forward-thinking Hamiltonians need not fear, because we have just as good a chance as anyone else. The key here is that progressives need to work at it, unite behind a strong candidate, and get the messaging right.

Hamilton isn’t lost. But we might stumble off the path if we allow ourselves to be led by merchants of rage.

1  _{Matthew Van Dongen. “Striking water workers briefly shut down Hamilton council meeting” Hamilton Spectator, May 28, 2025 (Spec link).}