Happy Friday!

Sorry I’m publishing a day latter than usual. I just got back from a conference I helped organize on democratic engagement and challenges to public participation. I got to meet some cool folks, brought along some wonderful advocates and changemakers from the Hamilton area, and had a great (albeit hot and swampy) time in Toronto.

Today’s first piece is on declining support for the queer community in Canada. That’s tied to a larger project I’m working on regarding Hamilton Pride 2019. And, on that note, if you’re around on June 27 from 6:30 to 9:00 PM, you should come to the Art Gallery of Hamilton to hear about that project. I’m participating in a panel discussion with some amazing community members where we’ll chat about the lead-up to, events during, and fallout from Pride 2019. Get tickets by clicking on the button or photo below ⬇️.

This backslide slays

Happy Pride Month!

It’s that wonderful time each year when corporations, political parties, and institutions break out their best rainbow-themed merch while the internet people prepare to engage in truly staggering amounts of…𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖘𝖊.

I’m talking Tumblr-grade conversations around corporations in Pride, kink in Pride, nudity in Pride, the need for Pride, the Pride of Pride, Pride³: The RePridening.

At least, that’s what it used to be like. Those of us who grew up on the internet felt increasingly secure in our ability to move past conversations about our right to exist and, instead, have conversations about the form and function of the organizations that exist around us. It was reassuring that we were having more discussions about what Pride should look like rather than focusing exclusively on our right to even have Pride. Not that there wasn’t some of the latter, of course.

But not anymore. Because we’re backsliding like…hmm…I’m sorry, I can’t think of a suitable analogy that isn’t overtly sexual. “Backsliding” is a word that just lends itself to naughty analogies.

Ipsos released their 2024 Pride Report a few days ago and the outlook is bleak. While Canadians remain generally supportive of marriage equality, the right for same-sex couples to adopt, and having basic protections against discrimination, we’re backsliding into regressive territory on a lot of other fronts.

Just three years ago, 61% of Canadians said they were cool with queer folks being open about who we are. That’s plummeted to 49% this year. In just three years, 12% of Canadians have gone from “you do you” to “you know what, actually you should stay in the closet, you [insert slur here]”.

Support for public displays of queer affection have dropped from 48% to 40%. Now just 34% of Canadians want to see queer characters in media.

Even more troublingly, in just one year, support for trans youth receiving gender affirming care (which, let’s remember, is statistically linked to dramatically improved mental health) has dropped 10% down to just 48%. Looks like the manufactured moral panic over trans folks has worked on Canadians.

But this wasn’t just a survey of Canadians. Ipsos actually conducted a 26-country poll to get a feel for queer rights around the world. There’s been an overall global decline in support, but Canada’s slide has been especially dramatic and sad.

Canada’s rank on the question “To what extent do you support or oppose LGBT people being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity with everyone” - the one where we slipped 12 points to 49% - is now 17th out of 23. That means Canada is now behind Thailand, Chile, South Africa, Italy, Columbia, the UK, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru (among others) and is just 2 points higher than the United States. On the public affection question, we’re just 7 points higher than Poland which, until last year, had actual “LGBT Free Zones”.

When I keep harping on about how anger has taken over politics and Canada is becoming a meaner, more selfish, pettier little place, this is what I mean.

I see a couple contributing factors to this.

The first is COVID-19. The pandemic absolutely shredded our ability to interact with one another. We avoided each other for two years and, in the process, lost the ability to engage with strangers. The essence of democracy is interacting with people who may not share your values, trying to convince them of your position, and reminding them that, at the end of the day, you’re still a human. A big part of this is how we’ve reworked work. Work-from-home was necessary for public safety and is now a convenient way to draw on people’s skills without needing to provide them with a central meeting place. But it has drawbacks. That Ipsos survey asked people if they have a coworker, friend, or relative who is openly gay. In Canada, that number has dropped from 60% to 52% - the third largest drop among the 26 countries surveyed. Even in Hungary, where the far-right government actively demonizes members of the queer community, that number has increased by 9%. When we’re not around different people, we start to see everyone else as less human, less real…like little NPCs standing in the way of our quests. That means not understanding their unique characteristics and the interesting perspectives they can provide. It also means not having a point of reference for when extremists make outrageous claims about people from certain communities, leaving people to fall back on their prejudices.

The second (which is rather connected to point one) is the way we’ve structured our lives and communities. Our zealous pursuit of developer profit and near-religious commitment to sprawl development (and the personal automobile) keeps us isolated, atomized, and alone, surrounded predominantly by our internet friends who think exactly like us. When people wake up in their own isolated house to a curated social media feed, jump in their own personal car, put in their time at work (or just stay at home all day because…well…see above), jump back into that car to head to a big box store where everyone around you is seen as an idiot or a competitor for scarce resources (“and now, we see feeding time at the Costco Watering Hole”), get back in that car, and go home to that isolated house again, you have no real chance to see or speak with or meet new people.

The third is the internet. Social media platforms continue their transition into virtual “dead malls” that we all linger around in, even though the product is getting worse and less reliable and the characters that abound become less and less real. If you don’t care about your mental health in the slightest or (and this is unlikely) have some modicum of stability, go take a look at the replies underneath some tweets about Pride. For those organizations and individuals without the foresight to turn off commenting, Pride posts are like a bug lamp for the worst-of-the-worst. A collection of bots, trolls, sockpuppets, agents of chaos hired by undemocratic foreign governments, and the most hateful little people in the community absolutely revel in throwing out slurs with abandon. They’re a very, very, very small minority, but as social media gets quieter, their voices grow louder. No one hears someone yelling “homo!” in a cheering crowd, but everyone hears it when it’s shouted in a nearly-empty room.

Finally, people are getting meaner because life is getting harder. We can’t expect a society with massive wealth inequality, an inefficient and cruel approach to distributing resources, and the strategic demonization of select minority communities brought to this country by a state that utterly fails them once they arrive to hold space for much difference.

How do we fix this?

Well, first, us queer folks have to just be there for one another. We have to work to support one another, build community, and be there for each other in good times and bad. Here in Hamilton, the city’s many, many, many queer sports leagues (full disclosure: I’m a part of a few of them because I’m so sporty) are doing an incredible job building community in a way that’s meaningful and lasting. But we have to keep supporting each other, no matter what.

Second, we have to consider the role of urban design in all this. The way we build our cities is isolating and alienating. When we focus on developer profit, rather than how we can build resilient, meaningful urban spaces for all residents, we allow the market to dictate how we live. Isolating is turning people against one another. Bringing people together - in person, in communities, in deliberate ways - is one important way we can start challenging growing distrust and hatred.

Third, we have to rethink our economy. This just isn’t working for anyone. People are overworked, underpaid, and stretched to their limit. Of course people are growing more hateful. They’re being told they aren’t worth anything, that they’ll never have any power, that their kids are going to be demonstrably worse off than them. That’s no way to live. We won’t achieve social justice if we rely on corporations to be “woke” enough to match our values or those with economic power to post hokey Pride Month messages on social media. We will achieve social justice by pursuing economic justice.

There are plenty of other things we can do. Having meaningful conversations with people who are “on the fence” about gay people or have said troubling things about trans folks so we can unpack their concerns and challenge their assumptions. Calling out homophobic and transphobic leaders, no matter their ideology or affiliation. Committing to not supporting politicians who have been ambiguous on basic human rights. Limiting our doom scrolling.

Ultimately, we have to be there for one another. Because we’ll only build a better world - a world where anyone can feel loved, accepted, and safe to be their most authentic self - if we work together.

Happy Pride Month, you wonderful neighbours.

Opinions are like bathroom beers

On Monday, another opinion from yours truly appeared in the Hamilton Spectator. In this piece, I unpack the government’s reckless decision to spend nearly $1 billion (approx. $63 per Ontarian) to push beer into convenience stores in an effort to appease voters ahead of an anticipated early election in the spring/early summer of 2025. The premier consistently spends money to serve his own aims, rather than following evidence, experts, or even what the people of Ontario want. There’s always cash for his own vanity projects, but none for the hospitals, schools, or transit. If you get the Spec, you can read it here, or you can access it through the HPL.

Of course, my little piece has faded into the background, overshadowed by the big story: the updated cost for the Woodlands Park washroom. When the $1.3 million price tag was revealed, it was like flicking on the TAXPAYER RIGHTS version of the Bat Signal. Today’s Letters to the Editor section is a cavalcade of indignation over the cost with letter writers taking the tantalizing opportunity to blame this TAX AND SPEND council of CLOWNS for their MONEY WASTING schemes to provide bathrooms to people.

This seems to be because folks failed to read even half-way through Teviah Moro’s article on the reconstruction. Had they done so, they would have seen that the city has insurance for the building and a $500,000 deductible. That means the city kicks in a half-mil and insurance company is covering the rest. But, in doing so, they have much of the control over the contractor, the timeline, and the materials.

This staggering lack of media literacy and inability to pay attention to even the most basic of details has forced Ward 3 Councillor Nrinder Nann to issue a clarification on X/Twitter, re-stating the fact that the city’s insurer is covering the bulk of the costs.

Six whole letters to the editor about this. No discussion about the increasing cost of basic building materials. No discussion about the insurer choosing the contractor. No discussion about any facts. Just the feeling that council is wasting money.

Absolutely infuriating. It is almost like people are okay with pursuing angry, contextless populism because it’s less work than being an informed citizen. Willful ignorance is so in right now.

Get the facts before you start complaining. Do some reading on how city hall works. Be better democratic citizens. Just be better.

I sure could go for a $63 beer right now.

I hope they have air conditioners in hell

Hot hot heat

I want to share a graphic. This comes from one of the more wholesome subreddits, r/dataisbeautiful. That particular corner of Reddit is populated with nerds committed to presenting information in unique and interesting ways.

The graphic I’d like to focus on was posted by a user named u/RdFi, who has done some other mapping and data visualization work. This specific post was done in the style of the New York Times, which is a compelling way to present the information. The post tries to highlight just how dire the climate situation has become. Almost every day this year, the earth has broken a heat record, and 2024 is on track to become the hottest year on record.

Even just today, a heat dome has settled over the American southwest and California, sending temperatures up to 45° in some places.

The climate is changing. We can all feel it. Literally.

But some folks feel it more than others. While most newer homes and apartments have built-in central air, many older houses and units don’t. I personally have to rely on two bulky air conditioning units with those ugly tubes poking out the back to find some comfort indoors when I can’t work outside.

An AP report from the US last year highlighted the fact that communities of colour and seniors have far less access to air conditioning than other communities, leaving them more susceptible to the adverse health effects associated with extreme heat. The effects of extreme heat are so intense that British Columbia opened a program to provide 8,000 air conditioning units to people living on low incomes from 2023 to 2026. But, when twice as many people applied than expected, a disability rights advocate dismissed the problem as a “lottery-to-live”.

Cool story, bro

Here in Ontario, we have a program that provides $350 subsidies to people living with low incomes to help them purchase an air conditioning unit. Unfortunately, that program only covered 50 Hamiltonians - again, far below the number of people in need.

Earlier this spring, Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch asked staff to see if the city could chip in to help expand the program. Staff came back with a report that gave a thumbs-up to spending $52,500 of the funds in the city’s Climate Change Reserve to expand the program from 50 people to 200 people. That’s a serious improvement and will make the lives of a lot of people much better, possibly preventing serious health impacts from enduring extreme heat over the summer.

Council (as the Public Health Committee) voted overwhelmingly in favour of this modest contribution to the program. The only councillor opposed was Ward 8’s John-Paul Danko.

Shortly after the vote, Danko took to X/Twitter to…well, I don’t know. It is actually hard to understand what happened.

Rather than provide a reasoned explanation, Danko played the populist, posting a Trailer Park Boys GIF with the text:

People immediately began pointing out the benefits of the program, to which he responded with:

This one also included a GIF like we’re in 2014 or something.

Invited onto CHML’s “Good Morning Hamilton”, Danko tripled down, directly attacking Ward 13 Councillor Alex Wilson for being a renter, implying that Alex does not pay property taxes (requiring them to take to X/Twitter to remind Danko that renters do indeed pay property tax - in fact, more property tax than homeowners).

Danko’s behaviour online and over air after the vote was strange, cringey, and all around uncivil. It played to populist talking points about council waste, attacked the motivations and character of his colleagues, and made progressive Hamiltonians shake their heads, wondering why this once-esteemed member of council - seen as a level-headed and reasonable moderate - had suddenly espoused the political style of right-wing populists.

Atlas Sweats

So what’s going on here?

Well, let’s take a gander back in time to see where this all started.

JP’s political rise happened in tandem with that of his wife, Dawn. Both got their start as parent activists on the mountain. Their first real moment in the local spotlight was when they forcibly took over a public meeting about the possible closure of Queensdale Elementary on the central mountain. At that meeting, JP grabbed the mic and assumed control of the meeting, much to the annoyance of many parents involved. He introduced himself as John Galt, the main character from the exhausting and pretentious libertarian novel “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, long hailed as a foundational text of the extreme antigovernment right.1 

Their activism on the Queensdale file put them on the map, and JP helped manage Dawn’s successful Ward 7 Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) trustee campaign in 2014.

Danko himself then ventured into municipal politics, running in the chaotic Ward 7 by-election in 2015. His campaign hit all the right talking points for many in the city and helped positioned him as a kind of progressive folk hero. He was able to keep above the fray, avoiding the infighting that hampered the campaigns of almost every other candidate affiliated with every major political party (and even some minor parties too!). While his candidacy was largely ignored by the city’s media establishment (Andrew Dreschel’s columns regularly included him as an “also running are…” candidate), he placed a very close second, catapulting him further into the civic spotlight. Three years later, he became a giant slayer, taking down former MP Eve Adams in the race for Ward 8 councillor.

But Danko has not shown any interest in maintaining those progressive, urbanist connections that he once had. Indeed, his legislative record has been all over the map. Depending on the day, he’ll side with the conservatives, side with the progressives, or just do whatever he wants. Some might see this as good politics - being a municipal maverick without any real allegiances or alliances. Some might see this as infuriating - an unreliable figure that can come across simultaneously as a bully and an ally.

Danko has previously expressed an interest in seeking higher office as a Liberal. He was once a card-carrying member and actively supported the party in the 2021 federal election. But he’s also identified himself as a fiscal conservative and a “Red Tory” - a political philosophy that seems, at best, shamelessly nostalgic for a slightly less unequal time and, at worst, dispassionately privileged in a kind of yuppy-adjacent upper-middle-class kind of way.

He’s been throwing some red meat the right-wing way over the past while. Aside from publicly attacking Environment Hamilton, he’s reversed his position on decriminalizing drugs, tweeted/posted about boosting police funding in response to the city’s uptick in gun violence, and has veered into culture war territory over the terminology used around homelessness.

Complicating everything is the fact that the Liberals have a federal candidate on the mountain (incumbent absentee MP Lisa Hepfner) and that local activist Heino Døssing has announced his intention to seek the provincial Liberal nomination for Hamilton Mountain. With the anticipated Tory sweep federally and their steady numbers provincially, it would not be a stretch to see Danko as a Conservative candidate in the near future.

The Churchill of Suburbia

This kind of political ambiguity is not uncommon in Hamilton’s municipal politics. Ward 6’s long-time councillor, Tom Jackson, has played the same game of “partisan chameleon” with reckless abandon since first being elected.

Jackson was a card-carrying Liberal in his youth. He jumped on the PC bandwagon as Mulroney was growing in popularity and started working for Tory candidates. Then, during the 1988 municipal campaign, Jackson told local media he was about to join the Liberal Party. By 1995, when the provincial Progressive Conservatives were rising in the polls, he was back on the PC train. In 1997, he was moments away from announcing a run for the PC nomination for Parliament on Hamilton Mountain before pulling back.

One year later, he told the Spec he was done with the Tories and that “The logical home (for me) is within the Liberal family.”2 Then, in 2003, the provincial Progressive Conservatives asked Jackson to run in Hamilton West. He declined, instead making his only federal run in 2004 with the federal Conservative Party on Hamilton Mountain. Jackson placed a modest third (with almost 30% of the vote). In the time since, Jackson has not stopped oscillating wildly between the Liberals and Conservatives. His most recent foray was with the Liberals, helping Chad Collins’s federal campaign in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, but it wouldn’t be outside reason to see him supporting Poilievre’s Tories in 2025.

Some would say that such flexibility is good, allowing a politician to accept ideas from a broad array of places, embodying a kind of “post-partisan” perspective that sees parties as vehicles for leaders, rather than rigid ideas. Others would say this is cynically self-serving, placing the ego of the candidate above any meaningful ideas, making politics about personality and how shamelessly extraverted a person is instead of focusing on a politics of principles.

No strategic evaluation, no relief cheats

A challenge was posed on social media. All-around cool guy, John Neary, posted on X/Twitter, encouraging me to dig up “some 19th century version of JP who opposed supplying municipal water to the poors back when we had cholera epidemics in #HamOnt.”

Well you don’t have to ask me twice to dive into the archives!

While I wasn’t able to find anything from the 19th century (full disclosure, my hard-drive with all my pre-1930 files died [I’ll gladly accept tips to my Ko-Fi to help fund a recovery effort] and the HPL’s ongoing computer situation has made it almost impossible to use their microfilm readers), but there is a slightly more recent example that stands out.

One of the best examples I can find is that of oft-lauded civic hero Nora Frances Henderson.

Henderson was in civic politics during the Great Depression. After the stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing economic collapse, Hamiltonians of all professions lost work. Estimates indicate that, at the worst point in the Depression, over half of all men in the city and 1/3 of women were unemployed. Efforts were made to restrict the municipal franchise, keeping renters, the unemployed, and those who were unable to pay property taxes off the voting rolls. In doing so, the local Conservative Party establishment was able to maintain a stranglehold on local politics, ensuring party members and ideological fellow-travelers made up the bulk of council.

Henderson was no exception. Positioning herself as a prudent fiscal manager, Henderson railed against a widely accessible welfare system and was absolutely fixated on the idea of “relief cheats”, whom she mentioned in her nominating speeches for her Board of Control campaigns all throughout the Depression. In 1936, speaking to the gathered crowd at city hall, she committed to a program of fiscal austerity, cutting the water rate, lowering taxes, and shrinking the social service net. “Our relief problem is still very serious, with over 4,000 families on the rolls. I stand for an efficient system which will prosecute cheaters…” she said.3 Henderson’s fixation on “relief cheats” and the number of people seeking social assistance persisted until 1939, when she turned her attention to the war effort. But she was back at it in 1940, warning future councils against forgetting “the lessons of the past and [engaging] in improvident, extravagant and unnecessary programs of expenditures.”4

Henderson’s opposition to social relief programs was not unique, as the concept of Keynesianism had not yet made it into the mainstream and the assumption at the time was that the only way to ensure fiscal stability was to cut the size of government quickly and deeply. But what did make Henderson unique was her persistence on the front well into the 1940s and the fact her opposition to providing welfare relief to the unemployed stood in contrast to her relentless advocacy for elderly women and for building a municipal “rest home” for seniors in poverty. She was also a staunch anti-unionist, actively crossing the picket lines of many strikes in the post-war period in a desperate attempt to antagonize workers.

But here’s the wild thing: Henderson was as ideologically ambiguous as Jackson and Danko. After the 1934 municipal election (wherein Henderson was first elected to the Board of Control), the Spec laid out the partisan affiliations of all the new members of council. At the time, Henderson was listed as being “definitely Liberal”.5 

A year later, Henderson launched her only campaign for higher office, running for MP in Hamilton West. Except she didn’t run as a Liberal. Henderson was nominated as a candidate of the “Reconstruction Party”, a right-wing isolationist outfit (it was very anti-League of Nations) run by former Conservative MP Henry Herbert Stevens. That attempt failed, with Henderson losing to sitting Mayor Herbert Wilton of the Conservatives (despite a Canada-wide Liberal sweep…because the Hamilton West Liberals fought so intensely, they ran two candidates, splitting the vote and allowing the Tories to sneak up the middle).

Henderson spent the rest of her political career siding with council’s right-wing and serving as a mentor for future Progressive Conservative MP Ellen Fairclough.

The wheel of time

Hamilton has a long tradition of municipal politicians on the centre-right of the political spectrum doing a dangerous dance with multiple parties.

Henderson went from the Liberals to the Reconstructionists to being one of council’s most conservative voices.

Jackson went from Liberal to Tory to Liberal to Tory to Liberal to Tory to Liberal.

Hell, look at Bob Bratina. In 2019, Bratina was a Liberal MP running for re-election, saying that the Conservatives were “too nasty”. In 2023 (even before his infamous Poilievre photo), Bratina was telling Paul Wells he will be voting for Ned Kuruc and the Conservatives in his old riding of Hamilton East-Stoney Creek and that he only ran as a Liberal in 2015 because “Stephen Harper was on his way out, and in Hamilton, if you’re not careful, a New Democrat might get elected, an outcome Bratina plainly doesn’t relish.”6 All this is despite Bratina appearing at campaign rallies with former ONDP leader Howard Hampton in the early 2000s and entertaining a subtle courtship from the party after his 2004 Ward 2 by-election win.7

Historical precedent shows that Danko’s behaviour isn’t exactly unique. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

JP Danko is committed to his own political style and does not seem to care how that impacts his future ambitions. It’s a blend of elite-projected centrism and opportunistic populism with a dash of the flavour of the day.

If he’s able to pull off another council win in 2026, it’ll be proof to him that his political style is resonating. But that does not mean it will necessarily translate to higher office. The record of ideologically ambiguous council members seeking another office is mixed at best and political parties are only willing to tolerate so much aisle hopping.

One thing’s for certain: Hamilton’s progressives can’t count on JP Danko being in their corner when the going gets tough. Tweeting pro-cycling messages and Happy Pride Month messages doesn’t erase his erratic political behaviour or targeting of progressive organizations and councillors in our community. His all-out attack on Alex Wilson and Cameron Kroetsch should be proof of that.

Regardless of Danko’s political future - running with the Liberals, the Conservatives, or the JP Danko Party - it is time for progressives on the mountain to start organizing. Because if we can’t count on JP, then the least we can do is find a credible alternative.

And preferably one who isn’t so cringey on social media.

Cool facts for cool people

• Just one thing to put on everyone’s radar this week: Bobby Hristova’s incredible work on segregation in the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre. Give the story a read. It’s eye-opening and frustrating. Right now, in our city, an institution is operating that literally meets the UN’s conditions for torture.