The Hamiltonians aren’t as Concerned as you think

Hamilton, 1985.

The city was nearing the end of a very long term of council. Not since the creation of the Region of Hamilton-Wentworth in 1973 had a term of council lasted so long. But, as the election of 1985 crept closer and closer, the end of the first permanent three-year term of council was coming to a close. And, for many, that end could not have come soon enough.

In the election of 1982, the remnants of local partisan groups that ran candidates for local office were on their last legs. The era of formal party politics in municipal government was coming to an end. In ‘82, the local New Democratic Party had put forward a slate of six candidates, four of whom were victorious. But their tenure on council was seen as disruptive and distracting to the direction of the city. The Spectator branded them the “Gang of Four” and was happy to see their leader – Ward 3 alderman Mike Davison – dispatched from council to briefly serve as Hamilton Centre’s MPP.

For many in city, the municipal election of 1985 provided a chance for a dramatic reset. A Spec editorial declared a week before election day:

The climate in the election was one of hostility toward incumbents. It seemed to some - particularly the city’s business establishment - that some members of council were advancing an agenda of obstinate partisanship that was disrupting the city’s possible economic success. Into that growing storm of opposition stepped what the Spec called “a group of city business…professionals who refused to endorse any incumbent aldermen…”2 

The group called themselves “Concerned Citizens for Hamilton”. An interview with the Spec the day before the election profiled some of the group’s leadership: real estate agents, accountants, public relations specialists, advertising executives. These were people who wanted to see a council that would work with the city’s business community to provide economic opportunities to the residents of Hamilton.

The group claimed over 100 regular supporters, $25,000 in donations, and no desire to stick around and act like a political party after the election.3 They ran slick, professional, full-page ads in the Spec touting their endorsements and encouraging Hamiltonians to vote to “get the government we deserve – the best – let’s get out there and make things happen!”.

Election night was an incredible success for “Concerned Citizens for Hamilton”. Seven of their eight endorsed candidates won, with only Ward 2’s Peter Rhodes failing to unseat the dynamic duo of Vince Agro and Bill McCulloch, whose downtown reigns wouldn’t be stopped until the 1997 election of a equally dynamic young outsider in the form of one Andrea Horwath.

In every other ward, their candidates prevailed. In an interview on election night, one of the group’s spokespeople – Peter Hill (who, before passing away in 2020, would become a staunch and dedicated proponent of the city’s LRT plan) – told the Spec:

True to their word, “Concerned Citizens for Hamilton” did not run another campaign in 1988.

While they acted as what we could today call a “third party advertiser”, they did so while remaining upfront and transparent with the voters. They maintained a campaign headquarters in a historic building just to the east of the intersection of Main West and Queen South. They had spokespeople who gave interviews, quizzed candidates, and made themselves available with their clever phone number: 523-4673 or 523-“GORE”. And, when they advertised in the Spec, they did so with professional, clear, positive messaging that provided information in a civic-minded way. “The choice is yours, of course. Since you may not be able to meet all the candidates and question them as we did, we are trying to provide information that will contribute to your making a sound decision,” read the ads.

A sound decision. Even if you disagreed with the direction of the group or believed them to be too cozy with the city’s business establishment, you could at least admire their professionalism and respect.

But that was 1985.

And it isn’t that kind of world anymore.

July-September

Last July, I wrote about a strange advertisement that appeared in the now-defunct Hamilton Mountain News. A splash of yellow and red and green and black, the advertisement was simultaneously cryptic and angry, doused carelessly with exaggeration and conflation.

“12.3% Tax INCREASE WHY???? UP TO 15% PAY INCREASE non-unionized CITY STAFF in 2023 YOU GET A 15% INCREASE?” it screamed from the page.

The mayor, this technicolour spectacle in over-punctuated Helvetica yelled, had gone to Italy, costing taxpayers $4500, “WHILE YOU STRUGGLE to AFFORD GROCERIES!!”

The advertisement, from a group calling themselves “Concerned Hamiltonians” included an email address – [email protected] – but little more.

I crunched the numbers and sent them some questions in an effort to better understand this group. While organized groups like “Concerned Citizens for Hamilton” were abundantly transparent in their branding, motivations, and accessibility, this new “Concerned Hamiltonians” had recklessly repeated question marks around it.

Why did they conflate the rising cost of groceries with the mayor’s trip to Italy? While $4,500 seems like a lot out of context, when divided among the people of Hamilton, it amounts to a paltry $0.02 per household and $0.008 per person. Were they aware of this? What were their long-term goals? Were they planning on joining the city’s lobbyist registry? Where did they get the money for this ad?

I fired off my questions and waited. I waited all summer and into the fall before I got an answer.

Not from “Concerned Hamiltonians”, though. From Metroland. Last September, the publisher announced they would be shutting down all their suburban weekly papers.

I assumed this meant the end of the “Concerned Hamiltonians” saga. The group had paid to put advertisements in the weekly papers delivered, for free, to the doors of Hamiltonians in select communities. As those papers would no longer exist, I assumed the whole affair would be an odd flash in the pan.

I imagined the kind of person who placed these ads. I saw them as a small-c conservative local resident whose civic-mindedness and subtlety had been eroded over the past few years of enduring, as so many of us have, the complete and devastating erosion of local news, community engagement, and meaningful dialogue. This mysterious advertiser, who had been influenced by talk-radio and Fox-ified news and the substancelessness of so much of today’s politics, decided to spend a couple thousand dollars to tell the people what they thought directly. No need to craft a researched, reasoned, coherent piece of writing like some pamphleteer of yore and have that piece be judged by an editor before being Gestetnered into reality, only to be ignored by the masses with whom they yearned to commune. They would place an ad in resplendent colour and make their views known in a few, short lines.

Taxes bad. Mayor greedy. Cost of living too high. Throw the bums out. A job well done.

With the demise of the suburban weeklies, I assumed that imagined conservative would be satisfied with their impact and declare their crusade over. They would power down WordPerfect 6.0, hop in their comically-oversized truck, and drive slowly off into the sunset.

And then September 23 rolled around.

Concerned Hamiltonians and the Amazing Technicolour Advertisements

Snuggled up in the top righthand corner of page A9 of the weekend Spectator, like an angry little summer throwback, lay another ad. The same liberal use of punctuation. The same confusion over the purpose of Caps Lock. The same basic message.

But this time, with a twist:

“HAVE NO VOICE? JOIN US”

With this ad, “Concerned Hamiltonians” began recruiting. At the bottom of the advertisement, they placed a QR code. Fuzzy and unfortunately bricked out by the inclusion of a blue bar along the bottom of the link, the QR code, while neutralized, signaled a change in strategy. No more shouting from the pages of the free weekly papers. Now it was time to organize.

The ad expanded their focus while, simultaneously, providing more detail. They revisited their summertime anger about water rates, but also threw in some complaints about the failed vacant unit tax (which they call a vacant property tax) and the student rental licensing program (which they call a rental tax). Though they could have meant the short-term rental unit licensing plan. The ad makes reference to random taxes using colloquial terms, making it nearly impossible to decipher the target of their anger and their overall intent. Though the base message was clear:

This CITY COUNCIL NOT WORTH the COST.

“HAVE NO VOICE? JOIN US”

JOIN US. JOIN US. JOIN US.

As the weeks slid on, the ads amped up the intensity. The following Saturday, “Concerned Hamiltonians” took aim at the city’s Encampment Protocol vote which happened a month prior, but sprinkled in some fear-mongering and misinformation.

They implied any councillor who voted in favour of the encampment protocol allowed “encampments in your local park”. This is a nonsense line that deliberately misleads anyone reading these ads. In reality, the protocol restricts where encampments can be established with such intensity that, while attempting to map the city’s guidelines, I was unable to find almost any space anywhere in the city where encampments could form.

But the exaggerated lines in the ad are only one of the strange things about their September 30 contribution to our civic discourse. The order of the names is…off. In the “voted for” column, Ward 8’s J.P. Danko is taken out and placed first, above the mayor. That isn’t how the vote is recorded in the meeting minutes from August 18. That isn’t geographically-accurate. That isn’t done by age or gender-identity or political affiliation. It would almost seem like the ad is singling out Danko and placing him at the top for effect.

And, one nitpicky thing about the list: the author failed to distinguish between Ward 1’s Maureen Wilson and Ward 13’s Alex Wilson. If you already have your Word processor open and the highlight option selected, it can’t be that hard to add an “M” and an “A” to them so that it doesn’t look like you’ve listed the same person twice.

A demonstration:

“Concerned Hamiltonians” did not stop with that advertisement. Beginning on September 23 until the end of the year, a total of 14 paid opinion ads would appear in the weekend edition of the Hamilton Spectator. That is almost every week on the back end of 2023 (I am unsure as to why they skipped October 21…my best guess is to mark the feast day of St. Tuda of Lindisfarne. Doesn’t everyone?). Every week for 14 weeks, a ¼ page advertisement graced some of the first pages of the local paper taking aim at an issue in the city.

On October 7, they said that council “broke our city” because of LRT. On October 14, they bemoaned the “GOLD PLATED Pensions” and “EXOTIC TRIPS” of council members. October 28 brought the claim that the current council is to blame for the high cost of housing, once again wailing “CITY COUNCIL BROKE our CITY!!! CITY COUNCIL NOT WORTH the COST!!!”.

On November 4, they broadened their scope and turned to the conspiratorial. They implied that those who own property along the LRT line donated strategically to councillors in order to ensure stops were placed near their investments. This claim is particularly bothersome for many reasons, not the least of which is that our current council was not even involved in the selection of stops for LRT. Indeed, among those who helped determine the configuration and stops for the new LRT line were Peter Hill, the “Concerned Citizens for Hamilton” spokesperson in 1985 and later LRT advocate who was mentioned earlier.

November 11 took aim at the city’s plan to add e-bikes to the current SoBi fleet, claiming that council spent $750,000 recklessly “While Hamiltonians wrestle with HOMELESSNESS & AFFORDABILITY CRISIS around HOUSING, HEATING, EATING & TAXES”. A day following the conclusion of the HSR strike, “Concerned Hamiltonians” returned to blame the city’s elected leaders for the labour strife. “WORST CITY COUNCIL? THIS CITY COUNCIL OUT of TOUCH!!” the ad screams, ignoring the fact that labour relations are a responsibility of the city manager’s office.

November 25 and December 2 are near duplicates, raising the spectre of tax increases “WHILE OVERTAXING US Over a BILLION DOLLARS SITTING in RESERVES”.

The next three ads were a whirlwind. December 9 blamed the current council for starting the Red Hill Valley Parkway inquiry, which began under the last term of council. December 16 shrieked “HAMILTONIANS are ASSAULTED with ABSURD TAX INCREASES” while opposing the two-way street conversion plan. December 23 pivots with vigour and took aim at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, claiming those behind the ad are “PUBLIC SCHOOL SURVIVORS”.

The barrage of yellow and red and poorly formatted anger followed Hamiltonians through the darkest months of the year, Blitz-like in intensity and relentlessness. Unsuspecting Spec readers spent weeks carefully cracking open the pages of their weekend editions, fearful of what conspiracy would be greeting them, unsubstantiated and unproven, from 1/4 of a page, hidden somewhere between local news and business affairs.

And then, just when it seemed like the onslaught would never end and we all would continue to suffer weeks and weeks of unnecessary capitalization, punctuation, and relentless misuse of 2/3 of the primary colours, it came to a close. Their ad on December 30 was, mercifully, the end.

“MAJORITY of HAMILTONAINS feel they have NO VOICE & NOT REPRESENTED WE will continue to STAND with YOU we are NOW on SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOW there & SHARE To a BETTER 2024.”

A sign-off. A plug for the socials. And then quiet.

At least in the Spec.

Because another front in their war had been opened. And this front was online.

Anti-socialism socials

A few weeks after their media campaign, “Concerned Hamiltonians” established a presence on three of the largest social media sites: Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram.

With their pivot to social media, they added an element of branding that gives the impression they are professionalizing. This style of presentation was notably absent from their Spec ads, which were serving “ransom note circa 2002”.

Their new logo is notably different. They’ve abandoned the stark yellows and reds of their print ads and are, instead, going for a vibe that screams “girl I knew in high school starts her own real estate agency and creates a logo on Canva”.

The last part, while intended to be mildly satirical, is also what they literally did.

Their logo is the first template on Canva when you search for “Service” and the third on both the “Minimalist” and “Typography” categories.

But, behind the shaky façade of professionalism, stands the skeletal form of a withered social media presence.

“Concerned Hamiltonians” has a public Facebook following of three people. While I am not “on” Facebook, what I am able to see is a very small following. One of their followers is Ward 7 councillor Esther Pauls, though, so what they lack in critical mass, they make up for in anti-vaxx sympathizing clout.

Their X/Twitter presence is not much better. After starting their account on November 27, 2023, “Concerned Hamiltonians” has posted 9 times and has a total of 11 followers. While nearly quadruple their Facebook following, this list is a thin collection of dormant accounts, spam bots with profile photos of semi-nude women, far-right sock puppets, and the Bay Observer.

On Musk’s site, they were modestly active for a period in December, notably “liking” 46 posts from various accounts. The posts they have liked generally attack local politicians, so a quick count of what they’ve thrown their weight behind can give us some indication as to the people with whom they have the most beef.

15 of their “liked” posts target Ward 8 councillor J.P. Danko, 13 are aimed at Mayor Andrea Horwath, 9 go after Ward 1’s Maureen Wilson, 4 attack Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch, and 3 are targeted at Ward 3’s Nrinder Nann. The “Concerned Hamiltonians” account also likes a post from someone responding to a Margaret Shkimba tweet. That particular post encourages “everyone” to “yell at” councillors Alex Wilson and Tammy Hwang for being on the CityHousing board. Beyond their support for the online harassment of civic politicians, “Concerned Hamiltonians” has thrown a like to two tweets targeting the federal Liberals (a right-winger knows you always get points for a Trudeau pile-on) and to a tweet about a National Post article from Barbara Kay article defending a transphobic former teacher.

Almost none of the “liked” posts can be attributed to someone genuinely representing themselves as themselves (aka: the aforementioned sock puppet accounts) and every one of them is riddled with poorly-placed vitriol.

Their Instagram presence isn’t much better. They have just over two dozen followers, though it would seem that some people are following them to critique their work (like the cool folks behind GASP4Change). But they do count Ward 10 councillor Jeff Beattie and Wards 8 & 14 HWDSB trustee Becky Buck among their Insta followers. Oh, and the now anti-social housing downtown Stoney Creek BIA follows them on Instagram as well.

The “Concerned Hamiltonians” posts on Instagram usually consist of videos that are mostly screenshots of Spec articles that fly by too fast for anyone to know what they say coupled with stock images and public domain music.

Importantly, their social media campaign has shown a willingness to broaden their scope.

An Instagram post on December 29, for example, attacks the concept of a universal basic income (which is, interestingly, stolen from a pro-UBI TikTok account) and includes this nearly inscrutable caption:

It’s called moretaxes socialism communism. 

With this, they’re taking a firm ideological position. They oppose the current council and are working to associate the councillors they don’t like with “communism”. The great red menace. The Soviet spectre. Cuba calling! The hashtags and opposition to UBI make it clear that they’re going after the same demographic every other right-wing populist goes after: people who are alienated, angry, and feel left out of the current moment. People who oppose the great, undefined, foreign evil that is Communism.

Another post reinforces this notion. While the Spec ads were heavy on the economic populism, their social media stances have veered hard right into the culture wars. A post on December 28, for example, makes the bold claim that Hamilton’s “Santa Claus Parades” were nearly the victim of “cancel culture”.

That post links to a post from local Progressive Conservative Party-affiliated activist Kevin Geenen’s blog. Geenen, who was also a candidate for Ward 5 councillor in 2022, wrote in November that the city’s new grant approvals process nearly doomed Santa Claus parades because of a focus on “equity”.

This framing is more than a little disingenuous, bordering on a deliberately misleading attempt at sensationalizing an issue to reframe it in the context of the culture wars. That framing was one which “Concerned Hamiltonians” ended up running with, albeit two months after the blog post, three days after Christmas, and forty days after the Hamilton Santa Claus Parade happened. Days after Christmas, they made the deliberate choice to rile up their modest following with an old, misleading story about something that did not happen.

Ira ex machina

All this leads to a natural question: who is behind “Concerned Hamiltonians”?

There isn’t a satisfying answer to this inquiry. No one from the group has responded to questions. No one has signed their name to any of the ransom notes left in the Spec or the populist rage-bating posts on social media. No one has stepped forward as a spokesperson or a leader or a prospective candidate. They seem to be reveling in their anonymity.

So all we can do is look for clues.

Their ads and social media presence provide us some idea as to their motivations and pet issues. They dislike LRT, have a right-libertarian aversion to government spending, oppose new initiatives like the vacant unit tax, short-term rental (AirBNB) licensing program, and the pilot project which licences landlords in areas with high concentrations of student housing. And they have a particular dislike of two figures on council: J.P. Danko and Andrea Horwath.

Some of this bleeds through on their social media.

On January 3, the group posted about the fire in Woodlands Park on X/Twitter and on Instagram. The post blames the city for not enforcing the encampment protocol (which their ad from September 30 indicates they oppose). The accompanying text on their Instagram post reads thus:

The second photo attached to that caption blames two things for the city’s homelessness crisis: LRT and the “citys [sic] rental licensing bylaw”. Again, the vagueness of this phrasing makes it difficult to know which rental licensing bylaw they oppose, but the caption text strongly implies they are taking issue with the pilot project licensing student housing landlords.

The fixation on this policy is woven throughout a noticeable amount of their messaging.

The licensing pilot charges landlords in areas with abundant student housing an additional $712.52 in fees for one year (which then drops to $434.52 a year), helping to fund inspectors who make sure they aren’t operating a deathtrap for vulnerable students. That’s an extra $60 a month for the first year and an extra $36.21 per month every year after that. The entire cost of the program would probably be covered by whatever 2.5% yearly increase they’ll charge their tenants or could easily be incorporated into the new rates they set yearly because these are student houses and the likelihood they get a new crop of tenants every year is pretty high.

“Concerned Hamiltonians” have run ads displaying a broad array of shallow grievances, but this single policy is the one that they have repeated, across platforms, and with intensity.

And then there’s their opposition to Mayor Horwath and Councillor Danko. Focusing on the mayor is obvious; she’s the figurehead representative for the city and, given her political past, is an easy target for angry right-wing populists.

But why J.P. Danko? It is the Ward 8 councillor’s name that is pushed to the top of the list of those who “Concerned Hamiltonians” falsely claim voted to allowed “encampments in your local park”. When a Spec article about changes to the public board’s trustee communications policy includes a number of quotes from Ward 7 trustee and former board chair Dawn Danko – the spouse of the Ward 8 councillor – and is followed in short order by a Scott Radley editorial about the matter on December 12, “Concerned Hamiltonians” turns around two weeks later with an ad attacking the HWDSB. Of the scant “likes” they’ve thrown to mean tweets, a hefty 1/3 of them target Danko.

Why him? The Ward 8 councillor has developed a reputation as a council moderate, willing to side with either the conservative and progressive blocks based on the issues and the moment. Danko has self-professed Red Tory principles and has demonstrated a commitment to fiscal prudence. He isn’t nearly as vocal a progressive as some of his colleagues. Sure, he has previously been cozy with the Liberals, notably canvassing with Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas MP Filomena Tassi in 2021. And he’s long been rumoured to be eyeing the Ontario Liberal nomination on Hamilton Mountain (helped along by congratulatory social media posts about new OLP leader Bonnie Crombie), which will almost certainly be a competitive riding in the next election.

But Danko was a prominent supporter of the rental licensing pilot program, given the inaction of absentee landlords renting to Mohawk College student in his ward. There’s something that ties the two together and helps to explain the motivations of “Concerned Hamiltonians”.

This lends credence to the theory that “Concerned Hamiltonians’s” real motivating factor is this student housing landlord licensing pilot program. And if that’s a motivator, it also explains “Concerned Hamiltonians” dolling out likes on X/Twitter to anyone attacking another prominent supporter of the licensing bylaw pilot: Ward 1’s Maureen Wilson.

But it doesn’t even need to be their only issue. It might have just been the spark that lit the fire. Referencing it with regularity might just be their version of “Build the Wall”’: a classic hit that they can always go back to when times are tough and it seems like nothing else is working. Rambling lines about LRT and whale-killing windmills not working? Start the chant: Build the wall! Lock her up! End the licensing pilot project!

If we accept that the rental licensing pilot program in Wards 1, 8, and 14 is, at the very least, a notable component of what drove them to place ads in the Mountain News, Spec, and build a network of social media accounts to keep the campaign going when the time came to wrap up their presence in print, then we can start to narrow down who might be behind this “group”.

There are organized bodies strongly opposed this particular bylaw. The Hamilton and District Apartment Association, for example, has run campaigns against licensing on the grounds that “once licensing is in place it will never be taken away”.6 Individual realtors took to X/Twitter to oppose the licensing program, but most of the vocal critics ended up softening their tone by this time last year and haven’t raised the issue since.

Some landlords took centre stage during the first volleys against the pilot project. Former Ti-Cat, federal Conservative Party candidate, and prolific municipal campaign donor Peter Dyakowski (who is the focus of the next piece in today’s newsletter) became an unofficial spokesperson for the opposition to the student housing licensing program, telling CHCH: “why impose punitive measures on those providing an essential service especially when the measures will reduce supply and increase rents.”7

Others have been more consistently vocal, even if they have less of a stake in the $700 landlord fee. There’s former Hamilton Mountain Conservative riding association president Rob Cooper, for example.

Fans of the newsletter will remember Cooper as the focus of Kevin Werner’s infamous (my words) June 30 article, wherein the prominent Mountain Tory told Werner that he believed an increase in homelessness could be attributed to the student housing rental licensing bylaw (this claim was not investigated, nor could any evidence be provided). This is the same Rob Cooper who, in a 2021 letter to council, expressed displeasure that J.P. Danko wasn’t responding to his needs and was supporting a rental unit tax instead of “defunding my decaying street from being repaired”. Cooper then contributed hefty sums to the election campaign of Sonia Brown, the right-wing challenger to J.P. Danko for Ward 8 councillor in 2022.

But there is no guarantee it is either of them, nor is there any certainty behind the assumption that anyone affiliated with McMaster and Mohawk-area landlords is the driving force behind “Concerned Hamiltonians”. They might be someone entirely disconnected who is just very concerned about the possible economic impact of this bylaw on the investor-owners of Ainslie Wood, Balfour, Bonnington, Southham, and Westdale.

If we expand our scope to include any of the usual suspects among the small but vocal group of anti-tax right-libertarians in the city, the list of possible figures behind “Concerned Hamiltonians” grows. Any number of former council candidates, past and prospective Conservative and Progressive Conservative nominees for higher office, and local behind-the-scenes power players could easily be the providing the cash and the graphic design skills for the “group”.

Nobody in the community has stepped forward to claim responsibility. No one has actively discussed the organization in a positive way. The only real discussion of the secretive figures behind “Concerned Hamiltonians” has come from bewildered residents who, after seeing week after week of Spec advertisement, have turned to crowdsourcing answers online.

For an organization purporting to speak for the “silent majority”, they’re leaning a little too heavily on the silent.

All about the Bordens

The only thing we really know about the person or people behind “Concerned Hamiltonians” is that they have deep, deep pockets.

I say that because I know their campaign of advertisements in the Spec has run them at least $21,000.

In the piece I wrote about the group in July, I hinted that I would like to “meet them on their home turf” and run a similar ad in Hamilton’s suburban weekly papers to provide a kind of reasonable counterbalance to their populist rage-farming. When the ads began appearing in the Spec again in September, I reached out to Metroland to discuss what the rate for a 1/4 page colour ad would be and was given a quote. So adding up what I was quoted (assuming “Concerned Hamiltonians” didn’t get a special rate or anything) plus tax over 14 weeks gives us a number just shy of $21,000.

That sum isn’t even counting the rates for the 1/2 page ads placed in the weekly suburban papers before they went under. There were at least two weeks worth of those, so a (pardon my phrasing) conservative estimate is that “Concerned Hamiltonians” spent around $23,000 on print advertising in 2023 alone.

All this money was spent outside an election period on a decidedly ideological campaign.

If the figure behind “Concerned Hamiltonians” instead waited to spend their money on an actual election campaign, their $21,000 would come close to funding a viable run across much of the city. That amount is more than the average amount raised by council candidates in each ward (except Ward 13 where the average was over $25,000…some big spenders in the Valley Town, apparently). That’s more than the combined campaign income for all Public School Trustee races in Wards 1 to 4. That’s more than the combined campaign income for all the Catholic and French-language trustee campaigns in total.

Of course, campaign finance laws would make it nearly impossible for you to funnel $21,000 into your own campaign. Hamilton council candidates in 2022 were only allowed to give themselves less than $12,000, but that figure varied depending on the number of voters in their ward. Unless you were running for mayor, the only way to spend $21,000 on an election campaign would be to register as a third-party advertiser. But doing so isn’t some easy way to skirt the law; there are some strict rules on third-party advertisers. Only individuals, corporations (or any incorporated group), and trade unions can register, they can only accept up to $1,200 per contributor, they have to publish financial documents, and they have to clearly identify themselves in their ads. But third-party advertisers are allowed to spend up to $25,000 in a campaign and, if you register as an individual third-party advertiser, you can entirely self-fund your advertising.

Hamilton had three registered third-party advertisers in the 2022 municipal election: the Campaign Life Coalition, Workers Vote for Change, and 2780552 Ontario Ltd., the numbered corporation which owns the derelict Westinghouse building at 124 Walnut Street South (the east-end of Augusta) in Corktown.8 While the latter failed to submit financial paperwork, the anti-choice Christian nationalist group claimed no income and just under $500 in expenses, while the organized labour-backed group raised $13,700.

Though it may not seem like a lot, $21,000 is nothing to sneeze at. That’s a lot of money. If I had that kind of scratch, some things would be a lot easier. I could pay down a solid chunk of my student loan debt. I would have enough to cover rent for over a year. I could buy my cats one of those fancy automatic litter boxes AND a Roomba to clean up after them when they inevitably spread litter all around the apartment like little gremlins.

Not everyone has that kind of money just lying around. So we’re looking at someone or a small group of people who have enough resources to drop 1/3 the average Canadian yearly salary on newspaper ads outside an election.

Shedding light on dark money

Back in 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled on the case of “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” (now known as the “Citizens United” ruling). That ruling held that the “freedom of speech” clause of the US Constitution’s First Amendment prohibited the government from placing any limits on how much a corporation, non-profit, union, or “association” could spend to influence an election.

The ruling opened the floodgates for right-wing money to be spent creating a cavalcade of “organizations” that were either entirely structured to attack a candidate (usually a progressive) or were designed to look like they came from grassroots activism but were, in reality, entirely fake. The latter is called “astroturfing” after…you know…fake grass.

If an organization in the United States is a nonprofit “social welfare organization”, which many of these fake groups would claim they were, they can spend money on political campaigns without ever disclosing who gave them their cash. Because no one knows where the funds came from, this is called “dark money” (in contrast to funds which must be disclosed on financial forms and, thus, exposed to the “light of day”).

“Concerned Hamiltonians” is definitely a dark money group, pouring tens of thousands of untraceable dollars into advancing distorted narratives about politics in this city without any accountability to the residents for whom they claim to speak.

What remains uncertain is if they’re an astroturf group as well. They have a social media following that, even if one were to include every bot and sock puppet account they have behind them, would barely be able to fill a small party room at a local pub. Despite their year-end claim - that the “majority” of Hamiltonians feel they have no voice – they obsess over niche issues and take particular aim at select members of council. They are fixated on things that barely impact the overwhelming majority of Hamiltonians; are all 580,000 of us so outraged at a $700 bill for student housing landlords that we’re ready to throw out every incumbent councillor? Are we all so convinced that Ward 8’s J.P. Danko is the harbinger of a socialist revolution that we must stop his political career? I’d hazard a guess that neither are true, as much as “Concerned Hamiltonians” wishes us to think that is what’s happening.

But, while we don’t know if they’re an astroturf outfit backed by moneyed interests in town, we do know they’re being fundamentally dishonest about their intention, their motivations, and their membership.

As I noted earlier, organized labour created a third-party advertiser named “Workers Vote For Change” that became involved in the 2022 municipal election. The progressive organization aimed to increase working class representation on city council and the public school board by backing candidates who could commit to opposing sprawl, building affordable housing, and advocating for working people. On their website, they noted:

After the election, they filed a transparent financial return that listed where they got their donations and how their money was spent.

Workers Vote For Change didn’t need to sneak around in the shadows, pretending to speak for the “silent majority” while funneling tens of thousands of dollars into ads that made it look like they had grassroots support. Representatives of labour - from the ATU to the Steelworkers, from CUPE to the Carpenters - all came together and put their name to a campaign to make life better for working people in this city.

The same went for “Concerned Citizens for Hamilton” in 1985. They were a decidedly pro-business organization that wanted a massive change on city council. They were tired of what they saw as the disfunction on council that was squandering the city’s potential. When the Spec asked questions, they answered. When they placed ads in the paper, they clearly identified themselves and presented a respectable, professional, positive message of change. When it came time to campaign, they had a campaign office and spokespeople and a real vision.

“Concerned Citizens for Hamilton” was an exercise in democratic engagement. “Concerned Hamiltonians” is an attempt at democratic manipulation. While the former group had an ideological bent, they solicited open donations and worked within the context of a general election to support candidates they liked. The latter group has poured exceptionally large amounts of cash into inundating the residents of this city with messages that substitute substance (and style) for bluster.

The first was democratic experiment, the second is a farce.

All we really know about “Concerned Hamiltonians” is that they’re a clandestine right-wing populist outfit seeking to manipulate democracy with expensive (yet still cheap-looking) ads and angry social media posts. They throw their weight behind the toxicity of internet culture, leaning in to those beasts of our worst nature and reveling in the chaos they create.

But no amount of internet anger and dark money can hide the fact that, behind that thin, thin, thin populist veneer is just another rich person who thinks they can buy the policies they want by making the masses angry enough to do their bidding for them.

They think you’re an idiot. They think so little of the people…of you…that they assume their clunky, amateurish, boring campaign of outrage and bitterness will actually get them the policies they want. They assume their Spec ransom notes and social media hate will inspire voters to rise up, throw every councillor who is slightly to the left of Donald Trump out of office and replace them with keyboard battle-hardened culture warriors and servants of the taxpayer.

They hurl money at the only paper in town in exchange for 281 square centimeters of space per week in which they can disingenuously associate every municipal expenditure with every other problem in our world. War, poverty, disease, greed, hatred: the fault of a council that dares spent a penny on cycling infrastructure and staff salaries. And, when that gets boring, they dabble in the culture wars. They hide behind their nostalgia-laden name and their vague references to a silent majority and keep their spending and their goals and their benefactor cloistered away.

With their dark money and their bile and their pettiness and their politics of grievance and outrage, they try to undermine our democracy to suit their own narrow aims and enrich themselves at our expense. They want you scared and confused and angry. They want their bags of money to be a substitute for real ideas. They aren’t standing up for the little guy, working hard to defend the humble taxpayer; they’re here to spend what it takes to get what they want.

And that, my fellow Hamiltonians, is what’s really concerning.

The 2026 #HamOnt mayoral race has begun

Over the past couple of days, 2019 federal Conservative Party candidate for Hamilton Mountain, Peter Dyakowski, has been tweeting about his intention to seek the office of mayor of Hamilton in 2026.

Dyakowski spent nearly $3000 during the last municipal election campaign to back council candidates Walter Furlan (Ward 3), Matt Francis (Ward 5), Tom Jackson (Ward 6), both Esther Pauls and Scott Duvall (Ward 7), and Nick Lauwers (Ward 11). Dyakowski, who retired from a career as a pro-football player with the CFL in 2018, actually ran against Duvall when the former councillor was the NDP MP for the Mountain, earning just over 25% of the vote as one of Andrew Scheer’s star candidates.

As for his mayoral ambitions, Dyakowski hasn’t officially announced anything, but has tweeted three times - on Jan. 21, Jan. 22, and Jan. 24 - outlining possible campaign platform planks, including making sure “people won't be getting their knickers in a knot”, giving the Hamilton Police Service more funding in exchange for “more arrests”, and advocating for the mass slaughter of downtown’s pigeons.

It is entirely possible that Dyakowski’s tweets are all just satirical, using the current populist anger at council to earn a couple of chuckles from the small group of people who still use X/Twitter. Dyakowski has been the subject of semi-jokey mayoral speculation from folks like Ticat team president Scott Mitchell all the way back in 2017, so that’s not out of the realm of possibility.

But Dyakowski has right-wing cred and has sought elected office before, so it isn’t so far fetched to assume he might be laying the groundwork for a right-populist bid for the mayor’s chair.

With 1,005 days to go, anything is possible!

The taxpayers are revolting

If you’re a cyclist in Hamilton and you still read the Spec, it has been a rough couple of days. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the paper’s “Letters to the Editor” sections were overwhelmed with furious taxpayers reacting to a $60 million investment in cycling infrastructure over the next five years. Just under half of every letter that appeared in print over those two days railed against entitled cyclists, a council lacking “fiscal acuity”, and the audacity of this coalition of out of touch left-wing elites pouring money into unused bike lanes when there’s still homelessness in the city.

The investment was derided as a “vanity project”, “taking up necessary space in busy areas”, “a slap in the face of” anyone experiencing homelessness, and “a sin”. Past investments have been “a colossal failure. We are a northern climate city and even in the nice weather riders are few and far between.” Councillors supporting bike lanes “needs to give their head a shake and be bounced from office.” A letter writer bemoans: “The next municipal election can’t come fast enough so we can boot this group of spendthrifts before they do even more harm to already struggling families.”

Guzzle that backwash and let the hate flow through you, dear taxpayer. Grab thine pitchfork and find yourself a scapegoat. Rage, rage, RAGE!!!

So what’s going on here? Well, it appears that folks read the first paragraph of Matthew Van Dongen’s Friday, January 19 article and…just kinda stopped there. The first paragraph reads:

An engaged citizen would maybe do a little digging before saddling up in front of their Word processor and firing off a letter riddled with every anti-cycling cliché in the world. What self respecting Canadian would dream of getting on a bike in the winter? This isn’t Denmark or some other pinko moretaxes socialist communist Scandinavian country where they have sunny, warm winters so they can ride their bikes to their pro-tax rallies.

Pay no mind to les Montréalais et Montréalaise who have been happily using their city’s bike lanes amidst some fairly intense snow storms this winter.

Had any of the folks who sent letters to the Spec done that, they would have found the actual report that was submitted to the Public Works committee on January 15 which reads:

Not just bike lanes. Improvements to all kinds of trails, paths, and roads. Some of the $60 million has already been committed and the rest will be requested, on a year-by-year basis, over the next five years.

I actually sat down on Tuesday to write an opinion piece for the Spec outlining just how blisteringly wrong each of the angry letters were, but ended up scrapping the whole thing at 500 words because it was an unpublishable mess of academic nonsense that not a single one of those letter writers would have read, anyway.

That being said, I’ve long advocated for passionate progressives to submit letters to the Spec and other publications outlining the fact-based and reasoned perspectives of the principled, urbanist opposition (like the two cool folks who wrote the pro-cycling letters published in today’s edition). The taxpayers may be revolting over their misinterpretation of a prospective future plan, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to let the loudest voices in the room suck up all the oxygen.

The folks who read the Spec vote. So ensuring our perspective is displayed is important, particularly in a one-paper town. Those Spec readers deserve the facts. They deserve to know that cycling infrastructure saves money because it needs to be replaced less often. They deserve to know that pedestrian improvements actually generate money for nearby businesses. They deserve to know that we, as residents of a large city, should have transportation choices and not be entirely beholden to the private automobile - a community-destroying, environmentally harmful, dangerous piece of equipment that remains one of the leading causes of injury and death in Canada.

So, as a reminder, anyone can submit a letter to the Spec. Letters are to be 250 words or less (preference for shorter letters) and be accompanied by a full name. They can be sent to [email protected].

Just saying.

Kevinaddendum

Two weeks ago, I took a look at some recent snippets from the journalistic career of Kevin Werner, who posted 99 tweets upon the occasion of his forced retirement from Hamilton’s local Metroland papers on Dec. 31, 2023. I had some mild critiques of some journalistic choices Werner had made and made an appeal for more robust media criticism in the city. I was worried I had been too critical of Werner, particularly considering the avalanche of well-wishes that were heaped upon him on X/Twitter on his last day with Metroland.

But then I was reminded of something that, frankly, I’m embarrassed I forgot.

Sadly, on January 15, respected journalist and activist Nerene Virgin passed away at age 77. Virgin was a trailblazing broadcaster, famous for appearing in the TVO children’s show Today’s Special and her work as a CBC news anchor. Born in Hamilton, Virgin was a relative of John C. Holland, a civil rights leader and pastor in the city during the early part of the 20th century.

Virgin was also an Ontario Liberal Party candidate for MPP in Hamilton East—Stoney Creek (HE-SC) in 2007, running against Paul Miller of the NDP and Tara Crugnale of the PCs.

What had slipped my mind (as the original column has been wiped from the internet) is that Werner wrote an opinion column on August 10, 2007 - two weeks after Virgin had been acclaimed as the Liberal candidate in the riding - that used a racial slur in reference to her while making a clunky analogy about the campaign in HE-SC.

Here’s the backstory:

Virgin left the CBC in 2005 and got a job as an elementary school French teacher in Stoney Creek. A short while later, Virgin was approached by the Federal Liberals who wanted a star candidate to run against Hamilton Mountain’s NDP MP Chris Charlton (for full disclosure, Charlton was one of my political mentors - I got a front-row seat to all this as it was happening, so I guess this is Old Man Chris Story Time).12

The 2008 election was very competitive and Hamilton Mountain was a target riding for all the major parties. The Tories had recruited former councillor (and Liberal) Terry Anderson to be their candidate while the Greens had local businessman (and former Tory) Stephen Brotherston in their camp. Wild times.

The Hamilton Mountain Grits were reeling from having lost the riding in 2006 to Charlton despite running another star candidate - famed local broadcaster and Ward 7 councillor Bill Kelly. In that election, the Liberal central office tipped the scales in favour of Kelly over Javid Mirza, longtime president of the Muslim Association of Hamilton. Mirza was allowed to run in the decidedly less competitive riding of Hamilton Centre (and would be the provincial Liberal candidate on Hamilton Mountain in 2014), but the nomination nonsense had bruised the party badly. The next year, when one of the Liberal nomination candidates - local lawyer Tyler Banham - found out about Virgin’s possible candidacy, alarms were raised by the prospect of another party appointment that would further divide the local Liberal establishment. Banham received assurances from Gerard Kennedy (who was, at the time, a Liberal MP and “election readiness and renewal advisor to leader Stéphane Dion”) that there would be no acclamation. Virgin dropped out and Banham won the nomination before earning what was then the lowest level of support for the party on Hamilton Mountain since 1984.13

Over in HE-SC, some similar nomination nonsense was bubbling. Another local lawyer, Ivan Luksic, was running against former Mayor Larry Di Ianni for the federal Liberal nomination. Luksic (who had backed Tony Valeri against Shelia Copps in the bitter Hamilton Liberal civil war in the east end) told the Spec that it appeared the party strongly favoured Di Ianni.14 The former mayor would become the federal nominee and lose to incumbent NDP MP Wayne Marston, but that wouldn’t be until 2008.

After not becoming the federal nominee, Luksic sought the provincial Liberal nomination in the same riding. Unfortunately for him, retiring MPP Jennifer Mossop had convinced Virgin to seek the provincial nomination in HE-SC and the party acclaimed her as candidate instead.15 It should have been no surprise to Luksic that winning the Liberal nomination in HE-SC would be a challenge, considering the Ontario Liberal election chair Greg Sorbara had indicated keeping the seat would be a priority. The party even tried (unsuccessfully) to recruit former Hamilton Ti-Cat football player Mike Morreale to stand as their candidate before turning their attention to Virgin.16 This city loves running athletes and journalists for office.

Luksic threatened to run as an independent candidate against Virgin, prompting a few weeks of damage control from the newly-appointed candidate, Sorbara, and a whole host of local Liberals who had, by that time, earned a solid reputation for infighting to such a degree that every election in Hamilton’s urban ridings was an NDP cakewalk.17 

And the NDP learned their lesson and never, ever did what the Liberals did, and kept winning elections, and lived happily ever after, the end.

Into the mess bumbles Werner with an opinion piece entitled “Into the Briar Patch”, where he compares the ongoing Liberal nomination scandals to an American folk tale, opting to use an offensive term to make reference to Virgin (while also calling Luksic a “bland white male”). Werner’s column earned criticism from Hamilton icons like Lincoln Alexander and Evelyn Myrie. The latter - writing in the Spec along with Kelly Hayes - poignantly observed:

The outrage prompted local Metroland papers to print apologies online and in print, though the paper’s managing editor (who, interestingly, would be the Ontario Liberal candidate in the exact same riding in 2011) Mark Cripps said at the time that “The writer did not understand the racist implications of this term.”19

Never mind that the column referenced characters that, when featured in a controversial Disney film, earned the movie strong rebukes from civil rights leaders and recognition of the original story’s racial bigotry when it was released in 1946. But, I mean…he didn’t know, so it can’t have been racist. That’s totally how it works.

Thankfully, Werner’s ignorant column occupies no more than one sentence in the biography of Virgin, an accomplished journalist, activist, and educator. Indeed, more space is dedicated to what Virgin did after experiencing racism on the campaign trail. As her CBC obituary notes:

Virgin was a passionate advocate in the city and region who will be missed. While the experience with Werner and racism on the campaign is only a small part of her story, it is an important one that deserves to be understood - if for no other reason than to ensure we can learn from our mistakes and not allow such things to happen again.

Cool facts for cool people

• I’ll be chatting with Kojo Damptey tomorrow (January 26) over on Kojo’s Corner at 5:00 PM. Tune in for a cool discussion about the municipal budget!

• My good friend Graham shared this with me, so I’m sharing it with you. Over in Toronto, they’re debating their municipal budget and discussing how much cash will flow to the Toronto Police Service in the coming year. As Matt Elliott from City Hall Watcher reported, the TPS has a sizable 15-horse strong mounted unit AND a cat named Harold. That reminds me of the Jake Likes Onion cartoon about Drug Sniffing Cats. Super useful crimefighting partners if you don’t want to fight crime OR have a reliable partner.

• Pride is back on in Norwich. Last year, the municipality made national news when they voted to ban the Pride flag from municipal flagpoles. The township’s local government is heavily influenced by the very conservative Netherlands Reformed Congregation and voted to ban all flags but those of Canada, Ontario, and Norwich (to get around those pesky human rights laws). But the councillor behind the Pride flag ban, John Scholten, retired from public office in December and Norwich council quickly reversed the decision. While the township’s mayor, Jim Palmer (who supported the ban), got some digs in at those who opposed the ban with the confusing statement “I know there's people on the right and people on the left, and the extremes are never going to be happy, but maybe they can live with it,” the motion now allows for pre-approved flags (including the Pride flag) to fly on a community flag pole for a week at a time.

• Don’t ask questions in Sainte-Pétronille. Located on the western tip of the Île d'Orléans in the St. Lawrence River, Sainte-Pétronille is a community of just over 1,000 with a distinct New England-vibe. It is also a town that recently served nearly 100 residents - close to 10% of the town - with formal legal notices threatening them with lawsuits if they kept asking questions about the town’s recently-hired general manager, Nathalie Paquet. It would seem that Paquet had serious allegations levelled against her while in a similar role in another municipality. Resident’s groups and the region’s paper, Autour de L''île, both began asking questions about Paquet, prompting the mayor and municipality to accuse them all of organizing a campaign to damage her reputation and her personal life. Attacking a public servant for their private life isn’t cool - but neither is intimidating residents with legitimate questions about a public servant’s past legal troubles as they relate to the job. We’ll doubtless be hearing more about this as further information comes out. But, as of now, Sainte-Pétronille has fallen into the classic Streisand Effect trap: trying to censor information only to direct more attention onto the information than would have otherwise been there.