Observing a platform

The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

An interesting thing happened over on Wikipedia the other day.

A page has already been created for the 2026 Hamilton, Ontario municipal election. The entry is filled with references to the folks who have either declared their intention to run or have been exploring candidacies ahead of next year’s vote. There are links to a Scott Radley editorial from June (in which, full disclosure, I’m quoted, so the link there is a “gift” article for everyone to read free) about Jason Farr, Andrew Selman, and Loren Lieberman eyeing council seats. The page lists other candidates, like Daniel Myles, a local activist who runs the Instagram account “intervention_intersection_”, a page dedicated to publishing Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch’s private direct messages and filming people experiencing homelessness and/or in crisis in the Central neighbourhood without considering their privacy rights (it’s worth noting that Myles has already admitted to committing campaign finance violations, leans hard into outright homophobia, and has called for the “eradication” of Mayor Horwath, Kroetsch, and “any other woke minions” - just a taste of what we’re in for in 2026). Other edits include Joey Coleman’s reporting on incumbents seeking re-election.

Sometime in the evening of July 20, an account called “CanadaPolitics” made two consecutive edits to the page. Those edits remained live for just under 24 hours until they were removed for their lack of sourcing.

The account’s history is eclectic. Since being created two years ago (we’re actually just two days out from the account’s two year anniversary), it has made just 27 edits. The majority of those edits have been somewhat connected to the Liberal Party. It updated the dates that Carolyn Bennett served in government. It corrected the names of the federal and provincial representatives (now both Liberals) for the hamlet of Constance Bay in Ottawa. It redirected a broken link about the Liberal MP Stephanie McLean from Esquimalt, BC. The person or people behind the account appear to have a somewhat niche interest in the personalities of the Liberal Party and make edits to ensure those figures get their due. That is the helpful side of the account.

But there’s also an unhelpful side of the account. That’s the side with a penchant for indulging in a little childish vandalism. Late last March, in the middle of the night, it vandalized the Wikipedia page for Ted Danson, replacing his photo with that of Pierre Poilievre and changing his place of birth to the imaginary community of “Ring, Rang, Canada”. A few months later, it added the qualifier “far-right” to the description of Peace River-Westlock MP Arnold Viersen, though I’m sure there would be some debate over whether that actually constitutes “vandalism” of the page.

A few of the account’s edits have focused on Hamilton. It updated the pages for Stoney Creek and Winona, and made some rather unconstructive edits to the page for Burlington, noting that the city is “10 kilometres north-east of downtown Hamilton” (that edit was removed after a week).

After a brief period of dormancy, the account sprung back to life on July 20 to add two little tidbits to the 2026 Hamilton, Ontario municipal election Wikipedia page. Under the “mayoral election” header, the account added the text:

Then, a minute later, the account added “political organizer” to the end of Sgro’s small string of listed accomplishments. There was no citation.

I have searched the internet for any indication that Sgro is about to announce a second bid for the city’s mayoralty, but have found nothing definitive.

The last reference to Sgro in the Spec comes from an April 24, 2024 Radley editorial about the idea of holding a referendum on LRT, where it discusses his 2018 mayoral campaign. Well, that’s the last reference to Sgro in an article, at least. The last last reference to Sgro comes a day later in a letter to the editor from former Raise The Hammer editor Ryan McGreal, who pointed out that Sgro made the 2018 mayoral election “entirely about LRT” meaning that the result can be seen as a referendum by itself.

Indeed, since his unsuccessful federal campaign in 2021, Sgro’s name has only appeared in the Spec six times - every one of those referencing his unsuccessful mayoral run in 2018. Contrast that with the 30 times the 2022 mayoral runner-up, Keanin Loomis, has been mentioned in the Spec since his defeat. Loomis’ mentions in the paper are equally split between people begging him to run again and his advocacy related to his new position as president of the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction.

So there hasn’t been anything official. But what Sgro has been doing has been slowly releasing what can only be seen as “platform tidbits” through editorials on the right-wing online tabloid, the Bay Observer. While the rumour mill initially indicated this was in anticipation of him running against Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch, it now seems that Sgro has larger ambitions.

With Jason Farr kicking the tires on another Ward 2 bid and a Liberal-affiliated Wiki editor dropping hints that a Sgro mayoral announcement is “pending”, it isn’t unreasonable to ask an important question: is Vito Sgro going to run for mayor in 2026?

So today, let’s look at the possibility of a second Sgro campaign for mayor. To do that, we have to look at the forum in which he has been dropping his hints, what his platform might be, and what all that means for the 2026 campaign.

A fresh perspective from the BO

To understand Sgro’s political programme, we have to understand the platform from which he’s been teasing his manifesto. And that’s because, as an outlet for local right-wing populist frustration, the Bay Observer has become a key part of Hamilton’s conservative political ecosystem.

Generally speaking, the Bay Observer - the ol’ BO, if you will - has a loyal following among some on the city’s more mainstream political right. Clicking on any given article on the site means you’ll be fed garish advertisements for establishment right-wingers like Ward 7 councillor Esther Pauls, Ward 14 councillor Mike Spadafora, and Flamborough-Glanbrook MPP Donna Skelly.

But it isn’t just your garden variety “throw the bums out” conservatives that love the BO. The site has been attracting more extreme characters who share their views freely, unmoderated, and without pushback. The site’s comments section has become a place where, for example, commenters can complain, unchallenged, about the “cultural Marxists” that run this city to former mayor and MP Bob Bratina (who, in the below comment, appears to question the democratic capabilities of Ward 3’s residents).

The term “cultural Marxists”, it should be noted, is a well-worn anti-Semitic dogwhistle that Busbridge, et. al. (2020, p. 725) define as an imagined global conspiracy that will “pave the way for revolution by destabilising and damaging traditional cultural values, attachments and solidarities”.¹ It has been raised by a host of actors on the extreme right, from American paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan to white supremacist terrorists like Anders Breivik, who cite it as a “globalist” plot, organized strategically against a defined group like heteronormative families or Christians. It’s a term that’s thrown around with abandon in right-wing spaces like the BO’s comment’s section, but it would be a stretch for anyone using the phrase to not know it has its roots in repugnant anti-Jewish hatred.

***

But what is the Bay Observer?

The BO was founded by John Best and Peggy Chapman, two local journalists with deep local political connections.

Best came from the world of television, joining CHCH in 1981 and working his way up through the ranks of the station from a humble reporter to the office of Vice President of News. Throughout this time, Best became a well-recognized figure in Hamilton, serving as the “voice of Crime Stoppers” from 1983 to 1995. After working closely with a few local political figures, Best jumped into the murky waters of Hamilton’s politics himself, registering to run against Ward 3 councillor Bernie Morelli in 2003.

During that campaign 22 years ago, Best ran to the right of Morelli, a right-leaning Liberal in his own…uhh…right. Best focused heavily on “law-and-order”, emphasizing a need to “clean up” Ward 3. Shortly before the election, Best told The Spec “I understand we have 15 crack houses in the west end of the ward alone. Even on some of the nicest residential streets, they are turning up. Crime and safety are still enormous concerns, both in the better residential areas and the more distressed areas.”² Without anything to really distinguish himself from Morelli, Best lost the election, earning less than half of the incumbent councillor’s votes.

Chapman was, in many ways, very similar to Best. She also got her start as a journalist, putting in time at CHML, Hamilton Magazine, local suburban papers, and at CHCH. And, like Best, she slid into politics, briefly serving as Brad Clark’s press secretary after he was named Minister of Labour in the government of Ernie Eves. In 2006, Chapman ran for Ward 13 councillor on a platform of fiscal responsibility and law-and-order. Two quotes from her profile in the Spec include: “Help Dundas regain the services and responsible taxation it had before amalgamation” and “Maintain small-town safety with a modern neighbourhood watch.”³ On election night, Chapman placed last with just under 11% of the vote.

With similarities like theirs, it was almost inevitable that the pair would realize the power in their synergy. In 2008, they did just that, launching the Bay Observer.

***

In the beginning, the Bay Observer was intended to be a weekly paper with the mission to, as they noted on an early version of their website, “[present] hopefully fairly, news and commentary of interest to the great community of Hamilton/Burlington.” When it was founded, Best served as Editor and Chapman as Senior Reporter.⁴ And the paper grew quickly in those early days; within a year of their launch, you could pick up print copies of the Bay Observer at 23 convenience stores across the city.

But print journalism is a tricky business. That same year, the modest publication pivoted from putting out a weekly print edition to a monthly. In announcing their decision to go monthly as of May, 2009, Best wrote “Many of you who contact us have already taken to calling the Observer a magazine, even though it is printed on newsprint stock; and in tone and style, to some degree that is the case.”⁵  

Still, the paper was expanding. By September of that year, you could grab a print edition of the Bay Observer at your local Denninger’s, at the downtown Sheraton, at the RBG, the Aldershot GO station, and even Burlington City Hall.⁶

All the while, the Observer was carving out its niche, focusing on the same two issues its founders brought up in their council campaigns: fiscal responsibility and crime.

One of the publication’s earliest posts was an appeal by a Burlington resident to ignore a story from Maclean’s ranking Halton Region as one of the safest places in Canada and not “develop a false sense of security.”⁷ And, in many of their early editions, the Observer’s favourite target was then-Councillor Chad Collins, specifically fixating on his role with - and the city’s spending on - the Waterfront Trust, the beleaguered organization that is presently in the process of being dismantled.⁸

Chapman, for her part, became one of the area’s leading critics of council in the pages of the Observer - a fact that did not go unnoticed by another local journalist who dabbled in politics, albeit with more tangible success.

***

After he was elected mayor, Bob Bratina quickly offered the prestigious job of Chief of Staff to Chapman. As if to formalize the bonds between the Observer and the Mayor’s office, within a year of taking office, the troika teamed up to launch “Access to the Mayor”. This call-in talk show on Cable 14 was hosted jointly by Best and Bratina, with Chapman serving as producer.⁹

Chapman’s tenure as Bratina’s Chief of Staff was objectively controversial. A year after the 2010 election, Spec columnist Andrew Dreschel reported that an unnamed councillor called Chapman the “mini-mayor” for the intensity of her involvement in the day-to-day governance of the city. By the end of 2011, the floodgates had opened, with elected officials and staff alike telling Dreschel that Chapman was “out of her depth”, combative, problematically hyper-loyal to Bratina, and, at times, still “acting like a surrogate mayor”. Dreschel’s December column was peppered throughout with references to the closeness between the Observer and the new administration at 71 Main West.¹⁰

Not long after came the saga of Peggygate. At some point in 2011, Chapman was awarded a $30,000 raise, bumping her onto the Sunshine List (meaning she made over $100,000). Bratina blamed the HR department, council debated the legality of clawing back the raise, and the issue filled the Spec Letters to the Editor page for months. The final report found that Bratina broke council’s code of conduct by lying about who initiated Chapman’s raise, and the event was added to the growing list of the mayor’s major fumbles during his single, tumultuous term as chief magistrate.¹¹  

For some of his supporters, who saw Bratina as a Ford-like guardian of civic fiscal prudence, Peggygate was a gate too far.

Bratina left the mayor’s office in 2014 for the greener pastures of Parliament Hill, and the Observer’s direct access to power was severed. Chapman, for her part, joined the Hamilton Bulldogs as their Director of Community Relations. Best carried on with the BO, which entered its undisputed, if not brief, halcyon.

***

In those salad days, Best and the Observer were like a fresher version of the Metroland suburban papers that served the communities around Hamilton: reporting on local issues, features on topics of interest to the editorial staff, and a smattering of classic conservative talking points that were not so offensive as to push away their more moderate readers. And, in that time, the paper and Best were doing some important work.

In 2017, Best was the driving force behind convincing Buffalo’s PBS affiliate to air a documentary about trailblazing Black football players, including the Tiger Cats’ Bernie Custis.¹²  

And, in 2018, Best was the one who got the scoop about allegations of harassment and bullying in the offices of local NDP MPPs. That controversy spilled over into the 2018 municipal election; after the Spec later identified the staffers who complained - including public school trustee Todd White, who alleged his boss, Paul Miller, made sexist, racist, and homophobic comments in the office - Miller’s wife, Carole Paikin Miller, ran against and defeated White in his bid for re-election. Even if the Observer’s access to the mayor’s office had been cut off, they were still influencing the city’s politics.¹³

But something changed during the 2018 campaign. It seems as though that election was a sort-of tipping point for the Bay Observer.

In 2014, the Observer positioned itself as “skeptical” of the city’s proposed LRT project. During that election, Best penned an editorial about how it was time for “sober second thought” on the project.¹⁴ By 2018, that position hadn’t just hardened; it calcified into a fanatical opposition to the project.

In the months before the 2018 mayoral vote, Best railed against the project, pushed to his new position by what he called “LRT zealots” and calling on regular Hamiltonians to hold whomever was returned to council accountable. “The propaganda, junk science and outright lies about the benefits of this project are well documented,” he wrote that August. Later, he wrote disparagingly about “the collective LRT mania that blew through Hamilton in 2008, infecting politicians, seasoned municipal bureaucrats, the social engineering class and the media.”¹⁵ In a few short years, Best had gone from calling for a reasoned debate on the project to likening it to a Music Man-style hoax, and the support for it in the community to an infectious disease.

And then Fred Eisenberger won the 2018 election by a healthy margin, seemingly affirming the city’s support for LRT.

It was around this point that the Bay Observer website underwent a revamp. Without the help of the Internet Archive, it is difficult to find any Observer articles from before 2018, with their 2018 election coverage notably scrubbed.

Peppered throughout Best’s post-2018 opinions are submissions from other writers. While Best and Observer contributor Kathy Renwald’s contributions make up the bulk of their opinion section, Sgro serves as the BO’s most prominent columnist.

Fill #HamOnt With Exclamation Marks Again!!!

Of all the city’s political power players, Sgro is among the least well-known. Indeed, before his run for mayor, Sgro was seen almost exclusively as a backroom figure in local Liberal Party circles.

That isn’t to say he wasn’t publicly involved in local affairs; he was one of the accountants who looked into allegations of campaign finance violations against former mayor Larry Di Ianni in his 2003 campaign. In early 2011, Sgro joined the board of the Hamilton Entertainment and Convention Facilities Incorporated (HECFI), which was rebranded as Core Entertainment in 2014.¹⁶

But Sgro’s primary contributions to Hamilton’s political scene pre-2018 were to the Liberal Party cause in the area. In the lead-up to the 2011 federal election, Sgro was the person to convince local nurse Michelle Stockwell to run against the NDP’s Wayne Marston and Councillor Brad Clark of the Tories in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek during the 2011 federal election. There were similarities between Sgro and Stockwell; Sgro was the president of the Hamilton East-Stoney Creek Liberals despite having lived downtown since 1998, and Stockwell lived in Copetown, around 23 kilometres to the west of the riding’s boundary. Two years later, Sgro did double duty, serving as an organizer and delegate for Kathleen Wynne during her provincial leadership bid and in a similar capacity for Justin Trudeau when he ran for the leadership of the federal Liberals.¹⁷

Sgro had some municipal experience under his belt before his 2018 campaign. In 2014, Jason Farr told the Spec that, during his first campaign for office in 2010, he “benefited from a campaign team of veterans that included Liberal organizer Vito Sgro and political pundit Loren Lieberman.”¹⁸ But, prior to his “contender profile” in 2018, Sgro was a virtual unknown at the local level in the city.

***

In late January of 2018, with the municipal election just months away and the province understandably fixated on the scandal around then-PC leader Patrick Brown, Sgro made his local debut, teasing a possible mayoral run.

“Let me be frank. Me, or anyone like me, is a long shot,” he told Spec columnist Andrew Dreschel, candidly observing, “You can ask 100 people and none of them will know who I am.” And, in that contender profile, he hinted at a little bit of his platform, saying he would pursue more highway development, assume more power as the mayor with an “executive council”, and work to balance the city’s budget. When Dreschel pushed Sgro on the LRT project, he was uncharacteristically cagey, saying that, instead, his focus would be on the HSR system as it existed.¹⁹

Sgro let months slip by before making any decisions. When Dreschel circled back in May, he again pushed Sgro on LRT. The potential candidate refused to take a position, telling the columnist: “I’m not anti-anything. I’m pro-everything. I always look at the positive side.”²⁰

Six weeks later, after the province elected Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives and the state of municipal governance in Ontario was thrown into the perpetual chaos in which we now live, Sgro made his decision. On the fourth of July, Sgro announced that, not only was he in the mayoral race, but that he had finally decided his campaign would be unapologetically anti-LRT. Chasing what he thought were the political headwinds of the time, Sgro spent the next few weeks distancing himself from his Liberal bona fides, heaping praise on the new premier for things like his decision to slash the size of Toronto City Council.²¹

As the campaign ramped up, Sgro dug in, reorienting almost everything in his campaign to focus on LRT. This outward focus was matched by attempts to show force, feeding the Spec and CBC Hamilton data-heavy factoids. His August 9 $250 dollar-a-plate fundraiser was attended by 400 people, his October 3 anti-LRT telephone town hall had 7,000 listeners, his campaign was so flush with cash that they could hire a plane to fly over the city, dragging a banner that read: NO LRT. VITO SGRO 4 MAYOR. Sgro’s campaign signs even shed all but a passing reference to his own name, instead reading “STOP THE TRAIN”.

But this singular focus was matched by notable missteps. Sgro earned flack for failing to respond to an invitation by the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce to a one-on-one debate between himself and Mayor Fred Eisenberger, to be moderated by then-Chamber CEO Keanin Loomis. Sgro told Dreschel he never received an invite. Shortly after, Sgro skipped a debate hosted by the Afro-Canadian Caribbean Association. And, just before election day, Sgro earned the ire of Joe Mancinelli, the international vice-president of the Labourers International Union of North American (LiUNA) after he lured then-councillor Terry Whitehead into his anti-LRT camp. In response, the rather conservative Mancinelli backed the comparatively more progressive Eisenberger - showing just how muddled Hamilton’s politics can be sometimes.²²

Sgro lost the 2018 mayoral election, earning 38% to Eisenberger’s 54% and carrying just two wards - Upper Stoney Creek’s Ward 9 and Flamborough’s Ward 15 - by narrow margins.

After the election, Sgro sat down for one last interview with Dreschel. The interview was a venting session for the runner-up, who reflected on people who are “supposed to be much more ‘progressive’,” allegedly spread rumours that he was dating PC MPP Donna Skelly, published his home address on Twitter, and mocked his physical appearance. “They made some awful, awful comments,” he said. Sgro also admitted that his mayoral campaign happened because his original plan of recruiting and campaign managing for “a well-known person” in the community (whom he did not name) fell through.²³

Between 2018 and 2021, Sgro kept his head down, rarely appearing in print or online publications. His 2021 campaign for MP in Flamborough-Glanbrook as a Liberal was relatively subdued, with local media focusing on the logistics of holding an election in the middle of a global pandemic and the federal party’s faltering campaign. His second-place finish with 21,350 votes, or 35.5%, was respectable, but still represented a decline in the party’s support in the riding from both 2015 and 2019.

***

Sgro’s Observer debut happened in the summer of 2023 - just two excruciatingly long years ago. Well, his contemporary debut, at least. In December of 2019, Sgro had an opinion piece published on the Observer where he admitted that he “made a personal decision after the last municipal election not to comment on any city issues for a period of time.” The piece was about “Sewergate”, the revelation that millions (possibly billions) of litres of untreated sewage spilled into Cootes Paradise because of a faulty gate in the city’s sewage system. It takes council and city staff to task for their handling of the situation and ends with the lines: “ To the citizens of Hamilton; the time for complacency has to come to an end. Change has to come!”²⁴

Over the next few years, the references to Sgro on the Observer were mostly links to his appearances on The Bill Kelly Show or various Cable 14 programs. Then, after the 2022 municipal election, Sgro jumped back in, first publishing an opinion piece that was a reflection on his 2018 campaign kick-off speech, focusing once again on LRT.

He followed that up with a piece a month later about his take on the North End meeting around the proposed Hamilton Alliance for Tiny Shelters (HATS) site on Strachan Street East. Teens were put in headlocks, seniors were denied use of the washrooms, the mayor and ward councillor (which he spells “councilor” throughout) were hiding, he claimed. The article is scattered and difficult to read. “This is transparency? This is community building?  This is BS!!!!” he writes, which was published, presumably unedited, by Best.²⁵

***

Sgro’s opinion pieces grew increasingly erratic. A piece in April of 2024 - entitled “HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH???” - reads like an extended Facebook comment from an unwell relative, pepped throughout with some of the most online right-wing talking points one could assemble in a single space. In it, he takes aim at the SoBi system, bike lanes, two-way street conversions, the poor state of the city’s roads, the Encampment Protocol, “anti-police rhetoric by some members of this Council”, the LRT project, and the war on cars. Sgro claims police aren’t able to do their jobs out of fear that “they [might] ‘trigger’ someone” and that congestion is part of some kind of conspiracy to make people take public transit. One of the least logical parts of the piece is the cry: “Have you had enough of certain members of Council trying to shame colleagues and the public, when they support their constituents over their concerns over a public housing project when they’ve stalled the same type of projects in their Wards, for the exact same reasons?”

I’ve read that sentence a dozen times and still have absolutely no idea what it means. Indeed, the entirely piece darts wildly between thoughts, asks rhetorical questions without any coherent set-up, and extrapolates and exaggerates with reckless abandon. “Every one of the 15 Councilors should propose 3 sites for these projects in their wards,” he writes, once again misspelling “councillor” and never once explaining what “these projects” are.

“If you’ve had enough, start taking names of those councillors responsible and start getting involved. There is time yet for those who’ve had enough to get busy,” he threateningly implores.²⁶

The article’s subhead from Best reads: “Guest Comment by Vito Sgro. This column was originally offered to the Hamilton Spectator”. The Spec rejected the piece, likely because it is incoherent and unreadable, attempting to save the former mayoral candidate from the embarrassment that would inevitably come with its publication. Best, on the other hand, was more than happy to run the piece. It evidently inspired the BO’s readership; there are six comments on the Observer piece, each one of them lavishing the nearly unreadable piece with excessive praise.

The April, 2024 piece appears to have unlocked something in Sgro. Because, from that point on, his Observer contributions begin to tease out a possible platform.

The possible platform

For exactly one year - from May 26, 2024 to May 26, 2025 - Sgro has had 11 pieces published on the Observer’s site that specifically address issues in the community. Many of the headlines and subheads for these pieces include some variation of “My take”, “Vito’s ideas”, or “My suggestions”.

Some of the pieces repeat earlier points. Others indicate an evolution, modification, or intensifying of previous points. Many of them are specific enough to constitute a preliminary platform, if not “feelers” to determine the community’s interest in a general idea.

Sgro’s not-quite-a-platform platform focuses on a few key areas:

1. Encampments, housing, and homelessness,

2. Law-and-order,

3. Austerity at City Hall,

4. Transit and transportation, and

5. “Other”.

Encampments, housing, and homelessness was Sgro’s focus in many of his early Observer pieces, though that obsession tapered off around January when many visible encampments in the city disappeared. Through these pieces, we get some broad ideas, which include:

• The creation of a large outdoor shelter at the northwest corner of Victoria Avenue North and Ferrie Street East. “If it is a private property negotiate with the owner now.  It is far enough away from most neighbourhoods, the General Hospital is nearby and all services are easily accessible,” he writes. It should be noted that the site in question was once owned by Imperial Oil and may be contaminated from decades of industrial use.

• The creation of a second outdoor shelter through fencing in land at the St. Joe’s Psychiatric Hospital on West 5th and Fennell. “I don’t care that the hospital is under provincial jurisdiction, we need help from every level of government now,” he writes. These proposals are presented with the caveat: “These are only suggestions and better places may be chosen.” He later suggests the Dundas Valley Conservation Authority could be used as a large encampment.²⁷

• An encouragement that the private sector be the primary force building new affordable homes. “We see local councillors still placing roadblocks on both deeply affordable and at-market projects,” he writes, without providing proof. His main way to incentivize this is “a combination of development fee offsets and some contribution to land costs might do the trick.” Might do the trick, apparently.

• A proposal to pool all housing funds from other levels of government and use that money to offset the costs for private developers, as well as requiring affordable housing in every new development, specifically mandating that developers building new greenfield subdivisions (of which he is extremely supportive) include “affordable townhouses” that would be run by local non-profits.

• A pledge to revoke the Encampment Protocol and the creation of a regulation that would require police “remove” anyone in an encampment after 12 hours.²⁷

Law-and-order is a consistent focus for Sgro. Some of the pieces that address the issue veer into the realm of conspiracy, nostalgia for an imagined past, and selective use of facts. He, for example, says: “There seems to be an implication that Hamilton Police are being restricted in what they can do, especially when the violence occurs around encampments,” he writes, foregoing even the suggestion of proof and, instead, resting his argument on the idea that there’s a vague “implication” (the city’s right-wingers love that word).

Taking aim at the minority on council, Sgro writes that “This is not surprising when you have certain City Councilors and their activist supporters calling for reduced Police budgets, cries of ‘Defund the Police’.” The - and here I’m using a favoured word of the city’s right-wing - implication is that, because a handful members of council, who are in the minority, have talked about reallocating police funding to prevent crime, the police now do not respond to matters like gun violence and social disorder.

This popular theory among those on the city’s populist right maintains that, even by simply suggesting we don’t give the police a massive budget increase year after year, the police have simply decided to stop doing their jobs. The theory is as incoherent as it is false, serving as merely one more excuse for people who dislike Kroetsch, Nrinder Nann, and Alex Wilson (occasionally throwing Maureen Wilson in when they want to get creative) to blame all the city’s ills on them.

“I have lived downtown for almost 27 years,” he writes. “It was in very bad shape when I first arrived.  It really started to turn around in 2011 when the Mayor of the day [Bratina] supported Police,” he muses. There’s no correlation between the city’s real or imagined renaissance at the time and “support for the police” which has not decreased under any municipal administration in this city’s recent history. Indeed, the very year Sgro’s piece came out, Mayor Horwath defended the police budget to local media and the police budget was approved by a majority of councillors.

Sgro’s platform points through all this boil down to:

• Supporting the use of body cams for the Hamilton Police Service.

• Encouraging more police-community interactions, including the restoration of the School Resource Officer program.

• Creating a municipal by-law around Supervised Consumption Sites.

• Supporting Doug Ford’s offer to use the Notwithstanding Clause to override the human rights of encampment residents if requested by council.²⁸

Platform planks about austerity at City Hall are some of Sgro’s more thought-out and concrete proposals. They include:

• The creation of a municipal Auditor General that could recommend the removal of elected officials for “any egregious act(s)” - this would be illegal under current provincial law.

• A line-by-line review of municipal spending with a “special emphasis” on cutting in “Public Works, Public Health, Health &  Safe Communities, Community Services and City Housing”.

• A review of all spending on “the homelessness/encampment problems” in the city from 2022 to 2024.

• Providing a transparent breakdown of spending on all committees and sub-committees of council.

• An initial call for a “review” of all newly hired senior managers that was later updated to a pledge to “completely reverse all new hires”, writing “With 6,000 people employed by the city I find it hard to believe that current staff cannot perform the tasks that the 750 were hired for.” It is difficult to tell if Sgro is advocating for the immediate termination of 5,250 municipal employees, though it certainly sounds like that’s the case.

• Immediate elimination the Office of Climate Change Initiatives, the Housing Secretariat, and the Vacant Unit Tax and any associated employees.

• Immediate elimination the use of all outside consultants, and temporary contracts offered to retired staff.

• A pledge to hold a referendum on any reduction of the city’s cash reserves over 20%.

• Forcing councillors to use their ward budgets to fund 75% of the renovation costs for privately-owned historical buildings.

• Petitioning the province to allow for all rent increases to be tied to a yearly municipal property tax increase, far above the current 2.5% cap.²⁹

Transit and transportation are favourite topics of Sgro, whose anti-LRT fanaticism has now expanded to include a general dislike of urbanists, a visceral distain for bike lanes, and a kind of full-throated endorsement of car culture that seems almost purposefully out-of-touch. This is, apparently, because of his interpretation of the city’s response to Bill 212, which targeted bike lanes across Ontario.

“First of all, to anyone hoping for a significant reduction in the regular use of personal vehicles…it will never happen. We are in a car culture and that will never, ever change,” he writes, ignoring all of human history before the year 1945.

He laments that the “perimetre road” wasn’t built in the 1970’s - you know, the road that would have tunneled under Dundurn Castle and wiped out much of Strathcona, Central, Beasley, and the North End, just to shave a few minutes off a driver’s commute to the city’s Industrial Districts? Yeah, Sgro appears to be in favour of that community-killing fantasy project, which would have displaced thousands of Hamiltonians to serve an area that is, because of contemporary economic pressures, hollowing out. But that’s not his main argument. Instead, Sgro calls for:

• An immediate moratorium on installing bike lanes and a directive that bike lanes can never impede vehicle traffic.

• Obviously cancelling LRT, though he also notes that he wants to “redistribute” an imagined $3 billion in available funds (there is no pool of money for the project - it was going to be funded on transfers from other levels of government based on the long-term operating costs of the system) for the project between:

  • Creating a BRT system,

  • Upgrading car infrastructure, and

  • Vaguely toward “affordable housing” (the money can only be spent on transit projects and Sgro has called for the private sector to take the lead on affordable housing, so this point is confusing.

• A commitment to take all ideology out of city building. It’s unclear what this means, though he seems singularly opposed to urbanism, so he probably means ending programs intended to slow traffic and make communities walkable.³⁰

The last area of concern can really only be classified as “other”. These are off-the-cuff or distinct musings that don’t really connect to other topics. They include:

• Complete opposition to Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch. Sgro writes that the councillor: “apparently allows City Hall Staff to be harassed and scared when people near the injection sites walk into the restricted areas of City Hall. He is the worst councilor [sic, again] I’ve ever seen since I’ve been downtown.  He needs to be replaced.” Sgro does not mention that, in 2010, he worked on the campaign of Jason Farr, whom Kroetsch beat in 2022.

• A more concrete definition of “heritage” when it relates to “heritage buildings”, claiming that there’s “no clear distinction between what is “‘Heritage’ and what is not.” Contrary to this claim, the Ontario Heritage Act sets out guidelines on heritage designations which, according to the City of Hamilton’s very easily Googleable definition, holds that heritage designation is for “individual properties identified as having cultural heritage value,” which are “designated by a municipal by-law, which contains the location of the property and defines its cultural heritage value, or significance, through a list of heritage attributes. Heritage attributes are those features of the land, building(s), and/or structures that contribute to the property’s cultural heritage value or interest and must be retained to conserve that value.”

• Claims that the Hamilton Santa Claus Parade moved to the mountain because “King Street and Main Street are hurting and hurting very badly with people harassing other people, urban blight, graffiti  etc.”

• Agreeing that Canada has “an immigration problem” (unsure of what this means) but that the white nationalists who protested in front of Jackson Square are bad.

• Pursuing a policy of building more sprawl, including revitalizing Aerotropolis, the failed suburban industrial park scheme from the early 2000’s.³¹

***

Sgro’s platform teasers allow us to put together a picture of the possible mayoral candidate. If we take his opinion pieces in the Observer as a potential platform, then Sgro will be running on a programme of sweeping, relentless, cut-to-the-bone austerity. It would eliminate jobs and municipal services that presently exist to find savings down the line. It would cancel transit projects, pull the city even further out of the provision of housing, and pursue unproven, untested, and unrealistic transportation policies, all while handing pink slips to the experts who would be the last line of defence against projects that would, in very real terms, destroy communities.

His focus on austerity conjures images of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which began eliminating and cutting positions with impunity after the president installed tech billionaire Elon Musk into the immensely powerful, quasi-legal department. Indeed, Sgro’s musing about firing thousands of city workers (which would be under the purview of the city manager and department heads, not the mayor) should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Such a move would have an irrevocable impact on our municipal economy, the ability for the city to function, and the services provided to Hamiltonians.

The legality of many of these proposals is dubious at best, and outright prohibited at worst. But, most of all, these pieces betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the office of mayor and the powers of a municipal government. Sgro’s understanding of the office of mayor appears to come from television shows and American history books where party boss-backed, ward-heeling despots had the authority to tell the police what to do, fire people at will, and change laws with a flick of their wrist. His proposals thumb their nose at the constitution, ignore precedent, and flip off jurisdictional authority.

Sgro would never be able to accomplish even a quarter of that platform if he ran thanks to legal, jurisdictional, and technical barriers. But that’s almost not the point; if he ran for mayor, he would be given a stage from which he could rail against the current council, inject outlandish ideas into the mainstream, and serve as a figure head for the permanently angry minority in this city that desperately wants to “fight City Hall” as a proxy for their own insecurities and feelings of powerlessness.

And, at that point, the specifics of the platform don’t matter. If the details and the actual policies and the concrete solutions to problems we face don’t make sense, then all you’re left with is a campaign built on pure, uncut, 100% Hamiltonian rage.

459 days to go

October 26, 2026 is barreling toward us. Sure, there will be a Ward 8 by-election in the meantime (what have we done to deserve this!?), but candidates are already prepping their campaigns for 2026.

Mayor Horwath, in an absolute shock to politically savvy Hamiltonians, announced her intention to seek re-election on July 9. Chad Collins, the former Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MP, long rumoured to be interested in the mayor’s chair, has been strangely silent since his federal defeat (and is ranked quite low in local right-wing activist Kevin Geenen’s Facebook poll on the mayoral election). Community members are still begging 2022 runner-up Keanin Loomis to consider a second kick-at-the-can, but he’s understandably taking his time to decide. Former fringe mayoral candidates are posting racist screeds against imagined other candidates and everyone’s angry uncle on Facebook has mused openly about running to make Hamilton a “city of transparency”. The gears of democracy are churning away, but, as of yet, they’re doing so in their expected fashion.

***

So, back to the question posed at the top of this newsletter: is Vito Sgro going to run for mayor in 2026?

The answer is a definitive: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe his Observer articles are just long-form social media musings. Maybe he’s content to stay in the backrooms. Maybe the Wikipedia editor who added his name to the city’s 2026 election page just wanted to stir the pot a little. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess.

Sgro has run for mayor in the past, backed by many of the city’s right-wing establishment figures who are desperately searching for another standard bearer after Bob Bratina failed to submit campaign financial documents in 2022 and was barred for running for office until 2030. They don’t have many other options. Collins has been cagey on the idea of a mayoral run, likely in part because of long-standing bad blood between him and other conservatives in the city who painted him as a “tax-and-spend” Liberal during his early years on council. Most of council’s conservative block are comfortable enough to run for re-election in their own wards. Area PC and Conservative (and some Liberal) MPs and MPPs are sitting pretty in their own ridings and lack the profile to jump over to a city-wide office like mayor. There’s a gaggle of terminally online weirdos out there, eager to run for office, but they don’t have the political skill to make a bid for the mayoralty and, frankly, most of them are salivating at a chance to go after the Ladies and the Gays^™ on council and act out their darkest anti-woke fantasies.

Whether or not Vito Sgro opts for a second mayoral bid remains to be seen. But, if his posts on the Observer are any indication of what his platform might be, then one thing is clear: he may want to be mayor, but he isn’t at all qualified to hold the office.

1  _{Busbridge, Rachel, Benjamin Moffitt, and Joshua Thorburn. 2020. “Cultural Marxism: Far-Right Conspiracy Theory in Australia’s Culture Wars.” Social Identities 26 (6): 722–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2020.1787822.}

2  _{Eric McGuinness. “Crime, prostitution, crack cocaine are key concerns” Hamilton Spectator, October 27, 2003 (Spec archive link).}

3  _{“Ward 13 profile” Hamilton Spectator, November 7, 2006 (Spec archive link).}

4  _{Bay Observer homepage, September 27, 2008 (Internet Archive link).}

5  _{John Best. “Adjusting to a changing media environment” Bay Observer, April 6, 2009 (Internet Archive link).}

6  _{“Where can you get the Bay Observer?” Bay Observer, page capture September 14, 2009 (Internet Archive link).}

7  _{Denis Gibbons. “High Safety Ranking Doesn't Mean An End To Vigilence [sic]” Bay Observer, April 6, 2009 (Internet Archive link).}

8  _{Emma Reilly. “Development agency at crossroads” Hamilton Spectator, January 8, 2011 (Spec archive link).}

9  _{Matthew Van Dongen. “The mayor is back on the airwaves” Hamilton Spectator, September 16, 2011 (Spec archive link).}

10  _{Andrew Dreschel. “Mutiny on the good ship Hamilton”, Hamilton Spectator, October 17, 2011 (Spec archive link); "" “Bratina’s aide raises eyebrows” Hamilton Spectator, December 5, 2011” (Spec archive link).}

11  _{Emma Reilly. “Mayor facing second integrity investigation” Hamilton Spectator, May 9, 2013 (Spec archive link).}

12  _{Steve Milton. “Documentary makes it to air” Hamilton Spectator, December 12, 2017 (Spec archive link).}

13  _{Observer Staff. “Labour turmoil in local NDP constituency offices” Bay Observer, March 10, 2018 (Internet Archive link); Matthew Van Dongen. “Union slams NDP for ‘appalling’ treatment of human rights complaints” Hamilton Spectator, September 6, 2018 (Spec archive link).}

14  _{John Best. “Sober Second Thought on LRT” Bay Observer, May 8, 2014 (Internet Archive link).}

15  _{John Best. “Time to take a stand” Bay Observer, August 15, 2018 (Internet Archive link); "" “LRT Alchemy, and an opportunity” Bay Observer, September 2018 (Internet Archive link).}

16  _{Eric McGuinness. “Di Ianni’s election donations disputed” Hamilton Spectator, July 10, 2004 (Spec archive link); Andrew Dreschel. “Dark cloud looms over HECFI brass” Hamilton Spectator, June 29, 2011 (Spec archive link).}

17  _{Daniel Nolan. “Liberals select 10th federal candidate” Hamilton Spectator, March 15, 2010 (Spec archive link); Daniel Nolan. “Wynne wins Hamilton; Pupatello takes Ontario” Hamilton Spectator, January 15, 2013 (Spec archive link); Andrew Dreschel. “Trudeau’s Hamilton allies round up votes” Hamilton Spectator, March 20, 2013 (Spec archive link).}

18  _{Matthew Van Dongen. “There are 15 candidates, few votes in Ward 3” Hamilton Spectator, October 2, 2014 (Spec archive link).}

19  _{Andrew Dreschel. “Vito Sgro eyes running for mayor” Hamilton Spectator, January 26, 2018 (Spec archive link).}

20  _{"" “Whitehead bails, Sgro bides his time” Hamilton Spectator, May 18, 2018 (Spec archive link).}

21  _{"" “Vito Sgro enters the mayor’s race” Hamilton Spectator, July 4, 2018 (Spec archive link); Robert Benzie, David Rider, and Jennifer Pagliaro. “Premier defends slashing ‘comedy show’ council” Hamilton Spectator, July 28, 2018 (Spec archive link).}

22  _{Andrew Dreschel. “Polling on the mayoral hopefuls and that weed conflict,” Hamilton Spectator, September 14, 2018 (Spec archive link); "" “Sgro ramps up his ‘stop the train’ message” Hamilton Spectator, October 5, 2018 (Spec archive link); "" “Eisenberger rejects one-on-one debates” Hamilton Spectator, October 10, 2018 (Spec archive link); “Hamilton Votes 2018: Sgro criticized for missing debate” Hamilton Spectator, October 11, 2018 (Spec archive link); Andrew Dreschel. “Mancinelli feels betrayed by Whitehead,” Hamilton Spectator, October 19, 2018 (Spec archive link); Matthew Van Dongen. “Hamilton Votes 2018: All aboard the election train?” Hamilton Spectator, October 20, 2018 (Spec archive link).}

23  _{Andrew Dreschel. “Some departing comments from Vito Sgro,” Hamilton Spectator, October 26, 2018 (Spec archive link).}

24  _{Vito Sgro. “Time for independent scrutiny at City Hall” Bay Observer, December 13, 2019 (Link).}

25  _{"" “My take: HATS encampment meeting was a disgrace” Bay Observer, September 12, 2023 (Link).}

26  _{"" “Opinion: HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH???” Bay Observer, April 7, 2024 (Link).}

27  _{"" “My Take: London Ontario – A Cautionary Tale for Hamilton?” Bay Observer, May 26, 2024 (Link); "" “My Take: Private sector has to be a bigger part of the affordable housing challenge” Bay Observer, June 23, 2024 (Link); "" “My take: lets get the ideology out of the homelessness and affordable housing crisis” Bay Observer, December 8, 2024 (Link).}

28  _{"" “Is Hamilton City Council Handcuffing Police?” Bay Observer, July 30, 2024 (Link); "" “Opinion: I WASN’T GONE THAT LONG!!!!!” Bay Observer, November 18, 2024 (Link).}

29  _{"" “My Suggestions For City Hall Administration And Governance” Bay Observer, November 30, 2024 (Link); "" “It’s déjà VU ALL OVER AGAIN! Massive increase in city salaries similar to HECFI 2011” Bay Observer, January 26, 2025 (Link).}

30  _{"" “ONE WAY, TWO WAY, WRONG WAY?” Bay Observer, January 2, 2025 (Link).}

31  _{"" “My take: Community needs to get organized in response to encampment crisis” Bay Observer, August 25, 2024 (Link); "" “Is Hamilton Missing Out on Tens of Millions Of tax Dollars Every Year?” Bay Observer, December 25, 2024 (Link).}