Preemptive strike

Well I feel like an idiot. More than normal, that is.

I delayed last week’s newsletter for two reasons: I was recovering from surgery (ALSO, I should have been more clear with my joke - I did not have brain surgery, though I’m already bald enough for them to get right in there and mess around if they wanted to) and I was having a tough time figuring out what to say about the hack. I mean…I’m a social scientist, not a computer engineer. And I can’t justify getting another degree just yet.

*OSAP lurks angrily around the corner, tapping its gnarled claws on the side of my ever-shrinking bank account*

I ended up calling on Mayor Horwath to be a more vocal presence and work to reassure Hamiltonians that things are getting cleaned up.

Moments later, the mayor and city manager held a press conference where Mayor Horwath was a vocal presence who worked to reassured Hamiltonians that things are getting cleaned up.

Talk about awful timing.

I’m not a journalist. I’m a semi-employed (soon to be very unemployed) nerd with a doctorate and a penchant for commenting on local affairs. I do some deep dives, I pull out lots of historical facts, I try to provide context, but then I provide my opinion based on all the info and resources I have. I don’t get press releases, I haven’t talked to people “on the record” yet, and I don’t cover the goings-on of municipal affairs in real time. I do my best with what I have. But I feel like I really dropped the ball last week.

I have been growing increasingly critical of our mayor. I gave her the benefit of the doubt when she was elected and even remarked that, with her election, we had the chance for a once-in-a-generation cultural shift at city hall. Along with a crop of new and re-elected progressive councillors and a few “king-maker” moderates, there was the very real possibility that things would be different. After years of the same old stale governance, her election signaled the possibility of real, substantive change.

But then reality set in. Within months, the mayor voted against providing a living wage to summer employees (which I once was). Because of her status as a landlord with a vacant unit, she was unable to vote to establish a Vacant Unit Tax, effectively killing the motion on the floor of council. She voted against even considering the “People’s Protocol” created by people who have lived experience with homelessness and she voted for Matt Francis’s inhumane culture war motion to create an “Advocate Registry” for people who are willing to house those experiencing homelessness in their yards. And she’s consistently shown support for the Progressive Conservative Block on the Hamilton Police Services Board, going so far as to align herself with Pat Mandy and Fred Bennink against Cameron Kroetsch.

While I hoped for a seasoned social democratic mayor, I now realize we have an ideologically-ambiguous magistrate that cannot be relied upon to stand with progressives - the very people who helped secure her those extra 1,600-odd votes that clinched her the job in 2022 - during tough times. There’s always room for change, but I am growing more and more disappointed as time slips by.

But my criticism of Mayor Horwath last week was premature and ill-conceived. Indeed, I let my general distrust and disappointment in her leadership guide my commentary, all while she was in the process of doing the very thing I lamented she had not yet done. I’ll work to do better in the future and hope that I’m able to still provide the mildly humourous local commentary you enjoy, just with a little more thoughtfulness.

It is important to remember that, in a democracy, reasoned and reasonable critiques of government policy and the actions of politicians are good and healthy things. We are called upon, as engaged citizens and concerned residents, to hold our public officials accountable. When things become more than that is when we have a problem. And that’s the subject of today’s main piece:

A few angry men

Une colère très Québécoise

I spent the weekend up in Montreal. It was a lovely time and I always enjoy getting back to the city. There’s always so much going on and an incredible sense of vibrancy throughout the metropolis. Sure, I seem to have picked up an irritating head cold whilst there, but I’ve sequestered myself at home to stop transmission and work on newslettering during the few moments of clarity I have when the cold meds kick in.

One of the big stories in Montreal during my stay there was Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s confirmation that the provincial police force, the Sûreté du Québec, had arrested a man who had sent violent and graphic death threats to the party leader. These threats apparently targeted both him and his young family. According to Plamondon, the threat was emailed on March 4 and a Montreal-area man was arrested for sending said threat on March 8, which Plamondon confirmed on March 15. The following day, Plamondon slammed Quebec’s media for asking him about the threat, saying:

Plamondon subsequently cancelled his scheduled appearances at the federal Bloc Québécois convention happening in Quebec City.

Other Quebec politicians came to Plamondon’s defence, with some sharing their own similar experiences. Marwah Rizqy of the Quebec Liberal Party recounted her experiences in the 2022 provincial election. That was an election where the Quebec Liberals were way behind in the polls, in no small part because of the racism directed toward candidates like Rizqy and party leader Dominique Anglade, who was born to Haitian-Quebecers. It was also a challenging campaign for Rizqy who was, at the time, pregnant.

On top of all that, she was repeatedly harassed by a 62-year-old man named Claude Delaney who, in a baffling act, called the local police to make his threat, telling them he knew her address and that they would be able to “find her murdered body there.”2 At a release hearing held around a year ago, Delaney was annoyed at the inconvenience the whole thing was turning out to be. When the judge indicated they weren’t satisfied with Delany’s release plan, he became visibly annoyed in court and snapped: “How much time is this going to take?”3 

Upsettingly, Delany had a history of harassing female politicians, including Jocelyn Mondou, a local councillor in his municipality, Sorel-Tracy. In one event during 2021, he called police claiming that Mondou was trying to kill him. His record and disturbing actions led a judge to order a psych evaluation on Delany, which found he was suffering from an undisclosed form of mental illness. This led Delany to believe he was intimately involved with both politicians.4

The cases of Plamondon and Rizqy are becoming more and more common. Political figures in our current moment are subject to such incredible vitriol and violence that many are simply turning away from public office, leaving the courageous few who haven’t yet been burned out by the rigours of the job. Sometimes, these threats come from the public. Sometimes, it is politicians themselves who create a climate of animosity and violence in their own workplace.

This kind of toxic atmosphere is not limited to Canada. Around the world, political leaders, candidates, and civil servants are faced with such incredible hatred and violence that the very foundations of our democracy are being shaken. As more people bow out to protect themselves and their loved ones, strongmen and enthusiastic authoritarians are stepping up to take their place.

So let’s look at what’s happening and what we can do about it.

A thoroughly impolite dustup

Let’s start in the UK where, a few weeks ago, a report was released on the state of local democracy in the country. The report found that over a quarter of incumbent council members are not going to seek re-election and that, of them, nearly 70% said the increasing abuse they’re facing in their jobs has influenced that decision.

The report was released by the Local Government Association (LGA), the UK’s version of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities - a national-level lobbying group for local authorities and their elected representatives. The chair of the LGA's “Civility in Public Life Programme Steering Group”, independent councillor Marianne Overton, told the BBC very clearly that: “If left unaddressed, abuse and intimidation risk forcing good councillors out of local politics altogether.”5

This came days after Harriet Harman, a Labour MP who has served in the UK’s Parliament for 42 years, called on both major party leaders to ensure the safety of candidates in the country’s next general election, anticipated to be held sometime later this year or early in 2025.

Other groups have been raising the alarm on the growing threats of violence against candidates for office. The Jo Cox Foundation released a report with recommendations called No place in politics: tackling abuse and intimidation.

Now this isn’t some charitable foundation named because a retiring politician or businessperson wanted some grand legacy to be remembered by. No, the Jo Cox Foundation was named for one of the two British MPs who have been assassinated in the past eight years. Cox was the Labour MP for Batley and Spen who, after working with Oxfam, was elected to parliament in 2015. She was murdered a year later by a white supremacist and ardent fascist while she was holding community office hours (known in the UK as an MP’s ‘Surgery’). Then, in 2021, David Amess, a Conservative MP for Southend West, was murdered by a man who was obsessed with Daesh or “ISIS”, also while holding his MP’s Surgery.

The culture of fear and intimidation surrounding national-level politics in the UK has MPs on edge. Stella Creasy, a Labour MP who has served for 14 years in parliament, penned an op-ed for The Guardian in which she reflected on the threats she had received over the years as a passionate supporter of reproductive rights, opposition to payday loan lenders, and her campaigns against misogyny. Creasy has a long history of dealing with threats; one year ago, someone made a social services complaint about her saying that her “extreme views” would be harmful to her children and that they should be taken away from her.

In her Guardian piece, Creasy writes:

Back to municipal affairs, local candidates and councillors have been dealing with a staggering increase in abuse. A 35-year-old Conservative councillor in South Cambridgeshire told the BBC she was threatened by a man who told her, in public, he would have shot her if he had a gun with him at that moment. A police commissioner (the rough equivalent to the chair of a Police Services Board here) in Bedfordshire has been stalked, subject to racist abuse, and endured threats toward his family. In the wake of proposing a congestion charge in 2022, a Labour councillor in Cambridge was told she would be shot and displayed in the town square like Mussolini. The councillor, who is of Italian heritage, confronted the person who posted the photo, but they just brushed it off, saying “it’s just a joke”.7

This isn’t just a UK problem. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention released a report last year that showed nearly 30% of elected officials in that country have experienced threats, harassment, or violence as a result of their jobs. They broke down the stats even further: over half said there has been between 2 to 5 events and nearly 32% said they had been victimized more than 6 times. Younger politicians, those linked to left-wing parties, and those elected officials in the news frequently are more victimized than others. At the local level, it is politicians in bigger cities who are attacked more often.

In the Netherlands, over a quarter of members of parliament have police protection due to the intensity of the threats they’ve received. The country’s former Minister of Finance, Sigrid Kaag of the liberal Democraten 66 party, announced she was leaving electoral politics due to the threats she had received. Shortly after being elected, a member of a far-right, evangelical-aligned party (with the worst logo I’ve ever seen) stood outside Kaag’s home with a burning torch, screaming at her. Over the course of 2021, Kaag endured sustained attacks, with over 1 in 5 messages sent to her and her office including some kind of hate speech or threat. After she announced she was stepping down, she told media:

And then, of course, there’s the United States. A CNN report from last December looked at the case of one man from Iowa who is a prolific distributor of threats. As his wife was dying, he became her primary caregiver, and used online forums and conspiracy sites as his escape. From there, he soon started making violent threats toward political officials across the United States. His radicalization became so intense that he eventually threatened his own son, who is not an elected official, all because he supported a Black Lives Matter protest in his hometown. One important statistic in the CNN report: 95% of those prosecuted for making threats toward political officials were men.

Back home

Canada has seen a fair amount of focus on this issue. Notably, last month, Gatineau’s mayor, France Bélisle, held a press conference where she surprised the community by resigning on the spot after only two and a half years in the role, triggering a June 9 by-election. One of her reasons for stepping down? The death threats she had been receiving.

Bélisle is one of over 800 municipal officials who have resigned before the end of the 2021-2025 municipal term in Quebec. The situation has become so bad that the Union des municipalités du Québec, their provincial version of Ontario’s Association of Municipalities of Ontario, just announced the creation of a “psychological support line for elected officials” and their families.

During the 2018-2022 term of council, Hamilton’s civic leaders spoke up about an increase in the instances of violence directed toward them. Three councillors had their homes egged, two had their cars damaged, and one had decorative planters destroyed. There was the 2021 bomb threat at city hall. And, of course, there was the infamous “Eisenberger coffin” event of 2020.

Earlier this month, two Brampton councillors, Rowena Santos and Navjit Kaur Brar, discussed the threats and violence they’ve endured since being elected. Santos spoke at length about messages about her family, generic insults lobbed her way, and a handwritten note that threatened her with sexual assault and murder. In one month, Santos’s “harassment folder” filled up with 29 reports. "I can't even open my own Facebook. I get my male colleagues to look at the messages for me," she told the CBC.9

Upsettingly, Santos remarked that some of her own colleagues have liked and re-posted harassing threats about her online.

Which brings us to a troubling point: what happens when it is politicians themselves who are creating the conditions whereby violence and toxicity can thrive?

Bullies in office

Using heated rhetoric is a great way to mobilize a group of people and rally them to your cause. But there’s always a fine line. Pointing out that someone’s actions are bad for a constituency is one thing, but accusing them of more nefarious intentions gives a greenlight to the worst of the worst to zone in and begin their attacks.

Take the new MP for Durham, Jamil Jivani, for example. Jivani is an extreme right-wing personality who previously worked as a populist shock jock and for the Canada Strong and Free Network, the current rebrand of the Manning Centre, founded by the eponymous former Reform Party leader. Jivani devoted his victory speech to railing against “liberal elites” in the media, the banks, and…the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, weirdly enough. Apparently Doug Ford’s Tories aren’t right-wing enough for the former classmate of J. D. Vance, the ultra-MAGA Republican Senator for Ohio.

Or there’s the case of Sarnia, where the city’s mayor (and less-polished Dave Foley lookalike), Mike Bradley, recently made an appeal for civility in his annual State of the City address. Bradley has served for 26 years and spoke out against “the negativity and the pessimism and the anger that’s been generated in Canada…[which] is often driven by the political people.”10

When he made those comments, he was no doubt thinking about one of his more irksome colleagues, Bill Dennis. Dennis has only served on Sarnia’s council since 2022, but burst onto the scene in a dramatic way, taking the most votes of any council candidate (Sarnia’s council is elected at-large) and defeating an incumbent councillor. Through family, Dennis is well-connected in the Sarnia area; his father is one of the city’s most well-known realtors and his wife is Janice McMichael Dennis, the CEO of Bluewater Power, the electricity distributor for parts of Lambton County.

Since being elected, Dennis has established himself as a firmly Trumpian character, advancing extreme right-wing talking points and positions on council. Last October, Dennis hijacked a presentation from the city’s Environmental Advisory Committee, violently berating the citizen volunteer who was presenting and railing against Justin Trudeau, whom he called “The worst Prime Minister in the history of Canada.”11 Dennis’s rant became so heated and so Alex Jones-esque, that, at the next council meeting, councillors recommended a safety and security plan be put in place.

Despite apologizing for the outburst, he has since ramped up his rhetoric. A few months later, he told a constituent to “fuck off”, for which he was docked two days pay. In response to the event, he announced he was going to run for mayor in 2026.

Then, a few weeks ago, he “liked” Facebook comments from constituents that called for “socialist” members of council to be lynched. When confronted about this at Sarnia’s March 11 council meeting, he once again hijacked the chamber, ranting without pause about his awful colleagues, saying that he wanted to get rid of all the “far-left socialists or communists that don’t know the first thing about business.”12 Council voted on Monday to have the city’s integrity commissioner look into his actions. Dennis responded by announcing he would sue the city and Mayor Bradley.

Over 300 kilometres to the northeast, Pickering is facing a similar problem with their council. Another brand new councillor, Lisa Robinson, has taken a slightly different approach than Sarnia’s Dennis, but with similar goals in mind.

Robinson first got her political start in 2018 when she ran to be Pickering’s Ward 1 city councillor. She came close to beating the incumbent, but lost by about 200 votes. In 2021, she was named the Conservative Party’s candidate in the Toronto riding of Beaches–East York. After the deadline for adding and removing candidates from the ballot had passed, the riding’s incumbent Liberal MP, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, posted screenshots of Islamophobic and homophobic tweets made and re-tweeted by Robinson, including a re-post of a homophobic tweet by none other than Hamilton-based neo-Nazi and failed mayoral candidate, Paul Fromm. While Robinson claimed the tweets came from a fake account, the Conservative Party found that her story “kept changing” when asked about them and the party “disavowed” her candidacy. She came in third in that election.

A year later, she finally won the Pickering Ward 1 city councillor race after the incumbent opted to retire. She hit the ground running, bringing a culture of bullying and intimidation to Pickering’s local government.

Not long after being elected, Robinson met with Christine Anderson, a German member of the European Parliament with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland known for her extreme anti-Islam views (Anderson was an activist with Pegida, a group whose name, when translated into English, means Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). Later in 2023, she publicly shamed three residents who spoke at a Committee of Adjustment meeting in opposition to Robinson’s application to allow a large shipping container beside her house for the purpose of storing Halloween decorations. When the application was denied, Robinson took to social media to call off her yearly Halloween bash, blaming the residents for the cancellation. When the city’s integrity commissioner found that she had bullied the residents and docked her 30 days pay, she jumped back on Facebook to say that she was “now a modern-day slave.”13

This year, Robinson has been in the news for publishing a series of racist and anti-trans articles in the The Oshawa/Durham Central Newspaper. The “paper” is a deeply confusing visual nightmare that also features a regular column from far-right former MP Corneliu Chisu and publisher Joe Ingino’s “Politically Incorrect Zone”. Indeed, it seems like the paper is a vehicle for Ingino, a perennial candidate for mayor of Oshawa who was accused in 2012 of using the paper to launch disturbing homophobic attacks on members of Oshawa’s council.

Robinson’s columns are designed to generate controversy. A column at the beginning of February made the accusation that Black History Month is divisive, that accusing people of white privilege is racist, and that too many people are “hung up” on the whole Transatlantic Slave Trade thing. Pickering’s mayor called the column “racist, irresponsible and unethical.”14 A group of speakers attended a Pickering council meeting to demand her resignation, to which she responded that she would “not be bullied into political posturing.”15 Indeed, she followed that council meeting up with another column, this time attacking trans people. And she’s taken to bashing her council colleagues on Twitter/X (where she uses the handle LifeLibertyLisa), claiming they’re corrupt, dishonest, and inept. That, and continue to tweet anti-trans and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories.

Hamilton is well-acquainted with politicians behaving badly. There was Sam Merulla’s long history of aggressive behaviour, culminating in his early pandemic meltdown, threatening a business owner and a CHCH reporter because some workout equipment he ordered was delayed. Or, casting our minds back about 15 years, there was Ward 11 councillor Dave Mitchell, who regularly generated controversy while in office. He tried to use his office to get out of a speeding ticket, tried to influence fellow councillors to give him a favourable deal on a land severance proposal he had before council, and said that the Hamilton city flag was a “pathetic looking” “communist” symbol that made him want to “puke”.16 Classy.

But if any municipal politician in recent memory were to win an Olympic gold medal in poor behaviour, that would be Ronald “Terry” Whitehead, the former Ward 8 (and Ward 14) councillor. First elected in 2003, Whitehead was initially seen as a moderate who could bridge the gaps between different partisans and bring a fresh perspective to council. He even seconded the motion calling for Mitchell’s first censure in the ticket case. But, as his first re-election bid came up in 2006, Whitehead began to transform into the person we knew him as until 2022. In August of that year, Whitehead began pursuing action at city hall intended to stop people with low incomes and/or high needs from relocating to the west mountain in what one social service agency worker said was akin to saying “Don't send your poor up here; we don't want any more low income housing.”17

As the years went on, the situation only devolved. In 2008, Whitehead got into a heated argument in council chambers with Brad Clark about accusations of leaked messages. The next year, he was accused of harassment by a former employee, though these complaints were later dismissed by the city’s integrity commissioner. As the years went on, his behaviour became worse and worse. He was the subject of another complaint from a former assistant in 2019. He openly mulled that offering free tampons in city washrooms would lead some people to start “hoarding” them.

Then came the “Sanfransico” email. At the beginning of the pandemic, a community member emailed councillors to ask that the city act with more compassion toward those experiencing homelessness given the circumstances. Whitehead responded with an email that is mostly illegible, riddled with spelling mistakes, cursing, and strange formatting, saying:

Later that year, Whitehead berated a member of staff during a public works meeting. That was the final straw, and another integrity commissioner investigation was launched. When it came back in 2021, it found that Whitehead had bullied, intimidated, or harassed members of city staff and colleagues multiple times over several years, so much so that people just started brushing it off as “Terry being Terry”. Councillor Maureen Wilson called it Hamilton’s “Me Too” moment. Whitehead was docked 30 days pay.19

Whitehead fired back that Wilson and Ward 3’s Nrinder Nann “brought this poison and toxicity to council,” and that “the left are organized and the moderates are running scared.” And he announced he was seeking re-election in 2022.20

Except, of course, he didn’t. Whitehead waited until the very last day to announce he would not run for re-election, leaving other candidates baffled. Since then, we haven’t heard much from the former councillor, who mused about running again in the future, but has mostly just dropped off everyone’s radar.

Fine lines

We’ve covered a lot of ground here. Politicians coming under attack around the world and politicians who are the ones behind the attacks.

Of course, there are some who will push back against claims that this is bad for democracy. In the Guardian piece from Labour MP Stella Creasy, she takes issue with the tactics of the direct action group Just Stop Oil. The relatively new group is very youth-focused and attempts to raise awareness of their cause by damaging paintings in art galleries, disrupting awards shows and theatrical productions and sporting events, and blocking traffic on major roads. One of the group’s founders wrote in an opinion piece also in the Guardian that the group would target Labour MPs “at their homes” if they don’t stop oil and gas projects begun under the current UK Conservative government.21 This is reminiscent of the tactics used by DefundHPS when they carried that infamous coffin to former Mayor Fred Eisenberger’s home in 2020. “You will not ignore us”, they said, reflecting the very real feeling that their voices weren’t being acknowledged and their positions weren’t being respected.22

The tactics of groups like this signal a growing frustration with the status quo. They’re unsettling, they’re confrontational, and they’re disruptive. But that’s largely because the people behind these actions are frustrated at not seeing their voices represented in a meaningful way.

There’s a divide in our society right now. On one side are those who maintain that working through the system in a patient, reasoned, and respectful way is the only path to secure a better tomorrow for everyone. On the other are those who look at how fundamentally broken the system is and are tired of putting their faith in leaders who fail to live up to expectations.

Of course, as with everything, the tactics cut both ways. As Creasy noted in her editorial:

The key problem is that far too many people feel powerless right now. All too often, the only way people feel like they have any power over a situation is by directly threatening an elected official. Stopping to have a conversation might not result in any change, especially if that elected official holds distinctly different views than the person talking to them, so threats fill the void.

But there is a way to fix this. The Jo Cox Foundation included some excellent recommendations on how we can bring a little civility back to politics. They include:

• Ensuring all elected representatives model good behaviour

• Launching awareness campaigns to increase understanding of the role of elected representatives and promoting civility

• Putting political and media literacy into the school curriculum and providing teachers with training on how to present impartial information and address misinformation

• Pressuring social media companies for a better and faster way to report abuse

• Better screening of candidates from political parties during elections and the requirement that candidates sign “civility pledges”

All of these things make sense, but there are other steps we can take as well. We can expand the kinds of elected offices available so that people don’t feel like there’s a legislative bottleneck and that they have to blame their councillor or mayor for every problem under the sun. That means more elected community councils, advisory bodies, and agency, board, and commission (ABC) seats. Municipalities, in particular, should produce easy-to-understand materials and guides outlining how a civic government works. A civics course should be mandatory each year from at least Grade 5 all the way to Grade 12. We should move toward real electoral reform to provide a greater diversity of voices. And legislation should be put in place to allow for the removal of those elected officials whose behaviour is threatening or violent in anyway.

And, for progressives, we have to treat ourselves and others within our movement with more kindness. We can’t be wed to ideological purity and recognize that our role in the movement is to be educators and persuaders. In his fascinating book The Persuaders, journalist Anand Giridharadas speaks with progressive activists from all walks of life to try and understand how we can start winning in a meaningful way. Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist, told him that we need to form broad coalitions to truly transform society. Black feminist organizer Loretta Ross told him we need to consider our “circles of influence” and not alienate those with whom we share 90% or 75% of the same ideas and even hold space for those who only agree with 50% of what we say in the hopes that we’ll be able to convince them someday. Oakland-based BLM organizer Alicia Garza told him we need to “employ multiple methods, multiple tactics, within a broad strategy…” AOC said we can’t be afraid of winning or “associate a moral purity with losing”. Political consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio reminds us to stay true to our base and energize them in the hopes that those “in the middle” will want to be a part of a movement that’s energetic, enthusiastic, and principled.24 All that means that we can’t give up on the idea that electoral democracy is a worthwhile pursuit and that real change can be made in legislative chambers. And, even if we don’t make it, it can still be a worthwhile endeavour. As AOC told Giridharadas, “…there’s a way where you lose and it is worth it…[if the community is] more invested, educated, and organized at the end of this process than it was at the beginning, then it will be worth it.”25

The photo I used at the beginning of this piece is of some graffiti that’s been etched into the sidewalk on Market Street. It may be a little hard to read, but it says “FK TRUDEAU”. It is a semi-permanent reminder of just how angry our politics has become. That anger is driving good people away, making reasonable leaders second-guess their participation in our democratic system.

Yes, there are many ways to participate in a democratic society and protest is an important and essential way to get involved. But if too many people are scared off by a barrage of death threats and harassment, then our democracy may not last much longer.

Politicians making the civic sphere more toxic must be held accountable for their actions. Those who wish harm upon people simply because they disagree with their perspectives should similarly be made to answer for their abuse.

At the same time, we have to make sure that people’s voices are heard and that everyone feels like their opinions and perspectives matter. It’s a fine line to walk.

All I can say is that I hope for a day when good political figures aren’t intimidated by a few angry men.

Spec me in print, why dontcha?

If you were browsing The Spec yesterday, you might have caught an opinion piece from yours truly on the ongoing train wreck that is the Hamilton Police Services Board. If you didn’t catch it and you have a Spec subscription (or access the paper through the HPL using your library card), you can read it here.

What’s unique about this piece is that it’s my first as a freelancer! After having some conversations with the folks over at The Spec, they’ve offered to accept my pieces on a freelance basis every once and a while. Now, I’m not a paid columnist or anything like that, so don’t expect to see columns from me all the time, but I am really happy to be providing my insights and perspectives on issues of concern to the community in a more formal way now.

And a big thank you to all the folks in the community who have supported me thus far! I appreciate the care, attention, and kindness you’ve all shown over the past while. Not a bad way to celebrate 50 editions, eh?

Back to ‘berta

There’s some weird stuff happening out west. First, the governing United Conservative Party (UCP) has, without warning, announced they intend to introduce legislation allowing political parties to appear on municipal ballots, despite 61% of respondents to a government-commissioned survey saying they “strongly disagree” with the idea (I should have worked harder on my manuscript to get it out in time for all this nonsense).

Let’s be clear: municipal politics is still partisan. If you think it isn’t, you’re not paying attention. If not partisan in the sense that provincial and federal parties are running the show from behind the scenes, then definitely partisan in the way that councillors are working together to achieve ideologically-similar goals. We all know this is happening. Local parties operate in British Columbia and Quebec and, in the case of Montreal, actually get stuff done.

But the reasoning behind this might be more sinister than previously thought. See, there’s another weird thing happening out in Alberta: conservative activists are trying to get Calgary’s moderate mayor, Jyoti Gondek, recalled. Recall is a thing in Alberta, but the threshold for successfully getting a recall initiative passed is very high. The groups behind the initiative have until early April to collect 514,000 signatures. That might be tough, considering just under 387,000 people voted in the city’s last municipal contest.

The recall initiative was supposedly started by a local HVAC repairman named Landon Johnston and has been backed by a group called “Project YYC”, a group founded by Roy Beyer, an activist with the far-right group “Take Back Alberta” and, Convoy organizer who said that the 2023 Alberta election was “ground zero” in the fight against “globalists”. The pair kept everything very clandestine and quiet, but it was clear there was a lot of cash attached to these folks. There are slick websites, lawn signs, and even roadside billboards directing people to where they can sign the petition to have Gondek recalled. Like “Concerned Hamiltonians” on steroids!

Then an internal Project YYC document was leaked, stating their goal was the creation of a coalition to support a “common-sense conservative mayor and counsel (sic)” in next year’s Calgary municipal elections.26

Reporters have pointed out that it is interesting conservative groups are organizing against Calgary’s mayor while, at the same time, the provincial government might make it easier for them to run as a unified slate in next year’s election. The one difference is that, in the recall fight, the proponents don’t actually have to disclose where they’re getting their money from. In an election, they’ll have to file proper campaign expense reports. Might be a problem for Project YYC, which didn’t respond to the CBC’s requests for info about where they’re getting all that money from.

The west truly is so very wild.

Cool facts for cool people

• Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Chief Librarian was fired two days ago. Cathy Simpson, who had been NOTL’s Chief Librarian for 11 years, recently penned an opinion article about censorship and libraries. Unfortunately, Simpson quotes from the misleadingly-named Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism or “FAIR”, which is a far-right group opposed to “critical race theory”, queer rights, and anything to do with the entirely made-up concept of “gender ideology”. Simpson’s opinion piece claimed that there was “hidden library censorship”, which included “the vigorous defence of books promoting diversity of identity, but little to no defence of books promoting diversity of viewpoint, and the purchase of books promoting ‘progressive’ ideas over ‘traditional’ ideas.” After the article came out NOTL’s library board asked Simpson to step aside and come up with a plan on how to “rebuild confidence”. Her plan, which included adding more far-right and “anti-woke” books to the library system, was deemed inadequate and the board decided to fire Simpson. Librarians are some of the most progressive, caring, wholesome people I’ve ever met, so Simpson’s behaviour here is…weird.

• Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow remains popular as we approach the one-year anniversary of her by-election victory. Recent polling has 53% of Torontonians approving of the job she’s doing, giving her a net rating of +13% positive. That’s way better than Ford’s current net approval of -29% and PM Trudeau’s -39%. Mayors of Hamilton almost never, ever, ever have any polling done about them because pollsters rarely remember we exist outside of election periods, but it would be super interesting to have a poll done on Mayor Horwath’s performance thus-far.

• Speaking of Toronto, one of their councillors - Bradford Bradford - has found himself in a weird Twitter/X fight with Progress Toronto, the progressive group working to get better people elected municipally in the Six. Bradford, a former Hamiltonian and recent Hamilton-hater, tweeted about new crime/hate-crime stats provided by the Toronto Police Service (TPS) on Monday. His general call was to “change the culture and put a stop to hate on our streets.” Fair enough. The Progress Toronto account re-tweeted his post with a caption that included the line: “The wild thing is that the police are getting more and more money (as much as they've asked for!) and yet, that doesn't correlate to a decrease in crime.” Rather than address the stats, Bradford responded and used the opportunity to attack Mayor Chow for plans to “cut the police budget and fire front-line officers.” This entirely ignores the fact that Chow voted for the budget increase for the TPS after their aggressive, scare-mongering campaign about what not getting their increase would mean for crime, which included an ad with a person being dragged out of their car at gunpoint. Bradford, who took 1.3% of the vote in the 2023 mayoral by-election, seems to think re-opening a closed debate with an advocacy organization’s account on social media will earn him points. With such a lack of political savvy, maybe he isn’t a shoe-in for Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s Parliamentary seat next time around…