Just under 28,000 hours.

I’m not going to discuss the City of Hamilton’s Encampment Protocol at length here.

A great many wonderful people have said a great many important things about that particular issue. If you want to read something by and for people experiencing homelessness, please take a look at the People’s Protocol on Encampments at this link.

And a great many awful people have said a great many terrible things about this particular issue. If you want to lose a bit of faith in humanity, you can read (or try to, because this was Whiteheadesque in its incomprehensibility, and that’s coming from me, the local viceroy of spelling and grammar mistakes) former Ward 2 councillor Jason Farr’s profanity-laced diatribe against Cameron Kroetsch and the Hamilton Alliance for Tiny Shelters, which has whipped some Facebook folks into a bit of a lather. Don’t worry, he says he’s “not running”, but there’s definitely work being done between Farr and the city’s angry populist right wing to turn, in the words of Farr, all this “Social Justice Warrior” stuff into a wedge issue. They’re starting in the North End and will almost inevitably bring this city-wide.

What I will say is this:

Ward 5 councillor Matt Francis attempted to make an amendment to the Encampment Protocol motion on Monday, August 14 that would have “prohibited encampments unless allowed by a ward councillor”.

This motion would have allowed councillors to, in essence, bar people experiencing homelessness from their wards, creating a city where local ward representatives would create “no-go” zones for people in crisis.

A motion was brought to council which would have legalized, promoted, and formalized classism, discrimination, and a wholesale rejection of compassion.

This is the politics of fear and anger and hatred in action.

This is the weaponization of public policy against communities and against the most vulnerable.

This is political violence.

This motion was brought by Ward 5’s Matt Francis and seconded by Ward 10’s Jeff Beattie. It was supported by Brad Clark (Ward 9), Tom Jackson (Ward 6), Esther Pauls (Ward 7), JP Danko (Ward 8), and Mike Spadafora (Ward 14).

Let me be abundantly clear:

These seven wards must be the focus of a concerted and organized progressive campaign to elect bold, compassionate, intelligent, community-minded, reliable progressives on Monday, October 26, 2026. Stoney Creek, East Hamilton, the Mountain.

And we must maintain the wins we’ve had elsewhere across Hamilton.

Now is the time to start identifying progressive leaders in each of these wards that can step up and take on the challenge. Now is the time for progressives to organize and strategize. Now is the time to get ready.

You know how long it is until the next election?

1,166 days. Just over 38 months. Just under 28,000 hours.

We can’t wait until February of 2026 to make this happen. We can’t write off these wards. We can’t let the hard right keep going on like this, introducing motion after motion after motion that, at best, would make Hamilton a national embarrassment and, at worst, cause actual harm to people. We will not move forward as a community with them spouting hateful nonsense on social media or on local radio or in the Spec and community newspapers.

This isn’t going to stop. Every chance they get, they’ll push back against the progress we make by turning the worst and most unfounded fears of a small but loud minority of people into policy. On housing. On transportation. On sustainability. On investments in our community. On everything.

They’re being governed by their fear. They’re being pushed to act based on hysteria and assumptions and dark, internet-fueled fantasies. Fantasies of needle-laden parks and lawlessness and dystopic visions of San Francisco.

We’re all atomized and divided and stretched to our limits and these people are reacting to their fear and lack of control by lashing out at the most vulnerable rather than at the people who have created the conditions that make us small and powerless and afraid.

Now is the time to organize.

Do not let the bullies of this world - the Matt Francises and the Jason Farrs and every other cruel and cynical politician this city has seen - drive you to despair. Let their actions push you to fight for change with more passion than ever before. Let every one of their angry opinion pieces push you to meet with friends to talk and laugh and dream about a better world together. Let all their vitriol and cruelty push you to make your community that much better. Let them remind you with regularity of some parting words from someone who always sought to make the world a better place:

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”1

And so, with that, a call to action.

It is time to start organizing. If you’d like to be a part of this effort, the scope and extent of which has not yet been determined, please sign up by clicking the button below.

I hope to get moving on this soon. I’ve already had some great chats with some amazing, forward-thinking neighbours and friends. A lot of people are already on board. Now all we need is to connect with other like-minded Hamiltonians.

Let’s build the Hamilton we deserve, together.

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Tournez à droit

On Tuesday, August 8, there was a provincial by-election in Nova Scotia. No shame if you didn’t know about this. Not everyone can be as big a nerd as me.

The riding - Preston - was represented by Angela Simmonds of the Nova Scotia Liberals.2 First elected in 2021, she ran for the leadership of her party in 2022, but lost pretty handily to Zach Churchill. Subjected to a fair amount of racist abuse (Simmonds is African Nova Scotian) from Progressive Conservative staffers and even the local RCMP (which is all the more shocking when you realize her husband works for the Halifax Regional Police), Simmonds resigned earlier this year to focus on other projects.

The provincial byelection was pretty notable for a few reasons. First, it marked the first appearance of the far-right populist and anti-COVID measures “Nova Scotians United” party, which, according to their website is “the Only Party Addressing Human Trafficking and Sex Crimes”. If that sounds to you like a nod to Q-Anon child soul eating sex rings, then congrats! You get to be as sad and frustrated as me and all the other nerds who study the far right. But don’t get too worried; the party only earned 95 votes, providing further evidence that fixating on COVID just isn’t doing it for the fringe anymore. Keep reading for more facts about other Nova Scotia-based fringe right parties!

Second, 4 of the 5 candidates in the byelection were from the African Nova Scotian community, which is really cool. This comes after the 2021 General Election in the riding where every candidate was Black. Though no one can be sure, the claim is that said election was the first time in Canadian history where that happened.

Third, the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party flipped the riding, which has been in Liberal hands since 2003. While the Tory premier of Nova Scotia, Tim Houston, claims that was because of the party’s skillful management of the province’s healthcare system, the Liberal leader claims it was because the Nova Scotia PC Party turned the byelection into a referendum on the federal carbon tax.

There’s been a lot of chatter in the right wing media (like, a lot of chatter) about how this is a sign that the next federal election will result in a Blue Wave the size of which would make Brian Mulroney blush. Though Canada’s progressive media is pushing back against this narrative, so there’s still some debate about whether JT will pull off another win next time.

But the country’s conservative establishment has plenty to be happy about, honestly. Both the BC and Saskatchewan Liberals have ditched the “Liberal” part of their names (which hasn’t been well received by voters in both of those provinces so far), of the nearly 50 polls done since the beginning of March, the federal Liberals only lead in 2 of them (and, in both, they’re beating the Tories by just under 2%), and the dramatic (and entirely expected) collapse of the People’s Party has seemed to do nothing but put wind in the Tory sails.

At this point, websites like 338Canada are projecting something close to a Tory majority.

The prospect of that is more than a little scary for a whole bunch of reasons. Pierre Poilievre is a very different Tory leader than Erin O’Toole was and has been skulking around the right wing fringe with the other CPC Brat Pack members for 20 years, waiting for his chance to be Canada’s Prime Minister. And he’ll do whatever he needs to in order to make that a reality. The man is fixated, viscous, and deeply connected to all the right Ottawa consultancy groups chalk full of kids in short pants ready to make the next federal election unbearable for everyone but the most battle hardened to partisans. His political strategy, upon assuming the leadership of the country’s largest and best organized political party, has been to transform himself into a maple-flavoured Ron DeSantis, welcome back anti-vaxxers who fled to the PPC in 2021, and point to every social problem that’s been decades in the making, blaming every last one of them on Justin Trudeau.

The Prime Minister has responded with all the political grace and acumen of a concussed ostrich, giving his equivalent of William Lyon Mackenzie King’s “Five Cent Piece” speech every single time he opens his mouth.

It isn’t just Nova Scotia and it isn’t just federally. If provincial elections were held today, 7 of 10 provinces would have hard right governments. Manitoba’s presently a toss-up, which could bump that number to 8. Elsewhere, the right seems similarly ascendant. New Zealand’s once popular Labour government is headed for defeat against the hard right National Party in October, if polls are to be believed. Support for Germany’s far-right AFD is surging, Giorgia Meloni’s neo-fascist Fratelli d'Italia is riding high in the polls, and Javier Milei, the Argentine right-wing populist, Trump aficionado, and sideburn enthusiast of the far-right Partido Libertario just won Argentina’s bizarre open primary round of their three-ish rounds of presidential elections.

Sure, everyone might be dressing like its the mid-90s now, but people sure seem to be voting like it is 1980.

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at the right today, with a focus on some interesting things happening in Canada. Specifically, let’s check in with the hard right fixation on drugs, the anti-Semitic talking points that are becoming a staple of mainstream Conservative Party messaging, and the fracturing and flailing among Canada’s populist right fringe.

Esther Pauls of the Prohibition Party

Last Thursday, Hamiltonians were treated to a Spec opinion piece by Ward 7 councillor Esther Pauls. Never one to let science and facts change her mind, Pauls wrote a piece in response to Margaret Shkimba’s excellent article “Legalization and safe supply must replace ‘Just say no’” from August 1st.

Shkimba’s article clearly outlines the new research being done into Psilocybin (mushrooms), notes that overdose deaths and the opioid crisis are the result of criminalization and shame, and writes: “Drug addiction is a health issue. It requires health care not punishment.”3

Pauls didn’t take too kindly to that argument. Given her…opinions on health care, this should not be a surprise.

Right out the gate, Pauls calls marijuana a “gateway drug”, so you know where she’s going with this whole thing.

The third paragraph is a recitation of people who have been accused of committing crimes while allegedly on a substance. Let’s go through those:

• Pauls writes about “the young man in British Columbia who killed his father and his father’s partner while high on magic mushrooms?” Couldn’t find any information on a case like that, but I did find info on Thomas Chan from Peterborough, who, as a 19-year-old policing student, got high on mushrooms and killed his father. What Pauls left out is that Chan had suffered so many rugby-related concussions that he needed to stop playing the sport. And that Chan’s reaction to the drug was so severe, it is considered an extreme anomaly.

• Then she asks about “the young Colorado man who recently shot and killed his friend with a bow and arrow while an acid trip?” That would be Carlos Alberto Trejo, who had been using both cocaine and acid after a bad breakup and had a long, long, long history of violence and substance abuse.

• And she ends with “the 45-year-old man who stabbed his wife to death after taking methadone,” pointing out that this was “reported” the same day as Shkimba’s article was printed. This time, we’re looking at Conrad Iyayi from the UK, who killed his partner last February but entered a guilty plea on August 1st. There’s no reference in the BBC article on his trial to methadone, but right-wing tabloids in the UK printed reports that he had told arresting officers he bought the drug (usually used to treat addition) on the “dark web”.

The unifying theme with all of these cherry-picked examples meant to terrify people with no familiarity with drugs is that they were covered extensively in right-wing media, which fixated on the substance use aspect.

Pauls lauds the “Just Say No” program for…how many people didn’t do drugs because of it? “How many individuals and families have not engaged in destructive drug use or criminality?” she writes, sans proof, because how do you prove a negative? That’s like writing “The ‘I’m Worth the Wait’ abstinence-only sex ed program in Hamilton schools stopped thousands of local teens from having sex!” Yeah, no it didn’t. Some of us were just awkward and closeted.

Pauls ends with this absolutely laughable paragraph that reads like it came from The Beaverton:

No notes. Amazing. Just pure gold.

Nobody in her office thought to read that over and tell her what “cringe” means?

The article is just an awkward local blip in a larger, Canada-wide campaign to discredit the hard work of advocates who have been fighting to stop overdose deaths and get people the help they need.

There’s an excellent article by Carlyn Zwarenstein in The Tyee about the new hard right campaign for another moral crusade against drugs that you should absolutely check out right here.

It details how moneyed interests (in the form of private rehab groups), cynical politicians like Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith, and hard right journalists like Aaron Gunn are stoking fears among Canadians by appealing to people with “right-wing authoritarian personalities” who are fixated on “moral degeneracy” and are highly deferential to authority.

Listen, Pauls’s opinions are mean and stigmatizing to people who use drugs. They’re people with stories that matter. There are reasons why people use, but those reasons and all the other things they’ve done in their lives doesn’t mean that they should be harmed by an unsafe supply or punished for their addictions.

In an age when our provincial government gleefully cuts services and leaves people to their own devices, we need elected officials who will fight for better healthcare. That means mental health supports and addictions treatment programs in addition to pharmacare and dentalcare. Pauls is not going to be the person to fight for these things. But the least she could do is not stand in smug judgement and tell people all they need to do is “Just Say No.”

The Wandering Globalist

Earlier this week, an article appeared on a few different news sites. I saw it through Google News on CP24, of all places, but only read it when I came across it on the CBC. Turns out it was a Canadian Press wire story that a whole bunch of outlets picked up.

This article is entitled: “Poilievre's Conservative Party embracing language of mainstream conspiracy theories”.

This should not be news to anyone who follows federal politics. Poilievre has been more obsessed with the World Economic Forum than most People’s Party members.

But Poilievre was pissed at the article and, clearly not understanding that the Canadian Press is an independent body, tweeted this hard right word salad:

Ugghhh. Boring. Talk about housing, you coward.

The article notes that a Conservative Party fundraising email included the line:

"It's far past time we rejected the globalist Davos elites and bring home the common sense of the common people."

Hmm. “Globalist”, eh? That’s a strange word to use. Especially since its an anti-Semitic dog whistle.

According to the American Jewish Committee:

The Tories have to know this. They’ve worked closely with many organizations to slam New Democrats in particular over allegations of anti-Semitism, so to not know that the word “globalist” is a common fascist term for someone of Jewish ancestry is almost impossible to believe.

What’s frustrating is that organizations like B'nai B'rith aren’t holding the Tories accountable in the same way they pursue leftists. In the past few months, B'nai B'rith has released press statements condemning Sarah Jama, local Rabbi David Mivasair, Québec Solidaire, and Marit Stiles, but hasn’t challenged the Conservative Party’s increasingly extreme rhetoric.

The fact that a person who is presently leading in the polls to be the next Prime Minister is actively and enthusiastically calling out “shadowy groups of international elites” while his party sends out email fundraising campaigns taking aim at “globalists” should terrify everyone.

Granted, as Justin Ling’s report for the Public Policy Forum (Far and Widening: The Rise of Polarization in Canada) noted, the Conservative Party in particular has been ramping up the use of extreme rhetoric to rake in the fundraising dollars. But, much like Dr. Frankenstein, they’ve created a monster they’re growing increasingly afraid of. The report includes the unforgettable line:

“One Conservative MP said, bluntly, they have grown afraid of their own members.”5

But, importantly, the reason for this extreme turn is laid out immediately after that line:

The assumption is that, because “centrists” have abandoned the Tories, they need to dredge from a shallow pool further to their right to win.

That should terrify everyone. Because then the Liberals will start pulling from the Tories and the New Democrats will…well…probably just do whatever hairbrained scheme the kids in short pants running the show come up with that’ll end up with the NDP losing a half dozen reliable seats and picking up three marginals in weird places. Absolute goobers.

Anyway, the Tories are on the path to total radicalization just so they can win. Fun!

I’ll leave you with this Beaverton article entitled: “Conservatives explain why Pierre Poilievre attacking ‘globalist elites’ isn’t antisemitic”.

Somebody save the Save the Children Convoy organizers

The Passion of the Christ guy’s Q-Anon movie, the Magna Carta, and a Nova Scotia-based anti-vaxx libertarian party that got 0.24% of the vote in 2021 all walk into a bar…they immediately start fighting.

Yeah, not the best joke, but at least I’m laughing.

We’re going back two weeks here, but I just had to say something about this article from PressProgress.

The Convoyists (or, more accurately, some of the ones not presently on trial) are planning a new convoy, but, this time, it is to “save the children”. Which children, you may ask? No one is quite sure, but they’ve all been riled up by the right wing blockbuster “Sound of Freedom”, staring Jim Caviezel, who famously played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”. While the film’s director says the movie was inspired by reports of child trafficking he saw on the news, Caviezel went full Q-Anon, claiming that there are people out there, doing what his character does in the film (save children from being trafficked) except they’re taking them from Satanic abuse cabals.

Anyway, the new Convoy is being organized by, among others, Gordon Berry, who told PressProgress that the plan was to save children from abuse and trafficking, but also:

I’m sorry, where were all the concerned neofascists when I was a kid being subjected to the math agenda!?

All fun aside, Berry seems to believe that the World Health Organization and United Nations are trying to normalize sex abuse in schools. A clearly unwell person, Berry was also involved with the Atlantica Party, a Nova Scotia provincial party that espoused a weird blend of libertarianism and right wing populism that earned under a quarter of a percent of the vote in their last provincial election.

He’s joined up with Elliot McDavid, the lumbering man who violently attacked Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland last year in Alberta. According to PressProgress, McDavid believes: “Trudeau’s paying LGBTQ a million dollars” to promote “the sexualization and the grooming” of “children in the hospitals and at schools and stuff.”8

Of course, not all of the Convoy Classic folks are on board with the Save The Children Convoy. Cory Sager, who gained fame for leading a mob against Justin Trudeau in Belleville in July, has said the new Convoy is “planning acts of terrorism”. Fun!

Sager is an adherent of the “Sovereign Citizen” movement. I don’t have the patience to go into detail re: what they’re about (there’s a hilarious video from the British YouTuber münecat about it that you can watch if you have an hour and 45 minutes to waste), but what I will say is that they were birthed from the white supremist and segregationist movement in the American South, believe in weird stuff regarding capitalization of letters, the Magna Carta, and “Contract Law”, think there are near endless bank accounts with oodles of money in them in your real, super secret name, and keep getting into fights with cops about traffic violations. They would be hilarious if they weren’t such raging jackasses.

If this whole “Save The Children Convoy” doesn’t collapse over infighting, expect them to show up in the Toronto area some time in late summer/early fall.

Stinsexit?

There’s a schism brewing in Stinson! Stinsexit? Separatinson? Still haven’t found a catchy term for this. I’ll workshop that later.

Anyway, the Stinson Community Association has raised alarms on Twitter about a strange, anonymous letter circulating in the neighbourhood.

It points out that the SCA is a community-building organization, but that this possible rival group wants to either break off to form a new organization or work to start “re-writing the mission of the SCA” so that the group will address, in the words of the anonymous letter-writer: “have frank discussions about the impact of new shelters, homelessness and encampments, mental health and addictions services on all of our residents.”

As communities start to feel the full weight of decades of policy failures, it appears that some are working to take over community organizations to reorient them away from community building and more toward restrictive and exclusive advocacy.

This is a shame, especially considering there are so few active neighbourhood associations left in Hamilton. COVID wiped out many of them and many more are hanging on by a thread.

This effort by anonymous figures in Stinson is concerning and hopefully does not come to pass. But speaking of NIMBYs…

New NIMBY talking point just dropped

“Apartment living is for perverts.” - a homeowner from the neighbourhood I grew up in.

Some Vacancy

Another multi-part piece here! Two interesting articles appeared in the local media about vacant land and a building that was made vacant.

Flippin’ the killswitch

In my spare time (all 15 minutes a week of it), I’m part of the Strathcona Community Council. It is fun to work with people in my community to put on events, lobby different levels of government on important issues, and try to make the west end a better place.

Before one of our executive meetings a while back, a man who was walking a dog stopped by, pointed at me, and said “I need to talk to you.” I wasn’t sure what I had done, but prepared myself to be yelled at about my opinions.

He informed me that it looked like a bunch of politician types were sitting around, talking about things. I was flattered at the descriptor, but told the man that we were a neighbourhood association working on planning a community event. He told me that was a relief, because he didn’t “want no soup kitchen or anything opening in the park”. He then gave me his opinions on encampments, poverty, and a host of other issues in the neighbourhood (all while telling me that he didn’t live in Strathcona), before pointing to a convenience store near the corner of Strathcona Ave. and King Street.

“There are weird skateboard raves that happen back there, you know?” he said/asked. I politely repeated the goal of the community association, thanked him for his opinions, and went back to my meeting.

Fast forward to last week when this article appeared in the Spec about “Th3 Killroom”, an underground punk venue and skate park that was operating out of the back of a bizarre apartment building…right behind that convenience store!

The man was right! There were skateboard raves happening there!

The space was a multi-purpose location for skateboarders, youth, and punk aficionados who all wanted a unique, local, secret spot to hang out and get to know one another.

An interview with the person who ran the space, Anthony Tarasio, gives us some insight into what Th3 Killroom was like: it looked like an old butcher’s processing facility, and was a safe and inclusive space for people of all gender identities and interests.

While the space was investigated by the city for alleged noise complaints, the Spec article indicates that neighbours never really had a problem with the location and the crowds were present, but polite.

Even though I didn’t know about the site (I’m more of an indie/electronic/new wave guy), I’m sad that it is gone. That corner has always seemed like a mishmash of weird buildings that are lightly used, so to lose another use seems like a shame.

Here’s hoping it isn’t gone for long!

That’s a lot

There’s a big, empty lot on the south side of Cootes Drive, just as you enter Dundas. Slowing down from 80 km/h (or 120 km/h, judging by most people’s speeds), and flying past “Caution! Turtle Crossing!” signs, you come up on the confusingly named “Dundas Street/East Street North and Cootes Drive” intersection (East Street South is up a bluff and in an entirely different neighbourhood).

Everything on the south side of Cootes is owned by 50 Cootes Hamilton Inc., a company based out of Woodbridge and run by Jaswinder Singh Grewal. Now that’s a fairly common name, but there’s a Jaswinder Singh Grewal who is a real estate agent (who presently has listings in Toronto and Brampton) with Nanak Realty that works out of an office in Toronto that’s in the far northwest corner of the city, sandwiched between Woodbridge and Brampton. If I were a betting man…

On the southwest side of the intersection is a giant gravel lot that one was a Canadian Tire store. That store moved to University Plaza a while ago (taking over a spot once occupied by a Metro grocery store) and the former location was demolished, but not before some hefty restrictions were placed on the site. The new owners can’t operate or lease to anyone who might operate:

• A food supermarket, grocery store or wholesale or retail food store,

• Any store where incidental food sales are more than five per cent of the retail area,

• An auto parts supply, sale or service store,

• A gas station,

• An auto rental or repair store,

• A hardware or home improvement store,

• A store that sells plumbing, electrical and building supplies,

• A paint or wallpaper store,

• A horticultural nursery or garden centre, or

• Any store that sells or services men’s and women’s clothing and accessories.

Looks like all that place could be is a bathhouse, a cat food store, or a used book shop. Either way, I’m excited!

The restrictive covenants on the site come from an agreement between Metro and Canadian Tire to restrict competition, which really sucks. Add to that the fact that the site can only be residential and no more than six storeys, must have floodproofing approval from the Conservation Authority, and have tested soil samples submitted to the Ministry of the Environment, and we’re looking at a fairly narrow use for a pretty big lot.

Back in December of 2022, city bylaw officials noticed that the site seemed to be serving as a parking lot and “transit terminal” for large trucks, which was also a use not permitted on the site. A follow-up earlier this year found the same issue, so the city filed a bylaw violation charge on the company. The company brought the city to court, and the city’s lawyers realized the whole thing was a little shaky and withdrew the charges.

That issue is slightly less concerning than the fact that a massive property in Dundas, within walking distance to McMaster and a whole host of amenities, that’s zoned for housing, is just…sitting. Empty. Being used illegally as a parking lot for trucks.

We’re in a housing crisis and a giant lot, and that would be the ideal location for a 6 to 12 storey mixed use apartment (ground floor retail, ample patio space for restaurants or cafes, little parking, ample bike storage, rooftop patios, maybe a microbrewery, the aforementioned bathhouse, cat food store, or used book shop…) which would be a huge draw for the area. But it is sitting empty, being used for parking.

Just another wonderful example of how blisteringly inefficient the market is at providing realistic options in this present crisis.

Cool facts for cool people

• Controversial Waterloo Region District School Board trustee Mike Ramsay will not have an integrity commissioner investigation against him after all. Turns out too much time has elapsed between his actions and the complaint being filed. The populist right wins this round on a technicality!

• Sad news in the Hamilton heritage and history community. The family of Brian Henley, one of the city’s great historians, announced he passed away a short time ago. I always loved Brian’s work. We need people to tell the stories of our community, and he did so with such ease and in such an enjoyable way. His passing is a huge loss for this city.

• In more sad news, Meghan Bragg, a 37-year-old councillor in Westville, Nova Scotia passed away on July 31. Bragg was a huge advocate for her community and sought to provide more accessible playground options for youth with disabilities. In her honour, the town has begun raising money to add those accessible playground structures to a local park, which will be named Meghan’s Place in her honour.

• Next Tuesday, August 22, Stop Sprawl will be having a rally at the corner of Queenston and Nash to oppose the Ford government’s plans to destroy the Greenbelt. Head on over to Stoney Creek at 5:30 PM for a great rally that will hopefully show Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MPP Neil Lumsden that Hamiltonians aren’t buying what Ford is selling!