Some programming notes:

1. The Sewer Socialists will be taking next week off! I’ll be heading out of town with my partner for a bit, so I won’t have all that much time to put together a newsletter for next Thursday. Your regularly scheduled newsletter will be back again on Thursday, June 20th.

2. Twitter’s gone to hell, eh? The Little Emerald Prince who bought the thing has gone off and limited how many tweets people can read a day...maybe. Some folks say they aren’t having issues. Regardless, his justification is nonsense and this move is just another in a long line of changes that will inevitably render the platform unusable. He wanted to turn it into a mainstream Parler (the far right wing social media site), but all he’s succeeded in doing is smashing it with a hammer and calling the new dents “improvements”. I haven’t been posting links to the newsletter on my Twitter, but you’re more than welcome to boost it on yours.

3. The potential Torstar/Postmedia merger will be bad for everyone. When I started this newsletter, I made one thing clear: I’m not a journalist. I’m like an unpaid opinion columnist. I try to blend the news with a healthy dose of humour, ideology, and local focus. But I still rely on news outlets to give me the essential background needed to tell a compelling story. Every good writer always cites their sources, and I try to do that regularly. But this merger will centralize media control in Canada into the hands of a very small number of very wealthy people. Canada’s tendency to slouch toward oligarchy means that you’ll get poorer quality news that doesn’t consider local issues and that does not provide the freedom to journalists that they need to do their jobs well. Plus, blending Canada’s Liberal and Conservative-supporting papers will mean a further centralization of political opinion and the silencing of progressive voices. This is bad. Tell your MP that you think the merger shouldn’t happen and throw your support behind some awesome local journalism (obligatory Joey shout-out).

A Troublesome Doug.

I’ll be the first to admit that my cursive writing is probably not the best. Here, I’ll show you.

I remember learning it from those take-home workbooks you could get from the teacher’s supply store. My parents brought me in to one that was across the street from Lime Ridge Mall, hoping to push my academics along a little (oops went too far now I have a doctorate someone please hire me). The cursive book had neat little lines that you could follow to make the curves and swoops in each letter, guiding you along to build up the muscle memory.

I always liked doing the “z”. Such a bizarre little letter to write in cursive. It felt like I was writing in a different language. Like I needed to set aside a little part of my brain that would flick on every time I saw a cursive “z” that would remind me it was a “z”. Just like that part of my brain that jumps to life every time I see the letter “z” and pronounce it “zed”. Same part of my brain will scream “lef-ten-ant” if anyone pronounces it “lieutenant” and “Grade 8” if anyone ever says “Eighth Grade”. I guess that bit of my brain is a bastion of nationalist linguistics.

I don’t use cursive in everyday life. If I’m writing by hand, I’m using my sloppy printing style with little self-drafted shorthand clues thrown in. If I’m signing my name, I just scribble something that looks like a “CH” and then a long, angry line for my last name. But, most of the time, I’m typing on a computer. Because of course I am. I can bang out the 261 words you read right before the number “261” in 5 minutes. Would take forever if I had to do all this in cursive.

And then what am I supposed to do? Mail you my newsletter? Who am I? Phyllis Schlafly?

When the Ford Government announced they would be reintroducing mandatory cursive writing instruction this coming September, my initial reaction was “well that’s dumb”. And then, about seven seconds later, my second reaction was “no, wait, that tracks”.

Not because I think cursive is a great thing to have in schools. Sure, Global was able to find a bunch of academics who said it was important to have cursive writing instruction (while simultaneously admitting there hasn’t been much research on the topic), but that’s not the point.

The point is that this is just oh so typical of the Ford Government’s governing style, which I have come to call “Nostalgia-Imbued, Populist, Eclectic, and Kakistocratic” or “NIPEK”.

Nostalgia-Imbued because of Doug’s folksy harkening to a simpler time when we all drove to work, drove back home to the suburbs, and then drove to the straight, nuclear, normal family cottage on the weekend. Populist because populism is a “thin” ideology (it can be layered onto anything from far right nationalism to leftist libertarianism) that simply means the elites in power tell people that they’re fighting the elites. Eclectic because the provincial government meddles just a little bit in everything, all depending on what Doug’s feeling or whomever he wants to screw over on any given day. And Kakistocratic because that’s a seventeenth century term for “government by the worst and least qualified citizens” (from the Greek kakistos meaning worst).1

And to understand why, we have to understand the Fords.

Ford Nation

In my academic work, I’ve referred to the general political grouping around the Fords as “Ford Nation”. The family has called it that (and it is a family affair, hence the references to the “Fords” plural), the media has called it that, and it was the general term for the family’s supporters during their time in Toronto municipal politics. Once Ford is defeated (or, more likely, retires after a couple of terms), the Progressive Conservative Party will have to pick up the pieces and rediscover themselves again.

They’ve done that in the past. Under Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, they were the neoliberal run fast and smash things party of the 90s. Under Tim Hudak, they were your granddad’s conservative party, like a caricature of the Reform Party from Royal Canadian Air Farce. Under Patrick Brown, they were what the Liberal Party will be under Bonnie Crombie. And, now, they’re Ford Nation. Who knows what they’ll be next?

(Ominous music plays as the long, tendril-like fingers of Tanya Granic Allen curl around the back of the author’s chair, her movements only halted upon spotting the Pride flag on his desk. The room is filled with her shrieks as she recoils in horror.)

Regardless, Ford Nation is an identifiable entity that, for better or worse (let’s go with the latter), runs this province.

In his “autobiography”/political manifesto, Doug wrote that the Ford Nation philosophy is:

1. customer service,

2. shrink government,

3. “stopping the gravy train”, and

4. subways.2 

I’m not joking. That’s in the book. See:

In my first solo authored academic paper, I described the Fords thus:

There was something I didn’t capture in my description of “Ford Nation” that is really important here. The Fords are salespeople. They know how to sell their brand and, oh boy, do they sell it.

That’s where the whole NIPEK thing comes in. The Fords, like any good salespeople, recognize that the product they are selling isn’t great. They’re selling working people solutions that will actively and enthusiastically make their lives harder. So they need to spice things up and throw in some little ad-ons. Things like “buck-a-beer” and privatized weed sales and a giant spa at Ontario Place are dumb little accoutrements that also happen to be reflective of their underlying philosophy. Corporate control, small government, the freest of the free markets. Pump up the sexy stuff so that the overall trend toward privatization and corporate control doesn’t seem so bad.

But the Tories have a problem. Canadian conservatives always do. Their base is…broad. Rural and suburban, very white and very diverse, fifth generation folks in the Ottawa Valley and new Canadians in the suburbs of Markham.

So the little accoutrements end up being wildly eclectic. We get things like cursive back in schools and forcing kids to learn times tables again. We get dumb little battles with teacher’s unions and a brand new subway in Toronto. We get a commitment to pave the Greenbelt and a new provincial park.

This lemon is no party

But we have to remember what they’re actually selling. Yeah, the new toaster oven, iPad, kitten, and free undercoating are shiny and interesting and all, but, at the end of the day, let’s not forget they’re selling us a Pontiac Aztek.

The Fords are trying to push Ontario rightward, but in a very specific way. They want government to be as slim and ineffective as possible so that corporations can pick up the slack.

Because of course they do. The family runs a corporation.

They can’t throw truly essential services to the open market because that would be disastrous. A great example comes from firefighting services in the 1800’s. Early firefighting teams in the UK were paid by insurance companies and only told to extinguish fires of homes that were insured by them and, in the US, different brigades would sometimes get into actual fights, with some demanding compensation to provide their services.4 So no one barely anyone wants to go back to that.

But, like 1989’s Rick Moranis, the Fords are obsessive over shrinking things. Which actually works out for them, because competition means the potential that one company will undercut another or start charging less to generate interest, and they don’t want that. They just want the functions of the state to be taken over by corporations that bid for single contracts. Then people with money (like the Fords) can invest in those companies. The companies won’t get the backlash when something goes wrong, because they’re just providing the service. The state gets the backlash, and voters punish politicians for the mistakes of a corporation.

Consider this section from Ford Nation when Rob was mayor and Doug was his handler/confidant/supervisor/Dick Cheney:

All of the little “inefficiencies” Doug saw in how Toronto managed garbage collection could have been addressed while still keeping it unionized and public. Change managers in the city, provide incentives for creative thinking, offer benefits that attract good workers, and actually value the input of those employees. But, nooooooo, the contract just had to go to Green For Life.

And let’s just spell this out to be real clear about why that’s important:

1. Green For Life is a waste management company founded by former hockey player Patrick Dovigi.

2. Patrick Dovigi donated $1,000 to Rob Ford’s mayoral campaign in 2010.

3. When Rob Ford won that race, he worked to convince a council made up of his allies (including Doug) to privatize garbage collection.

4. The contract for the privatized garbage collection that was then won by Green For Life.

5. Return to point 1.

But, remember, in Doug’s own words: “Ford Nation is not about…whether someone is wealthy or not. Ford Nation is about standing up to the political elite…”7

Deco Labels Presents: GO Transit, a Loblaws Transit Experience - brought to you by RBC; RBC - Banking on the GO.

Let’s look at another example (actually the example that inspired me to write this piece): the selling of naming rights to GO stations.

The Brampton GO station will undergo a name change soon. The new name for the station will be Brampton Innovation District GO after Metrolinx sold the 10 year naming rights to the station to…the City of Brampton? The comes after last year’s renaming debacle where the Oshawa GO station was renamed “Durham College Oshawa GO”, despite Durham College being nearly 12 kilometres to the north of the station, which works out to a 30 minute bus ride or 2 hour walk.

I know some people are calling this “dystopian”, but like…you try to submit a manuscript for a YA book where corporations run everything and all the elected officials who are put into power by frightened worker drones do nothing but cackle and make their rich friends richer and all you’ll get back is a polite rejection letter telling you that whole premise is cliché as hell.

There’s no good reason to do this. Metrolinx had a $946.2 million dollar shortfall at the end of the 2021-2022 business year (remember…pandemic, so let’s not read too much into that…their shortfall in 2016-2017 was only $262.8 million). But the province estimates that it’ll earn between $50,000 and $500,000 per year for selling station naming rights.8 For context, in the 2021-2022 business year, Metrolinx pulled in over $330,000 per day in fare revenue. Two days worth of GO train trips and they’ve already made more money than selling the naming rights for the Old Cummer station to the Stag Shop will get them in a year.9

Doesn’t it just make you want to pull your face off?

This move toward privatizing everything and making life generally worse for Ontarians hasn’t slowed the PC’s roll! The Tories are almost as popular now as they were last June when they won an increased supermajority in the Leg.

For some baffling reason, Ontarians just aren’t getting pissed enough to consolidate support behind one of the two major opposition parties. The NDP consistently fails to gain any traction while the leaderless Liberals hold nearly as much support as the actual official opposition, despite having no coherent platform at the present moment.

The province is on fire, those of us under 40 talk seriously about how none of us will ever have stable housing, groceries are 9% more expensive this year than last, the Premier is out there calling people on Ontario Works lazy, members of his caucus and inner circle are openly engaging in blatant corruption, the naming rights to our public transit system are being auctioned off to the highest bidder like they’re soul-sucking stadiums, and if an election were held today, he’d win another majority.

So what do we do about it?

A course of action on how to move on from Doug is going to be up to interpretation. Lots of folks will have different ideas about how we, as a province, can fix this mess. But you’re reading this newsletter, so here’s mine:

Holy hell we need hope. Like, we need a grand vision.

We need a provincial party that will come up with a bold, exciting, ambitious, grand, striking vision for the province we deserve.

A housing plan that commits to not just creating units, but creating them outside the market (oh so she’s on that again). A transportation plan that emphasizes high quality, affordable, accessible transit connecting all parts of the province and that says not a single dime will be spent on expanding any highways. A commitment to immediate electoral reform. A promise to provide more revenue to cities to provide the services that have been downloaded to them. Ending all moves to privatized health care and a reimagination of our public health care system so it provides high quality and rapid service to all. Extensive public consultation on merging the school boards (with the ultimate goal of creating one unified school system for each language). Expansion of the provincial parks system with a commitment to work with Indigenous communities to ensure collaborative stewardship over the land and water. Ferries. Mental health supports. Protections for family farms. Changing the ugly ass outdated flag.

And the party needs to get out there, be confident, and work in their communities. MPPs and candidates, on the ground, making life better for Ontarians. Not even saying a single negative word about the Ford plans on stuff. Who cares? They’re going to do whatever they want anyway. A reporter comes along and asks a question like “do you support the Ford government’s plan to kick every puppy?” and fire back with “The premier will do what’s best for his millionaire and billionaire friends. Under an X Party government, animal welfare will be a top priority, through robust funding for provincial wildlife safety, a commitment to create animal migration bridges over major highways, an expanded parks system, and support for local no-kill animal shelters.” BOOM, change the narrative.

Strong branding, a consistent message, an engaged grassroots that is asked their opinion before being asked for their credit card number, an executive that’s accountable, and a commitment to be better.

A party that acts like that is a party that has a real shot at defeating the Tories.

But that’s just what I think.

All I really know is that we need to do something. The Fords keep hucking nonsense nostalgia bites at us in an attempt to satiate a diverse base, randomly tinkering with the things that work in this province and actively trying to sell everything off that isn’t bolted down. They’re unqualified, uninspiring, and unrealistic. Truly government by the worst and least qualified citizens.

Ain’t that a NIPEK in the butt.

P.S.

Oh, and just in case anyone was surprised by Doug cutting the number of councillors in TO and implementing strong mayor powers, let’s all turn to page 85 in Ford Nation, shall we?

I’d suggest all Ontarians read Ford Nation, but…I’m not that cruel.

Cooper’s Mountain

A very weird article appeared last week in the Mountain News, one of the once-weekly suburban Metroland papers sent free to residents in their ad bags. Mountain News stalwart reporter Kevin Werner interviewed a mountain resident named Rob Cooper who has a lot of opinions on encampments, homelessness, housing policy, and JP Danko.

Some select quotes are:

• “My street has become an encampment,”

• “I have 10 houses in my neighbourhood for sale as property owners are rushing to leave my neighbourhood because of your [rental housing licensing] program,” and

• “How do you get these people some help? I don’t want Hamilton to turn into San Francisco. The city doesn’t have a plan to help those people who are now homeless.”10

Not too sure which street Mr. Cooper is referring to here, but that seems like a stretch considering most encampments are in the lower city and aren’t…in people’s yards. And property owners selling their homes because of a program that hasn’t even been implemented? Also the little Terryism there? San Francisco!? Why not just say “what, do you want homosexuals and hippies everywhere!?” but make sure you emphasize every 👏 single 👏 syllable 👏 in “homosexual”, queeeeeeeen (clacks fan vigourously 🏳️‍🌈).

These quotes are a combination of weird and objectionable, sure, so someone might ask why these were published.

But here’s a better question:

Who is Rob Cooper and why does he get a big write up in a paper that’s delivered to every house on Hamilton mountain?

In 2019, a “Robert Cooper” had another big write-up in the Mountain News about a (checks notes) bumpy landing he endured flying into YHM. But that isn’t really anything to write home about. And a “Robert Cooper” had some choice words about COVID-19 (including encouraging councillors to “[follow] the natural science”) in public correspondence with city hall. Again, not a claim to fame.

But being the President of the Hamilton Mountain Conservative Party Riding Association sure is.

That “Rob Cooper” has been a hot shot Tory (federal and provincial) up on the mountain for a while now (and has beef with another local Tory bigwig, Peter Dyakowski, a former Ti-Cat player). That same Rob Cooper tried to get city council to ban election signs back in 2021, which yours truly stepped in to save (honestly, the evidence shows signs can help marginalized candidates). During that meeting, he made sure to put on the public record that the meeting’s chair, JP Danko, had connections to the Liberal Party. Check the tapes. It was weird.

Hell, the Mountain Tory Rob Cooper has been a go-to source for the Hamilton Mountain News and affiliated Metroland papers going back to 2013. Sure, the name is common, so it is possible that this is a coincidence, but, being Hamilton, I seriously doubt that’s the case. I think it is far more likely that we’re looking at the same Rob Cooper all the way down.

Well, there are at least two Rob Coopers. I’m reasonably certain that the Rob Cooper who is the president of Alterra, a condo developer, is different, since that Rob Cooper is mostly based in Toronto. And this point is more bemusing than anything, but the Alterra Rob used his Twitter either to try and start a viral marketing stunt or, more likely, to try and Google search by tweeting for a while in 2011 and then left those tweets up, so, uhh, here you go:

Back to possible Mountain Tory Rob.

The whole article is bizarre. Cooper tells Werner that he’s seen people pushing shopping carts down his street and tells a second-hand story about a neighbour finding people sleeping in their shed. Then he actually blames the city’s rental licensing program for homelessness. He says, without any proof, that the licensing program (which, let’s remember here, hasn’t even started yet) has resulted in landlords evicting their tenants and selling their homes. In Ward 8. Yeah. Sure.

The whole article reads like it came straight from the Tory War Room. JP Danko, who has often and openly been discussed as a possible Ontario Liberal candidate for MPP on Hamilton Mountain, is taking heat from someone who is possibly the president of the mountain Tories for causing homelessness and negatively impacting property owners.

I don’t know if these are just supposed to be the quiet parts and I’m being terribly uncouth and un-Victorian by saying them out loud, but like…how has none of this context been added to the article?

Did the mountain Tories just call up Kevin Werner, say “hey, I have some incendiary and completely unverifiable comments about people experiencing homelessness I’d like to make, and I’d like to throw in a dig at a political opponent too, can we talk?”

I don’t know if Rob Cooper is stumping for Hamilton Mountain’s next Tory candidate (anyone have tabs on Mike and Esther?) or if Rob’s goal is running himself or running someone else in Ward 8 in 2026, but, either way, this article is just plain odd. A laundry list of complaints and second hand stories from a likely partisan with a strange focus on a completely unrelated civic project that’s been backed by a hotshot who is being courted by a different party.

That shouldn’t have been an article in any local newspaper. That should have been a blog post on the Hamilton Mountain PC riding association website.

This is a small, small, small city when it comes to politics sometimes. If you’re in the know, then you’re privy to who has ambitions, what the political power players are saying, and where people’s allegiances lie. The hope is that some of this city’s journalists have that knowledge, because it can be added as context to their stories or, at the very least, encourage them to dig deeper into why something is being shared in the way it is. But if they are in the know and choose to not provide that context at all, it implies they’ve taken a side and are doing their part to advance a narrative they know came from a political source. At that point, they’re not a journalist anymore. They’re a pamphleteer. Which is fine, just come out and say it.

AND if, by some stroke of incredible coincidence, there are multiple Rob Cooperseseses out there, why are they all being interviewed with such vigour by the Mountain News? Does everyone named Rob Cooper with a postal code starting with anything from L8T to L9B get a call from the suburban paper, asking their opinion on random things? Kinda seems fishy that something along those lines would happen. Kinda seems much more likely that a media-savvy political party exec knows how to work local journalists. Kinda.

So, if we’re talking about the same Rob Cooper here, I’m sorry he’s is frustrated with the city’s response to this crisis. I’m frustrated too (albeit in a different way and with a different focus). But I know that all three levels of government have a role to play in addressing it. Now if only Rob knew someone who was active in those other levels? Maybe that person, especially if they were an executive of the province’s governing party, could effectively lobby the folks they know to step up with the funds necessary to address this problem…

Cry about it

A Financial Post article went viral a few days ago.

After reading it, I can say the only coherent response is:

Though this response left in the article’s comments is excellent as well:

Waterloo Waterdid

A few weeks back, I wrote about the trustee appointment process happening at the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB). Far right activists with ties to the People’s Party of Canada, Ontario’s fringe New Blue Party, the anti-vaxx movement (specifically through the Waterloo Region for Medical Freedom or “WRMF” group), and Convoy-aligned folks tried to flood the school board vacancy application portal, with leaders in the WRMF group writing:

Narrator’s voice: “Unfortunately for WRMF, they didn’t realize that they themselves were the incompetent bumbling idiots.”

Only 19 people applied for the two vacancies. Always seems to happen with these chodes. They think that, because a Facebook group they started that recycles old Ontario Proud memes has 2,500 followers, they actually have a platform. Then they try to protest a drag show or a school board meeting or a free puppy adoption event because they think every Cocker Spaniel is gay or something, and a half dozen of the saddest, angriest people who have ever dated one of your cousins show up and are outnumbered 20:1 by counter protesters who can’t believe they still need to show up for this shit.

The WRDSB ended up appointing Samantha Estoesta and Joe Meissner to fill the vacancies. Estoesta ran for WRDSB trustee in Kitchener in 2018 and works in community engagement with a focus on diversity and inclusion. Meissner, who will actually be filling his father’s seat at the table after the elder Meissner passed away, is a biochemist at Laurier who is a huge cycling advocate. Early days, but seems like the WRDSB made two excellent appointments.

The far right is going to be mad about this. Sure, Pride Month has wound down and rainbow flags will be coming down at schools across Ontario (fun fact: queer folks have evolved to only need support in June…the rest of the year, we hibernate in a cocoon and don’t need any help), so the rage of the right might be subsiding, but this culture war stuff has intense sticking power among some dirty little subsets of the internet.

The worry about the WRDSB may be over for now, but there are only 1,208 days until the next general municipal elections in Ontario and you know those chodes are going to get ready for that. So stay alert, and stay safe.

Cool facts for cool people

• The mayor wrote an op-ed, published on Canada Day, about the council priority setting session. It was fine. I definitely would have left out the line “Not to mention a rich arts and cultural scene and our amazing sports teams!” given the whole “Honey Bee” gaff from one of the mayoral debates, but ain’t nobody paying me for my opinions so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The article lays out the broad priorities she will be pursuing, which are 1. Sustainable economic and ecological development; 2. Safe and thriving neighbourhoods; and 3. Working of city hall and transparency in municipal government. The grammar there is a little wonky, but a) who am I to judge and b) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The rest of the letter is a fairly standard issuance of long-term goals like more housing, safer roads, more public engagement, more city hall transparency, and better customer service. Not too many concrete things there. That’s a shame, considering many members of council are actually proposing real, actionable things that are going to go a long way to achieving each of these goals. More and more, it seems like the mayor isn’t necessarily the leader of what she calls “Team Hamilton” and more like the team’s mascot; someone who is present when you need them to be, is in all the pictures, and leaves the real work to the actual people on the field. Damn, you know Pride month is over when I start leaning into the sports analogies. But, you know, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

• The redevelopment of the Jamesville Townhomes bordered by Ferrie, James, Strachan, and MacNab isn’t going to happen any time soon. The Jamesville Redevelopment Partnership has been taken to the Ontario Land Tribunal by CN Rail, of all entities. CN contends that there aren’t sufficient plans in place to mitigate negative effects of the new development that’ll be 50 metres away from the east end of their massive yard along the waterfront. Because of this, the development has stalled and is unlikely to begin until the two parties meet on September 8th. And, even then, they might not get anywhere. The 91 vacant townhomes are in various states of demolition and have a massive blighting effect on the area. It is a shame that both sides didn’t talk it out before the plan for redevelopment went through. Or maybe they did and just didn’t tell anyone? These nebulous semi-autonomous government bodies and weird redevelopment syndicates aren’t exactly known for their transparency.