A mural, a flyer, a poster

How to use the Manitoba Act when protesting

On Friday, February 18, 2022, after being arrested for her role in the January occupation of Ottawa, Tamara Lich was brought before a judge in the capital. On that particular day, the courts were discussing the terms of her bail, and it was proposed that her husband, Dwayne, serve as her “surety”. That means that, if she violated the terms of her bail, he would have to report her to the police.

Dwayne Lich was questioned on a number of topics, as the Crown wanted to make sure he could effectively act as a surety on his own wife. When they got around to asking him about his role in the protest, he started to ramble. On the topic of the legality of the protest itself, he told Judge Julie Bourgeois:

Bourgeois responded: “What do you mean, first amendment? What’s that?”

Dwayne replied: “I don’t know. I don’t know politics. I don’t know.”

Mr. Lich was, of course, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads:

The first amendment to the Canadian constitution that is still in effect is the Manitoba Act, 1870, which brought Manitoba into Confederation, while the first proper amendment was the Rupert’s Land Act, 1868, which shifted responsibility for the massive swath of land with the aforementioned name from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the new country of Canada but wasn’t necessary anymore once Rupert’s Land had been sectioned off into provinces and territories.

Dwayne Lich’s proclamation that he doesn’t “know politics” isn’t necessarily true. Dwayne clearly understands something about politics. Just not Canadian politics. Canada is, at present, a distinct country with a separate legal system, history, and political culture. This is something the Convoyists don’t quite understand. This is a group of people, radicalized in the years leading up to and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and who got their start in politics through online activism on an Internet awash with political commentary and legal perspectives that presume a kind of American universalism. Thanksgiving is in November, the President is everybody’s President, and everybody gets jokes about CVS receipts and New Jersey.

It isn’t just the Convoyists, though. Many Canadians have a tough time disentangling their understanding of the law and their rights (informed by popular American television and movies) from the legal and rights-based reality of Canada. This makes conversations about freedom of speech and limits on expression in Canada difficult. We have to start from a position of educating people on the laws and political culture of their own home country before we can even begin a conversation about expression and the role of the state.

When people in the United States talk about their “First Amendment Rights”, what they’re referring to is that their constitution’s Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to their constitution) ensures their government can’t place unreasonable limitations on an American’s freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, as well as on the freedom of the American press.

In Canada, those sorts of rights are covered by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section 2(b) of the Charter indicates that:

But, this being Canada, there are always caveats and exceptions to these rules. As we’ve seen over the past few years, increasingly adversarial, populist, and brash right-wing provincial governments have demonstrated quite clearly that the Charter is a suggestion, and that provincial governments can override it when it is politically expedient.

But three big issues have recently come up at the municipal level that involve limits being placed on the freedom of Canadians to express themselves and speak freely about issues. They’re each distinct, involving different causes, forms of expression, and jurisdictions, but, in each case, they present an interesting question: what role is there for municipalities in managing public expression?

Let’s take a look at those issues, first considering the specifics of each case and then looking at how each municipality deals with freedom of expression.

Now, before we move forward, I need to state rather clearly: I’m not a lawyer. I am but a humble social scientist (trying to bridge the social science/humanities divide, mind you) who is doing his best to understand the issues using the skills I have. Do not take any of this as legal advice and, if I miss something, don’t assume it was an omission based on malice. The law is almost purposefully complicated sometimes, so if I trip up, I apologize.

And, of course, I’ll be discussing homophobia, the tactics of anti-abortion extremists, and the conflict in Israel and Gaza, so be kind to yourself and only proceed if you’re feeling up to it.

Bicycles in Markham

Last summer, Vancouver-based artist Julian Yi-Zhong Hou was approached by the City of Markham’s public art curator, who asked if Hou would like to be part of the city’s Façade Public Art initiative. The Façade initiative sought to explore the varying identities, cultures, and personalities that make up Markham. In much the same way that Canada struggles to distinguish itself from the culture emanating from America, many of the municipalities around Toronto struggle with a sense of identity, being so close to the largest city in the country. So this seemed like it would be a great project to showcase Markham’s strengths.

Hou, though not based in Markham, was a good fit for the project. Hou’s work considers his own “fractured identity” as a Chinese Canadian and explores issues of queerness and personality, which might resonate with those coming to understand their own multifaceted selves in a suburban setting. Markham is a city where a plurality (nearly a majority) of residents are of East Asian descent and where a majority come from racialized communities and are recent immigrants.

The piece that Hou developed for the Façade program would eventually be titled “Bicycle”. This photo mural would showcase Hou’s friend, the gender fluid artist James Albers and their drag persona, Lady Boi Bangkok. As the Façade project website says:

The mural, which was designed to be nearly 39 metres long and 9 metres high, was going to be installed at the Pan Am Centre, one of the city’s “legacy” projects from the 2015 Pan Am Games. Yeah, remember those? When all we had to worry about was a new stadium and cleaning the place up for visiting athletes? Simpler times.

Anyway, Hou was ready to go with the mural and Markham’s public art curator was happy.

Then, the day before it was supposed to go up, Hou received word from the City of Markham that the piece had been cancelled. Hou, Albers, and even Markham’s public art curator were confused and angry. All they were told was that the city had “made a determination not to proceed.”5

Only after the City of Markham was pressured by the CBC did they finally release a statement explaining why Bicycle was cancelled. A city spokesperson said that the municipality has a responsibility to ensure public art is “inclusive and sensitive to all”. By making this statement, the City of Markham indicates that the visual presence of a queer person, particularly one who eschews the limitations of the gender binary, is inappropriate for the public realm.

Egale Canada sent a letter to the City of Markham on November 1 calling out the municipality’s response, indicating that they had “sided with the voices of anti-2SLGBTQI hate”.

Egale is alluding to the fact that there is a strong social conservative community in Markham. Many of those in the city from new immigrant communities and/or those connected to traditionalist religious communities maintain considerably right-wing views and are quickly drawn into culture war debates by political actors both within their communities and those from outside seeking to leverage this group of supporters.

In 2018, for example, large rallies were organized among members of the Chinese Canadian community to protest a municipal plan to house asylum seekers from Nigeria in the city. Markham is also where, earlier this year, a group of students protesting the York Regional Catholic District School Board’s decision to not fly the Pride flag was attacked by another group of students who hurled stones and slurs. While it may seem counterintuitive that members of historically marginalized communities would hold such exclusionary views, there’s plenty of evidence to back this up; the very first sole-authored paper I wrote found that the Fords, as a political movement, draw their support from recent immigrants and from those with a negative perception of recent immigrants, suggesting a measure of overlap.6

Social conservatives within the community may have put pressure on the City of Markham to cancel Hou’s installation. Or the city may have preemptively cancelled it once they realized what it would be about. In any regard, the municipality has done little more than issue a half-hearted apology for their short notice in cancelling Hou’s mural.

Hell in your mailbox

Hamiltonians are used to the images. They’re on street corners at rush hour. They’re on placards at rallies. They’re sometimes in your mailbox, whether you want them or not.

The images are of what appears to be biological material. It can be hard to tell what the photos are and, in some cases, there have been disputes about the legitimacy of what appears in these grainy photos, but anti-choice activists claim they are photos of fetuses after an abortion.

Hamilton has long been a place where Christian Nationalists and fanatical extremists have organized. There’s a reason the far-right Christian Heritage Party held its 1987 founding convention in Hamilton where:

Since 2013, the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform (CCBR), another far-right religious-extremist-led group, has been targeting Hamilton with what it says are images of aborted fetuses. This began after Chris Charlton, then the NDP MP for Hamilton Mountain, voted against Motion 312, a private member’s motion which would have established a Parliamentary committee to study “when life begins”. The motion was defeated, despite the Conservatives holding a massive majority in the House of Commons, in part because of then Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s desire to avoid thorny issues like equal marriage and abortion. This enraged the fundamentalists at the CCBR, who began selecting MPs and ridings to target. Their efforts paid off in Hamilton.

Their tactics drew considerable attention. They started with a banner over the Linc at rush hour that caused an accident after distracting motorists. They then began sending “postcards” to homes on the mountain, estimating they had sent 50,000 photos of aborted fetuses to Hamiltonians. At the time, one member of council led the charge against the violent images, pushing to get Hamilton to lobby the provincial and federal governments to put a stop to the visual assault.

And that councillor was Terry Whitehead. Wild, eh?

But that was way back in 2014, when life was easier. see above PanAm Games musing.

Now, the charge is being led by Ward 1 councillor Maureen Wilson. At council, Wilson advanced a motion which directs staff to report back on the possible development of by-laws similar to those implemented in other municipalities which regulate violent and graphic images sent through the mail.

London was the first municipality to pass such a by-law, after the dedicated campaigning of Katie Dean. Dean is one of the founders of the Viewer Discretion Legislation Coalition (VDLC), which brought together people who had been traumatized by the images, either because they had decided to end a pregnancy for medical reasons or had a miscarriage, as well as those whose children had seen the images. After two years of lobbying, the VDLC got London City Council to pass the Graphic Image Delivery By-law which protects people from the images sent through the mail. Rather than restrict the CCBR’s ability to send images, the London by-law requires the images be placed in an envelope, include the name and address of the person responsible for sending it, and have a clear warning stating that the contents of the envelope “contains a Graphic Image that may be offensive or disturbing to some people”.

The CCBR’s response to Councillor Wilson’s motion was to call the proposed by-law “clearly unconstitutional” and that it will be challenged in court.

Despite this, more and more municipalities are passing similar by-laws. Woodstock, Calgary, Ingersoll, Strathmore, Okotoks, and St. Catharines all passed by-laws to this effect since February of this year. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada is keeping track of these by-laws, and includes some helpful tips to keep yourself safe if confronted by people holding placards or making violent anti-choice statements including not interacting with these extremists, not attacking them (which allows them to play the martyr), and taking steps to prevent them from handing you graphic images.

Fines for future crimes

The final issue comes from Hampstead, Quebec. If you haven’t heard of Hampstead, it is an on-island suburb of Montreal. The municipality is surrounded by Montreal and borders another on-island suburb, Côte Saint-Luc. The whole town is less than 1.8 square kilometres - roughly 12 city blocks - and has a population of just over 7,000. It is also a municipality where, as of the 2021 census, 63% of the population identifies as Jewish.

Hampstead is known for relatively sleepy civic votes, but, in Quebec’s 2021 municipal elections, a fight over a controversial condo development spilled over into the campaign. That fight saw long-time mayor William Steinberg - a proponent of the condo development - lose to Jeremy Levi, a local accountant who had never held political office.

Levi, a Conservative Party supporter, earned the support of 55% of the population, many of whom were residents of an existing apartment that was scheduled to be demolished to make way for the aforementioned condo.

But, ever since the conflict in Israel and Gaza, Levi has made international headlines for his plans to change a municipal by-law to issue massive municipal fines to anyone caught taking down posters of Israeli hostages. $1000 for the first infraction and $2000 for the second.

The Hampstead council has gone even further, passing motions asking the Canadian government to move the embassy from Israel’s capital, Tel Aviv, to the city of Jerusalem. That’s a very old page from the conservative handbook, even becoming a Progressive Conservative campaign promise in 1979 that Joe Clark eventually walked away from due to the negative economic fallout of such a move.

Levi admitted to the CBC that there have not been any reports of anyone removing posters in the municipality and that the by-law change was an effort to be “proactive”. There have been viral images of people removing posters, but they seem to be the same few screengrabs and short videos circulated again and again by figures on the hard right in an effort to further enflame tensions around the issue, targeting women of colour, university students, and anyone they deem to be an “anti-Semitic” leftist. All part of the selective outrage brand of grievance politics so common with today’s populist right, really.

Original reports indicated that Levi’s by-law would fine people for removing the Missing posters calling for kidnapped Israelis to be set free, but more recent articles indicate that it will be the nuisance by-law that will be amended to impose fines on anyone removing posters approved by the Ville de Hampstead that have been placed on public property. The appropriateness of their using any funds collected under the by-law to support Israeli charities remains in question, as it might be hard for the municipality to determine the specific amounts of money the by-law brings in.

The law and the right

Three different instances of municipalities managing the freedom of expression. In Markham, the municipality cancelled a previously approved mural because it might offend those with conservative views on gender and sexuality. In Hamilton, the municipality may require warning labels on mailers it deems offensive. In Hampstead, the municipality will levy fines against those pulling down posters calling for kidnapped Israelis to be returned.

The question is: can each municipality do this?

Simply put, it would seem like they can. In the case of Markham, the piece of art in question would have been hung on a public building and the municipality has now said they don’t want it. In the case of Hamilton, our city council would be following the precedent set by other municipalities. And in Hampstead, the municipality can update their nuisance by-law as they please, provided they ensure the law is applied to everyone equally.

There is past precedent for municipalities managing free expression. The case of Ramsden v. Peterborough (City), for example, was a Supreme Court case that affirmed a municipality’s right to limit the information on signs and where those signs can be posted without violating anyone’s Charter right to Freedom of Expression.

And we have the case of Norwich, the municipality in southern Ontario that, this year, banned the Pride flag but did so by banning every flag, other than the town’s, Ontario’s, and Canada’s (and presumably the Royal Standard).

Even the Canadian Civil Liberties Association notes that:

They go on to note that they “work to ensure that any limits are reasonable and strictly necessary.”

Which makes sense. Municipalities may have the authority to curb freedom of speech, but should only do so in ways that protect people from actual harm.

Did Markham protect people by cancelling the installation of Bicycle? No. Obviously not. The mere visual presence of a gender fluid person does not cause harm. Anti-trans and anti-queer activists claim that the mere discussion or presentation of queer issues will somehow “convert” someone to a particular gender identity or sexuality. But nothing in reputable, peer-reviewed developmental science and psychology research indicates that queerness is a “contagion”. Indeed, the presentation of queer issues merely shows those who are already questioning their identity or sexuality that they can do so and still have a community. Showing queer bodies in public shows those who are conflicted that it is okay to be who you truly are and be authentically you in public. Markham’s decision to cancel Julian Yi-Zhong Hou’s work was an effort to toe a more conservative line and avoid controversy. But, in doing so, the municipality has turned its back on the queer community and given queer people in Markham just one more reason to flee to Toronto.

Is Hamilton’s proposed anti-anti-abortion flyer by-law protecting people? Yes. Obviously yes. If an anti-choice fanatic puts a picture of what they say is an aborted fetus in your mailbox without you consenting to it, that can cause harm. These flyers are different than what you’d expect in your mailbox. A Bulk Barn flyer or Rob Golfi postcard or Costco coupon book in your mailbox are designed to sell products, not cause harm.

Well, not unless you use all of them, buying 15 pounds of prunes and eating them in one sitting right before going to a realtor’s open house where they’re serving discounted, room-temperature Costco Caesar salads that you’re just expected to slop into your unwashed hands as you look at someone else’s parquet floors. You’re sweating and you’re nervous, because the prunes are making their presence known. But you’re stuck. Another group is looking at the only washroom. You start to panic, your brow now coated in sweat, the tangy mayonnaise dressing dripping through your fingers. The croutons are turning to mush and sliding onto the floor. The young realtor bro is talking about the bones of the house, but all you can focus on is the tumult in your tummy. The prunes are a punishment from a vengeful almighty being, ashamed of your gluttony and your hubris and the uninspired earth tones on the living room wall of this pitiful little semi-detached on the Central Mountain. There shall be no Prune God but I and this shall be my mountain! the prunes thunder, coursing through your system with speed and purpose. The tepid salad joins the prune crusade and tears well in your eyes. You want to ask the realtor if there’s another washroom, but you can’t. Because he’s looking right at you. And he’s smiling. And in that moment, you know he’s on the side of the prunes. They’re all in it together. They always have been. They always will be. Prune and realtor and salad are one. And it’s too late. You close your eyes and whisper a prayer to the Prune God. Fade to earth tones.

Where was I? Oh yeah: A by-law requiring that graphic images are covered and can be traced back to an identifiable group makes sense; people who have had trauma relating to pregnancy or medical procedures should not be surprised by such images and anyone with complaints should know where to direct them. And, in this case, this does not restrict the freedom of expression of groups like CCBR. Instead, it changes the way in which they present their message.

Is Hampstead’s update to their nuisance by-law protecting people? Well…umm…maybe? Obviously maybe. If the by-law is updated to prevent people from tearing down all posters approved by the municipality and Hampstead’s town council doesn’t selectively approve posters, then it could be seen as a potential positive. But if the municipality passes this by-law and then is approached by a group like Independent Jewish Voices or any other organization calling for a ceasefire for poster approval, they’d be obligated to ensure those posters went up and were protected as well. Ultimately, Hampstead might be backing itself into a corner when they could have simply not made any comment about the posters at all. But, judging by Levi’s $1,550 donation to the federal Tories earlier this year, it is entirely possible this is political theatre designed to elevate the career of a promising new politician.

Municipalities have a role to play in protecting free expression in Canada. They also have a role to put reasonable limitations on that expression if it might cause harm to their residents. In each of these cases, a municipal government has identified an issue and has determined it was appropriate to place a limitation on that expression. While I agree with Hamilton’s approach, disagree with Markham’s, and am generally confused by Hampstead’s, each is a unique case in how a local government can manage what we see and when we see it.

Trustee time

Let’s check in with school boards! And, this time, we’re even getting a look at school officials south of the border!

Wages alive! and almost 50 years of on-the-job experience

There was some frustration online this week as the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) announced it would be unable to meet a 2013 commitment to ensure all employees made at least a living wage. A reminder: a living wage means what regular people need to afford basics like food, housing, and other necessities.

While many seem to be angry at the HWDSB, it turns out it really isn’t their decision any more. In 2014, the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act was passed by the provincial legislature, having been advanced by the Liberals with the support of the NDP. This means that central bargaining happens at the provincial level where the board is represented by the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA). The HWDSB lobbied the OPSBA to make a living wage a part of their bargaining priorities, but the OPBSA declined to include it. That doesn’t mean the end result of bargaining won’t include a living wage for HWDSB employees, just that it isn’t something board reps are really pushing for at the moment.

Trustee Elizabeth Wong says that the HWDSB will continue to push “so that living wage is at front of mind and the centre of the conversation when we go back to the table again.”9

Further complicating matters, at the board’s October 30th meeting, Trustee Ray Mulholland spoke about the HWDSB maybe making up the difference if there was any gap between a living wage and their employee’s new wage once bargaining was done. Staff promptly informed Mulholland that doing so would violate provincial law. In response, Mulholland voted against a motion to have staff report on the board’s living wage policy after bargaining.

The actions of the Ward 4 trustee are baffling, considering he has served on the HWDSB and its predecessor, the Hamilton Board of Education, for 48 years and first ran for school trustee in 1968. For someone who has been in public office for that long, you’d think he’d know the law a little better?

Trouble at the Lakehead

The Lakehead District School Board (LDSB) is the public board in Thunder Bay and some surrounding municipalities in the unincorporated area around the city. Back in September, the LDSB took the dramatic step of filing a court order that would compel Reddit to disclose the identities of users who made or were active on certain posts. The court order, which was only reported on by Thunder Bay news outlets in late October, demands Reddit provide them with “all data, information, names, email addresses, IP addresses, records, and other sources that in any way relate to identifying and contacting Reddit users responsible for the posts.”10 Holy school board overreach!

Thunder Bay news didn’t report on what the posts said, though. That was, instead, conveyed by members of the r/ThunderBay subreddit who were rightly pissed at this move by the LDSB. Evidently, the posts took aim at LDSB Director of Education Sherri-Lynne Pharand.

Sounds like a lot of drama up in Superior country. The poster could be anyone from an angry co-worker, to a frustrated parent, to an outraged taxpayer, to a supporter of former Director of Education Ian Mcrea. As an aside, the last paragraph where the poster talks about Mcrea is in reference to a professional misconduct allegation that was launched a few months after he retired as director and was in the midst of launching a campaign for school trustee.

The allegation claims Mcrea regularly used hurtful names for people, including the incredible insult: “back-stabbing two faced lemming.” Less fun are the allegations Mcrea engaged in fat-shaming, sexism, general bullying, and openly admitting to regularly saying awful things about Indigenous people. Slightly less terrible, but still not fun, are the allegations Mcrae fell asleep during a cybersecurity meeting, an anti-racism meeting, and an expulsion hearing, as well as regularly snoozing on a couch in his office during the day. The hearing wrapped up last week and Mcrae was found guilty, having his teaching licence suspended for four months.

But the LDSB motion against Reddit is a whole other thing. And it got Redditors mad. It made it to the subreddit r/news, one of the site’s largest, where it earned thousands of “upvotes” and hundreds of comments, including from confused international Redditors who seemed all-too-eager to give money to Reddit’s defence fund, and from many users copying and pasting the original comment in an apparent act of solidarity with the original poster.

It is unlikely the LDSB’s motion will do more than draw extra unwanted attention on the original post, so this seems like both a colossal waste of resources and an excellent way to demonstrate that kind of bureaucratic out-of-touchedness that is so quintessentially associated with school boards.

Toronto calling

A deeply strange story came out of Toronto last week. According to Global, 18 teachers at William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute exercised their “right to begin a work refusal process” due to what they said were unsafe working conditions.

The source of the problem? A nearby cell tower.

The 18 teachers claimed that working near the tower led to “health and safety concerns about possible radiation exposure” because of the electromagnetic field or EMF around it.

What’s baffling is that this whole story was reported as if that was a real thing. The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation said the process they followed was correct, the Toronto District School Board said they hired a consultant to recommend next steps, Education Minister Stephen Lecce made comments about workplace safety, and a spokesperson for the Ministry of Labour said they investigate all workplace safety complaints.

But…like…that’s not a thing. They know that’s not a thing, right? Like…it’s not a thing.

Health Canada reports that there are no known health risks to low levels of radiofrequency EMF that emanate from things like cell towers. Yeah, you can get some warmth and tingling if you’re in a setting where you’re exposed regularly to radiofrequency EMF that’s at higher levels than what is legally allowed in Canada for regular use (like in a lab or another industrial setting), but what’s coming off a cell tower isn’t going to cause cancer. As Health Canada notes: “The scientific evidence does not support a link between cancer and exposure to radiofrequency EMF at the levels permitted by Canadian exposure guidelines.”

Sounds like a case of mass hysteria that was taken way too seriously by the authorities and news media. But also concerning that teaching staff believed that, considering they’re supposed to be educators who should be capable of looking into these things.

America: Friendship ended with anti-trans candidates Now normal candidates is my best friend

Off-season elections were held across America on Tuesday, including many races for school boards.

These votes provided an indication as to how the hard right’s pivot from COVID issues to anti-trans panic and culture war nonsense has been going. Book bans, anti-trans motions, and pledges to stop “woke” politics replaced substantive discussions about student well-being and academic achievement after the fun of anti-public health measures stuff wore off.

Expectedly, scores of anti-trans, hard right candidates ran on Republican slates across the country, pledging to go even further in their quest to limit queer rights, punish teachers with differing views, and present a white-washed, unrealistic portrait of American history and life.

And, for the most part, they failed miserably.

In a small school district north of Philadelphia, a group of far right candidates calling themselves the “True Republicans” sought 5 seats on the Southern Lehigh School Board on an extremist platform called The P.A.C.T. This platform infused religious extremism with culture war talking points, and earning a Republican endorsement meant signing on to The P.A.C.T. Doesn’t that just sound ominous? One of the plot points in the recent AppleTV+ show Silo revolved around a document called The Pact and every time a character would say that, I got all creeped out. Bad name for an electoral platform.

Anyway, the True Republicans were opposed by the local Democratic slate. Except, in this case, the Democratic slate was made up of four Republicans and one Democrat. This lopsided political coalition opposed the extremism of The P.A.C.T. and focused on student privacy and well-being. You know: school things. On election night, the nominally Democratic slate won the elections easily, electing all five candidates to the board.

Across Pennsylvania, school boards once controlled by Republicans who tried to introduce Christian-based social studies and who banned queer-themed books and Pride flags, implemented bathroom bans, and restricted which children could play on which sports teams were all flipped as Democrats and moderate Republicans ran on platforms of being normal and not hating children and wanting good schools and stuff. Turns out that’s an appealing message.

Same can be said for the Virginia state legislature, where incumbent Governor Glenn Youngkin won the state’s top job on a “parental rights” platform in 2021. Youngkin’s Republicans pushed the parental rights line in the legislative assembly elections, which backfired terribly, giving Democrats control of both their state senate and “House of Delegates”, effectively ending Younkin’s 2028 Presidential ambitions.

While far right groups like Moms for Liberty (classified as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre) have made statements claiming they won’t back down from culture war issues, as the New York Times reported following the elections: “that era of education politics is, increasingly, in the rearview mirror.”11

Let’s hope the same is true for Canada.

Cool facts for cool people

• In the fifth edition of this fine newsletter, I wrote about Hamilton’s local experiment with daylight saving and a municipal vote in 1931 to adopt the practice locally. Now that the clocks have maddeningly switched again, it might be a fun time to revisit that particular edition. Here’s a link to anyone interested. Or you can check out this Polling Canada post on X/Twitter, asking if we should do away with the time change, and see the hundreds of replies that are simply “yes”.

• The deadline to file financial paperwork from the Toronto mayoral by-election was back in October and I’m only now taking a look at it. Some other folks have done excellent work on crunching the numbers, but I wanted to see how Hamilton’s own Nathalie Xian Yi Yan did in the fundraising department. As expected, Nathalie raised $0 and spent $0. That might explain why she only got 0.02% of the vote. Pulling in 180 votes, Nathalie was just 15 votes behind 2018 and 2022 mayoral candidate Sarah Climenhaga, who came in 6th and 5th respectively in those races. Importantly, she actually filed paperwork this time, meaning she’s eligible to run in the 2026 municipal elections, wherever she now calls home.