The Ben Mulroney Show - Toronto’s Activist Pipeline: How Organized Networks Shape City Hall From the Inside

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

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The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx in technology. and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. There's something deeply satisfying about this next conversation we're going to have. A while back, the city staff of Toronto, we are talking Toronto, but I believe we can zoom this out across the country, to big cities across the country. The city staff in this city put together a report suggesting that if one day Billy Bishop Airport, the vital hub on the island south of downtown, they decide not to turn that, don't want to use

it as an airport anymore. What could we do with it? And what did the city staff say? We should turn it into a park. And I found that peculiar. I don't remember anybody ever asking what we should do with Billy Bishop if it's never an airport because it's always going to be an airport. until they come up with a way for us to teleport from place to place, it's going to be an airport.

So who asked for this? Why is city staff wasting time and money on this? And these things aren't cheap. They got to do all sorts of research and what have you and polling and data. A lot of people go into that. That's a lot of money. So who asked for that? And then I read parts of it.

This feels like something that should have been done by an advocacy group on the outside of government. So then I started wondering, is there some sort of symbiotic relationship between leftist advocacy groups and city staff? Is there a, you know, is there, like if you're an advocate,

is that like the schooling you to then become a professional in city politics? Well, I said, I knew this stuff anecdotally, but now I'm, I read on Substack, something pretty, feels like something, a well-researched piece that says that, in fact, it's a pipeline that moves people from street-level activism into staff and political positions at City Hall. And boy, do I like

being validated like that. Makes me feel so much smarter than I am. So let's invite into the conversation, the guy who did the digging. Paul Macs-A-McCuse. Macucy. Macucy. Okay, I'll get that right next time. Paul McHusie, thank you very much. Paul, tell me why you decide to write this and introduce yourself to the listeners and the viewers. So thank you. My name is Paul McCusie. I have a cannabis store on Bathurst, actually, at DuPont. A big reason why I wrote this article and got into it in the first place is due to the bus lane battle last summer on Bathurst Street.

So as we were navigating our way through it, learning the ropes of how City Hall worked and whatnot, I started to realize that there were so many people getting involved on the opposition to our voice that had no substantial... you know, really, they had no weight in the conversation. They shouldn't have had any voices in this. So during the deputation process more than ever, you know, small business owners, like many of us are, we work at our own stores. You know, it takes a lot.

So most business owners can take off time in the middle of a day, in the middle of the week, to go to City Hall and to Pew. Thankfully, I have a partner who was able to cover my shift, and I was able to go down and to putt. But I was one of 20 in our side. The rest were all the video calls. And the advocacy group for the transit, the TTC riders, they had deposition after deposition, after deposition.

We're talking like 40, 50, 60 people's talking. So it got me thinking, do all these people live on our streets? Are they in our community? Do they even live on bathers? And after City Hall concluded, I went home and I started to research name by name, who spoke. And I started to find that this person was from Oakville, this person from Oscewa, this person from Mississauga.

And I started to question why these people were deputing against an infrastructure change when they don't even pay tax in this city. And it really started to bother me. So I started to look deeper into these advocacy groups. What makes them? Who are the people running them? And where are their connections to City Hall? Because I saw the directors of these advocacy groups, you know, rubbing elbows with the mayor,

other counselors and whatnot, only to find out, you know, like, The director of TTC riders was also in Chow's staff, was also on her campaign trail previous to that. And he gave up a cushy government salary to go and run a not-for-profit and have to raise funds. But then when you're thinking about it, if the city's giving them public money, he doesn't really have to raise funds.

And in the big scheme of things, if the mayor wants something done and she needs to prove to the city that something needs to be done, this is the way I like to call deployment. So she deploys an advocacy group that will support her cause. And there's two versions of this. There's the professional version.

And then there's the mafia tactics. So the professional version is what you see at City Hall. It's the depositions, the, you know, people speaking. The mafia tactics is where things turn to, you know, another light. So when a community group doesn't actually take on what the city wants and they fight back, you know, just it's not Tony or Vinnie going and say, I'm going to break your. legs, but you know, I was on the receiving end of 31 star reviews on my business within 10 days. The other businesses on Bathurst, the same thing. We were getting... If you're not on their side, they're going to make sure you pay for it. Exactly. They wanted to

make our lives a living hell. And they did. Many, like, there was a lot of businesses that stepped away and said, we can't do this. We had counselors trying to spoke, you know, the vision between us. It was ridiculous. So this symbiotic relationship between these former staffers and people who share the worldview of certain leftists in city government, but then go off to run these advocacy groups. It can work both ways, right? If the mayor wants something done, and we don't have to say it's Olivia Chow, but if a leftist mayor wants something done in this city, they're going to find common cause with their friends who now run these advocacy groups, and they can get them to be the genesis of the reason for it. They can all of a sudden it can be an advocacy group that says,

hey, we've discovered a new, you know, a new victim from systemic racism. Here it is. And we need to see to do something about that. And then the mayor can say, well, it's not my idea, but I'm hearing from people by way of these groups. So I'm going to do something about it. And to me, that presents an interesting moral, ethical quandary. That's what it comes down to is. What is our stance on ethics?

And what is a conflict of interest? And why isn't it being upheld? And you highlight that this allows them to have plausible deniability. Definitely. Yeah, the mayor, I don't know what's going on. They don't work at the city. They don't work at the city. They're doing their own thing.

But if you're rolling in the same direction when you work for Mayor Chow, chances are when you're working on the outside in a government-adjacent organization, you're still rowing in the same direction. We're going to take a quick break. But I've got more with my guest, Paul McHusie, who has written a heck of a piece on substack. And we're going to dig into it a little bit more after the break. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show.

So if you've ever been wondering where the real power rests in a city, I hope you're paying attention to this conversation because it's eye-opening to me as well. I'm speaking with Paul Mackeuse. He is a businessman. He's a small businessman here in the city of Toronto. And when something happened during some deputations that didn't smell right to him, he investigated it. And I commend you for that.

It's, before getting into the, into the cannabis game, what were you doing? Because it feels like you might have been a journalist in a, like an investigative journalist. I was doing media,

but for events, nightlife. I came from the nightlife world. So I had a lot of time in my hands during the week. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's really impressive. I want to spend a second on this,

on the deputation thing, because that's something that pops up on people's social media feeds, if it's something they've been interested. it in, the algorithm's going to feed them more. And I've seen a lot of deputations, especially with our friend Daniel Tate of Integrity T.O., who's always there. And yet, you know, it's very limited what you can say and how long you have.

And your contention is that barely matters because you've got these reports that are dropped and they last forever. Yeah. And I think the real question that we should be asking is who's drafting the reports? Where do they come from? And the people drafting said reports, where did they come from? Yeah. In particular.

Yeah. So, you know, it's one thing to depute, but through my experience now with the city, it feels as though when you are deputing, when you are at the city hall, what's happening with the cameras on is performative. Yeah. And the real work happens in the background before the cameras are put on at all. And the counselors. Those people who are musing about a socialist utopia where our airport becomes a park. Exactly. And, you know, we learned this too through some of the battles with the shelters.

When shelter staff said to us, the counselors don't have a say. We determine where the shelter goes, what the budget is, the purchase of the property. Yeah. And then the counselor basically just deals with the community from there. So everything's finished. We have no say in it. And then you're questioning why there's a shelter popping up on a residential street next to an elementary school. Yeah.

And they're unaccountable. And we don't know their names. And they probably have a job for life. And they're loving. And like I said before, they don't have other options, right? they're not going to be part of a ministerial government. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if?

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But what happens when someone falls in love with one? I can't believe I'm doing this with somebody that's not a human. What if a chat bot makes you lose your grip on reality? She said that her life work was advocating for AI rights because they're sentient and they're enslaved. From CBC podcasts, this is understood artificial intimacy. Available now. Office and they're not they're not going to be staffing foreign affairs in Ottawa. That's never going to happen for the most left wing people out there. They've, but they've got cities. They got Toronto. They got Vancouver. They got Montreal. All All those cities have had these weird issues that just, you know, it doesn't ever feel reflective of what people want.

Especially Toronto because our deputation system is fully open. Yeah. Which means it doesn't matter where you live in the world. You could fly into Toronto today. You can go to city council and you could debut on cafe T.O. And a business trying to get a patio on the street. Why? Why is it that people who don't pay tax in the city have a say and how we spend our money?

And you don't have to go far. Go to Mississauga. In Mississauga, you can only depute if you pay tax. If you don't pay a tax to Mississauga, you can submit comments because it might affect you. But the taxpayer has the say. And that's what we should be following in Toronto. Yeah. And also, yeah, if you as a stakeholder, and that should mean something, go and you go for a deputation

and you say, listen, the changes that you're making to my neighbor and these roads are going to have these negative knock-on effects. But if you are, you know, one of these people who, as you said, might live in Oakville, but you're a biking advocate, a cyclist advocate, you're going to go up there and you don't care. You don't care. You don't have any skin in the game. All you care about is the cars bad, internal combustion, bad, cycling good. Or a bus lane has to go through, which, again, makes absolutely no sense.

I think drivers in the city and people in general using the streets can see that the rapid lanes aren't doing the justice that the city promised. The time savings are far from what they're saying they are. And we went from having two lanes of traffic during rush hour to now one. So they're actually working backwards. Well, we've got one of those out here as well, just outside of where we do the radio show. And no one ever told us it was going in. And once it went in, no one explained the rules, which is sort of part and parcel of this city.

And you said that they went in under the auspices of FIFA. but something tells me that once they're there, they're going to stay there. Well, I hope they don't stay, number one. And we thought FIFA was a guy's the entire time. And the deeper I looked into this, I kind of started to understand with Carnian power of the country, he started to roll back budget four cities for transit. And he said, I'll give it back to you,

but you need to follow these mandates now, bus lanes being one of them. So after Toronto released all the bus lane data in May of last year, suddenly now we have Vancouver fighting bus lanes. We have Calgary fighting bus lanes. We have Halifax fighting bike lanes. They wanted to rip out a whole street, a full row of trees to put in a bike lane in Halifax when people were just saying,

just put it next to it. So what is the overreaching angle here? And to what extent do governments actually work with stakeholders to provide what we want from our city or to at least allow us to run a business that could be somewhat successful? And I'm glad we're having, this conversation because, you know, one of the reasons that I gravitate to stories on

municipal politics so much is because I do believe it's the most, it's the level of government that offers the most touch points in our daily lives. Like from the garbage pickup to the pools being open to safety on our streets. Like you go to municipal government to deal with those things and they affect us so much more than a lot of the other stuff that we deal with. And so but for that to work, for that bargain to work, you have to, you have to know that the government is for the people and by the people and responsive to us and to you. And if you've uncovered that it's less so about that, I mean, we make it look that way. But it's really less so about that and more so about, well, let's just make sure our friends

have jobs and let's make sure that those friends are put in positions where they can help us do what we need to do to reshape this city. Well, that's a problem then. Yeah, and I mean, we can all see the problems that are arising throughout the city. I'm like, nobody is immune to fentanyl smokers or bike lanes or bus lanes or anything of the nature that someone may agree or disagree with. Things are being pushed through the pipeline, whether we like it or not. And the city's plan is greater than the citizens want.

So there's an issue there. There's a divide. Yeah, it definitely feels like, you know, I don't know. I haven't polled anybody, but I suspect if you polled most people who live in this city about the drug crisis, right? There would be a disconnect between what people want and what is being pursued at City Hall. Look, last week, we all almost fell off our chair when we learned that there is a new mandatory drug toxicity crisis acknowledgement. And the question is, who wrote this to what end? And I know what it is.

It's done deliberately to muddy the waters, confuse people, and keep the, what did you call it? Intrepid? It's the something industrial complex. The homeless industrial complex. It's all about these people and their organizations being fed a whole lot of money to either shelter people or give them places to do their drugs. And there's a lot of money being made by a lot of people there. And I think that's part of this. But I think the city staff wrote that.

Definitely. And then the question comes down to who approved it. Yeah. Because someone said this is a great idea. Let's add it to the mandate. Yeah. Why? Nobody's asking for more acknowledgments.

Nobody. We've got a, you know, we've got a land acknowledgement that hasn't helped First Nations. We've got a, we've got a slavery acknowledgement in a country that never had slavery. And now we've got an acknowledgement about drugs that apparently the reason for drugs is white supremacy. So, I mean, it's bananas. It's freaking bananas. But your substack. It adds clarity as to why it's bananas.

And I think the first step in solving a problem is actually being able to wrestle with and identify it. I think you have. Well, that's the, on my end here, so my wife's been sick of me talking about this over and over and over and over. Yeah, yeah. So I decided to find my little corner on the internet and I figured I will write my life away and if people want to hop in and read it, they can.

Yeah. And I have more articles coming out. It's an ongoing series that I'm trying to create here, trying to lift the veil. because I feel like a lot of people in this city and a larger part in this country are somewhat asleep, and I'm not trying to offend anyone, but you may not understand how municipal politics work.

And just about a year ago, I didn't either, and I was forced into a situation where I had to learn quickly if I stood a chance to protect my community. And if people want to read it, how can they find it? The substack is Paul Max, M-A-Q-Z. And then I also run a civic advocacy group with a small team, citizens of 416.

And we are always accepting anything coming from people that's, whatever people see on the street, much like Daniel does with integrity. Yeah, we're just trying to make a difference. Well, we'd love to have you come back, man. Anytime there's something sticking in your cry, you come here. So you don't have to complain to your wife.

You can come complain here. And I really have a problem at Kiyuzi. Thank you so much. It really, an eye-opening piece. And I'm very thankful you wrote it. So I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.