Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - David Rider: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1913

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

On this 1913th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with David Rider, Senior Politics Reporter for the Toronto Star, about The Star's recent use of AI for a story on strong mayor powers, the upcoming municipal election, and more.Toronto Mike'd, an award-winning podcast, is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca.If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is David Ryder. I'm the senior political reporter at the Toronto Star, and I'm thrilled to be back in Mike's basement, post-pandemic, post-John Torrey. And I can't wait to talk to him about my newest project, which involves artificial intelligence, and anything else going on in the Toronto Mike universe. Welcome to episode 1,913. That's 1913 of Toronto.

Mikeed, an award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. I was literally just there. Order online at Great Lakes Beer.com for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma Pasta.com for more. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Catch a game at Christy Pits this summer

No ticket required Fusion Corp's own Nick Ieemis He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline And Mike and Nick Two podcasts that you ought to listen to Recycle My Electronics.Ca Committing to our planet's future Means properly recycling our electronics of the past

And Redley Funeral Home Pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today making his return to Toronto Mike, it is indeed the Toronto Stars David Ryder. David, good to see you again. Great to be back. Do you know this is only your second visit to the Toronto Micth Basement Studio?

Yes. I think there would be a cognitive deficit if I didn't know this was the second time I'd been here. But the third time I'd been on the show. But the third time I'd been on the show. Yes. So let's review the ongoing history of David Ryder on Toronto Mike. Yeah.

You were my very last guest. That's right. Before the COVID-19 shut down. That's right. And we joked about it. We're like, oh, what's coming as if kind of maybe nothing was coming? And then a whole lot of stuff came. It's all surreal when I look back because we recorded on March 13th, 2020.

You were in this basement that day. And that was the day we were picking up. I mean, I was picking up my kids from school. because the March break was the next week. We didn't go back to school for a long time. Yeah. This was the day, March 13th, Friday the 13th, 2020. Yeah.

And I think I went back to the City Hall Bureau. I was City Hall Bureau Chief at that time, which I've morphed a little bit since then. But I remember saying to my colleague, Jennifer Pagliaro, like, oh, see you later. And we kind of joked about, oh, because I think we're both taking time off for March. Like, who knows how long it'll be?

And then literally months and months and months before we saw each other in the flesh. Isn't a wild looking back that that happened? It's crazy. It is. And it's all, I feel like, I feel like it's going to take years, maybe decades for everybody to work through all the things. Like, you know, a lot of kids with anxiety, but also just my sense of time. And I'm old. I'm old. My kids joke about like when I say something is five years ago and they're like, Dad, that was 20 years ago. Yeah, me too. But I honestly think pandemic did mess with our time because we didn't have all those normal markers that we normally do. You're so right. And when I think about events and things that happened, I always think is it pre-pandemic or post-pandemic? Like, that's literally how I look at things. So your visit to this basement, that is the very last thing I can think of that was pre-pandemic. Because the very next week, I remember that Monday, what is that? So 13th, 40, 50th, the 16th of March, which was a Monday.

Peter Gross was at the door because every Monday he would come over and we would record his podcast, his excellent horse racing podcast down the stretch. And I remember telling Peter, I said, Peter, it was funny to say, Peter, I don't think you can visit anymore. Because I remember my wife was like, oh, you can't have people over. Yeah. Because we were instructed, you know, no one can come over unless they're in your bubble or something. And I remember telling Peter, I think we got to change our process here. Right.

And you went in the backyard. No, I did go in the backyard. You did some magical backyard shows. I remember you talk about Mike Boguski doing his magic on the... That was magical. Yeah. And your neighbor's kind of like, what's happening over there? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was some great podcast. So, I'm getting it. I'm going to speak to you as David Ryder. And then sometimes you'll be speaking as, what's your current title, of the Toronto Star? So I'm senior political reporter. So I'm the one and only. So yeah, do you want me to tell you how I morphed out of my job? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I'll jump into it. So, you know, I was City Hall Bureau Chief. I started in February 2010 when there was rumors that a guy named Rob Ford might run for mayor. And then saw through the end of David Miller's regime. And then all of Rob Ford's crazy chaotic time. And then John Torrey's Merrillty. And then my bureau.

helped him decide that he should end that sooner than he originally anticipated. Right. And then I oversaw the by-election coverage that ended up with having new mayor, Olivia Chow. So around that time, my boss checked in with me and said, listen, you've done that for a long time now. That was 14 years in counting, I think. You know, is there something we do try and give other people a shot at good jobs like City Hall beerjee? Is there anything else you'd be interested in? And we went through a list and she offered some things that, you know, didn't really turn.

my crank and she kind of said well what do you want to do and on the spot i said senior political reporter i will because i've have i've experienced covering federal provincial and municipal i can help the different bureaus as a utility player i can also do those stories that kind of fall between the cracks and sometimes straddle both of them like ontario place would be an example because it's both on it's both queen's park and city hall um and i'll kind of do enterprise stuff i'll go find my own stuff and do interesting projects and she said okay done and so i've been doing that for a while now. I guess since I think July

2023 and so far so great. I'm having a fantastic late career experience. I'm happy to hear this because I legitimately like you as a human being. I like you too. And we're linked by my painter. We are by the fabulous Chris Brown

my brother-in-law who's a great guy. Okay. So to remind people because I want to revisit. So March 13, 2020 was your first appearance on Toronto Mike and you did it in the basement here. Yeah. And it was episode 596. So what's that like being 596 and then coming back for 1913?

That's quite a gap there. You know, I guess it is a gap. But the fact is, I'm going to let people know in a secret that we sometimes hang out, me, you and Chris. Oh, I didn't know if you wanted me to say that. Yeah, well, I was purposely. It's not a dirty secret. So we just go to dinner and talk. There's nothing.

We're not selling illegal stuff or, or. or smuggling people or anything. So all that to say, it just feels to me like I'm having a chat with you, which I've always enjoyed. I've also... I don't record those chats, though. No, I know. And Chris and I have also gone to some TMLX's. So this just feels to me like an in-person back visit to the Toronto Mike Universe.

So it's all good. So that episode 596, here's the description I wrote at the time. I wrote Mike Chats with the Toronto Star is City Hall Bureau Chief. Who's the current City Hall Bureau Chief? Ben Spur. Great. Yeah, fantastic. You know what?

Why hasn't he been in the basement? I don't know. I know. Why don't you introduce me to him? Absolutely well. Great reporter. And yeah, super. And the thing is, another great thing about my job is I work often out of City Hall.

So I'm City Hall adjacent. And so I can help them out when I can or bounce ideas off them. I'm in the same weekly meeting with them. But, yeah, no, Ben and Ben Cohen. And Alicia Hashim is now doing 905. And Mattis Hababina, who's like a young firecracker of a reporter. All city hall, I left the city hall in fantastic hands. Okay, good to hear.

By the way, remind me at the end of this description, if I ever get through it, I want to ask you about a different bend. Sure. So in this episode was 596, Mike chats with the Toronto Star's City Hall Bureau chief David Ryder about COVID-19. So we were talking about it. Obviously, he was in the news.

He talked about your career. We did the A to Z of your career. The Toronto Star, of course, and how I know your brother-in-law, who is the aforementioned Chris Brown. The good, Chris Brown. The good one, yeah. There's a couple of good ones.

We talked about that CBC guy. He's a Chris Brown. Also a good one. He's apparently good. I think, yep. Right. So that episode, I was excited to nail the 90 minute mark. It was 90 minutes flat.

Like not even 90 minutes one second. It was exactly 90 minutes. But we did Zoom. Okay, before I tell you about the Zoom, because you did appear in February 2020. That's right. But I remember, because there was talk of like quarantine and shutdown and lockdown and lock down all this. And I played for you.

I said to Chris Brown, I said, hey, what music does David Ryder like? And he said, oh, he's a big Beastie Boys fan. Which is true. Okay. Which is true. Yes. Check your head sticker over there. Saw it. Yeah. So, but then I decided, no, we're going to go into isolation

when this pandemic strikes. I'm going to play for him, isolation by Joy Division. And I did that on my own, just with no intel at all. And then you revealed, when I played isolation by Joy Division, you revealed that Joy Division is your favorite band of all time.

That's right. And I tried to fish for my phone and I think I couldn't reach it, but Ian Curtis is the phone. It's a good test for me when I can see people who, a few people recognize, including Ben Spursa. Is that Ian Curtis from Joy Division on your phone? I recognize. Also, Councillor Gord Perks, a Joy Division fan. Okay, who's not running this time? No, you see, he's retiring from politics. So yes, yeah, that's right. All of that is true. And you, yeah, so you somehow psychiatric intuition. I find it incredible coincidence that I played that song because the title is isolation. and COVID was coming.

And it turns out that was actually your favorite band, not Beastie Boys, although you love Beastie Boys. I do love them. Saw them in Osaka. They were great. Unfortunately, never saw Joy Division. Yeah. Right.

They were going to play The Edge. That's right. And the Garees were going to present it. That's right. And tickets were printed, but we all know what happened on the eve of their North American tour. Incredible tragedy.

Yeah. And Curtis ended his life. Right. And Joy Division was born. And now are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which I was very excited about and I'm very happy about. That is great. Now, one of your Toronto Star colleagues,

I believe you were very close to him professionally. Maybe beyond that, you'll tell us now, remind us, but we talked about Ben Rayner. Yeah, fantastic Ben Rayner. So did you share a desk with Ben? I can't remember now. No, but I go back, way back with Ben. I go back with Ben to the early to mid-1990s

because before we were colleagues at the Toronto Star, we were colleagues at the Ottawa Sun. Right. Yeah. So I moved from Winnipeg to Ottawa and met this great crew of young, eager, talented journalists, including Robert Benzie and a whole pile of people I also later worked with. And one of them was Ben Rayner, who a beautiful guy and fantastic writer. Amazing, obviously knows music backwards and forwards.

And also kind of, like I'd say even back then, had a bit of the rock star charisma himself. we'd have a party and we'd all kind of show up at 10 o'clock. And then at 2 o'clock, 2 o'clock Ben would come in with like some really super funky people who kind of looked at us like what's happening here, a bunch of boring journalists. But a great guy. Looks a bit like Eddie Vedder.

Yes. Although, you know what the funny thing is, the first time I remember reading somebody, somebody in Now magazine, they were talking about this new band called Coldplay and this guy named Chris Martin running down the beach in the yellow video and they said, he looks like Ben Rayner.

So Ben Rayner just, he's kind of a, he's a rock star of rock critics because he apparently looks like a rock star. Have you been listening to any of the Ben Rayner catch up episodes on Toronto mic? That touched base of him a few times on this. I will say I am behind on my podcast listening because I was involved in this extremely kind of deep project for a while. I'm behind a whole bunch of things, but I'm aware. I have heard you talk about talking to Ben Raynor and I'm absolutely going to listen to them now that I'm kind of have a bit of more free time. Okay, because hello to Ben, who's listening in the Maritimes right now. Yeah.

And Ben, when you're next in Toronto, we got to get you back to the basement. And I want to see Ben Rainer next to him back in town. You can jump out of the bushes. Yeah, he used to be in my neighborhood a lot in the East End, so I used to bump into him on the Danforth. And my son's also a Ben. My son's Benson, but he'd always say, how's your, how's little Ben? And, yeah. So your son's a Benson.

Yes. A famous pop star is named Benson Boone. That's right. And I'm a Boone. Yeah, wow. Whoa. We're connected in so many ones. ways.

Are we related? We're just going to do 90 minutes setting up the episode and then we're going to write out of time because I have that WPBL thing. But you and I zoomed in, so you weren't in the basement, but we did a quick call in February 2023. And I'll read what I wrote at the time. In this 1,2002nd episode of Toronto Mike, Mike chats with David Ryder, the man who led the Toronto Star's investigation into John Torrey's affair with a Toronto

Toronto City Hall staffer. And then I had an alternate title. Everything you wanted to know about the John Tory sex scandal reporting, but didn't know who to ask. So we talked about a half an hour and got the goods because that was the morning that this, I still can't believe that sentence exists, but the John Tory sex scandal was revealed by the Toronto Star. Yeah. Well, let me tell you something kind of funny here is you got me mildly in a little bit of trouble. Oh, I would love to hear this story.

Not a lot. But so I had a lot of media requests. And I did a lot of media around the time we had that story because obviously it was national news, not only city news. Right. And you were one of the first podcast requests. You were right in there. And I basically. I say to my bosses, like, you know, I'm asked to do this, such as that.

And when the podcast request came in, one of my bosses said, you know, Toronto Star has this podcast. And we kind of want you to save the really good, juicy stuff for them. And I said, I've already kind of tend to. I'm definitively agreed. And here's the key part. I said, Mike said it's just going to be quick. It's going to be 10 or 15 minutes. It was 27 minutes.

I know. But you did. I think I would say, you tell me if I'm wrong. You do journalism, but I don't think you call yourself a journalist, right? I am interested in uncovering stories in discovering the truth and shining a light on the truth. But I don't think I'm a journalist, but I still have personal standards and ethics. And I think, and I agree with all of that. And I would say that what you do here are listening information.

in a fair, open-minded way is journalism. And I would say you did an old journalist trick that I do all the time, which is I only want a couple of minutes. I only got a couple of questions. And then you kept saying, but one other thing. And then it was going. And then it was going. 27 minutes later.

Yeah, one of my bosses said, you kind of gave up a little more. And I was like, oh, sorry. And I said, you know what? I do do that. David, I owe you an apology. You don't. It was great. And it was all five.

And then, and then you know what? I went on the Toronto Star Bot. And I said to the podcast, I said, there's other stuff. Like, I'm going to give you a new stuff that I didn't give Mike. Right. And I, I'm sure. How dare you? How dare you withhold from me?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you had me for an hour, I think I made it really trouble. You are, you know, that is my move. I got to say, especially if I have a rapport of the person. Because most of the episodes of Toronto Mike, I meet them for the first time and then I turn on the mics and we go, right? No rapport.

We build it on the fly. I used to work with a reporter at Toronto Star, City Hall, Bureau. Paul Maloney, who was a great guy, and he would do that, and the only people of a certain age will understand the reference, but counselors used to call him Columbo, because there was a, there was a TV detective. Yeah, exactly, be

like, and he had this, he was this rumpled detective, and he'd act like he didn't know what he was doing, but then it was always like, eh, but this other thing, and then they would say something that would get them in trouble. Well, I'm sorry I got you in trouble. I don't know, I probably did say, let's just do 10 minutes, and I went, you know, almost tripled that. It was all, but I will say it is probably

one of the very shortest episodes of Toronto mic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you said it was pretty well listened to, you told me. It was super. I remember, it was the most popular episode of the year, maybe. Wow. Wow.

Yeah, I believe so. I think there were a lot of people just, you know, you draw, because you have your Toronto mic fans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Believe it or not. But then this would attract the Great Unwashed, like it would attract the flies who are just interested in the actual John Torrey story. Yeah.

Well, it was, I mean, it was interesting to me as I reported it. It was one of the, I think I told you at the time. It was one of the stranger. stories that I reported and investigations, mainly because once we realized that there was probably something to this tip that originally I thought was probably not true, that we essentially had a small team of reporters and editors all like focused like a laser on this. And then John Torrey had essentially a war room of advisors on his side. And I was, I was, I did more negotiating that I did writing on that. Ben Spur wrote a lot of it. And then I was sort of filling in the details with

what I got. So I was, I kind of felt like landing a plane. So that was a, I understand. And then also just, it seems so out of character for John Torrey. I understand why there was obviously huge interest in it. And then he resigned, which made it like a, like went from being a huge story to like a nuclear story here, to which I got a lot of people saying, why did you force him to resign? And I always said, like, I didn't tell him to resign. I was surprised. I heard a day before, I think I knew a day before from my sources because I was, I knew some

of the people in the war room and I was getting a little bit of intel while it was the whole thing was unfolding. And they said, yeah, it looks like he's going to quit. And I was, I was shocked when I first heard that. And they were like, they said it's not so much of the ethics. It's the practicalities of governing when you're, when you're kind of down in the mud and you want to get stuff done. But everybody's asking about this thing and also the splashback on the woman involved,

the splashback on his kids and his wife. Right. At the time, they're not divorced. But it was, yeah, that was a really super interesting kind of weird time. You know, he's still with this woman. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I like, I have a lot of sources who are around him and that's how we help

crack the story open. And there's still sources on other things. There are all people in political life are involved in all kinds of things. I didn't really, once he was not going to run again, well, it was funny. Like, I kind of didn't care about him like in that way professionally.

But people would still tell me, oh, they went here, they went there. They were kind of broken up. Now they're back together. They're canoodling at this event. Oh, yeah. And I still, and then all of a sudden I had to pay attention again

because when he talked about maybe running for mayor and then we'd have to figure out how to handle that. Ben Spurwood, really, but I would be involved in just sort of talking it through. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, so what are they doing? And, you know, somebody's saying, oh, they went to, I think they went to New Zealand over Christmas and then England. And I was, so anyway, I don't actively seek that kind of stuff out. Well, that's more of a TMZ type.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't do that, David. But I, but I do, I mean, of the nature of political reporting is you have lots of friends who are involved in politics and you, you gossip about stuff. But I would never seek, but people would always tell me what he's doing. So it's, but I've had interactions with him since then. I'm not. Have I talked to him face to face? I don't think so. We've texted, because professionally for some stories, I've had to reach out to him. And he has responded to his credit. There's always been a bit of a frosty precursor about I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this because of something else. But he could just say screw you. So he's, I will give him that credit. At any point, did you think he might run again in this 2026 mayoral election? Yeah, yeah, I think most of the betting money and most of my sources, right up until he rejected it, we're saying he seems pretty keen on it.

He seems like he feels he has unfinished business. I mean, I think a lot of the intel I had heard that he, you know, he really doesn't know a life other than public life. Like he really believes in public service and really wouldn't know what to do with himself without that. And that maybe, you know, I'd heard that he was entertaining ideas or hoping for, I have no idea on this. I didn't do the reporting, but maybe an ambassadorship or some public appointment or something that would involve him still in public life. And that whatever, if whatever offers came forward, I guess didn't meet his approval. And everything I'd heard was he was keen on it. And then when I reached back to my sources to say, hey, I thought he said he was probably going to run.

It sounds like there was a late, surprisingly late in the game to me chat with his children, his grown children, all of whom are older than his current relationship person. I don't know what to call it. I don't know what to use about what impact that would have again on them and having to relive it and that maybe there was some negative reaction. I haven't done all the reporting to say that, but I would say that that's what I've heard. Well, I can tell you there was a huge sigh of relief from the Brad Bradford camp.

Oh, yes, yes. I mean, there was definitely no doubt about that, that John Torrey being in the race was. going to be a problem for him. The interesting thing to me is that, you know, I think, and this has been talked about, I think it's, I think I feel comfortable saying that, you know, that John Torrey was not happy that Brad Bradford was going around last year to a bunch of conservative backers and donors and supporters and essentially saying John Tori's yesterday's news, you should bet on me.

and so when I heard that not that long ago, like months ago, Brad Bradford was on 10-10 with John Torrey. And so I reached one of my sources and said, oh, so have they kind of like buried the hatchet? Is there a universe in which John Tori sort of gets behind Brad Bradford? And the answer was, no. That while John Tori, you know, is a big enough person to professionally interact, I'm told that the chances of John Tori,

in any way helping Brad Bradford become there are extremely small. Okay, at the end of this chat, I'm going to bring Brad Bradford back up. But, you know, you said, okay, you said Bradford, well, you talk about Brad Bradford. And I was just moments ago, I was at Great Lakes Brewery, the South Atobico Brewery, 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard, home of TMLX 22 on June 25th from 6 to 9 p.m. Any chance you and Chris Brown make your way to Great Lakes Brewery to hang with me, get a free beer from Great Lakes and some delicious palm pasta lasagna. I will have to check both. I think there's a definitely a maybe.

Just say the date one more time. June 25. It is a Thursday. I will absolutely try. Last Thursday of the month. I will absolutely check with Chris. Because that would be absolutely amazing. And palm pasta will feed everybody.

Palm pasta sent over a lasagna. It's in my freezer right now. You're going to get yourself a palm pasta lasagna. Amazing. Can't wait. And the beer in front of you is going home with you, David Ryder. Great. From Great Lakes Brewery.

And I'm going to do this real quick because you said the word Intel. And I got some questions about an artificial form of intel. Yes. But okay. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, they play at Christy Pitts. Have you ever been to a Leafs game at Christy Pitts? I have never been to a Leafs game. I have sort of lived them vicariously through you and listening to some of your podcasts.

But I have a relative, and I should have. have done my research. I have a relative who is somewhat of a star on the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team in the, I'm going to say 50s or 60s. Okay, so that case. So this iteration is 1969 until now. So my, I think my relative would have been on the predecessor. So they would have played at where the tip top tailors was. Oh, right, right, right. They had a great stadium there, Maple Leaf Stadium. Somewhere in my house, I have somewhat of a trophy that was handed down to that's cool. That's cool. Yeah. So this book I'm giving you on the history of Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball.

I believe it begins in 1969. Cool. But so I don't think you'll find your relative in there. That's okay. But you're going to learn a lot about East York legends. Rob and Rich Butler and others, Paul Spalgerick and many great Maple Leaf. So that's going home with you. And I have a measuring tape for you, courtesy of Ridley Funeral Home.

Thank you, Ridley, for you home. They have a podcast called Life's Undertaking. And the next guest will record next week. Heather Rankin, do you know the Rankin family? Of course, I do. Because you're a good Canadian boy. So that'll be interesting. Brad and Heather,

and I'm on those episodes as well. So check out Life's Undertaking. And if you're going to check out a podcast, and I'm going to bring up this podcast at the end when I talk about Brad Bradford. But Nick Aieny's has a podcast called Building Toronto Skyline, which I proudly produce. And Nick has stepped up to help fuel the real talk.

And he's helping to make great episodes like this one with David Ryder happen. Amazing. Last but not least. And I did that trick with you back in. When was it? It was February 2023, when I would do to you one more question, David. Yeah, you got me. One more question, David.

I'm supposed to be an old pro and you totally got me. Six seconds later. Last question, David. But last point before we rock and roll here. Sure. If you, David, Ryder, have old electronics, old devices, old cables. You probably have a closet full of this stuff. I do, yep.

Don't throw it in the garbage. No. Those chemicals will end up in our landfill, David. Terrible. Go to recycle my electronics. dot CA, put in your postal code. I know it's somewhere east of young. That's all I need to know.

Put in your postal code and find out where you can drop that off to be properly recycled. Do you, the way you say somewhere east of young, I detected a little bit of disdain from a West End guy. I just shouted out East York Legends. Yeah, that's true. Robin Rich Butler. You're right. Okay.

My Toronto includes East of Young. Amazing. That'll be a new t-shirt. I'm a proud Eastern. I'm a former Western guy. Tobacco, almost in Mississauga. Really? Like long branch?

Where were you? No, I was, well, I grew up in a Tobacco, the first 24 years of my life, like almost in Mississauga, Blue and West Mall, kind of. Cloverdale Mall area. Yeah, and then basically mostly around kind of Bronsa Vils, which is, yeah. Lovely. Yeah, which we rented around there before I moved to Japan. And my parents both grew up around Ronsie, so I have a big Parkdale connection.

Okay. And I was born at St. Joe's. Amazing. So maybe we are related. But when you were in the Cloverdale Mall area there, yes, many, many, many days. She's a bit older than you. Yes.

But Cynthia Dale is from that hood. That's right. Yeah, Cynthia Dale, I heard her. And Bonnie Cromby. And Bonnie Cromby and the late, great Catherine O'Hara. 100%. The pride of Burlington. Not what I'm saying.

Aptuio. Richview? No. Don Bosco. What's going on there? I'm having a brain free. Sorry about that. Silver.

Silver. Burnhamthor. Burnhamthorpe, Caledian. She grew up very close to Cloverdale Mall. You're absolutely right. So there's some of our legends.

And Bill Breyo. Yeah. I feel like we should shout out Bill Breyo. Yep. He came on my show once to talk about the old version of Cloverdale Mall before they put a roof on it. I remember.

I remember those days. I was a very small kid. And I think you talked about there was a, there was this weird cement play structure. Yes. Yes. By big boys restaurant. And if you go to Cloverdale today,

and you're going to the washroom, you'll walk a hallway with old photos and you will see a photo of that structure. I was spent many, many hours on that thing and I loved it. And bringing it back to building Toronto Skyline, thanks to the frozen condo industry,

Cloverdale lives on. That's right. It's all that development there that I've never seen the big plants. I think I maybe have reported a bit on the giant remake and it's all, yeah, it's all like Drake. It's all frozen.

It's nothing, nothing is happening. It's all frozen. Now we've got to, Hose it down. Yeah. Find the great mortgage rate or something at the bottom of it that will allow that thing to continue. So David Ryder, what are your, this is a big question, but what are your personal feelings about artificial intelligence, AI, if you will? Yeah. Complicated.

I think there's potentially, potential great and I think there's also potential great harms. Yeah. So I would say that to my industry, I'll speak more of journalism than me as a person. So AI poses a big threat in that AI, all the big companies have been training their models on all kinds of written material, including news articles, including mine and probably your transcripts and everything else they can get their hands on. and the idea for them is that once you start using chat GPT or Google Gemini or GROC or whatever you want to choose, that it kind of keeps you in its ecosphere and that you don't have to Google and click a link into the Toronto Star or go listen to a Toronto Mike podcast. It will just summarize everything and crunch it down for you.

It's like a chicken McNugget. It doesn't really eat chicken anymore, but they processed it and they've handed it back to you something that looks like a chicken. And that's a big threat. But there is also big opportunities. And I can speak to the project. I mentioned that I'd been too busy to almost do anything for the last month or so. So I, along with my colleagues, Kate Allen and Nathan Pilla at the Toronto Star,

just published a pretty big series of stories on strong mayor powers that were handed, starting in 2022 until last year, handed by Premier Doug Ford to almost half the mayors in the province and we used artificial intelligence. We used to customize sort of an LLM or chatbot, whatever you want to call it, to analyze the data. We didn't use it to write any of our stories, but we did use to help. We had about 4,200, a little more than that, strong mayor decisions that the mayors had to post that says, I've used these powers and here's what I've used it for. So we used it to analyze it and to say, like, was it something substantial? Did it do something for housing, which is the ostensible reason that Premier Ford gave all these mirrors the powers.

And we published it. And it was a big, it's the first time the Toronto Star has used AI in a major way for a major investigation. And it took months and months and months of figuring out how to do that. And at the end, I think it was very successful. But it was a huge learning curve for me, I think, for the Toronto Star. Because we, first we had to figure out how to get all these. notices off municipal websites and they were posted in all kinds of different ways and all

kind of different places. Some put it in PDF. Some put it in a JPEG. It was incredible. That's the worst. Yeah. And that's not really AI. That's a scraper, a software program. But Nathan, who's our kind of data experts, figured out how to do that. And then I manually had to go back to a bunch and make sure that we hadn't missed any because there were some of the people that hadn't posted any, which seemed impossible that they hadn't done anything with the powers. And then we had to analyze it. And this was another big long process of me helping say, I guess I came in as kind of like the municipal expert. I know how a Toronto City Hall and other City Hall municipalities generally work and what they do. And then Kate has done a lot of

reporting involving, she's our climate reporter, has done municipal reporting, but also a lot of reporting involving AI. And then Nathan is the data expert. So basically he had to figure out how to get our customized artificial intelligence to kind of analyze more than 4,200, tell us all the important things. And then actually maybe the longest part was we had to figure out how to verify it because if you're using chat GPT and it tells you something crazy, well, you know, no big deal if it's not for your job or you're just kind of trying to figure something out or maybe you realize it. But it will mess you up in bar room trivia. Yeah, yeah, for sure, yes. But we we cannot publish unverified information in the Toronto Star.

That is just not what we do and it would be a, obviously people would lose faith in what we do. We're the one saying there's a lot of misinformation, disinformation, AI slop out there, but if you read it in the Toronto Star, it is true. So we had to come up with a process to verify the information

and it was at times bizarre. It was fascinating and essentially what we did was the process, I'll boil it down, but it was essentially myself, Kate and Nathan would analyze a strong mayor decision and kind of say it's this or it's that, it's this, it fits into this category. Really, he was using the power to hire and fire or he was using the power to approve housing or something like that or she.

And then we would do it separately and then we would come together and kind of argue it out and come to a consensus position. And we said this is the gold standard. And then we would match it against what AI did. and look and see how close it is. And then when there was differences, we had to figure out which was true and why was there differences. And we did that.

We didn't do it with all 4200, but we did it with a statistically large sub-sample, large enough that we could say that the 4200, the numbers it gave us are accurate. And the big headline number out of it is that although these powers that are unprecedented, parts of them actually don't even exist in America, which is what we were supposed to be modeling our powers on,

that was done to help get housing built because we have a housing crisis in Ontario, only 2% of the decisions directly related to housing in any kind of way. Some of the mayors are using, some of the mayors are using the power, some are not. The ones who are using it are using it for all kinds of things that have nothing to do with housing.

We chronicled ones a lot of hiring and firing of basically city managers. They call it a CAO, chief administrative officer. In one case, one who was fired, before he was just picking up his laptop and he quit a job and come to a new job and the mayor said no i don't want you i wanted to get another guy council wanted you but i don't want you so you're gone turkey um and uh we had a mayor who used the money to get or use the powers to get funding for a giant flagpole a 50 meter flagpole and barry yeah another one where uh the mayor got used money for to get a pickleball court um uh the mayor of windsor used it to cancel a popular bus route

went from Windsor to Detroit to the American border. So all kinds of things that didn't involve housing. And then the most, I guess, the kind of the weirdest or most extreme part of the strong-married legislation that has just kind of rolled out very quietly, it's very being very under the radar, is there's a power in the budget. So it's a strong mayor now. The mayor's budget. The mayor essentially proposes it.

It doesn't come from city staff anymore. And the mayor, the council can change it. can amend it, and then the mayor can veto whatever they changed, and then council has a chance to come back with a two-thirds override. That is like, that's a big power, but it's not unprecedented. But there's a separate thing where any mayor, and these are down to some very small places, some very small rural places, like there's like 216 municipalities have this power. Where the mayor comes say, I'm proposing a bylaw,

and it fits in with provincial priorities, which is a fairly vague, or a bit of housing or infrastructure or kind of improving life here. And I can get it passed with just over one third of council. So it's minority rule. Two thirds of council can be against me and I still get my way. And there is no way to overcome it. So I interviewed Richard Treger, who is the America's foremost expert on strong mayor systems in the United States.

And, you know, he looked at a lot of the powers that, that Premier Ford had given these mayors. He was like, some of these, like, look familiar. but this one on minority rule does not exist anywhere in America and it never will. It never would. It just would not fly. People would say that's, that's anti-democratic.

So we had a funny little exchange where I said, are you telling me that Ontario is less democratic than Donald Trump's America at the moment? And he kind of laughed and he said, well, in this narrow aspect, yes. Like this just does not exist. Okay. So to review here, so the Toronto Star. Yeah.

which has very high standards. So if we see something published in the Toronto Star, we can trust it. Yes. I mean, I'm not to say we don't ever like legitimately get some things wrong, hopefully very small, but we have a public editor and we correct the record. Right. So the Toronto Star has used AI to crunch this data. I guess it was an overwhelming amount of data.

Yes. And AI was used to crunch the data. And then you had a process at the Toronto Star to figure out. to figure out how can you ensure these numbers that spit out by AI are trustworthy enough that they can appear in the Toronto Star. That's right. So we called it a human verification process of the AI. And we also, after we had our results, we also put it out to outside AI experts to make sure we hadn't missed anything. We totally stressed tested it.

But there was, I've said some of it was bizarre. And part of it was, so Nathan would say to me, sometimes like, you're really disagreeing with the AI. Can you like basically look at it and figure out like, were you wrong? Was it wrong? What's going on here? And it was essentially me debating a machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you got to remember, like, I'm not the youngest reporter in the newsroom.

I was a reporter for, I was at my third newspaper before the internet was available. Like I was pre-internet reporter. And now I am arguing with artificial intelligence. But it basically, like, so one example was, there was one point, part of it was like, has, did strong air powers in this aspect, did it change something? So the debate was, I was saying that a certain process of who could hire and fire senior officials of the city had not changed. And AI was saying, no, it has.

And literally it was me going back and forth with this machine. And then it popped out a thing and said, yeah, but the powers were designated. And it was at the beginning of amalgamation. And therefore, the power rests. with the city council on the mayor. And, you know, they delegated it, but they could take it back. And I had to look at it and I was like,

you're right. Crap. Like I, I, some, me who was like an expert on Toronto City Hall, 14 years of City Hall, Bureau chief,

hundreds and hundreds of council meetings. And the machine was smarter than me on that one point. And then there was another time where Nathan came in on a Monday. And he said, he said, yeah, you and the machine, were you and the eye were unusually.

disagreeing on Friday. There's a few decisions. Can you look at them and sort of see what's going on? So I, like, should I check the AI or where was it something with you? You know, and I said, sure. So I'm looking at it on Monday. I'm all refreshed after weekend off. And I'm looking at it and I'm looking and I finally had to say to Nathan, you know what?

I think I was really tired on Friday afternoon. And I just was not thinking as sharply as I should. And Mia Koppel on these, they were all, that was me. And he said, oh, well, that's good to know. He said, because AI never gets tired. and it applies the same logic that he had taught it with our very long, I think pages long command. It applies the same logic every single time.

And I'm saying this. Obviously, there is AI that hallucinates, we talked about it. I will say that whenever we had something from the AI that kind of didn't drive with what we thought, it was always in the gray area. It was always understandable how you could make that mistake. We didn't, going into this, I thought maybe that the AI is going to say,

like Mayor Elton John on this date, you know, you know. But my understanding of AI, my limited understanding is that it's all depends on the source, right? Because AI just sources it from whatever database and then it will crunch or whatever. So you're providing this AI tool with the source material. Right. So in this case, yeah, I think that's a key point. So the hallucinations will be, will be fewer, I would guess, because unlike when, you know, I could probably, I'm guessing, this is a little joke in here. but if I said I'm going to look up David Ryder of some AI tool and it says,

oh yeah, he's a 15-year-old cyclist from Toronto or whatever. It's based on the fact that in your bio it says you have the calves of a 15-year-old. Right? Because that's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. But you've provided the source for the AI. So the hallucinations I would suspect would be minimal.

I think that is a smart point. Although I will do a caveat is that one interesting thing, there was many interesting things about this project. But when I reached out to at the beginning, when I was starting to work on it to a professor at the University of Toronto named Gabriel Idleman, who's a well, very well-known urbanist in Canada. And I said, hey, we're doing this project at some point I'm going to be coming to you for comment. And he said, oh, that's funny because we are doing something very similar as a research project here,

looking at strong mayor powers. Are they being used for what they said? What are the impacts are they having a local democracy? Because all of a sudden, mayors can hire and fire city officials than when they couldn't before, it had to be all of counsel. And he said, but we're basically, they were doing very similar, but instead of using AI to crunch this huge number of decisions, they used, they had a small army of undergrad students that they had trained.

So we had a good comparison. So we had an interesting meeting where, um, uh, Professor Eidlman was saying something along with, like you're saying, well, it shouldn't be tainted by outside stuff because you do have a bit of a closed data ecosystem here. But Nathan, my colleague said,

never really believe that because these things were trained on outside sources for all kinds of things and you can't assume that they don't bring it into every decision they make. So there is, which I think was news to Professor Idomen, and he was like, oh, okay, that's good to know. Like the idea that you can put a ring fence around total data. In this case, it definitely made it less prone to hallucinations, which, as I said, we really didn't see anything that was crazy. but there is always the possibility. And, you know, the strange thing is I used to listen to a lot of political podcasts and then

general, and the last five years or so, I've listened mostly to tech podcasts. And I'm not 100% sure why, but I've become very interested in AI and all these things. And one of the things that strikes me is when I hear these, you know, the data scientists or the CEOs from these frontier labs that are making the big kind of things is when they're asked about, well, why did it, why, how does it do this? Like, it can sometimes do these incredible calculations or it can, you know, potentially get research for a new medicine. And so many times I hear them saying some version of we don't really know. And that to me is like a wild thing.

And you at, and again, it was delayed, right? So this was going to be published in the Toronto Star. And it took, I guess the delay was almost a month. Yeah. Actually, I think, to be honest, I think we probably had two or three delays. It was always something like, okay, like what could possibly go wrong? Like, what are we potentially missing? And I think in one case, what was going to the outside experts was one.

We said, let's really stress test. I think we took it to three outside AI experts and said, yeah, I don't know why I have trouble with that. And say, like, are we missing? And they always said your process is great. And a couple of things they said, the way you should describe what you did should be maybe a little bit different. But what you're doing is. Like the prompts. Yeah.

Or the way, in the news story. Oh, in the story. Yeah. Which is human wrote, right? Yes. Kate wrote most of that. Here's how we did it story. Okay.

And then there was one, two, we just wanted to make sure, especially the decisions that did relate to housing, because we want to be perfectly fair to the provincial government. And there are some mayors who have used it in some ways to try and advance housing. So we just wanted to make sure that we were not missing any, that we'd gone back to them and said, is there anything about housing that we missed? Is there could it be on a different part of the website,

classified. So we did delay it, yeah, a few times I would say, and to make sure when we rolled it out, it was 100% accurate and bulletproof. So this is the first time, the first major foray by the Toronto Star into AI assisted investigative reporting. It is, yes. Like now that it's been published, and of course you're standing behind the findings, do you deem this a great success, Mr. Ryder? Yes. And I will say it was interesting to me because, you know, I'm a long time Ford Watcher and Ford reporter, both on Rob and then Doug. And I was very curious to see what the provincial government reaction would be. And we debated. Like, anything from they could just ignore it because, you know, he's polling well that week or he doesn't think people care about this kind of stuff. Or is he going to go on, are they going to go on the attack and say, no, no, like you're ignoring this decision in Ajax. where there was a housing belt and try to point at one little example and say therefore, you know, our findings, which was that there was not a significant amount of housing across Ontario built as a result of strong mayor.

They would try and sort of poke holes in that. In the end, they kind of conceded the point. They really didn't put up much of a fight. They've essentially said, we think there have been some decisions that are around housing, which is true, and that it's up to the mayors to decide whether they want to use the powers or not, which is true. So they didn't really try to fight the point. We had good uptake from our listeners. A lot of people were interested.

It sparked a lot of debate. It has some of the other papers affiliated with the Toronto Star, the Metroland Community Papers, have done their own reporting. That's one of the important thing as well as being a main story. And then I think it will be five or six sort of sidebars or substories from different parts. We also have on Star.com a permanent dashboard where people can go in and they can look for any municipality that has strong mayor powers, they can look from the time they first got them until this past March

and see exactly how their mayor used them. So they can see, they can look into the analysis, even things that we didn't report in our story, to see what the analysis is of whether it was used for housing, whether it was used for this or whether it was used for that. So I would say it seems to be it was a very successful. Oh, I just, one other thing is... Yeah, please.

Because at times, it took so long from the time. Like, it was a year ago where I first said to my boss, like we should look at strong mayor powers. And then it was, I started, I'd done probably a couple of weeks of work on it just manually before he said, we think this is a good chance to try out AI. And then it was part time for a long time and then full time for a month or something for me anyway. Where I was kind of like, oh, like we've invested so much. And I don't think I've ever worked in 37 years as a journalist.

I've never worked so long on a project without pushing a story along the way. Like I covered some big stories, but it was always like every two weeks I would, you know, pump out a big story. This was a long time before we actually did anything. But the big thing for the Toronto Star is that now that we, and I say we, Nathan, a lot of it, especially the data smarts. But I will say collectively, we came up with this new data verification process. Anybody going forward at the Toronto Star on any project analyzing with AI can use our same verification system and we can publish knowing that we can stand behind the results, which is it will be a big benefit for the star going forward. Okay.

So one very positive aspect of this foray. Yeah. Fun word to say foray. You fully disclosed how you were using AI and you were transparent about the Toronto Star's use of AI. I think that's very good. Yeah. And then there was internal debate about how do we, I think the only, we always wanted to be transparent. There was a fear, I think, from us as reporters.

We don't want the headline on this to be Toronto Star uses AI. we wanted the data and the findings to be the headline. But we also recognized, and I think our editors very smartly said, you know, there is massive distrust and sometimes for good reason of AI out there among our readership and in general public that if we're going to use this, we have to be very transparent about exactly how we did it. And there was a story called, I think it might be the headline, might be literally how we did it, that really goes into the details of exactly what we did with AI.

What's important to me personally, as a reader of the Toronto Star, is that you have a verification process in place because you don't just let the bots run free and then publish without any verification because I have personally witnessed a hallucination or two in my time. Well, and some big-name journalists have got caught, including a well-known, very senior person at New York Times recently where they had a quote from a Canadian political leader

and then it turned out that it was that essentially they'd use a chat bot and that it turns out that the quote, he never said that. So anybody can get tripped up, but we were extremely careful. And I think more than once one of us said, this is the first time we're doing this. We have to get it right.

So it was like, I can't tell you the amount of work and thought that went into. And it was worth it. Like, I'm hearing you describe this prompt. process and money. What if you just hired a bunch of undergrad army of undergrads and yeah. That's a great point. I mean, we could have. I would say, I don't know what it would cost. We don't, we don't have free students, which is the University of Toronto. But here's an important

point, I think. In this case, we were using 4,200 decisions. The process we've now come up with could let us do 400,000 decisions. Right. And there's not enough undergrads in the world to crunch that. So. And you trust your verification process with a quantity. that kind of a data. And I will say I'm not a data scientist, so I don't want to get over my skis here. I would say you would have to increase the amount of human verification you did to

commensurate with the number of the amount of data you're looking at, but you could. And that's part of the reason that AI is presenting so many possibilities for journalism, as well as presenting so many potential hazards, especially financially, and all that kind of stuff. And just like

when my mom comes to me and says, she read something on Facebook, my first question, he says, what is the source of that data? And then she gets so upset with me. You and your sources, but as, well, you're a journalist, you know better than anybody. Sources everything. And that whole idea that maybe,

even though you provided the database from which to, like this is the pond where you're fishing from, that they might have fished in other ponds and simply you don't know it. And then that got in there. Like the whole thing, I'm going to say these two words. Slippery slope.

Like, are you worried that, okay, this was your first foray and you used it in this manner you were transparent you disclosed everything and it was deemed a success but what if this eventually what if eventually

it's not a human writing this story like like I just I don't want to read my Toronto Star and it was written by AI like so many less like blogs and forums of less integrity

where it's clearly AI slop I want any AI slop in my Toronto Star I don't either and I would I would not give it to you and I don't, I don't foresee based on, I mean, part of the reason it took months is we had editors and,

and reporters saying we've got to be extremely careful how we do this. And I can tell you there are very strict rules about the, the Toronto Star, I think is my boss, Nicole McIntyre is on record as saying excited about the possibilities of AI, but also understanding the hazards. And we have very strict guidelines on what we can do and can't do with it. I can tell you, and I will tell everybody, AI did not write any of our strong mirror stories.

It was not used for writing in any way. And right now I can tell you that I'm not the boss, but I can tell you that we have been told we are not having AI written stories. And I think, I mean, I agree with you. Like there's so much AI slop out there. I was looking at something today. Somebody was forwarding. It was like it was a AI slop about the man and woman who are about the prime and woman who are the, the prime people in Sonic Youth and their

kind of great love story. And it was, a lot of it was wrong. And also it didn't mention the fact that they broke up and had fairly like public disaster. Yeah, public disaster way. And then like the capper was it.

There was a photo of her with a tall man who is not Thurston Moore. Like everybody was like, who is this guy? Like is that even a real photo. So that, that is what we're fighting. And that's kind of funny. But there is obviously like more serious dire misinformation and

disinformation that is just flying around out there. And a lot of it is racist. A lot of it is anti-democratic. And a lot of it is, I think, honestly, probably funded by some foreign governments who really want us at each other's throats, not defending democracy, but instead, like, trying to kill each other. Oh, enough about Alberta's movement here. I'll save all that. Ed Keenan comes over every quarter, by the way.

And he's good for two hours a quarter. And he's up in early July. So that's where I, you know. Well, he's also got a new, a kind of a new rule. He's writing our newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that last time.

Okay. Yeah. So he can tell you how it's, first up. He can tell you how it's going. And yeah, he's, also interesting. Just I always talk to him. I'm curious because he's got this crazy work day where he's up really early in the morning.

And then he goes out of like seven or something. Yeah. He's, I think he's four or five. I can I raise my very mild grievance. Okay. So Ed's got it from Monday to Friday. Yes. Ed likes to open with a list.

Okay. Five things. So there's like it's a, it's a bulleted, numbered, bulleted list of things. And our person who does it on the weekend, uh, doesn't do that. And I know on Saturday and Sunday when I get my first up, I missed the list. Yeah. Like you got me, you got me, uh, into this list. And then suddenly Saturday and Sunday, when it's not penned by Ed, the list does not exist. Yeah.

Well, I will pass on that. So you, so you want conformity even when it's not. I happen to like the list. Yeah. Yeah. I'm busy band. It's always in the morning before I get my kid to school or whatever,

and I'm just breezing it, and then I'll check in later. But here are five things you need to know as you start your day. Well, from your lips, to Ed Kinnon's ears, I'll pass it along. All right, spoiler alert, Ed, it's coming.

Okay. And when we talked about the hallucinations and stuff of AI, this is not a Toronto Star thing, but FOTM Ashley McIsaac is literally filed a lawsuit. He lost a gig because AI said he was a sexual offender I hadn't heard that.

Yes. And I know, because I had Ashley and I did a lot of homework, I know how that hallucination happened. But because AI didn't get the facts right on this one. I know how the hallucination happened, but simply serves up this untrue facts. I mean, it is such a, I mean, we both have university age kids and you're like, what kind of world are we sending them into?

And I mean, you know, driver scars, which is something I've reported on and being very interested in, Wamos and all the various and stuff. Right. The whole thing about, like, when they hit somebody, who do you charge? Right? Like, it drives away. Do the cops go and stop it?

So there's a million unanswered questions. You know, you hope that you're sending the kids into a good world. It seems very, it seems confusing. I'm about to attend my second convocation in a three-week span. Congratulations. That's next week. Amazing. My son's convocation.

I just came to all where my daughter graduated from McGill. So that's a couple of conferences. of complications out of the way and I've got a little time before the next couple of complications. But the, it's funny, the AC came on and I was listening closely, oh, do I need to get that checked out? Completely, I checked out, I think, when I was doing that. But, because there was a pin I wanted to put in this, but I think it is regarding the fact that you talked about the AI slop and the misinformation and that is a different category in my mind anyways. That is a category.

And I have an episode of Toronto Mike scheduled for later this month with Jeremy Hopkins to discuss this plague of AI slop, typically from there's a copycat of vintage Toronto that seems to be coming out of another country. I think it comes out

of America, but it comes out, it doesn't come out from Canada where they'll show you a photo and say, oh, this is exhibition stadium in 1977. And you and I are of a vintage where we can look at that photo and say, That is not exhibition stadium. But I always worry about, you know, our kids' age, people, our kids' age, might see this and trust that, oh, this is what it looked like and everything.

And that's a, just, it's happening, especially on Facebook where they don't seem to care if you report it as AI slop and misinformation. Meta doesn't do a damn thing. No, it doesn't. In fact, I think it encourages it. It monetizes it. And I think, well, the CBC story about the people in other countries pretending to be. Alberta separatists. Right.

And Facebook is essentially funding that. Yeah. Meanwhile, in Canada, actual credible news sources like the Toronto Star and the Globe Mail CBC are not allowed to post there anything on Facebook. So make of that what you would. And we'll discuss that part of the AI quandary. So very interested, before I move on to something else, any consideration at the Toronto Star regarding the environmental impact of all this heavy AI

work. And you know what I'm talking about, the use of electricity and water. These resources are strained. And, you know, this is in the news now. I heard CBC talking about these data centers and how much electricity, how much water is required to cool these AI data centers. I know there's definitely interest. Kate Allen, as I mentioned, who worked on me with Strong Air, is our climate reporter. Marco Ovid also does a lot of reporting on all things to do with climate and the environment. I know it's definitely something that we're interested in looking at. Yeah, and the water issue, I've seen, I don't know where to think on that because I've seen contrary reporting. There's a podcast you've ever called Hard Fork.

It's a, yeah, Hard Fork is a tech podcast. It's by Kevin Ruse, who's a New York Times columnist, and a guy, Casey Newton who runs a Silicon Valley newsletter. And they had on a guy who was just like a, he was kind of a citizen expert, but they both sort of deferred to, was arguing that the water issue isn't that strong. And in fact, there's other industries that do. I think it probably is a legitimate question, especially that, but also electricity, because we've already seen in some smaller American centers where the price of their power goes up because a data center opens and it's just sucking it all up.

So suddenly they're competing with a giant multinational corporation to pay for their power. Interesting. On Metro morning this morning, Chris Glover was talking to a chap who was talking about the immense quantity of water because of how hot. That's right. Because it's different than just the old-fashioned data servers where you call up TorontoMike.com or whatever or the TorontoStar.com.

It's the fact that the energy and processing required to complete these AI request tasks. It's like when your laptop overheats on your lap. And apparently, but, but, and there's other little things that were brought up

I thought was interesting. Like it emits a certain tone and noise not necessarily a loud noise, but there is an audio tone. There's a whack of things we need to consider as these giant data farms or growing. Yeah, and it's fascinating to me to see,

I mean, I think a lot of things start in America and then come to Canada. America, we've definitely seen some mass protests, like communities just outraged over the idea of a data center going in. And again, I get a little worried about misinformation and disinformation. Is it one of those things like 5G antennas

where maybe the science isn't there, but people are just sort of get. But I think in this case, there are extremely legitimate concerns and also the fact that, you know, a lot of these big companies are selling it as an environmental or sorry, as an economic generator when in fact,

you know, there's a bunch of construction jobs and then there's after they build it, there's only a few guys just to keep the lights on and, you know, turn the power on and off when something glitches. So I think it is interesting. I'm curious to see if we,

if we have the same kind of, A, if there will be a push to have data centers built here like there. it seems like probably we would all go on a smaller scale because we're a smaller country. And then are we going to get the same kind of public concerns. At the moment, I think we are. And I think a lot of the tech podcasts I listen to, I'm always kind of chuckle because they're always kind of like, why don't people like AI? And, you know, why don't they trust us?

And then I look at like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all and Zuckerberg. And I think, why would we trust you? Like essentially, you know, there seems to be like a sociopathic tendency that whatever is good for my shareholders is good for America. and then screw everybody else. David, I find it gross. Like, there was a six-month period where Elon Musk was running willy-nilly

making cuts to the American budget and based a lot of that on AI. Yeah. And there are some well-documented stories of things getting cut because it included a certain word. Right. Or, what's it called when you get money from an agency or whatever?

to proceed. Grant or something? Yeah, like USAID and all that kind of stuff. Like grants were be cut. They said, oh, this had a real diversity grant, but these are legitimate, you know, sensible grants, but maybe a term triggered the AI thing and it got flagged and then got canceled. Yeah, yeah. And just, just no, I think any sensible person would be weary of this very sudden, in my opinion,

a very sudden leap of faith into this world of AI. Yeah. And I think the people they have. selling it. You know, Canada's own Mr. Wonderful was the, you know, the face of one of the data centers and then there were two wonderful women from Utah who really schooled them online. You know, the people that they're putting out there and saying, you have to understand this is good for you, are billionaires who appear to really not care about the public good, to really only care about their own wealth and power.

So I'm glad that you guys are being careful with it and your first four A is complete. Do you know what the next project from the Toronto Star will be that will require some AI assistance? Yeah, I think I do, but I can't say too much about it right now. No, I won't. I'll try not to. Every appearance, I'm going to get to trouble. I have already started working on the next thing for me

that it will be very involved, which is, I can't take as long because it's related to the municipal elections that are coming up. And there is an AI, angle, which I know my editor-in-chief, Nicole McIntyre is, I believe, going to be writing about very soon. And it's also, we're doing it in collaboration with some university folks who are AI and municipal democracy experts. So I think, and I'm hesitating because I'm not sure what the AI is more on our side or more on their side, but there will be some aspect. But we will be very careful with it and we will be extremely transparent about how we're using it. Okay. You'll have to come on

Toronto mic each time to explain yourself so I can grill you. Okay. Done. All right. So you mentioned the municipal election. So just a little light, again, I don't want to steal Ed Keenan's thunder because he's here in less than a month. And we always go over all this.

But I mean, from where you sit at the, do you even go to an office anymore or are you doing it all from home? You know, no, I'm not from home. Actually. And it's funny. I was, yeah, I was at the well five days a week for about a month there while we were working, trying to really hash out the strong mirror stuff. So I, yeah, I'm all over the place.

because sometimes I'm from home. I was working at home this morning and I probably finished my day there. But my main desk is actually at City Hall. I asked to keep my desk there because I like those folks and I like working at a city hall. If you ever own an office building,

make sure that there's a wedding chapel and a daycare because you can be having the worst day in the world and you see happy people about to get married, either coming or going, and then you see a line of little cute kids and you will immediately love life again. Who needs AI when you have weddings and baby children?

Yeah, so I love working out of City Hall, and then I'm at the well sometimes, so I'm all over the place. You're all over the place. Okay. So there's an election upon us, and it's looking to me at this point, which is June 9th at 305 p.m. I'm going to see Breaking News. No. Okay. It looks like it's going to be Olivia Chow versus Brad Bradford. Do you feel like another big name or reasonably sized name will enter this election? I don't know. That's a guess. Yeah, I mean, we have until August 21st. You can either enter a race or pull your name out. After that, your name's on the ballot and you're officially in the race. At the moment, it appears those will be the two main choices.

But, you know, I've covered politics so long and, you know, shout out to Rob Ford. You never can say never. You know, at this stage of the 2010 election, nobody was really giving Rob Ford much of a chance. So whether somebody out of the blue, who would be high profile enough to say neither of those people are the right one. I'm the person to lead. It is entirely possible. David Miller, I think, had 3% or 8% or something like that at the beginning of 2003 election

and then picked up steam. So there is a possibility. I will say in the modern amalgamated Toronto era, usually an incumbent if they want to get reelected, odds are that they will get reelected. So, and, you know, we now know she played quite for a long time, but we know that Olivia Chow does in fact want to lead the city for a full term. She's only had a part term because of she was elected in a by-election partway through John Torrey's term. She wants a four-year full term.

And so at the moment, that's a long-winded way of saying, I don't really know. Sure. I can say that I don't know, and I talk to a lot of people involved in all levels of politics, I don't know of somebody who's just sitting there waiting the wings to, to, to, to, burst onto the scene, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. Interesting. And when you mentioned the 2010 mayoral election, I feel I should note that on June 24th, the day before TMLX 22, I see in my calendar the Toronto Mike debut of some guy named Rocco Rossi. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right? Rocker Rossi. I feel like he finished second, right? Oh, geez. I think, I know, I'm not going to hold you to it, but my memory is, who finished second in

George Smitherman. Smitherman was second than horse and C third. Yeah. And there was a lot of people running. Yeah, Rocco was funny because he was, back then, the campaigns are shorter now.

They're still pretty long compared to provincial or federal, but now they go from May until October. Back then, they were from starting in January to October. They went forever. And he made the thing, you know, he was,

I think he's headed Ontario Chamber of Commerce at the point and not well known, known to a business circle, but not probably. So he did the thing where he jumped out early and got a bit of attention. And people were like, oh, maybe this Rocker Rossi guy. And then in the end, I mean, I don't think he really came close. But yeah, but he did acquit himself well.

And he stuck it out, I think, to the end. A whole pile of people in that election just folded their tent partway through because it was essentially a Smitherman versus Ford campaign. Right. Okay. So we have a Brad Bradford versus Olivia Chow campaign shaping up. We'll see what happens. Yeah.

And it feels, I mean, you know, you know, you said it's very difficult in municipal politics to defeat an incumbent. This is just the way it typically is. But it seems like if you think Olivia Chow's doing a good job and you want her to continue, you know where you're going to vote. And then if you think she's doing a poor job and you need change and there's only one place to park that vote, Brad Bradford. Yeah. I mean, I argue that if there was, like in politics we often talk about lanes,

like is there a lane for somebody to run? In other words, where it's not like, you know, Olivia Chow was. Obviously, a former NDP. I would argue that she's run a fairly centrist government, mostly but because she has to because the city, the pandemic really whacked the city of Toronto's finances. Right. So she had to get this new deal, a new financial deal with Doug Ford. And also the fact that she is one member of a council. And the council is generally fairly centrist.

So she can't on her own turn Toronto into some kind of socialist paradise, even if she wanted to. But there, but you could argue, I think, you would argue that, that, um, Brad Bradford has seen. He's kind of positioned himself as center right. She would be center, I would argue, probably center left. But if you were going to argue, it would be a real lefty, like an Avi Lewis, but on the municipal scene, who would like say... Like left of Olivia? Yeah, who would say, you know what?

She's made too many deals. I will fight Doug Ford. I'm not going to go along to get along. Those words, hearing those words, you just made Bradford very excited. I think that would be the dream come true. somebody to split, because, you know, if you watch the wire, you know how to get elected in Baltimore. You need somebody to split that left of center, Olivia Chow vote. Yeah, I would say, I don't know of that person.

It would have to be somebody with a built-in high profile. I will throw out a name and I would say it's not going to happen. But Abby Lewis's partner, Naomi Klein, like very internationally known, you know, a left-leaning, sort of smart person. So they live in Vancouver. So that's not going to happen. But somebody like that. Somebody with a built in name and credibility to say like we need a real progressive and we can't just keep going along with Doug Ford. So that would be interesting to me.

I mean, there also could be somebody on the far right. But Brad Bradford, I think has, you know, he's signaled that he is on the small C conservative side to, I think he would argue the centrist side. I mean, I interviewed him. I did a long sit down for about an hour before Christmas, and I wrote kind of analysis piece on his early candidacy. You know, he will say that he's not a political stripe guy, that he'll work with anybody, and he doesn't really consider himself a conservative.

But I would argue his positioning on a lot of issues would be towards the center to the right of the aisle. But David, wait until the right-winger's here that Brad Bradford is a cyclist. Yes. Well, but he's fighting bikes. lines, a bunch of bike lanes. Trust me, I know. Just ask Alan's Weig about that at a TMLX event.

Yeah, he is definitely fighting bike lanes. My good. Okay, so stay tuned. More with Ed Keenan in less than a month here. Quick thoughts, though. Do you feel like Olivia Chow is being vocal enough regarding the island airport and expansion to have jets? Yeah.

So I say, we'll say the framing of your question would beg for an opinion and I have to say I am a news reporter. Oh yeah, you can't, you don't have a opinion. That's Ed has opinions. Ed has opinions. I will say, yeah, no, I will just, I will reframe it a bit and say, has she mean vocal? I would say she actually has been increasingly vocal and I'm curious as to whether that's emboldened because some of the Toronto members of parliament spoke out or, I mean, they're all, everybody is doing,

they're polling and figuring out how to position themselves. But she has been, you know, at first it seemed of somewhat muted, I would say, her criticism of the idea because she just kept saying, well, we don't have a plan. We don't know whether, I can't react to something we don't have in front of us. I mean, I would argue that Doug Ford is saying, I want jets and I'm taking away the city's power to do anything about it.

And I want a long runway and I want it to go into the west part of the harbor. Like, there is stuff on the table, at least coming from his mouth, whether or not it's written down or not, but he is the premier and he's famous for getting his own way. So, but lately she has been more vocal about saying that,

that, you know, we have to listen to Torontoans and we have to, you know, we have to really study this plan. I think the problem, Toronto's problem is we're so dependent on property taxes, unlike big American cities that often have their own sales tax. In some cases, they have a share of income tax that she, you know, she has to pick her battles with Doug Ford because we are reliant on the province to somehow figure out how to make Toronto finances whole again. They're better than they were right after the pandemic, but they still are.

or not in great shape. And so, yeah, whether or not it's she's enough or not enough, it's a bit of a, it's a very difficult position for her to, to both sort of, you know, stick up for, I'm sure, what she believes, which is that the island airport is perfectly fine the way it is to, to Doug Ford saying, well, that's not the way it is. Yeah, that was a leading question. You handled it very well. I forgot you were opinionless in you're... I'm just a conveyor of facts. You're just a journalist.

Okay. So on our way out here, this is a question because I'm just curious about it. And I maybe did I ask Ed Keenan about it? Maybe. But do you have any awareness, David Ryder, as there's a... Was it Progress Toronto? You know this? I do know Progress Toronto, yes.

So Progress Toronto filed a complaint with the Integrity Commissioner regarding a live podcast recording. It was a ticketed event. It was Brad Bradford on the Affleck. mentioned Building Toronto Skyline podcast hosted by Nick Aini's. Do you have any awareness of how long it would take to get a ruling from the integrity commissioner,

what that would mean? Do you have any idea? Yeah, I will just say... Asking for a friend, sure, sure. Based on my understanding of the process is, I don't think we're going to... I don't think that's going to affect the election at all. I don't think we're...

I think probably Progress Toronto did that to get sort of public discussion about it. It was the day where it was the first day where you could register That's right. So I think it was to take some... My understanding of the process, and I have covered complaints before about candidates

and whether they spent too much or spent too early, it's usually through it. It's not usually through the Integrity Commissioner. It's a compliance audit committee that essentially looks at whether or not you broke any election rules. And they actually can kick people out of office. Jim Carrey, Janice, former counselor, got caught. So I don't think that's going to really cause any problems

for Brad Bradford or have a major impact on this election. I'm just naturally curious because I produced that live event. Yeah. And I was there. And I have not heard from any integrity commissioner. I don't think you're in any legal jeopardy. Well, I wasn't worried about myself. I was just curious whether I had a front row seat to something particularly interesting.

Yeah. David Ryder, well, what were you going to say there? You were going to tell me... No, I was just going to say, I think you're okay. And, yeah, that's good. Oh, I'm not worried. I look for trouble. It's my middle name here.

But David Ryder, I didn't get you in trouble this time, did I? Probably not. We'll see. I don't think so. I think I'm okay. Next time. I'm, I'm, I'm okay. I can leave anytime. But we can't wait six weeks, six weeks. We can't wait six years for your next in-person appearance. Well, I'm happy to come back whenever you, whenever you, whenever you put a lasagna on the table, I'll show up. You're like Garfield. Yes, exactly. All right, give my love to Chris Brown.

I absolutely will. And your wife? Yes, Donna Boll. I don't think I've met her. No, you should. But Dr. Brian Goldman was over. Yeah. And he shouted her out. That's right.

She's now working in ideas and producing fantastic documentaries. What a talented bunch of people you are. My goodness. Love this very much. I'm going to keep my good eye on how the Toronto Star uses AI. Please do. I don't like what I see. I'm going to call you back here.

I'm the integrity commissioner around here. It'll be like you've given feedback on the newsletter. You can tell me what you think of AI. Right. And that brings us to the end of our. 1913. I'm checking that number because I don't want to make a mistake here. 13. Okay. 1,90013th show. Can I come back and be 2112? Is somebody already booked that? Oh, Rush. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that. Are you going to see Rush? I'm going to try. The tickets are expensive, but I'm going to try.

I bet your wife's not going. Probably not. I heard they don't let women into the show, except for the drummer. That's right. Finally, a woman will be at a Rush show. Go to Toronto Mike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. Toronto Mike.com. Much love to all who made this possible. That is Great Lakes Brewery. Palma Pasta. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball.

Get your butt to Christy bits, David Ryder. No ticket required. We'll go together, man. Sounds good time. Recyclemyelectronics.ca. And of course, Ridley Funeral Home. I've got to check my calendar real quick. Oh, this is very exciting, David Ryder.

early tomorrow morning, I'm going to pack up my studio, and I'm going to build it out at the Glen Abbey Golf Course, because the Joe Carter Classic is happening, and I'm literally going to, like, try to grab the celebrities as they go to the golf course and make them talk to me. Wow. Joe Carter.

As a kid, I got Jack Nicholas's autograph at that very golf course. Well, I don't think he'll be there. But you never know who will show up. I heard Ernie Clement's going to be there. Well, it's a big name. Big name. A lot of interesting people will be there. Josh Donaldson will be there, Russell Martin.

There's a whole bunch of people there. So I'm going to have many, many people or nobody. We'll find out together tomorrow. How long is it going to take you to ride? That's a long way. I would totally ride that, but I'm actually driving. I would do that. That's okay.

See you all then.