Dianne Saxe: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1990
00:00 Welcome to episode 1,990 of Toronto-Miked, an award-winning podcast. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at great lakesbeer.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 palmapasta.com for more. Fusion Corpso, Nick Aienies.
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01:20 And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, returning to Toronto Mike, it's city council candidate for Ward 14, Diane Sacks. Good morning, Mike. How you doing, Diane?
01:44 Oh, look, I think I've got a very similar couple. Oh, yeah, oh yeah. It's being blurred out, though, but yeah, is that a Yeti? Yeah, that's fine. This one is a contigo, I think, but, you know, same general idea, and not quite exactly the same color, but close. Well, a lovely client sent me this. I don't know if you can see it, but it's got my name on it. It says, Mike.
02:03 Oh, that's wonderful. You know. Well, you're well loved by many people, as we all know. Thank you. And with good reason. The problem is that doesn't really help because usually there's at least six or seven mics around. So who knows whose cup it is. right?
02:18 There's a lot of us, so it's not very... Is it... Yeah, is it still true that there are more Fortune 500 CEOs named Mike than there are women? You know what? I don't know. That's the truth, but doesn't surprise me somehow.
02:36 Well, you know, Michael, great. It was a wonderful angel. It sets a very high standard of aspiration to be... Whoops. Oh, yeah. Empty cans. Be the person who stands up.
02:50 It's okay. Well, yes. Sorry for your... Thank you again for accommodating my crazy schedule. I am grateful. And let me just turn my phone off so it doesn't do anything stupid while we're talking. And then while you're doing that, I will tell the listenership, because I've already started recording.
03:05 I'll tell the listenership that not your first visit to Toronto mic. So in July 2020, this was the, if you remember, July 2020, the COVID... Yes, the heavy COVID times. I actually visited your backyard, and it was episode 688, and I'm going to read the description I wrote at the time. We recorded live together in your backyard. In the 68th episode, Mike chats with Ontario's last environmental commissioner, Diane Sacks, about her father, Morty Shulman,
03:39 her career in environmental law, her years as Ontario's environmental commissioner, why that came to an end and we talked about your excellent new podcast, Green Economy Heroes. And then we chatted again a couple years later, November 2022.
03:57 It was episode 1,150. And I wrote at the time, Mike Chats, yeah, I'm going to, we're almost done. Mike Chats with the newly elected counselor for Toronto's Ward 11, Diane Sacks.
04:10 We learn why she entered politics. How that nail-biting election night unfolded. You know, I love the details. What will be her focus and what will become of green economy heroes? I'm always interested in that. So, this is round three, I suppose, for us. And
04:27 I thought off the top, I'll ask you a question from a listener. This is on Blue Sky. Her name is Connerdian girl. And she says, was Diane Sacks's mom, the famed high school teacher, Bernice Sacks? That was my
04:43 mother-in-law. Okay. But a relation, interesting. Yes, absolutely. And she was very well loved as a high school teacher. And she loved her students. She would be very pleased to know that she was still remembered. Unfortunately, she's been dead now for many years. But she would have been so pleased.
05:03 Yeah, and of course, I know because I can use my logic that your sister-in-law, I'm sorry, your mom. Oh, yeah, okay. So your father was Morty Shulman. We talked quite a bit about that in your first episode. but I just would just like to remind people that we had clips and we had Peter Gross remembering your dad and his time at City TV. And I just would just like tell people, get your butt to episode 68 and learn about Morty Shulman because I just love talking about your dad. And there's a wonderful new book, Mavericks, Mobsters, and Militants that Giobite Fernandez just released about the battle in the 1960s for construction safety in Toronto and the role among other things that my father played.
05:45 I had him over here sitting right there and we talked about your father. Super. It's a good book. Yeah, no, great book. In fact, I'll just shout out my friend and client, Nick Iini's because we're doing a two-parter with Gilberto and part one recorded last week and actually on this Friday, part two. So great book, smart guy, and it was great to read about your dad's role in all of that. It's a part of Toronto's history that most people have forgotten. In one way, it reminds us how fortunate we are now that we stand on the shoulders of giants who fought for safety and dignity for workers and really transformed the exploitation of workers here in Ontario.
06:30 And at the other hand, it's also a reminder of how large the obstacles are to making that kind of positive change and the kind of collaboration and persistence and stick-to-itiveness that it takes to survive and do it anyway. Absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. Now let's get into it, Diane, because you probably have doors to knock on or calls to make. I know what it's like in your seat there. So tell us the big question right off the top, which people want to hear from you. So you just served your first term as counselor for Ward 11, University Rosdale, but you're now running in Ward 14, Toronto Danforth. Please tell us why the switcheroo. Well, I'm running in Toronto Danforth because I believe in public service and I believe that the work I've been doing for the city isn't done. There two things happened at the same time, three and a half months into the election campaign and after I had knocked on many, many thousands of doors.
07:31 At almost exactly the same moment, people discovered that Paula Fletcher was intending to retire, but not to let anybody know so that she, she could just hand the ward to her protege, Sarah Earhart. And a lot of people in Toronto, Danforth, really didn't like that. And at the same moment, Mike Layton, the mayor's stepson, who had even two weeks earlier said that he wasn't going back into politics, announced that, after all, with the mayor's backing in the Progress Toronto Machine, he intended to take the seat in University of Bristol. I'm an independent. I don't have a big political machine.
08:10 I'm not the mayor's family member, and it was immediately clear that, well, if you're standing in the way of a bulldozer that intends to kill you, there are only two choices. One is to get out of the way and do something else, and the other is just to stand there and let yourself be mowed down. Any good lawyer has to learn when to fight and when to switch. And with so many people in Ward 14 asking for me to come and run there, given my long history, dealing with cleaning up the contamination in Ward 14 going back to the 1980s and the lead in Riverdale, fighting for the river cleanup, working with TRCA, Toronto Region Conservation Authority on the Lester Street, Spith, the new mouth of the dawn, as well as personal connections, dancing in St. Barnabas and so on. So I have a long history in Ward 14 as well, and what we heard from people was they wanted an experienced counselor, not a beginner.
09:10 they wanted an independent, not just a party loyalist, and they really prized a clear focus on the environment and what can and cannot be done by the city. In addition, because I'm a current city counselor, I have the networks with the way the city works today, which is very different from the way it was before 2018, and of course the planning law has also changed dramatically since then. One other reason that people urged me to run in Toronto Danforth is because Toronto Danforth, actually in all of North America, has the largest opportunity to build affordable housing that workers can afford to live in. So the teacher's pension plan through Cadillac Fairview owns a big piece of land in the Portland's. Are they going to make it include enough units that first year teachers can afford to live in or not? And so what we've seen is these kinds of opportunities can be used well or badly.
10:16 I'd like to see it done well. And we know that there's some really egregious examples in Toronto Dunforth where it was done badly. I don't repeat that. So, okay, so I'll very well said. Was that too long? No, no. No, are you kidding? I can do it shorter.
10:34 No, this is Toronto, Mike. There is no do it again. It's one take only. Yeah, but the Ward 11 University Rosdale, where you served your term, when Mike Layden said he's running again for city council, kind of returning to his old ward there, that's, uh, it sounds like basically, okay, so you,
10:52 let's call a spade of spade here, if you will, that you couldn't beat Mike Layden in that machine behind him and, and his, his popularity in that ward. So basically, there was another ward with Paula Fletcher, who I believe was on city council for like 23 years or something. like that. And when she decided to retire, there was an opportunity for you in Ward 14, so you did
11:16 the switch. But did you have a relate on city council? What was your relationship like with Paula Fletcher? Well, I sat next to her for the last four years. I have read and voted on all of her motions. Some things we agreed on, some things we didn't agree on. But the important focus on trying to serve the community, improve road safety, public safety, improved public space, increase affordable housing, you know, fair treatment for staff. There are a lot of areas in which we did agree. Looking at this particular circumstances of Craven Road in relation to garden suites, I mean, in most cases, I voted for her motions. So it's something that I got a detailed knowledge on from serving on council as well as everything else.
12:09 It puts me in a good position to carry on without there being a sudden break. Being a city council, being a city councilor is extraordinarily complicated. For beginners with no city hall experience, no government experience, it can take a long time to become effective. And there isn't that time to waste in Toronto Danforth. And then, of course, you've also got, I mean, it's the Danforth, right? It's the extraordinary collection of unique shops, some beautiful parks. It's got the river.
12:42 It's got the entire new mouth of the river, Bidasegay. It's got a quaman menacing. It's going to be larger than most Canadian cities as it's built out. So huge opportunities and a lot of issues I've worked on for many years. Okay, so you did a great job there telling me about the switcheroo in the last minute and Paula Fletcher trying to delay as long as possible her like officially not being on the ballot or whatever because there was that deadline.
13:10 But can you break it down just a little bit more? Only because I've been following, for many decades, I've been following city politics. And that's switcheroo. That whole Paula Fletcher is retiring. Mike Layden is joining the race in this ward. Diane Sacks has switched wars. That was the most exciting switcheroo,
13:27 I'd say, in our municipal politics since that day that Doug Ford's, said, I'm running for mayor. And Rob Ford said, I'm going to run for my old council seat. I guess that was for 2014. Like, so in the detail, like, how close was it? Like, are you at, you know, City Hall and checking the clock? Like, like, I'm just trying to think when I make this biopic.
13:48 Like, is that clock ticking? Like, how much time did you have? How close was it all for all these switches? There wasn't a lot of time. We were three and a half months into the campaign. Right. I mean, I wasn't kidding. I had already knocked on many things.
14:02 thousands of doors in University of Roadsdale. But I am capable of making good decisions quickly, and we had a lot of people reaching out. Okay, so we didn't come down, like, we didn't have a clock going, okay, all right, Mississaug, you got 15 minutes left. What are you going to do? Like, it wasn't quite that close, but we were in, we were in the final day, right? Was it the final day? When I registered, it was at the close of the clock.
14:35 There you go. So I just need this scene, the climatic scene in the biopic I'm filming. That's the final closet at the big clock. Tick, tick, tick, tick. It's on CBC. There were reporters. They got it all on film. Okay, good.
14:48 I'm going to need to license that footage there. Okay, very good. So you've done now your first term on city council. What did you learn? Like, what surprised you, Diane Sack? from your first term on Toronto City Council? I always knew that being a city councillor was an extraordinarily difficult job. I was pretty sure it was more difficult than being an MP or an MPP
15:14 or a cabinet minister in the provincial government. But I have been, it's been really driven home that it is one of the most difficult jobs in Canadian politics and the interventions of Doug Ford keep making it harder. The hours are relentless. The expectations are extraordinary, especially in a ward with a very highly educated population. So, you know, we would get emails 24-7. We would get sometimes thousands of emails between Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend and Tuesday morning at 9 o'clock. and by Tuesday morning the people who wrote on Friday afternoon were angry that they hadn't had an answer. Well, it was the weekend and I have to work virtually all the time, but my staff need some time off.
16:15 And the city's staff gets some time off. And so the demands are truly extraordinary. There are also, of course, opportunities to. have a tangible impact on things that I care about. And so some of the seeds that I planted and projects that I started will take time to be realized. But I've done it enough to make things possible that other people can now carry it on, such as the community center that's been needed for Midtown Toronto for years and was completely blocked and installed when I got elected and is now underway with an international design competition, revitalizing the VIII.
16:58 veil of Avoca, which was a destination park for the city of Toronto 100 years ago and then has been allowed to fall completely into rack and ruin and is now on track to have a revitalization as a cooperation between the Conservation Authority, the city and a residence group that are going to lead the fundraising. You know, saving sneaky deeds, making significant upgrades in the parks. There's a beautiful new park that's going into behind the Summer Hill TTC station. That's going to be a Rose for Rosedale with the first really interesting new playground for children that we've had in years. I mean, other than Bidasigay, most of Toronto's playgrounds have been dumbed down to the point that they're no longer of interest to kids after they're about eight or nine. Literally, they've been deliberately dumbed down.
17:55 And so it's fine if you've only got kids that are one or three or four or six, but kids get older than that. And we need better facilities for them. We need better places for adults. And this is going to be a very exciting park that I had to push the staff way out of their comfort zone, all kinds of different ways to get it done and designed by the best park designers in the country. I'll give you an example. Sure.
18:22 I mean, there's many examples of the crazy risk diversion that this is. city has reached. So on the third go-round of the design, I got a design. So Cormoran Associates, best designers. They're the ones who did Sugar Beach and the dog fountain and all of those things. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful designers. And I've been pushing to try to get something interesting when we make really good use of the space. And they showed me a design that showed a two-level spiral slide, which I know kids would enjoy. And a note on it, and a note on it, saying the staff are insisting that we take this out and put in a short, straight, simple one. I said, this is outrageous.
19:02 If the staff insist on dumbing this down, so it's no better than anything else, I'm not going to fund it. And I had to make a really big fuss to keep it interesting. Here's an even dumber example. Yeah. You know those foam dumbbells that you can use in the pool to push up and down, get a little bit? So about a year ago, some of the young aquatics instructors got together and agreed that you really couldn't trust seniors with foam dumbbells. Because after all, the poor dears might hurt themselves. They might strain their shoulder.
19:43 And so they decided they would take away all the foam dumbbells except for possibly a small number of very advanced classes. Now, this is completely outrageous. older people and especially women need resistance activities to keep bones and muscles strong. And the safest way to do that is in a pool against foam because that way you get safe resistance. And this idea that you couldn't trust seniors who, after all, have had to look after their bodies for a long time to push a foam dumbbell was. So I protested to the head of parks. And they sent, they had the aquatics people send me a totally patronizing email saying, oh, don't worry, we really have to protect the poor dears. And I went ballistic.
20:37 And I, you know, anyway, I managed to talk the head of parks out of this completely stupid idea. And by the end of the week, the foam dumbbells were back. But it takes constant attention to that kind of detail to get good results. The, you know, the staff have been told thousands of times the safety is very important, but they turn this into something utterly dumb. Yeah, risk adverse, like you said, even minimal risk, it's not worth it. Well, it depends for whom, right? In the meantime, they're perfectly willing to close the bike lane and force bikes into heavy traffic without any kind of protection. Because if those people get killed, they don't, you know, that's not they. them. But anyway.
21:24 But we'll get back to that actually because it sounds, I mean, I've had chats with my local counselor. It sounds like that's, you mentioned Doug Ford, but that's a provincial thing. Well, provincial is a larger issue. But the question about risk aversion and whose risk is important and whose risk do they look after. And what does it take to get some common sense? Anyway, the foam dumbbell example has actually been my most popular ever post on LinkedIn. It was shared about 30,000 times or viewed about 30,000 times
21:59 because on the one hand, it's such a silly story that anybody can understand. And on the other hand, people want to be able to have some personal autonomy on things that don't hurt anybody else. And really, I mean, if there's any group of society that is risk-averse, it's seniors who are taking an aquatics class.
22:20 Right. Right. You know what? I say foam dumbbells for all. Okay? I'd go the other way. But you mentioned here, because I know we only have so much time and I have a few more hot spots I got a hit. And one of them you've hit for this audience particularly. You mentioned sneaky D's. Do you know how sneaky D's got the name sneaky D's? Tell me. Well, it was originally at Bathurst and Bluer. And of course, Honest Ed's was across the street. So sneaky D's is just the opposite. if you took honest edds and you flipped it, sneaky deeds. Okay. So. I suppose. There you go.
22:57 So, but my question is, can you please just, I'm curious because I was following that very closely. I've seen many a great show at Sneaky Dee, shadowed to Rusty. But what was your role? Remind us, please, your role in saving Sneaky Dees. So the Sneaky Dees demolition application came into the city when Mike Layton was counselor in 2020. And basically. nothing happened. The negotiation back then had been that some new space would be created in the new
23:30 building, but there was absolutely no assurance that that was going to protect sneaky ds. They'd still have to move twice. We don't have any control on retail rents. Was it going to be like the silver dollar, which as you know got pushed out of college and Spadina and wasn't able to go back? So it really looked like the end for sneaky D's. And so that's the way things sat for six years. When it came back to me, you know, in the first it looked pretty straightforward. There had been a public meeting in 2020,
24:08 but then as they say, nothing had happened for six years. So I called a public meeting myself. Nobody came. So it looked as if people didn't care. But then I, I was assured by the developer that they had an agreement with George, the manager of Sneaky D's,
24:25 to make sure that he would be able to come back into the space and continue operating at a price he could afford. But I didn't get that assurance from George. So I tried to reach George. I couldn't reach George. And so I wouldn't let it pass in May of 2026 because I hadn't yet heard from George. The developer sent me a letter that he said was from George,
24:46 but it didn't come from George, and I didn't know whether it was legit. So I deferred it for a month. During that month, A, I finally did get to speak to George. I went and sat and sneaked ease until he finally talked to me. But also, the community got organized to say, this is a really, really important place to us. And I met with the activists,
25:08 and one of them mentioned that he'd heard that the development was supposed to include five properties is one of which is currently the RBC branch. And he'd heard that the developer didn't own that property. Well, so I'm a lawyer, I'm thorough. I went back, I checked the application. The application, the developer has certified that he owns all five properties. So I asked for a title search.
25:37 The title search showed that the developer will only own two of the properties. Nobody had ever done that. In all the six years, nobody had ever done that. And in particular, the developer didn't own the Royal Bank branch. Now, the Royal Bank used to be a client of mine. And one of their board members used to be on a board with me. So I had several connections into World Bank. We were really short of time.
25:58 There was only a week left at this point before this was going to come back to community council. So I pulled all of my strings, all of my networks to, and of course it was a holiday week as well. It was the July 1st weekend. So getting a major Canadian bank to do. do anything in writing on a holiday week in the summer is almost impossible. Right. But I pulled it off and I was able to get a letter from the Royal Bank by Friday saying, no, we have not signed anything.
26:30 We do not consent. We do not support this application. And within hours, the application caped. And in the meantime, I had got independent legal advice because I couldn't get help from the city as to what I was going to do to stop this from going ahead because it was based on a fraudulent application. Right. Right. So it took many parties, but it wouldn't have happened without me. Okay, this is going in my biopic, Diane. Okay, there's going to be, this is going to be a great scene. Like when you realize, you're looking at the records late at night and you say, wait a minute,
27:02 RBC owns. That's exactly right. Okay. Well, exactly. And how do I get RBC to get it, you know, because they had managed to keep their head click deeply in the sand for six years. And they didn't want to be dragged out of that hole. Wow. Okay, well, thank you. Thank you for your role in savings. And thank you to these giant banks. Is there anything they cannot do, Diane? These giant banks. If you can actually get the right person to talk to you. Well, that's why you've got that Rolodex there. Now, back to Ward 14 though, because I just checked the clock. So there's another candidate in Ward 14.
27:38 You talked about Paula Fletcher had like handpicked her successor, Sarah Earhart. And there's another candidate, former counselor, former city councilor, Mary Fragadakis, who entered the also a late breaking edition when she found out there was a retirement.
27:56 So we have, she was there representing the ward 2010 to 2018. We all know Doug Ford. Part of the ward. Yeah, because, yes, because we went from 40 to 25, I guess. So there, yeah, and then, yes, there was, yeah. So that was that great election when two incumbents were fighting it out. Okay.
28:13 But she grew up in that writing. She lives there. So the big question I have for you, Diane, is do you think it's important? Is it important for a city councillor to live in the riding that they represent on council? Well, Paula Fletcher doesn't. And she's been representing for 23 years. Peter Tabins is the MPP, and he doesn't live there. Lord Perks didn't live in his word.
28:35 Lots of people, you know, Jennifer McKelby doesn't live in Ajax. It's important to know and love the place he represent and to live. and to listen carefully. I think it's very important to have a constituency office in the ward, an active, open constituency office, which I absolutely would do and have pledged to do, and I've got staff who currently run my constituency office who would do the same.
29:00 It's a question of providing good service and being listening to constituents and then knowing what to do when constituents bring you a problem. There's a lot of similarity in objectives between me and some of the other candidates, the difference is in the ability to execute. Good point about Paula Fletcher there. She was up 23 years on council.
29:26 I didn't know where Paula Fletcher lived. I didn't know she didn't live in her writing there. Well, I checked the voters list. I double-checked because when we knew she didn't live there during the last election, I double-checked to make sure she doesn't live there now. And she doesn't and Peter doesn't and Sarah doesn't. It's...
29:42 Yeah, check the liner notes. we say on Toronto, Mike. You're just the sacks, ma'am, just the sacks. You can use that. That's a good line. That's a good line. Three quick hits from listeners, though. Listeners like to hit hard.
29:54 Okay, so Tim on Blue Sky writes, how does she reconcile being a supposed, and these are his words, okay? How does she reconcile being a supposed environmentalist with the fact that the hardest battle she fought in one was against a bike lane to protect parking spaces on bathers for a few business owners? End quote.
30:14 Well, that's quite incorrect as a statement. One of the hardest battles I thought was to get a bike lane onto Avenue Road. On Bathurst, there was never a question of a bike lane. It's not safe and isn't proposed for one. But what I did do was a compromise on buses. So we had a proposal from the staff to have a 24-7 dedicated. bus lane on Bathurst. And I approved it from Bloor Street South for the streetcars, which is part of why the
30:53 streetcars are operating so much better now. But between Bathurst and DuPont, there are, you know, close to 100 small individual, locally owned businesses. And they felt very strongly that they would lose their businesses if all the parking was eliminated 24-7. because unlike some other places, Chinatown, there's a Green Pea underground parking garage that had lots of space.
31:21 So like when I reduced parking for the TTC on Dundas, there was lots of alternative parking available. There is no alternative parking available in that stretch of Bathurst. There is, among other things, there's an arena block away, which already uses up any spare parking there. So there was no alternative parking. And what the business has said to me was,
31:43 if you eliminate the parking 24-7, you're not doing that much good for the bus, because the bus doesn't have a problem 24-7. So I asked for the data. I got all the data on parking use. I got all the data on the TTC variability. And what it showed was the TDC bus has a huge problem on weekday afternoons northbound. They didn't have a big problem southbound, and they didn't have a big problem other hours. And so what I did was I got the parking out of the way. During the hours, they were blocking the bus and only on the side of the street where they're blocking the bus. And I said, this is a compromise. If it doesn't work, we'll come back to it. But it was worth trying a compromise to save dozens of locally owned businesses where people had put their life's work into it in an area that used to be just derelict and is now a thriving business district. Follow the data, do what we actually need to do, and not just a, knee-jerk reaction. Well, that's why I like this, you know,
32:49 longer-form conversation format because somebody, you know, Tim on Blue Sky has been having that assumption for who knows how long, and we can actually hear a reasoned response from you. I like this. Okay. And it has worked. It has fed up the bus a lot when it needed to be. Good. Okay.
33:07 So two more quick hits and then we'll wind down. But Cam, and if this is a, by the way, If this is a personal question, you can tap out of this. I'm not sure. I think it's fair, so I'm going to ask it. But Cam says, I'd like to know if the leather glove she wears is a fashion statement or a medical necessity. It's medical. They're not leather.
33:28 They're just cloth. And they reduce the pain in my hands. That's what I assumed. I mean, come on, stop prying on the personal medical information, Cam. What's wrong with you? Okay. Cousin Janow would like you to clarify. I think she's got some confusion on this, and I'm hoping you can clarify.
33:43 Your views on warming centers in the city? Well, I think I was the only counselor who led bringing more warming centers into my ward. I opened a warming center on Spadina. I worked with Cecil Community Center to have an emergency warming center in the coldest weather there. I hosted the only 24-7 cooling center in the city. I hosted a new indigenous youth shelter for kids coming straight off the street, a low-barrier shelter, and that one has worked really well. We know that one-third of the residents in downtown encampments
34:30 tend to be indigenous men, and they have a very poor record of success in conventional shelters, but there is one group, and I think only one group with a really great track record of helping Indigenous men get off the street, get off drugs, and find stability, and that's the Native men resins, numbeds. And so I helped put the pieces together, so they are going to run a brand new indigenous men's shelter at 720 Bathers to cite that I help the city by. And it's going to be run by them specifically to give Indigenous. man a culturally respectful, dignified, successful way of getting off the street, and Namiraz
35:14 has a proven history of being a good neighbor to the people around them. It's not going to be stepping over insensible bodies and having open drug use in front of the building. Yeah, I want to shout out Namirez as well because I did an episode with Steve Teakins. It's actually the only, we're almost at 2,000 episodes here to Diane. And the only episode, he's now 12, but my thirdborn co-hosted that episode. because he was very interested to speak with Steve Teakins, and I just urge people to check that out. We talked in great detail about that wonderful organization there.
35:48 So thank you for shouting them out. Yeah, one more thing about Steve. We had a challenging community meeting because a lot of people were frightened, what it would mean bringing an indigenous shelter around them. And Steve worked closely with me to plan and present this meeting in a way that people could have their questions answered and hear what it's really like to live next to a NAMI res shelter. And it made all the difference from people being terrified and angry, generally being supportive.
36:20 He does a good job. Agreed on all counts here. So you're in Ward 14 now. Are there any debates between the, you know, I was almost going to call you contenders. I don't know it makes it sound like it's some kind of a wrestling match or something like that. But do you have debates with other candidates? Well, I'd be happy to, but no one's organized one. The closest that anyone got was that there was in one of the churches last night, there was what they called a fair. So any candidate
36:48 who wanted could have a table. And we had, well, I don't know, a few dozen residents come, maybe 50 came and asked questions of the different candidates one at a time, help themselves some free cookies, that sort of thing. So we had good discussions last night. But there hasn't been anyone willing to organize a debate. But in Ward 11, where you ran last time, were there debates then? Yes, because Ward 11 has much more active residence associations, and they worked with local churches and Evergreen Brookworks was going to hold a debate. The Stone Church usually holds a debate. The United Church in Rosdale usually holds a debate. There would have been lots of opportunities, but there are no comparable organizations willing to put in the time
37:36 an effort in Toronto Danforth. It's one of the things I hope to change, actually, is to help foster more community organizations that they can do a lot of good. Yeah, I think that's interesting because, you know, Toronto's just a bunch of neighborhoods stitched together, but sometimes you can have no awareness
37:56 of what's happening in that, you know, the ward next door or a couple over or whatever, but that's interesting. Yeah. I will say that a lot of the questions, so we've knocked on about 20,000 doors, now in Toronto Danforth. And most of the questions that get asked are issues that are the same issues that I dealt
38:17 with in University of Resda. I mean, the specific locations differ, like which intersection needs a new whatever is different, which street wants a certain kind of streetlight is different, but the issues are very similar. Community safety, open drug use, traffic, parking, park improvement. bike lanes. You know, a lot of the issues are the same. How do we support local businesses?
38:45 How do we keep locally owned businesses and not just the big American chains? There's East Chinatown, which has some of the same issues that West Chinatown has had, where I've been so successful in helping to anchor and preserve the community. And we're going to have the first community-owned Chinatown hub in the entire country that has been made possible by a partnership between me and the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust and some very generous local folks. So every area has its unique issues, but so many of them are the same kinds of issues I've successfully dealt with before.
39:24 How do you successfully deal with, as you said, open drug use? That is a huge one. I wrote to the city manager and to the chief of police about this in August because I've been getting so many complaints and particularly in the Kensington area. It's completely out of control and doing enormous damage to both residents and businesses in the area, constant break-ins and other things. and I do recognize that in some ways, the provincial government closing the injection sites has made anything around a remaining injection site out of control.
40:09 But I also believe that we are not doing enough. Yes, we need 2-1-1. Yes, we need outreach, and we do need absolutely the provincial regulators to cut down on the wild abuse of the safer drug supply, which they're allowing people to walk out of pharmacies with 20 pills and trade them for fentanyl basically on the steps of the pharmacy. But we know that there's constant open-air drug markets just outside, for example, the injection site in Kensington, and there's been no effective police response.
40:47 So we do need more public protection, the most fundamental duty of any government is public order, and they're failing in that. It's interesting because that's a mental health crisis, which you would think that belongs to the province. It does. Yeah. Health and addiction are provincial responsibilities, but they are not doing them, and they're dumping them onto the street where normal people are suffering. Well, you realize, Dan, I know you do, but that as I sit here, I realize they're not doing their job, with the mental health crisis we're facing,
41:22 but they are ripping out bike lanes in the city of Toronto, which is really, that is a municipal job, if I ever heard of one. Absolutely. Ford is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars of your money, ripping out tens of millions of dollars of city infrastructure that the city wants that we just installed that are used heavily every day,
41:45 that save lives, that improve affordability, that help clean the air, support local businesses based on a lie about congestion. The research shows that bike lanes reduce congestion because they give people a safe, cheap alternative to having to have a personal car, which is increasingly too expensive from more and more people, $1,500 or more a month. And there's nothing you can do on city council.
42:11 That's not quite true. I mean, again, we would need some leadership from the mayor, which we haven't had yet. but if we, for example, were to pass a rule that any contractor who works on that will not get work from the city for five or ten years, that could help. We have seen Ford back down before when he's booed in public. This is a devastatingly bad idea. He goes by in his chauffeur-driven limousine that you're paying for, and he doesn't give a damn about the nurse that has to drop her kid off at, at daycare on the way and wants to save the $1,500 a month and get to work faster, so she's a little more time to make her kid lunch.
42:54 He doesn't care, but we do. And, you know, when I was an environmental commissioner, I always used to say, I didn't have power, but I had a can opener, a microscope, and a megaphone. And I still have those. And I want to keep using them. No wonder he eliminated that position. Well, he passed special legislation to fire me. Yeah, that's in the episode one of Diane Sacks too.
43:20 My goodness gracious. And the whole bike lane thing, I mean, we don't have time to get any further into it. But the fact that you're right, Olivia Chow needs to lead this. But at the same time, Brad Bradford, who really, can I say the expression, two-horse race? I think I can. Brad Bradford said day one, he'd rip out the bluer bike lanes. At least I think he said West of Jane or something like that. But my point is that we do need leadership.
43:46 from our mayor on that file. We do. And again, you know, think about saving the waterfront from the Jed airport. I mean, it was me, not the mayor, and not the waterfront counselors who led the charge on council that the people of Toronto deserved to say. And my motion made enough fuss and got enough press that it helped embarrass the federal government into actually giving the people of Toronto a say. And when we got to say, we said no. So that's a perfect example of not having authority. but being able to help galvanize the public in a way that makes change.
44:22 Well, I wish you all the luck in the world, Diane Sacks, in Award 14. People can literally vote today. It started yesterday, the early voting. I always vote early, so I know there's like-minded people like me who they know who they're voting for. They get her done so they don't have to worry about it on election day in case some big storm hits or something. But are you up for it? This is another four years of very hard work. It sounds like it's a lot.
44:44 Now, you're up for it. Four more years of this. I am, and I do want to say it's not just people in Ward 14 who can make a difference in a tight race like this one, anybody in the city can help. Come out, make phone calls, knock on doors,
44:58 help us. It makes the difference. If you care about who's on the city council, you can make a difference. And that brings us to the end of our 1,990th show. 1990. What a year it was. Go to TorontoMike.com. for all your Toronto mic needs. And much love to all who made this possible.
45:23 That is Great Lakes Brewery. Palma Pasta. Nick Aienes, he's at the old mill with Karen Stints tonight at 7 o'clock. Recycle MyElectronics.ca. And of course, Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of this community in New Toronto.
45:41 See you all literally in like an hour, because Ron James is going to drop by and love me some Ron James. Don't you dare miss it.
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