Ed Keenan from The Toronto Star: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1999
00:00 This is a throwdown, a showdown. Hell no, I can't slow down. It's Ed Keenan on Toronto Mike. First offense. On the mix. Down. The beat will be played in many parts. I think we did this.
00:17 One of the greatest hits. Many parts. You listen to everyone. I just had Shaw Claire on the program. If you're looking for some Toronto hip-hop legends, yeah. Just love. this week. I'm supposed to say something right now.
00:32 My goodness gracious. Welcome to episode 1,99. Ed Kahneman, 1999. Can you believe it? Oh, man. This is a very special Prince episode, though. Yeah, we're going to party like it's 1999. I'm Toronto Mike.
00:55 An award-winning podcast. Brought to you by Great Lakes Brewing. 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. Fusion Corp's own Nick Iienes. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to.
01:28 Recycle My Electronics.com. Safe, secure recycling for residents, businesses, and the environment. Ready to recycle? Bring it! And Ridley Funeral Home, Pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today for this big episode, 1999, making his quarterly visit to Toronto Mike. It is indeed the Toronto Stars Edward Keenan. 1999.
01:55 Let's go, baby. Let's go. You had no idea. No, I had no idea. I knew that 2000 was coming up soon. Tomorrow morning. And so, here's a behind-the-scenes moment for people.
02:10 You always wonder what it's like here in the basement. Everyone does. We talk very little before we get on the air, but I did say to you, what number is this? And you said, hold on, hold on. Yeah, I wanted you to be surprised. Because I actually think that's a cooler number than 2000. It is.
02:24 And both because, like, it's got, it's got like a buy-way price check. vibe to it, 1999. 100%. That's the price of the orange tab jeans at the time when my mom would be making me try them on the aisles. But also, it's like one of the first massive hit songs by one of the, probably among the greatest musicians to ever call Toronto home. He didn't call Toronto home at the time, but he later did.
02:53 100%. Yeah. For a time. And so, you know, like there's a soundtrack for people. you know, I don't want, you're not going to clear the samples and all of that, but people can at home. We'll sing it for them. That won't get caught by the algorithm.
03:09 I don't really know the words. You got the, 1999. You got a high voice. That's good. That was good. So, Ed Keenan, when I hit milestone episode 1,000 of Toronto Mike, it was such a big deal. I had the CBC calling. I was on here and now with Jill Deakin.
03:26 But most importantly, a Toronto star photographer. Richard Loudens, the legend. He was here taking photos of me for episode 1,000. Gilles LeBlanc was at his typewriter typing away. And I know you don't have to turn around, but I've got it printed behind you. I was just looking at that, yeah. I had like a four-color photo spread over two full pages. Where the hell is the media for episode 2000?
03:52 Well, we got to wait now for till 10,000. Oh, my God. The bar has been raised. It's like when you add zero, then everybody starts paying. attention. Do I have to clear 2000 to get the attention? Maybe in 2022 when you reached 1000, you know, the main, the lane street media was like, this guy in his basement, right, has done a thousand of these things. What the heck is that about? It was more remarkable. Now, now you are like a part of the Toronto media landscape. I, you mentioned Judge Schockley where he's
04:27 here. I can't even keep track of the number. of legends that you have here on a regular basis. If I want to listen to your program every episode, I would have to make that my full-time job. Because as fast as you can Craig are. I'm just looking and seeing, you had the guy from FM in here the other day. Cam Hawkins, and ready for this?
04:47 At the end of this conversation, which was just amazing over 90 minutes, he told me everything. We talked Nash to slash, phasers on stun, everything. It was amazing. At the end, he goes, that was my, debut or whatever and then I said well not yeah of course it was your Toronto Mike debut he says no his podcast debut there's only one instance of Cameron Hawkins of
05:10 FM the founder of FM the singer of FM he was a duo at first he was 50% of that there's only one example of him talking about everything with a podcaster in the entire world and that's me brother that's you that's you got me all fired up here man that's so there you go Okay, so you're a columnist for the Toronto Star. Do you think I need to clear 2000 before the media is at the front door? Maybe that's what we're all waiting, and maybe tomorrow morning the paparazzi are going to be out. When Jeal LeBlanc pitched this idea to Doug Broad, that's how it went down. I believe I have all these names correct.
05:48 Yeah. I think it was after I recorded 1,000, which was a five-hour and 40-minute epic of like, I hope you were on it. I can't remember who was on it anymore. But, like, maybe I need to clear 2000. I've got a huge guest. It's already in the can. So as we speak, the afternoon of Thursday, October 22, recording episode 1999, tomorrow morning before my kids' soccer tournament for school,
06:13 I'm going to drop episode 2000. That's happening tomorrow, Ed. You'll be pounding the refresh key. Where is it? It'll have to be. Yeah. We'll have to be. I might do it at like 730.
06:25 Well, but as we said, though, 1999, that's the real milestone. Yes. That's a, it's a challenge to get that high. Thank goodness you got sick. Yeah, because I was probably going to be like 1952 or something. Something like that. But how are you feeling because you're always the first two, no, sorry, the first Thursday of the quarter.
06:49 So you are a couple weeks late here. Yeah. Like, how are you feeling? I did know you were really sick and not just putting me on. when I was reading my first up email newsletter, I read every morning, and it had like a note that Ed Keenan is unwell. You weren't able to do a first up.
07:06 Yeah, send your cards and letters, prayer offerings. Pretty much. No, I mean, I just had a nasty cold, and I think it was going around, but I didn't want to come here and give it to you. Right. Because I know in your race to 2000, you couldn't. Yeah, well, I mean, I work for a salesman.
07:25 civilized organization. They don't want you to come and contaminate everybody else. And if you need a couple days in bed to recover from something, you take a couple days and recover from it. You got good employers over there. And as a result, I did recover in time to get here for number 1,99. I think you did that on purpose because you wanted 1999 for yourself. So let's do a little quick promo for first up in the Toronto Star.
07:51 Because as you know, there's a lot of ears on this episode because your illness, created the perfect storm where we're recording this episode near days before the big election and I got questions for you we got to talk about it Monday is election day in the city yeah it's a very exciting time
08:09 very exciting time so tell me about first up which I subscribe to yeah so your long time listeners will know that I was you know originally at I weekly and then at the grid I was writing about the city and it's politics but also the rest of city stuff
08:25 almost like your podcast for quite a long time. And then I became a city columnist for the Toronto Star. Then I went and spent a few years in Washington, D.C. as the Washington Bureau Chief. I came back and was a city columnist again. And then earlier this year, I took over the first up morning newsletter. And so my title there is host, but I'm the writer of the newsletter and curator of it with an editor named Merriam Shaw. And it is our sort of flagship morning newsletter that goes out to people who sign up for it for absolutely free every day to try and tell them what's important in the star. And it's like coffee, the news, and a conversation.
09:07 It's very good. It's kind of a tagline. I have a little mini column in there every day sort of like trying to talk over some of the angles in one of the more interesting or talker stories and ask people to like get in the comments. but I also just try to give everybody a big roundup, sometimes lighthearted, sometimes with a little bit of point of view, but like not opinionated, a straight-to-head look at like, this is the news of the day and the best stuff in the Star today. So that's what I'm doing now,
09:38 and people can sign up for that at the Star.com. And I got to say, I enjoy how you sprinkle pop culture references throughout. Like I really enjoyed this morning when you talked about the Kauai shirts, because at the Raptor game, they had the Kauai, the claw, if you will, the hand of Kauai, big hand, and you quoted the violin fems. Big hands, I know you're the one,
10:00 but I noticed you didn't let the list, sorry, they're readership. You didn't let the readership in on what that song is about. It's about Kauai Leonard, I think. In fact, it's about something else. The author of that song has denied that it is about masturbation.
10:16 Okay, because I was always told it was about masturbation. But it clearly is. Right. But when he was asked about it, he said there was a girl he knew whose nickname was Big Hands or something like that. And then he's given a few answers. But when I was like looking it up, not yesterday, looking it up at some vague point where the violent fems got me thinking about something and I googled them. And I was reading all these histories and, or like interviews and stuff. And he was like saying, no, no, no, he's walking it back.
10:44 About that. So, you know, I think he came from a very religious family. So which, but the violent femmes are a very horny band. Like when they, the early stuff, especially when they were like 17 years old. Why can I get just one? You don't say. We can swear on this show. This isn't a Toronto Star production here.
11:03 Yeah, yeah. So before we get into the election stuff, oh yeah, and people should subscribe to the Toronto Star. Sure. I mean, I just think we should support the Toronto Star because it's good to have journalists As the good people, I'm thinking of the great David Ryder, whoever's going to write about my 2000th episode. I will say, like, on that note, and like I never want to make the appeal to people of like,
11:27 please support the star, you know, as if it's a charity, because it is a business. And, you know, but I do think, like, the more and more we're buried in AI slop. And the projection is like, oh, AI can bring you news digest. Like you can just ask chat GPT and it will bring you all of this stuff. And the thing is that to the extent that it can do that
11:50 and sometimes it's not good at it, but occasionally there are ways to get AI to do a passable version of presenting you something, it's finding that news from places like the Toronto Star and the CBC and the Globe and Mail and the New York Times. Like it's finding the information it needs by, you know, searching through our stuff and paraphrasing it for you. But beyond that, like, even if we reached some point where AIs were good enough to go over
12:22 government documents and pull out the relevant bits and tell you, like, give you that news or whatever, the AI, I can't see a point where it's going to be good at standing in a scrum and shouting out questions and getting answers, making the phone calls, pounding the pavement, going out and seeing in person what this new development looks like or what is happening at this protest where they're removing bike lanes and the cyclists who are angry are confronting the people in front of them. And the star is continuing to sink a lot of money
12:56 into both investigations and live reporting. Like we have one, two, three, four, I believe, four or five full-time journalists working at Toronto. Toronto City Hall. Here's your segue. Working at Toronto City Hall, almost no other, I can't think of another media outlet
13:13 that has more than one, but AI has zero. But you make it a device in an aggregator. If you wonder where's your money go to, it's like the news that we're producing is coming from that, those dollars. It costs money to have those reporters being our eyes and ears on things.
13:32 Right. So there's the sales pitch. Prior to this AI slop, boom, if you will. Like we would, for example, you might use Google News, right? And Google News would be an aggregator. So it would collect different, oh, this is what the National Post is saying about this. So the Toronto Star is writing about this.
13:49 Oh, there's different sources it deems, you know, maybe a proper or whatnot. Legitimate. But AI essentially does the same thing. Like it aggregates and it sources out things. Like I've noticed I've been a source for a lot of stuff. Right. So I'm not always concerned me. Like it'll search something and it'll come back and I'll be like, oh, that's what I thought.
14:09 And then I'll look at, they have a little link or whatever. Where is the source from? Oh, me. Like, I am the source. Like, that happens a lot. It's shocking because it's little niche things where no one else is covering it. We'll get to that after. You are the authority.
14:21 You don't get to 1,99 episodes without. Well, I'm the authority when it comes to the discography of Rusty and what a fluke. I can tell you for sure you are the authority about rioting at the C&E because I made a reference to those riots in a newsletter recently. Yeah, me too. I was there a bunch of times. Right, right, right. And so I made a reference to it because I was an eyewitness. Like I was just, you know, on my way to something else. And an editor was fact-checking it and what they found was you. They were like, oh, Toronto Mike says he was there. I was there. I risked, looking back, I don't know what I was there. If I found out my kid did this, I'd be like, what are you doing?
15:02 But I would risk my life for the large plushy toys that were being yanked down from the string and the S-hooks. Yeah, yeah. I was not doing that. I know. There was a girl I worked with, like a 16-year-old girl I worked with who would chase these guys down halfway across the midway and come back with the toy. But why did I do that? I did the same thing.
15:20 Like, I think it was dopamine hit. Like maybe we can trace back my dopamine addiction to those moments or whatever. And I mean, we had a casually racist name for that day. and the stories that would be told about that day, especially from the Conklin guys and everything. Oh, boy. They would all have bats back there. Oh, yeah.
15:39 Pipes. Bats, that's more of a Brad Bradford thing. There's your segue. Okay. So let's get into this. And before we get into the nuts and bolts about, you know, Bradford versus Chow and some of the city council, you hosted a debate.
15:54 I did host a mayoral debate. Was that the first one? October 6th. No, there were several before that. I think it was like, it might have been the second televised one. Okay, so tell me, though. The day that Chris Alexander dropped out. Right.
16:10 So he wasn't on the stage. It was the first head-to-head between Olivia Chow and Bradford. That's, okay, you know what, that's what I meant? Because I know there's one tonight that's a CP 24-1 that's happened. That's the final one. Okay. So the first head-to-head after Chris, and it's funny because I take notes after, you know, we do this every quarter at Keenan and I,
16:28 and I take notes on what's going on during the quarter. So last time you were here, Chris Alexander had not officially entered the race. So he literally, in that period of time, three months or so in a bit, Chris Alexander enters the race and then he drops out. But before we get into the Bradford and chow of it all and everything, can you tell me, I'm curious, I'm no Steve Paken, okay? Paken, he hosted many a debate. What was it like for you hosting the debate on October 6th, good, bad, and ugly?
16:58 I think it was overall a very good experience. I did one in the last election where there were many more candidates, right? And it was the same debate, the Toronto Star United Way, TMU debate. That one was on CP 24. This one was on City TV. But, you know, it's a relatively low-stress job for me because nobody's voting for me. If I say something stupid, it's just going to be something stupid. I say something stupid in the newspaper all the time.
17:33 Right. You know, but and at this stage, partly because of all my talking to you, I feel fairly comfortable, like, with public speaking. Well, you had a radio show on 10-10. Yeah, yeah. And 640. And so, but it's exciting and interesting to be up there. And to sort of, like, put the whole thing together.
17:56 There was quite a lot of. stress on the day because Chris Alexander had dropped out. And because we had planned a three-person debate and now it was a two-person debate, there was a lot of wrangling with the campaigns about any changes we could or could not make to the format. And we did wind up shortening it. We had planned for up to 90 minutes and it wound up being just over 60 minutes because it was being broadcast on city TV's like news.
18:27 channel, they don't have a hard out. Like, it's not like law and order is coming in by satellite at the top of the hour. It's more like they're going to go back to their anchor desk and, you know, carry on with the day. Like, that's not over, like, I don't get that. Unless, like, online maybe. I am not an expert on the table packages that are available and the streaming
18:49 options and all of that. You don't work for Rogers? I do know that it streams to YouTube. Right. And the entire debate remains up there on YouTube. But not only that, it was chopped up and sent out on social media, which I know because more than anything I've done in the past, like teenagers I have coached in various sports.
19:14 And like my kids' friends were all texting like, dude, your dad's on TikTok. Like I show up to a hockey practice and people are like, I saw you on the internet. You were hosting that mayoral thing. I'm voting for you. But they thought you were Brad Bradford. So, you know, those clips, there's a great photo that one of the star photographers took
19:36 of me and Brad Bradford leaning over talking to each other. And it's like the two bald heads like staring each other down, which actually he was just asking quietly for clarification on something. And I was like whispering back to him. But it looks like we're having a heated, passionate argument. So you look like twins, even though I know you have 20 years on the man. Not far, not far.
20:01 20 years of what? How old Brad Bradford? He's in his 30s, right? He's born an old man, right? Right, right, right, right. But regardless, I'm sure he's early to mid-30s. He's been a city counselor for eight years. I don't think he's in his 30s.
20:17 Maybe in his early 40s. Maybe he's in the late 30s. I'm going to Google his name, but I want to tell you, because just before I got to you, I was at Centennial Park, because two of my children were running cross-country for their schools. And one of the teachers at my kid's schools, who is like volunteers as a cross-country coach, he was there,
20:36 I met him for the first time at your 50th birthday party. He was my neighbor. Yeah. Like I spent time with him today. He is your neighbor. Won't you be my neighbor? Okay, so keep going on about the hosting the debate. And I'll find out how old this man is.
20:54 So I will say, So there was a bunch of wrangling at the last minute About the format and the timing and all of that But it all worked out fine, right? We got on there, everybody did fine I mean, if people want to know too, we don't give them the questions in advance. I do want to know.
21:11 It's one of my questions. But what we do do, you know, in you... Oh, he's 40 years old. I actually thought he was like 34 years old. Yeah, I would have guessed like early... You don't have 20 years on him, but you've got a good, you know, 12 years. or whatever.
21:25 I got hardly any years on him, man. We're basically the same. You also have more hair than he does. Yes, slightly more, but I think he shaves it off. I think he razors it down. I don't think he's naturally a cue ball like that. Okay, that'll be my first question. Who knows that we...
21:42 He comes back. Okay. But you're hosting a debate. Yeah, and so the United Way does a lot of the heavy lifting of the actual wrangling of the campaign. but essentially I write the questions, but we look at the United Way's research and we look at the Toronto Star's own surveys
22:02 to see what people think the biggest issues in the city are, both the United, like Toronto Star readers and United Way, they're members and like the people who use their services. Right. And then we kind of come up with topic areas based on that, and then I go and write questions. And the questions are up to me, but they're informed by, like,
22:25 that stuff, right? Because of that, then the candidates, when they're agreeing to participate in the debate, are told we are going to have eight topic area discussions, right? And the first one will be on housing. The second one will be on affordability, right? So they know the general topics we're going to be discussing, which allows them, I guess, to prepare their answers, no matter how I frame the question they can do whatever. And then we say, okay, and then there will be a speed round.
22:56 There will be yes or no policy questions, and then a series of personal questions. And then a swimsuit competition. There will be a period where you get to ask your fellow candidates a question and they'll respond, right? And so that was like one of the sticking points was that like when we had a three-person format, each candidate was going to be allowed to ask both fellow candidates,
23:20 like one at a time, two different questions, right? So you wind up with like three times two is six, but then you get the responses and the rebuttals. And it's like when you cut it down to just two questions, it's like, it's not just one third shorter. It's like dramatically shorter. And so it was like, how are we going to fill the time? And yet these people have been preparing. You ask them for their jams. What are your jams?
23:45 So I didn't ask them this time. I think I did last time. Ask them what their jams were. Always a good question. But okay. So here's another thing. though is that, and here's a little bit more of behind the scenes sauce. I like it.
23:57 Is that after the debate, the candidates go back and scrum with the press, right? They talk about why they thought they want or whatever they want to do, right? Right. And so the pests are gathered back there and they had a kind of a like standoff because neither of them wanted to go talk to the press first.
24:13 Both of them wanted to be second. And like at one point, Brad Bradford and some members of his campaign team were kind of like hiding behind a curtain, like just standing behind a curtain so there should be the incumbent should get to go last and Olivia Chow was kind of barricaded in her green room with her team and they're both like they're both no I'm not going and then Bradford like when somebody was like why are you guys standing here behind this
24:37 curtain he went to the bathroom and then he was in the bathroom for like 10 minutes and but in the meantime Chow was like still not coming out and then I think eventually she just did go and and talk to them because it was like time to go yeah it gets awkward And it's like the kind of thing, though, that it's just like these are, they're screwing with each other, right? Like the press doesn't care who comes out first or who comes out second. There's not a mass of Torontoans glued to some live stream where they're going to take some significance over who goes first and who goes second. Right. Like nobody else is going to know, but they're both like at that stage in the campaign when they've been facing off for months and months like or campaigning against each other for months and months.
25:22 there was like all this Well can I ask you about that kind of stuff Like is there I feel like there's probably some protocol Where the acting mayor goes last Because you know there's a challenger And there's a champion If you want to bring it into like boxing parlance
25:38 Yeah I mean The box, the challenger always goes first Into the ring Always always The champion goes last Yeah but I guess we We had not set up a protocol The debate organizers
25:50 Had said basically Whoever gets back there first. Okay, that's their fault then. This should have been clear. Because these two have, you know, ran for mayor against each other in the past. You do. In 2023, these two were, I will just say that you do hope that somebody affiliated with, like, when we're talking about becoming the mayor of the largest city in Canada,
26:14 the most important city in Canada. Abs in the universe. A giant global metropolis. Huge. You would hope that the people running. to be leader for that would not be toddlers, right? You would hope that they would be mature enough to not give a tiny shit about who goes first and who goes second.
26:34 Right. I was doing Sharsie back there because I was just like the police officers who kind of wait around to accompany the candidates that were just kind of shaking their heads like about these people. And I was just like, like, get out there and set the tone. Set the tone. You go first. You get out there.
26:52 You get your elbows up. That's from ER, though. Is that from Shorzy? E.R. Remember? Set the tone? Yeah. Mark Green was told that by... Is it okay?
27:03 Because set the tone was... Because I just rewatched ER, okay? I can tell you, it's a huge thread that travels through as the, you know, because the young doctors come in and then they become the leaders and the mentors. I think it means something different in ER because in Shorzie, what it means is get out there and hit somebody. Hit somebody hard. Hit somebody.
27:23 Maybe. stick them. But whatever you got to do is like, injure the other guy. All right. Well, I have to listen to the produce stand and find out what the definitive ruling there is. Okay, so that's good. So, yeah, that was the debate. But it was like an interesting experience, obviously, to be up there. It's a different experience than watching it at home because when you're on stage, you're trying to keep track of the time and like moderation duties, right? Of like when to cut people off. Right. Whose turn it is to speak next? Who's already had their two minutes? Who gets their 30 second rebuttal? I screwed that up.
27:53 only once or twice. And so it was like only later that I actually got to really listen to what they were saying because there's so much business you're trying to figure out on stage. Right. And keep track of what you're going to say next, that it's a different experience. Four days from now, Ed Keenan, even though a lot of Torontoians have already voted because of advanced voting,
28:16 or mailing in ballots, whatever. But most Torontoians are going to vote in four days, election days on Monday. Is this what we're led, if I, I read the news, it sounds like it's a toss-up. Do we have a bonafide nail biter on our hand? Is the incumbent Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford all but tied as we speak right now? We absolutely appear to be in that situation, right? Exciting. According to multiple polls, it's like a statistical dead heat, that they're within the margin of error of each other.
28:48 And that is, I'm trying to remember the last time that was the case. Like, like, Bailao Chow was close, but it was like not that close in the polls, and it was more like, does Bailow's momentum going to carry her up enough, right? I'm trying to remember the last one that was this close. It was pretty clear John Tori was going to win when he was running against Olivia Chow and Doug Ford by the end of it, right? Like, David Miller, yeah, like, it's been, I can't remember a time when we had an election that was this kind of nail by, And it's honestly, like, people have been asking me. Yeah.
29:28 And so, like, I'm not currently writing opinion columns. I have a job where I'm trying to showcase all the stars journalism. So I'm not, like, endorsing people and all of that. But people around the office are always asking me, so what's actually going to happen? Who's going to wait? Well, they want you to look at your crystal ball. And all of that. And it's like, my crystal ball, like, I have enough experience to know, like, what I don't know.
29:51 And this is definitely one of those cases where, I think if I was trying to talk to you through just not the performance of the campaigns and not the policy and none of that, just like who's going to win, trying to read the polls and the momentum and hear what I've been hearing from people, is that I think if they are, if the polls are accurate and it's going to be that close, it comes down to a couple things, and one is certainly turnout in which my pre-existing understanding would be that Olivia Chow will have a stronger turnout operation. She has a more sophisticated, experienced, deeper political team.
30:31 The NDP in particular is very good at pulling their vote. They have a very efficient vote in federal and provincial elections. So historically, the NDP is one of the best at getting their voters to the polls. And Olivia Chow, as a politician, has like, you know, last time she beat Bailau and everybody noticed, like the way their vote came in on election day, initially looked like Baylau had a big lead, but that was like when they started putting in the early vote, Olivia Chow cruised way ahead, right? And it's like people, you know, there's one story you could tell about that where like people who made up their minds at the last minute voted for
31:07 bylaw and all of that, or like time was changing. And if bylaw had another week, she would have changed more minds. But another story you could tell about that that I think is more likely to be accurate is actually that like Olivia Chow's organization got their voters to go out and vote early at the advanced polling both to lock them in and so that there was no chance they have a cold on election day or whatever it's like it's like and now we see a record early vote
31:37 so but I don't know Bradford's citywide political organization is like less tested we just don't know what that looks like. And so we'll see. So if you had to ask me who's more likely to get more of their voters to the polls, I'd probably say I would guess Olivia Chow, right? An educated guess. But it is this one of these things where momentum is not nonsense in polls. It's like since Chris Alexander left, Bradford's been creeping up, creeping up, creeping up. And if what those polls are showing is like a trend that's going to continue cresting up over the weekend. Like if they're a trailing indicator of his.
32:17 support, it's possible that he has pulled out ahead and the polls aren't quite showing that yet, like by more than the margin of error. And so it's like, I don't know which of those or if either of those is true. And I don't know if I had money that I would bet any of it on knowing the results of this thing. So I mentioned you come over every quarter. So it has been over, it's been about three months and three weeks since we last talked about this.
32:45 So I think you can answer this question. Are you shocked sitting here with me right now? Are you shocked that you're throwing your, you're literally throwing your hands way up in the air. You're waving them all around like you just don't care. You don't know how to call this thing. It sounds like a toss-up as far as what I hear coming out of your mouth. Are you surprised?
33:04 Here we are four days before election day. And it's a, you think all bets off. You can't call this thing. Yeah. I mean, do you mean, I'm, am I surprised by how close it is? My memory of our chats is that I think I had this epiphany when I was at that event that Nick Aini's, for Nick Aeney's podcast, of Building Toronto Skyline. This is before the official campaign began.
33:29 Okay, you remember that was part of the problem. The podcast has been a source of some controversy. Yes, it has. Do you know if they ever make a ruling or does it just stay as like, I'm naturally curious if any ruling ever comes down, but we'll talk later. Especially if you have to go to jail as a result, right? I mean, I assume that's the consequence. I think I'm the only one involved who's not in trouble. I think I'm the only, I'm like, don't shoot me.
33:50 I'm just the piano player. Like, I sent an invoice to produce something, and I did a hell of a great job. But that was the night, I was in a room, it was full. And these people, they were mainly developers of that nature. But they were really big on Brad Bradford. And I remember leaving that event and thinking, he has a chance. I still thought Olivia Chow at the end of the game, because she's had three years
34:14 and I thought she did a fine job. I thought at the end of the day, she'll still win fairly, you know, she'll still win fairly comfortably, but I said to you on this maybe two times, two visits ago,
34:23 I said, Brad Bradford, he can win. Well, and here we are. Yeah. Brad Bradford may be mayor of Toronto. I remember,
34:33 Monday night. We talk so often that it's hard to remember exactly what every three months. But there was one podcast where you said to me, yeah. Is this just like
34:42 some kind of dignified retirement or what? Right? Like, what the hell is he doing? He's going to get his ass handed to him. So why would he run again? Because he finished because, Ed. You and I had to, I know, I know.
34:53 I'm not calling you out. No, no, but I do want to point out of fact. And then maybe you pick that up. Just to say, in 2023, which was three years ago, we had a buy election for mayor. You mentioned Anna bylown. She finished second and fine. Brad Bradford finished eighth, barely beating Chris Sky. And I said to you early and often,
35:15 what percentage of the vote? You don't have it in front of you, right? I don't have it. It was less than 1% I think. I got to look it up. But if a candidate can finish eighth, with like less than a percent of the vote, and three years later run again and win,
35:31 I said to you many times, and I believe it to be true, this will be the greatest political comeback in the history of, I think, this country, let alone this city. It certainly will, be, I mean, I'm just trying to think of another example. Eighth.
35:48 I'm going to find out what percentage is boats were. Very few people run for mayor with any profile and finish that far back. It's tough to do. But in fairness to him and to Josh Matlow, who also finished back of the pack, Mitzie Hunter, right? The last minute sort of like coalescing around Anabailau, the endorsement by Doug Ford of Saunders and of John Tori of Anna Baileau sort of cleared the field a little bit. Like it meant that a lot of people who were supporting Bradford and Mitzie Hunter and Josh Matlow,
36:24 who were intending to vote for those people from there. 1.28% wanted those people to be the winners. I did not vote for them because it had become clear that it was like really a two horse and possibly a three horse race, right? So that's coloring those numbers. Sure, but it's 1.28%. That aside, I don't know that anybody that I can think of,
36:48 not just in Toronto like mayoral politics, but in Toronto politics at all, or Canadian politics or even American politics that I can think of, ran and finished with less than 2% of the vote and then won in the very next election. I mean, that will be something if that turns out to be.
37:07 be the case. And even if he does not win but but show finishes close in as close as the polls are kind of showing, I think um, it's still going to be a massive achievement. And as I'll give you all a preview. Yeah. Tomorrow's Toronto Star, uh, we'll have a story by David Ryder exploring how the unprecedented nature of how
37:31 Brad Bradford has accomplished that, um, without the support. of his own constituents, right? All the polls show that he is going to get smoked in Beaches, East York, that the people he represents as a city councilor are going to vote for somebody else in the mayoral election. That may turn out to be wrong,
37:52 but the polls, that seems to be a relatively less disputed fact. And yet, so he has built a mayoral power base, completely divorced from his city council power. power base, right? Like his whole electoral history is in one district, and he's going to, he's not building out from that district. He is like starting again
38:15 elsewhere in the city. Right. Right. So this is like all kinds of ways that Brad Bradford's run here. And I mean, I think he is the anybody but chow candidate. He has spent three years now setting himself up to be the anybody but chow candidate.
38:31 He was having a like behind the scenes like brawl with John Torrey about whether he was going to get in or not and like a daring contest and all of that. But I mean, to his political credit, he has managed to make it work in a way that a lot of people doubted he could. And so, I mean, there's no taking away. I was in the middle of that story to tell you that you and I bandied about like, why would
38:58 this no hope guy run again, right? And he sent me a text after that saying he thought the conversation was hilarious. and he loves listening to like people. Oh, he's listening right now, where I don't know Olivia Chow is listening right now. Right, which is not remotely the point I was trying to make. The point was that he said, why don't you go and have a beer with me?
39:18 And I'll tell you what I'm thinking. And so then he told me at that point, here's why I think I can win. And I think in our very next conversation, I told you that because it was a follow up from our chat. And I think, like, everybody has this hindsight bias where they think they thought something before. And if you go and play the tape, they didn't think that.
39:40 So I could be wrong about what I said at the time, but I think I thought he had a puncher's chance, that I wouldn't vote any money, I wouldn't bet any money that it was going to be closer, that he'd be able to beat Chow, even in a one-on-one. But that, like, I understood why he believed it, and I didn't think it was impossible, right? Like, I could see a world in which things broke for him that way.
40:04 But I think obviously if you'd asked me two months ago or three months ago, and maybe you did, but I think if most of us in the summertime, like even most seasoned, maybe especially seasoned observers, had said like, it's not like Chow has it locked up, but her winning is the most likely outcome. And you would expect something big would have to happen to really change that. And I don't think some, there's no big scandal did happen, right? like in the last couple of months. There was no one big campaign event that you can point to and say, the race changed right here,
40:43 except Chris Alexander leaving, and nobody expected Chris Alexander to win anything anyway. I think we were all hedging our bets last time we chatted, because if another formidable anyone but chow candidate emerged, I felt that that's curtains for Brad Bradford. Okay. So we talked about, like, Michael Ford was talking, you know, that was a little bit of a chatter.
41:04 for a bit. And of course, you talked about John Torrey. We talked quite a bit about that. And then there was rumblings about Chris Alexander. And then Chris Alexander does enter the race. And it's important to note at this point, Ed Keenan, that Chris Alexander's name is on the ballot. Like, he didn't, so he's on the ballot. People who voted for him.
41:20 They can't, those votes count. Right. He's on the ballot. So when people go on Monday to vote for mayor, you're going to see Chris Alexander. You'll find a couple of chows and you'll find Chris Alexander on the ballot, okay? But do you think, even though he said I'm out of this race, but he's still on the ballot.
41:35 Do you think because the race, do you think the race is close enough that the fact that, I'm making this up, let's say he gets, I don't know, could he get 5% of the votes? I have no idea. But even 5, 4% of the vote going to Chris Alexander
41:46 because it's an anti-Chao vote could swing this in, in Olivia Chow's favor. Like, that's how close we are. Yeah, but I mean, we seem to be so close that like a few thousand people voting for the wrong Chow by mistake
42:03 could, swing this thing, right? Talk about that. And that would be a travesty, right? Like, I don't care which candidate you support if, like, basically people are tricked into voting for the wrong person. And this, I think his name is Braden Chow, the other Chow. So he's listed first.
42:20 There's two Chow's, and he's listed first. And the ballot design, you don't realize how poorly designed this is until you look at it and see it, where the first names are in very. very faint type and they're left justified. They're forced over to the left margin. And the last names are in big, bold type, and they're right justified. So they're forced over to the right margin near where the circle is, right, that you color in or whatever.
42:47 Or put your X in. And so there's like this little weird geometric shape that emerges between the first and last names when you're scanning down the ballot. But it also means that it's actually kind of hard to scan your eyes over and reliably see the name. Like if they were just printed, like it just said Olivia space chow, like it normally would, you'd be able to say, oh, wait, there's two chows, let me see this one. Whereas here you've got to kind of like, do a little ruler across it or something.
43:16 Like, it's just more confusing than it needs to be. And I think, like, obviously this guy has a right to run for office. He has a right to put his own name on the ballot. but it does seem like like you can understand why people think it's a dirty trick for him to run that there are lots of people running who have no hope of winning and there's lots of people running who are not actually running any apparent campaign that we can see and everybody's entitled to do that
43:50 but it is a question that comes up of like whether we should make that harder not to restrict somebody's right to actually run for office if they want to run for office But if you needed 5,000 signatures of voters to get your name on the ballot, if you needed to put a larger monetary deposit up, if you needed some other, it would work just to get your name on the ballot, then you'd have less distractions on the ballot of people who are not actually running for mayor in any conventional sense and are running for vanity reasons or mischievous reasons
44:25 or whatever other reasons they might have. But I just think, like, all of that said, like, it's not to question that that guy has a right to run. He certainly does. I don't have any, after reading about it, I don't have any reason to suspect he's up to no good. Like, I think he just put his name on the ballot. He's running for mayor. Lots of people are running for mayor. But if the fact that he's running decides the race in a way that the voters did not want it decided,
44:57 Like the people who vote for him by mistake, I think that will be actually like a travesty, right? Like, I think that will actually be a mockery of democracy, right? I'm very interested in. So Olivia Chow is the second Chow listed on the ballot. Number nine. And then there's also a Choi, I think, listed after her. So.
45:16 Yeah, see, I just wish it worries me, and not because it's Olivia, if it was Bradford for too, like if an Andy Bradford decided to run for shits and giggles, because, hey, this might be funny, I'll get some votes who are meant for, Brad Bradford. Like to me that's just that's not cool.
45:31 Like to me, you're messing with democracy. This is, uh, it's, I hope like I, I, I don't know if anyone's talk to this guy, this, uh, yeah, yeah, the Toronto Star has talked to him. There's a few people who talk to him. And like he just, he was going to run, whether Olivia Chow was on the ballot or not. I,
45:47 didn't hear him say anything like that, but, because I'm looking now, I just wanted to see like, what did the lesser thans get in the last election, right? So, you know, Mamelidi was a name everybody in the city knew. Yeah, and he got 1,100 votes, okay? So we're talking about, and naturally, I think this chap would probably end up with somewhere, like, from 200 to 300 votes or something is what he would get.
46:09 So it'll be interesting to see, does he end up with... You mean, like, just by being a rando on the ballot, you get a couple hundred pounds. Blake Acton got 264, for example, in that election, and Rick Lee got 241. But go down, what did Walter Rubino get? Okay, let's find out what Walter... Because that's... So many names on this damn ballot. Someone, none of, is he even there?
46:28 Oh, 67. Okay. So Walter Rubino got 67 votes. You were mentioning a lot of people whose name I recognized. Walter Rubino, I only recognized because he was my high school teacher. Okay, so there you go.
46:42 He ran, and as far as I know, didn't actually run, and I'm the only guy in the city who recognized who he was. So that would be, if this gentleman, Braden, if his last name was not Chow, he would be like a Walter Rubino, because, you know, who knows, I mean, unless you went to high school at them or something like that.
46:58 So it'll be interesting to see. If he ends up with 1,200 votes, that to me would smell like an unnatural number. And it would be, I would say you could speculate. You could never prove it, of course, but you could speculate that hundreds of those votes were destined for Olivia Chow. Like, Monday's going to be fascinating, Ed Keenan. Yeah. And so, I mean, that's why Olivia Chow's campaign has spent, you know, more time than they would like to, but just clarifying what number she is on the ballot. telling people there's more than one chow on the ballot make sure you're voting for the right one
47:29 right you know she joked when she came out of the early polls i i i almost voted for the wrong one right like i had to do double take because i didn't realize there was going to be too on the ballot right um and so you know but that that was also debate day right so chris alexander dropped out right early voting started right uh and chow's people realized oh or it became clear to them what the ballot looked like you know oh there's two these two chow's here So there was a lot going on that day. It was an exciting game. You should do some Toronto Star should print up fake ballots
48:00 and have 200 people from the Young Blue or Subway Station. Go vote. It doesn't, I don't know if you can, maybe that's against the law. But I mean, there's another question I have, and this is like, we don't have to spend a lot of time on this. But it's like I asked a question in the newsletter one day about like, what kind of ballot design can we have? Like, we want to preserve the right for people to run for office.
48:21 So you can make it harder to get your name on the ballot as long as, but like increasing the fees seems to me to like just shut out poorer people, right? Or less resourced people, blah, blah, blah. You don't necessarily want to shut off access to the ballot, but you do want a ballot design that makes it harder to make a mistake. And some people would say initially that having, the names are in alphabetical order because that's a intuitive way for us to organize things, right? Right.
48:49 But it also theoretically, I think it gives you an advantage of your listed higher up, right? Right? It's like being the Ardvark Auto in the phone book is like, well, we've got AAA Auto. We're first in the phone book. People call us first. Like, to what extent to like people just default to the names higher up on the ballot because they don't want to wade through all 50? Right. Tick the first box you're presented with. So like, potentially you could just randomize the names. Now that would make it harder to find the candidate you're looking for, but you would have to actually look for the candidate you're looking for. although maybe that would make two last names all the more confusing
49:25 and two same last names. I don't know. No, I don't know with it. So when we get the final results, so when do we? Also, though, if we had a runoff system where the top two finishers, there was another election where they just ran against each other, or an instant runoff system where the votes are reallocated, like a ranked ballot or something.
49:48 Which I've been advocating forever. All of these would eliminate the possibility of, of like someone stealing the election that way because it would always mean the fringe candidates get eliminated after the first round and you get to vote again, right? So it'll be interesting to see how many votes Chris Alexander gets because we could safely say
50:07 those votes would have probably gone to Brad Bradford. I don't think you can safely say that at all. No. Because I always think that this is the name. I don't want chow. All the polling we had showed that Chris Alexander's declared supporters were almost as likely to vote for Chowell's their second choice.
50:22 Okay, thank you for correcting me because I make some false assumptions. This is from, I don't mean all the polling we had. I mean like what I heard from liaison. Okay, that is interesting because I figured, okay, you either like how things are going in the current mayor or you want to change things up.
50:35 And so my brain thinks of if you're going to change things up, you're probably going to go with Brad. Brett Parker vote with Brad Bradford. There's another category, though, of change things up. Whereas like, I would like to change things up, but I hate that guy. Right? Oh, yeah.
50:51 And Brad Bradford is probably the least liked popular politician I've encountered. Like, honestly, I don't mean that as a slag against him. No, hey. I don't, I have yet to meet a, like, fervent Brad Bradford supporter. I've met a lot of, like, I talk to a lot of people who are like, eh, yeah, okay, let's do that. And then, and then some people, like, like, Nick Huvallis, who was John Torrey's campaign guru and Rob Fords and Doug Fords
51:26 who said I would more likely campaign for Olivia Chow against Bradford than vote for him, right? Like there are John Tory conservatives who do not like Bradford, and would not naturally vote for Olivia Chow. Would prefer to vote for somebody else, but actually don't like him at all, right? And so that might be some of that vote for Chris Alexander.
51:50 I mean, the regular people of the city don't have those kinds of grudges and stuff. Right. But I do think there's probably, you're probably right that very few of Chris Alexander's supporters would otherwise be like flag waving, fist pumping Olivia Chow partisans. Right. But maybe people who are like thinking they're voting for the lesser of two evils anyway who are like, eh, I'll take, I'll take, you know. Yeah, well, they hold their nose and they vote. Yeah. Yeah.
52:20 Yeah. So, okay, so it'll also be interesting to see how many of both Braid and Chow gets for the obvious reasons. But I want to just ask a quick question from the live stream. So hello to the live stream people at live.tronomike.com. Hello to you, Jeremy Hopkins, who says, join Mike on episode 2000 as he interviews the Y2K bug. That would be quite an interview. That could drop tomorrow morning. Who knows?
52:39 At first I thought it was just a helpful comment, like a comment giving you an opportunity to do a plug. But it turns out it was actually more sophisticated. Very sophisticated, Jeremy Hopkins. And of course, Leslie's on the live stream and complains about her Wi-Fi. I don't know. I think she's in Greece, so she's got some wonky Wi-Fi, but she's tuning in from Greece.
53:00 That's how committed she is. But Moose Grumpy asks, do you have to use your legal name to run for mayor or city councilor? For example, if you are John Smith, but are known as Johnny J, can you run as Johnny J? I think, let's put it this way.
53:15 If I want to run, can I run as Toronto Mike? I don't think so. Okay. And I'm not, I don't know off the top of my head what that rule is. But I think if, if as I'm Googling right now. Right. I think it has to be what's on your legal last name. What's on your passport or whatever.
53:35 But could you be, could I be Ed Keenan instead of Edward Keenan? Or do I have, like, either your middle name's not on there unless there's a reason for it to be, right? Right. But I know that Edward Gong is not formal. normally Edward. He's Zahuah. Okay. I'm not good at Chinese pronunciation, so I probably mispronounced that, but that's my best guess. But that's a good point. And so, should we talk about is he, is he on the ballot as Edward, or is he, because I know his signs say, gone. Yeah, but they also say some of his signs are pamphlets I've seen, have in parentheses like his Chinese name. So that,
54:15 And I think, I suspect that's because it's what's on the ballot, right? And so people have to know. But I was Googling that because I'm actually just trying to, I'm not an expert in Gong and I'm not an expert in this ballot question. Okay, so why don't I set up the next conversation? So obviously we'll revisit it as we chat here for another hour, but Brad Bradford versus Olivia Chow, pop the popcorn and get ready on Monday,
54:44 because it's going to be a nail-biter. And I think you as a member of the media and me as a podcaster, this is exciting. Like if this thing was done and, you know, you know, we've had elections recently where it's John Tory versus whomever. And it's like, it's going to be an 80% of the votes
54:58 are going to John Tory. Like it's almost like, you know, that's when you get the low voter turnout. And that affects the city council races, which I'm going to ask you about a couple right now. I'm glad it's close. I mean, your listeners are going to know, but we'll see if the general public
55:12 realizes how close is going to be and if that's a motivating factor for them or not your vote will matter which I do think yeah yeah and I mean so today a recount result from the Quebec election was just announced
55:30 the liberals had won one riding by 10 votes after the recount it looks like the PQ has won by three votes that's how close it was the liberals are not conceding yet they may be another recal. count, I don't know, but it's like, sometimes it's that close. Kiaraparavani
55:49 in York Southwestern lost last time to Francis Nizuada by less than 100 votes. Okay, can we talk about Francis for a moment? Absolutely. Since you said the name. So, and I used to live in the borough of York, okay? I think my whole life there's been Francis
56:04 Nunziata either as like a school trustee or eventually she would be. Shockingly close to your whole life. It's been the case. Yeah, like late 70s maybe. No, no, I think in the early 80s. Oh, maybe it's John Nunesiata, because there's a John Nizietta. John Nizata is her brother.
56:20 And he was also a politician, but they were definitely both in office in the 80s, right? Early 80s, I would like to say. Like I think Francis Nunesiada was first elected as a school board trustee in, I want to say 84. Okay, okay. And then she became a city councilor and then the mayor of York. The last mayor of York. And then she's been on Toronto City Council. ever since then.
56:43 Who broke? Was it, I'm trying to remember. Was it City News, I believe. I believe City News, I believe it was an FOTM, actually. So City News broke the story. Broke is the wrong word here. They reported, they reported briefly. Well, they did break it.
56:57 They weren't right. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. So they broke the story that what turned out to be untrue, that Francis Nizziata was dropping out. And then, but this didn't happen. That's right. So. And I wish I had.
57:11 some insight into where their sources were or or like they must have heard this from more than one person like news organizations typically when they have they know who the source is right some blogger and they trust that that source knows what they're talking about and they often want to check it like against other information they're getting elsewhere and all of that but certainly they briefly reported that and then it was quickly that francis knows he had a matter of hours later clarified sort of that there had been no change to her campaign. Although weirdly her clarification was not alike, this is ridiculous and false. I'm still in and I'm campaigning vigorously and I expect to win.
57:54 Instead, her thing was like, I don't dignified rumors. There's been no change to my campaign plans. Is this your worst nightmare as a columnist for the Toronto? I mean, when you would do reporting, like, is this your worst nightmare? Getting it wrong? You'd have good sources. You'd be confident that what you're going to publish. is correct, and I'm sure you have lawyers that read it over or whatever,
58:14 but to have it not happen, like every night you're going to bed is, oh, it didn't happen again today. People will think I was wrong. Yeah, I mean, well, the worst nightmare is that you were wrong because you were misled. But sometimes you're right, and they literally, I've experienced it, they've changed their mind.
58:33 Yeah. Well, which is why it's dangerous to say, you know, that something's going to happen. Right. Right. unless you don't have a crystal ball. Right. But certainly, like, routinely we get,
58:46 it's why we're so careful about trying to find multiple sources, especially if we're not able to identify who told us something. We are trying to find different people. Make sure they're not all, like, you're hearing from a guy who heard from a guy. Like if I'm the source, and then they call you and you're like, I can't tell you where I heard it. I heard it from Ed Key. So don't go to AI and check because you'll find out you're the source of that story.
59:09 Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, the worst nightmare is that you get it wrong. Right. And then, but like close behind that is that you wind up getting stung by your sources because they're out over their skis and they've told you something and given you really good reason to believe this is a done deal when in fact it wasn't. But then sometimes the story just changes too, right? Like it's like, but it's weird.
59:36 Without knowing the backstory, I don't even know what happened. there because like clearly like if someone is planning to announce within hours that they're withdrawing from the race and then they don't um like what what changed what had to change what i don't know right like pride was somebody trying to push her out but pride cometh before the fall sometimes it's like uh but that's also why like in the star and most news organizations and i think and i'm not saying this was the case in this case but i'm saying that like another possible thing of how this happens is that like political reporters are supposed to not grant antonymity and or treat with very high suspicion and need a high level of verification if you know
01:00:23 information is coming from somebody with a political axe to grind or a political benefit to you reporting this information or something like that. And so without knowing where that information was coming from or what what their motivation in sharing it was, it's hard to know what went wrong here, but it is like, it's just hard to figure out how, how the rumor starts going around
01:00:46 that somebody's going to pull out if they were not going to pull out. I saw it before it was modified to soften it a bit. I saw the original version that was published and it was like basically reporting that she was leaving the, dropping out of the race. Yeah. Francis Nizuad.
01:01:01 Okay. So a few more, what I think are interesting stories. because this is how much has happened since you were last here, Ed Keenan. Since you were last here, Mike Layden, that is Olivia Chowell's stepson. Mike Layden announced he's going to run again in Ward 11. The city councilor for Ward 11, an FOTM, is Diane was, is, is Diane Sacks. Diane Sacks did the old switcheroo, which we last saw when Rob and Doug Ford did their switcheroo. And Rob said, I'm now running for counselor, and Doug Ford's running for mayor.
01:01:34 I think that was 2014. Okay. So Diane Sacks withdrew from the race in University, Rosedale, where she was city councilor, because Mike Layden had entered that race, and she decided to run for the vacant seat in Toronto Danforth. I believe that's Ward 14, because Paula Fletcher announced her retirement.
01:01:52 Speak to all of this. This is kind of exciting. So this happened, like, in a matter of a day or two, where Paula Fletcher had registered, was running for. reelection was expected to win easily, right, as she always has. Of course. Diane Sacks had registered, was running for re-election.
01:02:12 She had some competition from sort of like her left, right? But it's hard to size up. But some people would say, oh, maybe that's one to watch, right? She's got a couple challenges there. If somebody coalesces the vote against her, that might be interesting. But then Paula Fletcher announces at the last, minute that she's, well, close to the last minute. Like, the last minute, mind is 24 hours, right?
01:02:42 Yeah. That she's going to withdraw and, you know, kind of her heir apparent is, is it Sarah Earhart? I'm just trying to remember. Yeah. I think that's correct. Who is a school board trustee and sort of like going to pick up Paula Fletcher machine, right?
01:03:00 And the speculation, widespread speculation is that she, that she timed her announcement so there wouldn't be a free-for-all of people running against Sarah, that Sarah would kind of walk into it, right? But then, at even more last minute, Mike Layton says, like, even more last minute is like, wait, is that Mike Layton's music? Dan, da, da, da, da, da, da, nah, here he comes. Down the aisle, Mike Layton, coming out of retirement, coming out of retirement
01:03:38 to seize back his old ward, which then causes one of the main progressive challengers and possibly the most, the one that people had the most hoping, to just withdraw and endorse him, right? And Diane Sacks to hightail it over to Toronto Danforth to try and win Paula Fletcher's old seat. And in the meantime,
01:04:03 Mary Fragadacus, a former city councillor who represented the other half of Toronto Danforth, half of it for a while, also puts her name in. And so suddenly University Rosedale is a bit of a snooze, right? Definitely. And because Mike Layton is just like, nobody wants to take on Mike Layton. He's like, I'm trying to even think of like the, the WWF comparison where this guy like Andre the Giant comes striding in and everybody else is like, okay, he can't win the Battle Royal. It might be Andre the Giant.
01:04:44 I'm going to do something else, right? And then in the meantime, Toronto Danforth, which was also supposed to be a snooze, is like one of the most interesting ones to watch in the city, right? Now, I don't know, and I, like, Diane Sacks has the name recognition and the sort of like pseudo-incumbency of like representing a nearby ward. But she doesn't, the way city council sort of like power bases work or electoral constituency basis work is like often the power of incumbency is that, first of all, you have like, you've been serving these people for a period of. time. They have phoned your office and you have helped them, right? And often on like not politically divisive issues, but it's like, oh, uh, you know, you know that you are a city counselor helped you get a permit for your driveway or whatever. And so now you and all your friends are like,
01:05:45 oh, I like that person. And she helped me out and all of that. Like, so like, Sachs has none of that in Toronto, Danforth. So I don't know. And this sort of like neighborhood level organizing machine, right? Is like, does that just translate over? Like, I don't know. Freddakis has, like, been on the shelf for a while, but in that time out of city politics, she also, from what I understand, is not made,
01:06:11 not well liked these days by the Toronto Danforth BIA, the taste of the Danforth people. I have not, like, read deeply or investigated deeply into the source of that, but I think, that's not a plus for her, her association with the Toronto Danforth BIA or the Danforth BIA, the Greek town BIA.
01:06:36 And then Sarah, Erhardt is like, she does have Paul Fletcher's machine working for her, right? Like she does have a real advantage there because Paula Fletcher has been a powerful politician in that part of town for quite a while. So it's going to be really interesting, right? Like, it's going to be very interesting.
01:06:56 You're right. Word 11 became a snooze fest. Like, it's done. You can print it now in Charlestar. I'm calling it, okay? I'm going to call it now. Yeah, okay. But now Ward 14, I mean, I just talked to,
01:07:07 Diane Sacks, I'm trying to Mike. Like, also, I did say, so I had, Diane Sacks came on the program a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about all of this. And I got a few people who said, it's disingenuous of her that her signs, the signs that we see Oliver, say,
01:07:24 elect Diane Sacks. But I personally, speaking for Toronto Mike here, not the name I can use on the ballot when I run, but speaking for Toronto Mike, I don't feel it's disingenuous because I believe it means re-elect her to city council where she currently sits. I'm sure that's what she's saying. And I'm sure she already had bought the signs. Like it doesn't feel like she's doing a dirty pool. Yeah, like I don't feel like she has to cover that up on a sticker. When Paul Ainsley, see, this is where like my memory. It's just the details here where I could get in trouble.
01:08:00 But, okay, Paul Ainsley became, I believe, he was appointed to finish out David Socky's term, maybe. He had been David Sockney's EA or something, executive assistant, and when I think this is the case.
01:08:16 When there was an open seat in Scarborough because a counselor had vacated, Paul Ainsley was appointed to fill it, and he promised as a condition of that appointment, he solemnly promised before city council that he would not run for re-election, that he would not run for that seat, right? So what he did was he voted, he ran in the neighboring ward and used that re-elect slogan, right? And I, at the time, I was a much younger man,
01:08:47 we were all younger, piss and vinegar, which is why I may have one or two of the details wrong here about which seat David Socky previously represented and all of that. But he ran in a neighboring ward and he was putting reelect on his signs. And at the time, I thought that was the dirtiest thing. But I was also thinking it was dishonest of him to have sworn he wasn't going to run, right? And then go ahead and run. Yeah, that's a whole different level. And that happens all the time.
01:09:13 At Toronto City Council, whenever there's like a fill-in candidate, they always have to say, oh, no, I'm not going to run. But there's nothing legally binding and they often do go and run, right? And it's a huge advantage that you've now been serving as the city counselor without ever having been elected. Right. And so, you know, I don't do that to air Paul Ainslie's dirty laundry to just say, though, that in the past I have found that troubling. And maybe I don't want to be a hypocrite about it. But it's not in the realm of offenses against, like, democratic integrity.
01:09:47 I don't think it's a huge one. Is it possible, though, because I really, realize the majority of Trontonians only realize, oh, there's an election going on when the signs show up. That's really the big sign. But we talk about it for months and months. Like, it's the biggest thing. Oh, my God.
01:10:02 The election's like. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, the signs show up. And the average Joe or Jane is like, oh, I guess it's election this year. Like, this is their awareness thing. So I just wonder how many people at that level of, you know, these people are not reading first up, okay? They're not reading the Toronto Star.
01:10:18 This is Winston Churchill's, like, the best argument against democracy. is a five-minute conversation with the average voting. So when they see re-elect Diane Sacks, they will think, oh, she must be our counselor now. Well, and the name is familiar, right? You know, this is somebody on city council.
01:10:33 Yeah. She can keep the job. Yeah. So I can see that aspect, but I just think, I'm not sure there's an answer to this question. What a lot of people, like, and so I'm not even sure
01:10:42 what the right terminology there is because it's like, I know a lot of counselors who you, are like politicians, who used to be the, like somebody like, Mike Layton. Traditionally, someone in that position, their signs would say return, Mike Layton, right?
01:10:59 Instead of reelect, they would say return. Right. He's been there before. Send him back, right? Right. And you see that in federal and provincial elections where, like, the, we lost last time because of Carney Mania, but now I'm coming back, right? Right.
01:11:13 I'm not, you're not being reelected. It's returned. But, like, even that is like, well, Diane Sachs represented somebody else, right? So it's like send me back to City Hall for sure, but I'm not sure what the right term for that is. Yeah, there is. We don't have a convenient term. I assume what happened here,
01:11:27 and I could be wrong in this assumption. You had her in there. Was she'd already paid to have the signs and they were already printed and like she's an environmentalist, she's not going to throw them in the trash. Now what a lot of politicians do in that case, like they reuse their old signs
01:11:39 and they just put a sticker on them that says reelect or whatever. You could put a sticker over that reelect if you were so motivated. But maybe if you don't think is an advantage to you. You wouldn't pay for the stickers. Stuff that people are talking about.
01:11:55 It's that, we've reached that time where I just want to dip into the restroom. So if you've got promos to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I'll, I see Moose Grumpy. You go, I'll be talking to Moose Grumpy on the live stream who says they have a TV personality running in Mississauga who's not running under his real name. I actually think, am I right, Moose Grumpy? This is an FOTM, right?
01:12:17 Because I know, I think I know who you're talking about here. but interesting. So there's an example. If that's true, well, maybe sometimes you can use an assume name or something to that effect. Okay. So November 28th at noon,
01:12:30 put that in your calendar's listenership, because November 28th, that Saturday, at noon, I'm recording live from Palma's Kitchen in beautiful Mississauga. Who will win that mayor race? Maybe I'll see if there's time at the end to see if Ed wants to call that one. So TMLX-24 is what this is, the 24th Toronto Mic listener experience.
01:12:53 And Palm Aposto will feed you. And I will bring fresh beer from Great Lakes Brewery. I hope to see Brad Jones there. We just recorded a fresh episode of Life's Undertaking yesterday. Brad Jones, of course, is from a Ridley funeral home. And will Cliff Hacking be there? I sure hope so. Cliff Hacking, of course, is with Recyclemyelectronics.ca.ca.
01:13:17 Safe, secure recycling for residents, businesses, and the environment. Recycling electronics and appliances with local Recycle My Electronics programs is free, fast, and easy. Ready to recycle? Bring it! Find out what and where to recycle at RecycleMyelectronics.com. So did you hear that? There is a TV personality running for some people from Mississauga. And I think there must be some standard of what name you're allowed to put on the ballot.
01:13:46 because I doubt that I would be allowed to enter the race under the name the real Brad Bradford or something, right? Yeah, there's got to be rules. It must be that you actually, it's a name you use. But it does seem to me like Jack Layton presumably was like Jonathan Layton or something. And Mike Layden is Michael Layden. Is he on the ballot as Mike Layton? I'm not 100% sure, but his signs and stuff say Mike Layton.
01:14:14 He's known as Mike Layton. If that's a name you use, it seems like you should be able to put it on the ballot. Like you said, you can't go in as Bradford, Bradford, because that's going to be confusing. Okay. So another city council race I'd love to ask you about because. Yeah. Well, where do I want to go on going? Yeah, Gord Perks retired.
01:14:33 Burt Perks retired. That's my city councilor out in Parkdale, High Park where I live. And I think, like, I have known Gord Perks for a long time before he was a city counselor. He was the Enviro columnist for I Weekly when I was his editor there. Hey. I remember when he ran first for federal office and then when David Miller basically convinced him to run for city council, he was environmental activist. I am personally fond of Gordon.
01:15:04 I know I'm not shy about that. We're friends, right? Like we're not close friends. We don't hang out at each other's houses or anything. But we didn't drive you here today. We are longstanding fond acquaintances, let's say. But I think he has been tired there at City Hall for a while. He took on a big portfolio under Olivia Chow on the Budget Committee, on the housing committee.
01:15:26 He has been, like, through the Rob Ford years and the John Torre years, he was never the, like, Adam Vaughn maybe was considered the leader of the opposition at first against Rob Ford. you know, Josh Matlow would be in the spotlight a lot. But Gord Perks was for a long time the unofficial behind the scenes leader of the opposition in the sense, not so much that people were taking orders from them or anything like that, but that he had, as an activist, preexisting, like, a really sophisticated understanding of city council procedure and how the bureaucracy worked, how the rules worked,
01:16:12 how the budget worked and all of that. And so he was often able to sort of be a strategy quarterback in opposition for like, how do we get our stuff done and wrangle the votes for that, even though the mayor is against us, right? Or how do we find procedural ways or technical ways or whatever to block what the mayor's trying to do or delay it or change it, right? And so he's been doing a lot of. lot of that work for quite a long time on city council.
01:16:45 And then when Olivia Chow got elected, I think it's like, okay, our team is here now. Right. And he was given a lot, a heavy workload. And I think he's been there long enough and his own personality. Like, Gord Perks is like for better and for worse as a politician. He's the kind of guy who will stand on your doorstep and you'll tell him, you know, well, I don't think
01:17:12 I think we should have cars in high park, right? Like, I like to park there near the Grenad Air Cafe and he will say, you should vote for somebody else. I don't want to represent you. I'm not representing that idea. I stand for something different, right? These are my principles.
01:17:28 If you like them, vote for me. If you don't like them, if you want, he was famously like denying all of his constituents front pad parking pads, right? Front lawn parking pads. Now, this is something that, like, this is where being an incumbent becomes an advantage is that, like, some little stupid thing, I need a front yard parking pad. My city councilor is going to help make it happen. I now have a good impression of him.
01:17:52 When he says no, when his office personally tells you, sorry, Gord Perks thinks these are destructive to the city, we're not approving any. Like, those constituents get mad. Like, they're really mad. The guy who represents them is not on their side, right? And Gord, for better and for worse, as I say, like you can admire it as a principal thing, but you could say it's crazy as politics, is that he would be the one telling people, like, go vote for somebody else, right? No, that's not me.
01:18:22 I'm not your guy for that, right? And I think there's like an accumulation of those things where people, especially in the more affluent parts of the board, like up near Blue or West Village, up in Babi Point, along parts of Ronzi were just saying like this guy man this guy and I think but he's shaking his head
01:18:44 and saying like these people right like and so I think he was tired and I think a lot of his constituents were tired of him like I was the honest truth and then like so I think it maybe was a natural time for him to move on
01:18:57 but it has opened up a really interesting race there Nadia Guerrera I think is like she has run for the liberal nomination before. I think she was the liberal candidate federally. No, no, provincially last time. And she has endorsements from like Kathleen Wynn
01:19:20 and Arif Farrani who used to represent the liberals there federally. He was the justice minister and a host of others, right? And she's running on a sort of a bylaw style, I think, progressive, like, like left liberal kind of platform. And then Diana Chan McNally is running there. And she's like, she presents as like youthful and energetic, right? I'm not sure exactly how old she is. I would guess early 30s.
01:19:55 She's a DJ, you know, like there's pictures of her DJing in Berlin. Like she's an actual DJ DJ DJ. Yeah. She is a homelessness activist, like who's done front line. work, trying to house homeless people and try to help them navigate things. And she's got sort of the traditional sort of NDP machine, or for lack of a better word, the progressive David Miller endorsement, the Gord Perks, the Progress, the Progress Toronto kind of general Team Chow, like, or Progress Toronto, let's say, endorsement in that ward and seems to have a ton of energy, right?
01:20:37 And then there's another candidate, and it's actually my fault that I don't remember their name off the top of my head, who is the school board trustee, current school board trustee, is endorsed by Sherry de novo, who was a former NDP MPP in that ward. And has a labor council, I think, some sort of labor endorsements as well. and had maybe want to be the standard bear there and then Diana Chan McNally is like there's an elbows up kind of fight there. There's a host of other people running there. I think those three I named are the likely front runners.
01:21:18 The first two I named are likely the head-to-head that's emerged. But it is going to be an interesting. And it's a significant beyond Parkdale High Park, mostly because of the role Gord Perks played on council, like both in opposition and in power. He was like a pivotal member of the progressive team. And as years passed and maybe he was growing more weary, more tired and whatnot.
01:21:47 And the baggage was piling up where he had made enemies inside and outside city council because of the role he played. It still was like all the strong. that his like institutional knowledge and experience were an asset for his allies. And so they're going to be sort of starting over there either way, right? May I address Moose Grumpy for a moment? So everybody else stopped listening, including you, Ed, but Moose Grumpy did suggest, and I knew who she was talking about, but she talked about this city council candidate in
01:22:21 Mississauga who is not using their real name on the ballot. And I said, is it an FOTM? And she confirmed yes. So this is Anwar Knight, who I remember my first question to Anwar when he sat right where you're sitting right now, Ed Keenan. So he sat here, he came on Toronto Mike and I said, that's a fake name, right? I didn't believe he could have the last name Knight, considering he started his career as an overnight DJ. I think at like 108 or something, energy 108. Like I think it was too convenient.
01:22:51 It'd be like, your last name is wrong. This is Johnny Midnight. Right. Yeah. Dr. Johnny Fever. Is that your real name, Johnny Fever? No.
01:22:59 But I remember now, I'm sitting here talking to you, Ed. I remember he said, it's my real name. So I believe Anwar Knight is Anwar Knight. So if you see Anwar Knight on the ballot, it is because that's his real name. I'm just here to say, I don't believe that's an example of somebody having a different name on the ballot than their real name. I'm going to guess, and I have to confirm this, I'm going to guess you actually have to use your real name on the ballot. Okay. So I've now addressed
01:23:27 I'm going to look it up when I get home and we'll talk about it next time but that's going to be in a few months and nobody's going to care anymore because it's not going to be an election Who is our mayor?
01:23:35 Okay and one more quick note on Diana Chan McNally and it's funny you live in Park Deal High Park I feel like that's my second home in the city because every single Friday I walk that neighborhood I'm going to do it again tomorrow
01:23:46 my oldest lives in that neighborhood and I see all the signs so I feel like an expert because there's sign season you know that's how I know there's an election going on I see signs But there is...
01:23:57 George Bell is back open, by the way, if you were wondering. I did see the grand opening, and I saw that they... That's off topic, but it is... No, I'm glad you told me. I've been back up there a couple times in the last couple weeks, so... Dweller, I'll call him the Parkdale High Park Dweller. My firstborn did play his entire house league. Oh, no, he started at Swansea Hockey Association at Renny Park.
01:24:17 Yeah. And then he moved over to George Bell. Okay, these are important details, but I'm at Mimico Arena this weekend with my thirdborn. I've been there recently, too, so... Okay. Well, there's a issue there with people, number of children who signed up for House League. Because we now need to play. Too many or not enough?
01:24:36 Not enough. We now need to play teams from Warren Park at Lampedon Arena in order to have a 14 league. How old is your kid now? He'll be turning 13 in 2027. Oh, boy. That's tough. So I have a daughter. I have a daughter who plays in the Atobic Dolphins organization, like House League. And at the 18 U level, she's only 15, but at the 18 new level,
01:25:00 basically they don't have quite enough registrants to form two teams. So they have two teams, but they're very like short bench teams. And they call up to each other and they play some Mississauga teams to form a loop. We had to bring in multiple teams from the aforementioned Warren Park. So I don't know if this is the state of hockey in Toronto or if there are a few. really successful organizations sucking up all the registers. Okay, so on that note, where the Maple Leafs practice, the Toronto Maple Leafs of hockey.
01:25:33 Yeah, is it? Yes. You used to be called a Master Guard Center. You got it, buddy. I believe there's a league out of there called Faustina that absolutely has recruited our better house leaguers have been recruited to get maybe, maybe there's better facilities, more games, whatever. They're like, come play where the Leafs play, where the sectors play.
01:25:49 It's definitely more modern, right? And there's multiple sheets of ice, et cetera, et cetera. I personally am like, I'm, because I'm a George, bell guy and I like me I like these old barns and I resisted it and I'm like long branch arena also key to note hockey is my son's second love where he's a he's soccer first so he's in a developmental league for soccer and that always is first and then the hockey is like for fun on the week this is a lot of inside info as to why I resisted the lure but now I'm in a situation where I'll be honest mimico right now for that age group house league we can put together one full team So basically we need to play teams Yeah, from other leagues to have a season. To just be able to have a season. Right.
01:26:33 So anyway, that's the side. But I wondered if it was COVID, but it's a combination of COVID. But you get the exotic travel hockey experience of going from arena to arena in your house league. Yes. And when you're at the other arena, playing the other team,
01:26:46 it does feel like more of a blood sport. These mimico ambassadors have come out here into enemy territory. In the Toronto Sun. today. You know, I know you don't want me to name any rival newspapers over there. That's okay. That's okay. You know, shout out to Steve Simmons, okay?
01:27:02 Who is going to return to Toronto Mike at some point? Diana Chan McNally, and this is a quote. I'm just going to read the paragraph. You may not have any insight into this, but I'm going to read it. Diana Chan McNally, who has been positioned as the heir apparent to long-time Toronto City Councilor Gord Perks, has expanded and contradicted details of her personal life in interviews on. the campaign trail, misrepresenting her age to one publication and altering the already
01:27:32 painful story of her teen pregnancy. So as I read this article, it is interesting. It does seem like there's different, and I'm not interested particularly in these personal details, except that disclosure of certain details have been contradicted by other disclosures in different publications. So it is interesting that that news kind of broke today. Yeah, I haven't. I haven't read that story yet.
01:27:57 And the West End Phoenix plays a role in this story because at some point I did read in a publication she talked about being 17 years old and pregnant and needing to leave home. And then with the West End Phoenix, she talked about leaving home after she got pregnant later in her life. But the same pregnancy.
01:28:14 And again, I don't know, it feels a bit greasy to talk about anybody's pregnancy except that this story did emerge today and I thought it's relevant when we're talking about Diana Chan McNally. It may be. And I haven't read it yet. So, and I believe the star has a spotlight on that ward coming out in the next few days. And so maybe, maybe it will get into some of that or maybe it will clarify some of that.
01:28:38 I don't know. Yeah, you can leave it there. Like I say, yeah, I think that that's it. I mean, you don't know. It's a weird thing, though. No, it's fine. I think, like, being honest or being straightforward, like a lot of people, journalists and politicians have gotten into trouble for what ultimately in retrospect seem like
01:29:00 relatively trivial exaggerations or like details of their origin story. Adding details in, or like finessing the details of their own biography in ways. So like as you read those out to me, none of them seems like the source of a massive scandal except not having read it and not having known what these things reflect on, maybe I shouldn't say anymore. Well, you said you don't know, but I look forward to the profile and learning more here. Okay. I don't have a vote in that.
01:29:32 You do. Okay. So Ted O. Pitts and Amber Morley. So this is War III where you're sitting right now. Amber Morley, of course, is the incumbent. She's also an FOTM. We talked at the beginning of this campaign. It feels like 100 years ago now.
01:29:45 But I, again, I count the signs. I bike, right? When you bike, you see signs. I see a dog fight going on here. This is not going to be a slam dunk for the incumbent Amber Morley. And that's maybe not unexpected. Like here's the thing is that I didn't have that on my like dog fight scorecard or something, right? Like I'm relatively uninformed about what's going on here compared to some of the other places we could talk about or did talk about.
01:30:15 but like I think Amber Morley was kind of a surprise Victor last time maybe Mark Grimes was the Mark Rhymes had been here forever and so it is sort of like Rob Ford's Midnight Mayor Mark Grimes as conservative a guy as there was on city council maybe like him and Stephen Holliday and and the fords were like you know buddies did Tobacco right wing guys right and and so
01:30:45 Amber Morley, uh, fresh, young face, a progressive face. Very progressive. Um, maybe partly represented,
01:30:52 I think I wrote after the last election, um, some of the shifting demographics or trends that you could see beyond just city politics in this ward, right? But also, um, like a surprise for a ward that has, so,
01:31:07 has historically not sent, like, uh, progressives to city hall, right? So, well, it is a Tobico.
01:31:14 So, you would expect maybe maybe a fight again back there and maybe I don't know to what extent the bluer bike lane stuff which is according to the Starzone research
01:31:26 through the vote compass like what we're able to glean from how people respond to our vote compass questions the absolutely most polarizing issue in the city not the most important not what people say is the most important
01:31:40 but the most polarizing the place where people in Toronto disagree most vociferously with each other is on that. So I don't know if that reviving in this campaign is also driving some of the battle here
01:31:55 or not. Well, one thing, and I've tried to do my best to educate the people as to how it works, but the proposed shelter at 3rd Street and Lake Shore definitely gets pinned
01:32:07 unfairly, in my opinion, to Amber Morley. As if a different counselor would squash it and sticking in someone else's ward. Yeah. Or even really has the power to do that. They don't.
01:32:21 They didn't vote. You know how this works. It's not a council decision where to put these shelters. I mean, and I think I hear a lot from those people who are opposed to that shelter, who don't believe the city has taken them seriously in consultations. Like, with no direct shade to them on this part of the common, like, everybody thinks there wasn't enough consultation when the decision doesn't go their way, right? Right.
01:32:49 The people who reject the High Park thing is like, there's nothing but frigging hearings on these things, nothing but consultations. That's a good example, yeah. It may be, as you believe, that there was some predetermined conclusion and they weren't really listening to you, but the consultations happened. And like holding more consultations is not going to better enlighten them to the level of discontent. it's just that you hope the decision will go a different way, right? But I mean, it may be, and I think it likely is,
01:33:19 that whether or not she could do anything about it, they don't feel like she was in their corner on this, that she was not joining the fight. She was welcoming of our new residents. Heaven forbid. And so, I mean, that's a thing that's going to get a lot of people in trouble. I will say, like, I made a lot of fun of the former budget chief, Gary Crawford, especially when Rob Ford was the mayor
01:33:43 and Gary Crawford seemed to me to be a guy who was, I used to call him one of Rob Ford's pet jellyfish, right? Like he painted a portrait of Rob Ford was probably the most distinguishing act he did in his first term there. And then he was the budget chief under John Torrey and I think he matured into more of a leadership role on council than he had had.
01:34:05 And so, but I had, as a columnist, I made fun of him a lot. but I went out to a meeting on Kingston Road in Scarborough where his constituents were dead, set against a plan to turn some of the sleazy motels there into like a senior's homeless shelter and all of that. And he stood up to those people and said, look, this is the right thing to do and we're going to do it. And like, I'm not on your side on this.
01:34:29 And I gained a lot of respect for him because I think like it takes guts to do that. And it doesn't win friends among the voters you need. Right. And so if that's what, if that's what her trouble, then maybe that's what her trouble is. I don't know. Well, the closer you get to the proposed site,
01:34:49 which is a parking lot right now at third and Lake Shore, the closer you get, the more signs you see for Teddopitz. Okay. But you mentioned the other big one, which I think we need to address right now before we run out of time, which is if you're looking for the face of the bluer bike lane in southern Etobico, So it might be the face of Amber Morley.
01:35:11 Like she definitely wears that. She's a huge proponent. To be honest, one of the reasons I'm a big Amber Morley booster. But I was on that. So today I mentioned I went to Centennial Park. So I took Royal York to Bluer, and then I biked on Bluer Street west to Renforth.
01:35:28 Okay? You know these streets. But I'm going to Centennial Park where you've been. But I took the lane. Where are they doing the? I took the lane. So it was. You have to.
01:35:37 That's what the signs tell you do it. The signs tell you do it. And I took it. And I actually felt, I'll say this, it's my podcast, I felt like I was too fast. And going at the same speed as a car would be going on Blue Street. I was really, and I felt like I should slow down to make it less convenient for the motorists behind me.
01:35:55 Right. Okay. But then you worry they're going to run you down. You know what, though? I am out of fucks to give. So there's the wonderful place I'm in. If you want to do a profile, let me know. But please, let's hear more from Ed Keenan.
01:36:06 But then if they run you down, you're going to be out of breath to give too. Like that's the thing, right? Oh, and you're right, yeah. So right now they're ripping out and they just repaid it. I saw it was all nicely done.
01:36:18 The asphalt or whatever was just redone. But the bike lanes west of Royal York, they've been yanked out. Yeah. Because we talked about this 100 times about Doug Ford and the bill. The appeal failed, and they said that let them work it out in the polls or whatever.
01:36:35 If you don't like it, vote out that party or whatever. which probably is the right decision at the end of the day. But I think that is polarizing. I myself find getting into Fistakoff, said Keenan, because I actually like the fact my mom lives at Aberfoyle and Bluer, and I like to take the Royal York. And with my 10-year-old daughter,
01:36:54 we take Royal York, which just has a painted bike lane, but we feel fine. You know, what are you going to do? But we get to Bloor Street, and we take the separated, safe bike lane to Aberfoyle, and she feels safe, and I feel safe riding, you know, 12 kilometers an hour behind her. And it actually upsets me as a father that I don't think she's going to want to do that bike ride.
01:37:17 Yeah. And I don't know how many fathers would want their daughter to do that bike ride without those separated lanes on a street like bluer. Right. And it's like those bluer bike lanes come past my house too. Yeah. They're not immediately removing those ones right away, but, you know, maybe in the longer term plan. and I, you and I have talked about this before. I think it's like wrongheaded.
01:37:40 I just would say like back onto the ward politics of that though, that like those preceded Amber Morley, right? Like the plan to build those. Right. And in fact, Mark Grimes wound up supporting them, right? Before he left. Right. He was like, you know what?
01:37:58 Good point. Let's do it. John Torrey and Mark Grimes approved those lanes, right? And then, every candidate at every minute level has so far lost when proposing to remove them, right? Like, including like in the last mayoral election when Saunders, as a holiday came out and Saunders was promising to remove them and he lost. And local candidates who were running against Amber Morley who were like,
01:38:24 these bike lanes are ridiculous, we got to get rid of them. They lost. And the provincial, the Rob Ford conservative provincial candidate who ran, on a platform. Doug Ford. Sorry, Doug Ford, yeah. The Doug Ford, Premier Ford's
01:38:40 own local representative who was running on a platform of like these bike lanes are evil. She lost. Christine Hogarth. Yeah. And so now he's removing them.
01:38:51 He's not, the conservatives don't represent this riding. Lee Fairclough from the Liberal Party. Yeah. So like, up until this point, every single local person
01:39:03 who has run against those bike lanes has lost. And so it may be, it is a very polarizing issue, but it hasn't been a political winner here in the past to remove them. But maybe this time, we'll see. But now that it's a provincial, the province is doing it. And it's not Amber Morley.
01:39:23 Like, she, I think she supports them. 100%. She didn't build them. She didn't put them there. But she does support them. And Ed, again, people are sick of me. I feel like Alan's, is about to storm the table here.
01:39:35 Shout out to Bradford and Alan Swig at TMLX. But, and I'm boring myself on this topic, except to say there is no alternative route that gets you over the Humber River in that neck of the woods, because here you're on the waterfront trail, but up there, there is no alternative to say,
01:39:52 we'll move it to these side streets. Like if I, and I said this... No, unless you consider Dundas a side street. Unless you consider Dundas a side street. And that's like the route to Ridley Funeral Home because you will die with the 18 wheelers on Dundas. So, yeah, move a bike lane to Dundas
01:40:07 and let the constituents chew on that for a little bit. Or maybe down to Queensway, is that too far down? There is nothing else. Here's the thing like I want to tell, like, those people on the Kingsway and all of that, all those merchants who are so angry, who I'm now no longer patronizing. Crooked Q, brother, crooked Q.
01:40:25 But it's like, the traffic sucked before. Yep. And it sucks now. Yep. And it's going to suck again. And it's going to continue to suck. Right. But while you're sitting in that traffic, look up ahead of you.
01:40:38 There was a writer with Spacing Magazine who did a thing. Like, look up ahead of you. John Lawrence. Not just see all the other cars in front of you, but like look at what the delay is and you'll see a red light. Right. You've got a traffic signal every block. That is what's slowing traffic down, not the volume. Like at most times of day, I will say since those bike lanes went in, I have noticed
01:41:01 I did notice less so recently, but I had noticed initially when they were doing the construction and shortly after a massive car backlog near the South King's Way. Yeah. Right?
01:41:12 When you come across it on the Hunter. Yeah. And you got to turn on to the South King's Way. Yeah. And I don't know how much of a factor those bike lanes were, but that's the only place
01:41:22 in that whole stretch of bluer where the actual volume of traffic is the source of us slowing down, right? For the rest of it, it's like, you're racing to the next red light. And then you've got to stop again. And so maybe there's 10 cars in front of you instead of three,
01:41:37 but you're all just stopping at the light. And then when it turns green, you all moved up to the next red light, and then you move to the next red light. And it's like, I don't believe these bike lanes are slowing anything down. And certainly the Ford's own advisors inside the bureaucracy didn't believe that it's the bike lanes slowing anything down.
01:41:58 And they don't believe that removing them is going to speed anything up. But you cannot convince people of that. They are so angry. Yes. They seem angry. They seem angry. Like it's elementary when you have two lanes of traffic,
01:42:14 you can move more cars, right? And it's like, well, yeah, but we're all crawling at 30 kilometers an hour to the next red light. Like that's all. And to me, what offends me as a guy who does love to get from A to be on a bicycle. Yeah.
01:42:26 So, right. Is that completely disregards my sense. safety and the safety of my children. Like, it's like, you know, maybe, maybe you'll be a titch quicker, but it does absolutely put the cyclist at risk. And I speak from a place of privilege. You want to know what place of privilege I speak from, Ed Keenan? A guy who lives on the waterfront trail.
01:42:46 Like, if I need to go east west, you can just take the waterfront trail the whole way. I can take the waterfront trail and then find an artery that gets me north, right, wherever that is. But the fact is, like I said, I have a family that lives off the Bloor bike lane, a son, a mother who live in different parts of the blue her bike lane. And the bluer bike lane for me to get across the city has been a godsend. It makes all the sense of the world. And Brad Bradford, who promised to visit before the election, as we speak on Thursday,
01:43:12 I do not believe he will be in this basement before Monday. I'm sure after the election we'll get him on. But I was going to present a map and a marker. This is probably why he didn't come over. I was going to give him a map and a marker and just say, because he's gone on the record is saying it shouldn't be on bluer. That's a busy street. Yeah, yeah.
01:43:30 Where are you going to put it? Just show me the street. I know this part of the city, like the back of my head. What is that, Ed? What is that? I'm getting off the bike lanes now, except I was thoroughly disappointed in FOTM Brad Bradford
01:43:41 when he said his first day as mayor, he would do the premier's dirty work and he would rip out the bike lanes. And I think it was west of South Kingsway, but I can't remember what his demarcation line was. And maybe it was changed. It is as strange that, yeah never mind
01:43:58 he then though when the when the he said he was going to do that dirty work and take them out himself yeah and then when the court decision came down and Doug Ford was able to rip them out right he said Olivia Chatt didn't do a good enough job standing up to Doug Ford on the bike lanes and it's like
01:44:14 I can kind of see a nuanced position where it's like I was opposed to these bike lanes but I also think she should have had the guts to stand up for what she believes in or whatever but it is like one of those things that The strikes people is weird about them. But let's move on to a different.
01:44:30 Andrew Ward, who loves the Ed Keenan, by way, a lot of people love your quarterly visits to this basement studio. I'm so glad. And I want to say thank you for doing this every single quarter.
01:44:40 I have so much fun. And you would not be surprised, but other people would be surprised by how frequently they are mentioned to me by people I just encounter. Like who know me as a writer, but they're like, I love hearing you on Toronto Mike.
01:44:54 It's like, oh, This reminds me of, I got a, about the newsletter. Yeah, first up. Oh, I love this kind of joke you make. It reminds me of listening to you on Toronto Mike, right? I love hearing that, man. I love hearing that. Do you know episode 2000 drops tomorrow?
01:45:10 Tell your editors. That's what I hear. That's what I hear. You want to guess? Do you want to make a guess? Do you want to just take a stab in the dark? It's your 1999. Is it Brad Bradford?
01:45:20 Is it Bradford? Is it Olivia Chow? Because you know my, you know my rule. I get asked us a lot about Olivia Chow. Can I say that by the people? You're like, when are you having Olivia on? I have a longstanding firm rule when it comes to active politicians.
01:45:35 Do you know what it is, Ed Keenan? They are welcome anytime? Well, within reason. Oh, no, you wait for them to call you. They have to ask. Yeah, yeah. Like Anna Bylown was here. It gave her a big boost.
01:45:44 But it's like when... Her people or her said, would you talk to Anna Bylown on Toronto Mike? And I consider it for a moment. I said, yes, I would talk to Anna Bylown on Toronto Mike. And I did. Amber Morley has been over on the reg because she loves the show and she asks,
01:45:58 can I come over? She asked for it. She asks. So the reason Brad Bradford has been on multiple times and Olivia Chow has never been on Toronto. The reason I took myself out of this equation, I don't have a bias and say, I don't talk to the conservative candidates or whatever.
01:46:13 I only talk to the progress Toronto stamped candidates. No, that's ridiculous. I'll talk to anybody within reason, but you need to request to come on if you're an active politician. Right. Fair enough. Are we clear?
01:46:24 That's how it is. So Olivia is not an FOTM yet because nobody in her camp has said, would you talk to Olivia Chow? Whereas Bradford comes to Toronto Mike Devance because he loves the podcast. He's listening right now. And that's why he's invited into the basement studio. Andrew Ward says, hey, Mike, I hope Ed is feeling better in that you haven't caught the flu that's going around.
01:46:46 Is that to me or you? I didn't catch any flu. Yeah, no, I had a cold and I don't think it was the flu, but I spent a couple days in bed and felt much better and then spent a couple more days working from home and no longer have any... It's a couple weeks in the past now. There's the medical records of Ed Kenan.
01:47:04 Okay. Attash is a copy of a book. He wrote in 2013 during the Rob Ford Mayoralty. Can you ask if he's considered revising or updating it? Ed's such a wonderful writer and chronicler of the city. Hope all is well with you.
01:47:21 Happy reading. So you wrote a book in 2013? Yeah. Andrew, thank you for plugging that. That's called Some Great Idea. A Good Neighborhood, Crazy Politics in the Invention of Toronto. It's an interesting, the timing of that book was interesting because it was about, it was like, unlike many book projects, it wasn't meant to be like, it was like kind of a, of the moment, right?
01:47:54 It was time to come out a year before the election to talk about the Rob Ford experience of Toronto and, or maybe it was two years before the election, whatever it was, yeah, yeah, a year before. One year, yeah. And talk about the Rob Ford experience of Toronto and how we got there, right? To a point where politics seemed to have gone crazy
01:48:21 and we had swung back and forth from David Miller to Rob Ford. We're putting in bike lanes. We're taking them out. We're like this and that. And like trying to set the stage for like what, where does the city go from here? But then it became all the more, the night before my book launch or no, sorry, as we were going to press, a court ordered Rob Ford out of office on conflict of interest charges. I remember.
01:48:47 So I had to rapidly rewrite the concluding chapter. of the book to say not this election in 18 months, this election potentially in two months, what do we do, right? Like, or whatever. And the appeal court decision was only being handed down the night before my book launch, I think. Right.
01:49:06 And so it had to end on sort of a cliffhanger, right? Right. That said, like, I have looked back at it again and occasionally people will say, have you thought about writing an update? And I think it would be more like at this point I might write a sequel or something just because updating it would, it's so of its time, and there's been so much time since then, right?
01:49:36 It's 13 years ago that, that, like, it wouldn't be a matter of tacking on an extra chapter or adding in a few different references, like the whole circumstance of change. There's a lot of discussion in that book about the squabble, at City Hall and not just squabbling, but like long-standing debates about building transit infrastructure, right? So since then, not only have we built out quite a lot of it, or we have others under construction, but the provincial government has basically taken it over
01:50:06 and is no longer even a topic that they discuss in the municipal elections, right? It's like, wow, that's weird, because that used to be the biggest issue in most of these elections, right? that was that big defeat for Rob Ford was when Karen Stints turned heel or turned face depending on your perspective
01:50:28 and like led a revolt against his transit plans and all of that is like this is the drama of that book but that is the drama of a different time
01:50:38 and so I think like I may I will continue writing about the city in general terms I may at some point write another nonfiction book about Toronto's politics in some respect, but it would have to be like more of a sequel to that book,
01:50:55 not a update of it. And well, since we're talking about Rob Ford here for a moment, I just want to take a moment with you, Ed, to recognize that since your last appearance on Toronto Mike, Renata Ford passed away. Yeah. Yeah.
01:51:10 And it's something where, like, I feel like I should have more to say about that than I do. Or, like, I was sadden to hear it for her family, for her children, especially. Sure. I did not, I met Renata Ford a few times, but, like, did not know her at all. I knew her only as a character in these news stories. I take it that she had, like, like a difficult run of it a lot of the time, not just
01:51:49 because her husband was the mayor, but because of some of their, um, like, domestic disputes and addiction issues that the family had, that spilled out into the headlines often that, like, they're like,
01:52:03 there were things she was wrestling with there too, right? Like, um, and you, you'd like to see people come out the other side of that and stronger and, and live long, happy lives and, and, and so that she passed on in a relatively early age,
01:52:18 uh, is, is, you know, sad to hear, but I don't have a lot of No, I wanted to just recognize the loss of not afford 55 years old. That's far too soon for anybody to shed their mortal
01:52:32 coil. Okay, I have, oh, Neil, Neil wrote in, and I experienced this firsthand because I did advance voting, and if you do advanced voting with children, and I brought my two youngest with me, they vote for tree of the year. Okay, yeah, which is great, isn't it? It was really great because there was so much conversation beforehand
01:52:52 on which tree they were leaning towards and my 10-year-old daughter really loved it. Like, she really embraced it. Like, she didn't like one tree because it attracted the bees and she didn't like the bees. And then she really took this seriously. And then they went behind, they got a ballot and they went behind a, it wasn't where we vote.
01:53:09 It was a different one. So, you know, they voted for the tree. They have their own little screen. A little screen. That's what I'm looking for. They had their own little screen and they did it. And then they submitted it. So what I liked about it is that my 10-year-old and my 12-year-old kind of got the feeling of what it's like when you vote.
01:53:24 Like, this is the process. And I loved the idea. Do you have any thoughts on which tree is going to win this? You don't know. Sugar maple, maybe? There's a birch on there, right? Definitely a birch on there. Paper birch.
01:53:39 There's definitely a birch on there. That would be my vote, I think, of the options from what I read on the ballot. But I'll tell you, I think this is a great idea. And I'm somebody who loves voting. I love voting in person. I love the ritual of going there, seeing my neighbors at the polling station, going behind that little screen.
01:53:59 It feels like, I mean, I'm a guy who, long after I fell away from the Catholic Church I was raised in, continued going back to church for, like, services, for things I got married in a Catholic church. And I like, I like rituals. I like traditions and enacting traditions in ways that make me feel like I'm participating in something bigger. And I feel like when I go to vote, I get that sense of ritual, that sense of like participating.
01:54:32 And I did vote my mail when I lived in the United States in Canadian elections and it was not the same thing, right? Like it's like going down there to the polling station and requesting my ballot and taking it behind the little screen and marking it and putting it in the box. I love all of that. And I love the idea of being able to, when I was a kid, my parents, my mom would take me with her and I would go behind the screen and watch her. And she would make a show of hiding who she was voting for because we have a secret ballot. But from me, but I would get to see how it worked, right? And so I love that they have this process that that implements that. But I also say my boss, Nicole McIntyre, the editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star,
01:55:16 also moderated a mayoral debate that was co-presented with the Board of Trade. And she, like, called an audible there. The Board of Trade, and she had developed a series of questions on serious economic topics and whatnot. And then she just kind of sprung out a question to the candidates about which tree they were supporting in the tree vote. And they all had, like, really well thought out. answers, like, and it was almost everybody I talked to's favorite moment of that debate, not just because it was a moment of levity, but it was also like hearing them kind of caught off guard, but then, you know, like freestyling on the topic of trees, like was kind of revealing
01:56:06 about them. It was kind of interesting, and it was, and not much hung on it, but it's actually like kind of cool that that's another topic and that the kids get to say that. So, yeah, I thought it was very cool. But it's only the advanced voting. So you don't get to do that on Monday. So when you bring your kids on Monday, they won't get to vote for a tree. They just have to vote for a mayoral candidate like everybody else.
01:56:26 That's right. School board trustee. Now, the way you describe voting. Now, I always think of Cuddy Wise goes for a run listening to music. And this is Election Day in Baltimore. This is the big election episode in The Wire is what I'm talking about. Okay. It's all fictional.
01:56:45 I got you. Karsetti? Karsetti? What was his name again? Kirkcetti? Anyway, if you watch the wire, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And then I always think I get a similar buzz. I love it. Voting like you do, Ed Keenan.
01:56:59 So why is it that 7 out of 10, approximately 7 out of 10 eligible Trontonians won't vote in this municipal election? 7 out of 10. That means we're going to get, I mean, maybe a bit more because it's a heated race, so maybe we'll get to 40%. But bottom line is, 60 plus percent of Torontoians who are eligible to vote in this election will just take a hard pass. Yeah, I always say, I mean, this is typically read as either a sign of disenchantment or a sign of complete disengagement.
01:57:33 And I do think it is disengagement, but I will say like, okay, so I'm somebody who really believes that democracy works best when more people participate and that we would get better. candidates we would get better government if like more people were actively like following this stuff and demanding and learning about things and voting you know smarter and more people were just voting right like and you get a more accurate representation of what people want but i will say like you look at the turnout and i don't haven't seen the final numbers yet but it seems like sky high turnout in the alberta referendum right i think um like you look at votes where people actually believe something that they consider vital is at stake and they show up, right? It could be that the low turnout in Toronto is a sign that people believe things are actually
01:58:31 going okay and that none of the candidates likely to win is going to screw that up in a way that motivates them to do anything to stop it. Like it could be a sign, a general sign, not that our democracy. is healthy locally, but that at least if you ask people what's bothering you in the city, they'll say the rent's too damn high, the traffic of socks, whatever, right?
01:58:59 But if they're not motivated to go out and vote to do anything about those things, they can't think it's all that bad, right? They must be generally like, eh, it's all right. They'll all do fine, right? Maybe that's it.
01:59:15 Your glasses have to. That said to people out there listening, like, get out there and vote. Because first of all, it works better if you do. And second of all, it's actually fun. It's actually like a rewarding process to go and vote. It feels good. Feels good, man. We may have a...
01:59:36 And it's going to be close. And we may have a gentleman who finished eighth place in 2023, the by-election for mayor. He finished eighth, barely squeaking by Chris Sky. he wasn't allowed to put the name Chris Sky on the ballot, by the way, because that's an example. So there you go. He was Chris Sakakoi. I can't remember his view of your name. That's right.
01:59:54 Right. So I think you have to use your real name. So Anwar Knight, I believe that is his real name. Who do you think is going to win the mayor of Mississauga? That's an interesting one, too. We didn't even get into that. That's a three-way brawl out there, and between two, like, really eccentric political characters and another guy.
02:00:18 I'm putting my, I'm not putting real money on it, but I'll put my palm pasta lasagna on Carolyn Parrish winning this election. There you go. I have no bet. I have no bet. All bets are off with Ed Keenan.
02:00:30 You can't pick the Toronto mayor. You can't pick the Mississauga mayor. What are you good for, man? Love this episode 1999, Ed Keenan. You'll never forget. You are number 1999. 9,99 episodes.
02:00:45 Ask me how many podcasts in this country? I have only appeared personally on 400 of those episodes. Not far off, but I will see you again in early January. So will I see you at TMLX24 on November 28th? Hope Springs Eternal. Okay, because I would love to see you again before the year is done. It would be amazing. You get free food.
02:01:07 You love your palm pasta. We'll get you on the mic to say seasons greetings to everybody. There'll be a special gift from Retro Festive. I hope to see you there. Otherwise, we'll recap whatever the hell happens Monday. We'll talk about it if we can remember it. We'll talk about it in January. Thanks for being here.
02:01:23 Ed Keenan. Woo-hoo! Thank you. And that brings us to the end of our 1,999th show. Wow. 1999. That took a little while, but holy smokes. Not many podcasts get to episode 2,000.
02:01:41 because I already recorded it, I can slam dunk guarantee. There will be an episode of 2000. Go to Torontomike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. And much love to all who made this possible. Again, that's Great Lakes Brewery, Palmapasta, Nick Iini's Recycle My Electronics.com, and Redley Funeral Home. See you all tomorrow morning when I drop episode 2000 with a very special guest. Do you want to take a guess who it is?
02:02:11 You already guessed wrong. You had no guess. It's not Olivia Chay. I don't have a guess. Is it Jim Cuddy? Is it... Is it... Is it...
02:02:20 See you all? Diti Petty. Ben. They're both FOTMs already. Come on.
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