Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Edward Keenan: Toronto Mike'd #1232

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

In this 1232nd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with The Toronto Star's Ed Keenan about what's making waves in Toronto. So much has happened! Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, the Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris, The Moment Lab, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

Welcome to episode 1232 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online 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.

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You need The Moment Lab And Ridley Funeral Home Pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making his quarterly appearance, is the Toronto Star's Edward Keenan. Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back, Ed. Yeah, I'm glad to be back.

I think I'm going to... Not much has happened since the last time we were here. I tweeted that joke. So we decided, I guess, in early January, you came over and I said, Hey, Ed, would you mind coming over every quarter and we can just catch up on what's going on the past three months? And you said, yeah, like I would do it. I would do it for the lasagna from Palma Pasta.

Absolutely. Would you have ever imagined that since... So you were here early January. Now we're speaking early April, everything's changed. Well, we had just finished back then, if people can turn their mind back to early January, we had just finished a really sleepy election and the new crushing inevitability of strong mayor john tory was setting in uh and and now we're on the cusp of a much more exciting election it seems it's well we're gonna get into it uh there's lots to discuss here because you're right that was like one of those deals where it's like you know who's

gonna win this election you know it's not gonna be close and uh you know as as much as we try to make it like a at least a two-person race like i wasn't buying it like there was no race but now it's like i don't know uh we'll have to talk about it i don't know who's going to win this election there's so many candidates who could uh who could become victorious here we have to talk about it but i need to ask you am i going to have you on toronto mic'd again tonight like am i going to have a double header? Because it's possible. Because I think we're both going to this AM640 thing.

I am scheduled to record live from the GLB Brew Pub at Jarvis in Queen's Quay tonight for an event. Yeah, it's an AM640 event, and I'm going to be set up there recording with, like, people who have something to do with

the radio station be it FOTM Greg Brady or FOTM uh Kelly Cotrera FOTM Danny Stover FOTM Alex Pearson it's a FOTM a FOTM extravaganza and then please tell me this Ed Keenan what do you have to do with AM640 do you have a relationship with that station? I have resumed my relationship with that station as a fill-in host on their roster. So I recently was in for just over a week for Alex Pearson, which, you know, it's kind of a seamless transition for listeners. Alex Pearson to me. That's a joke.

Yeah. I guess you have to be familiar with both of me uh at the joke because we're we're yeah um if i guess you have to be familiar with both of us to uh to get the joke but um i it's funny because alex pearson was away and the week she was off on vacation um the whole sort of chinese interference thing with han dong and and all of that just blew right up and it was like i wasn't sure if she would be uh relieved because otherwise her bits of her brain would be all over the studio just from how her head explodes with this stuff or if uh or if she was like so we so upset that that you know her big story her big a trudeau scandal is like christmas for alex pearson her fantasy is a trudeau no exactly so but yeah uh i i was a regular sort of fill-in voice on that station

before i left for washington dc and um amanda the program director there gave me a call f-o-t-m amanda cupido you know i while i was down there, and that's right. While I was down there in the States, and after I came back, Brady was booking me a lot to just do some interviews and stuff, so Amanda said, hey. And I'm so happy to be doing it because, like, I think I have the job that I'm ideally suited to do at the Toronto Star. I was a city columnist.

But I love doing radio. I love talk radio just as a format. It's so fun and fascinating to do. So yeah, and I also got invited to a party because of that. Right, so you and I were basically invited to the same party, and it just so happens that it's going to be at GLB Brew Pub, and it just so happens Great Lakes Brewery is a proud sponsor of

this very podcast, and that's why there is fresh craft beer on the table here at Keenan. There you go. That's the stuff. Now, what you don't have here, I imagine. No, I don't. I'm just checking the selection. Is the beer they're launching tonight? No, I do not. Which is a 640 Toronto special brewery,

which while I was there a couple weeks ago, they announced, I think, in the newscast right before my show, actually it was on Greg Brady's show right before I went on, that it was going to be called Breaking Brews. So that's what they're doing there tonight. Is that what we're drinking tonight? I think they're going to be called Breaking Brews. So that's what they're doing there tonight. Is that what we're drinking tonight? I think they're going to be debuting it tonight. And people in attendance,

of which a few listeners had won a contest. For all this hype we're doing, if you're listening to this and it still hasn't started yet, you can't get in if you come down. Is that right? Actually, I didn't know that rule. I've invited several friends. It's a private party. Some listeners want tickets.

I'm selling selfies. They have like staff and clients. And then of course, the Toronto Mic live broadcast. So I'm live there and I really am going to have all these different voices on the show. A lot of FOTMs, hopefully some new blood there. But it was kind of exciting for me to realize that you, Ed Keenan, are going to be there. So this is episode 11, no 1232. So I'm going to drop this before I bike to Jarvis and Queens key with my gear to set up for tonight's six 40 recording.

So it's possible you hear Ed Keenan. I'm hoping you jump on just at least to say hi, long time, no C for 1233. And I will drink this breaking bruise beverage and I will review it on episode 1233. And I will drink this breaking bruise beverage and I will review it on episode 1233. The live unboxing of the

breaking bruise. Like a sip by sip tasting notes. So what a day. What a day. Now there's so much ground I want to cover with you and we have to get to this mayor thing because apparently something went down with John Tory. Those four words are still haunting me, John Tory sex scandal. Like, they just don't seem like they belong together, but all that happened

since you were here. So hold on, we're going to get to it, but I had a memory of something that would happen when I was in primary school, and I went to primary school in Toronto, and we would have this event every year, and I remember it so well and I was thinking about it and I need to ask for your recollections about it do you remember Edward Keenan the inner sorry I gotta say this properly inner city angels the inner city angels balloon race it's uh as as my butting in there indicates I do remember it. And at one point, actually, I worked for the Inner City Angels balloon race. I write about this in my book, Some Great Idea, briefly. For me, at that age, in elementary school, it felt like a job.

Because what would happen, we were officially volunteers, but they would give us $2.50 a day plus two TTC tickets, child TTC tickets. Sure. And the $2.50 a day was to cover lunch. And so two friends from school and I went there, and their office, I guess, or their facility, was in the little house in behind the Eaton Center, you know, where the church is, the Trinity Church, where the Homeless Memorial is.

And there's a scatting cottage there, which is like a historic house that's been preserved. So we worked in there, cutting string to be tied onto the balloons. be tied onto the balloons. And, um, and so the, if people don't remember it, the balloon race was essentially a thing where you would get, uh, sponsors or whatnot. You would go and do some fundraising and depending on how many dollars you raised, I think, or how many people you had donate, you would get a certain number of balloons. Yes. And on each balloon, there was a tag at the end of the string and you would write on it you know your name eddie keenan uh and your address or your school's address uh would all be pre-printed on there and um and what would happen is that on a certain day you would gather

all the students in the school would go out to the schoolyard and you would have thousands of balloons helium balloons yes and everybody would get to hold the ones that they had sent the pledges uh for and then you would let them go and they would go up into the sky and drift off to to pollute the waterways and kill small birds and things like that um take down a few planes maybe uh and so so they no longer do it but like looking back though because it was an exciting day uh for us kids to be all out there and see all the balloons go up and then as time would go on you'd be like oh there's a note that came in from i don't know tonawanda am i saying yeah yeah yeah uh this this came in yeah look what happened this guy in buffalo found your balloon and wrote a note to say we found your balloon in the backyard, whatever.

And that was exciting. And look at how far our balloons went. But now look, I can't believe it happened. Like it would happen every year. And it just seems really like maybe dangerous or wasteful. It just doesn't seem like it was a great idea to put all these like thousands of balloons in the air at once.

I don't know, but we did that. The reason this may have been jogged into your memory was because recently uh a school teacher uh i think it was a school teacher sent me an email and said hey i noticed you mentioned this do you have any more information about the balloon race and i i said no i don't um and i a quick google search led me to i i said you know toronto mike had something about it here on his, um, his blog.

Maybe you should check that out. And then I also though, um, when I was writing about it for my book and I was trying to jog my own memory, the research I did showed me, um, like this great Cleveland balloon race disaster where, uh,

in Ohio they had a plan is it's like straight out of WKRP's like Turkey Stunt or something where like the whole town, you know, they're fed up with this nickname, the mistake by the lake and this reputation they have. And they're like, we're going to do something to get the world's attention. So they set out to break the world record for the most helium balloons all released at one time so they had you know hundreds of thousands or something all downtown and all these balloons were under a tarp and and the the thing is it became a giant fiasco because there was some kind of weather system moving in and as as they released the balloons, instead of sort of going up, up, and away,

they kind of like hovered low in the air under the weather system. And the wind blew a lot of them right into the lake where there was some kind of marine disaster. And they couldn't tell who was a body in the lake that needed to be rescued. And what was the balloon? Yeah, no, because there was like some kind of shipwreck

or a boat capsized, and they couldn't find the people who were floating there with their life jackets. Because these balloons were all there, and they're like, oh, there's a kid. No, that's a balloon. Yeah. And it is remembered as a day of infamy in Cleveland.

I mean, when you watch them, if you take out the elements of human tragedy, it is absolutely comical to watch the news videos from it, where it's kind of like everybody was so excited. Like they're so into it, this giant civic project, and it just did not turn out well. Okay. So I just Googled inner city angels balloon race, and I ended up on torontomic.com. Okay. So I'm, I'm ranked very highly for these keywords because I've written about these memories.

You got the SEO. I got the SEO. And somebody Googled it and then wrote me a note which caused me to write about it again. So I'm just going to read a little note that

came in. So I actually got this email in 2007. Hi, Mike. Inner City Angels halted the balloon race in 1990. The last race was in

1989 when the city of Toronto made it illegal to do such a silly thing. Yes, it was ill-conceived, but it brought in a few million dollars for artists' visits in inner-city schools. Inner-city angels still exists and reaches 10,000 children each year in 100 schools. Our 26 artists deliver some wonderfully innovative programs, working hands-on with kids. This is what we have always been about, not balloon races.

I joined the Angels in 1993 and have met many balloon race kids now growing up, including accountants, lawyers, and bank tellers who recall their elementary school days letting balloons off in the skies. I received balloon letters back from the U.S. until about 1995. Today, our fundraising comes from smaller events,

corporations, governments, and individuals who remember the balloon race days. Cheers, Jane Howard Baker, Executive Director, Inner City Angels. I love the general worthwhile point that Jane Howard Baker is making in that email to to you or that toronto mike.com uh blog comment yes uh but i also love that bank tellers is an example of like some

former balloon releases have gone on to prestigious jobs such as and some are podcasters there you go and uh and you know um overrated writers for the toronto star underrated if you ask me okay i believe scatting cabin is now at the cne grounds like they moved it's uh different oh different scatting yeah no it's the same guy henry scatting i think or the same family okay um but um uh i'd have to look it up maybe it's not scatting getting my names. Okay, because scatting cabin is the oldest home in the city and it's at the CNE grounds because I've gone and taken pictures of it. In behind the CN Tower.

Yeah, where the church is. No, scatting court is a community center. So I'm almost for sure getting this mixed up. And so there is a house back there named after one of the first bishops of toronto where where he lived um and it's still in the same place um and actually it was going to be leveled when the original plan for the eaton center like the eaton's expansion there came out and there was a you know one of those periodic like civic movements to save something and and so as a result it's kind of

like hidden and buried away but if you go out that door of the eaton center that little courtyard with the church and the house and the the labyrinth does feel like a kind of a like uh a respite in the heart of the city it's kind of like you you oh there's a secret place it's a cool spot yeah most definitely Most definitely, most definitely. Okay, let's get to it. People are like, okay, these guys are already a half an hour deep here.

Not really. We're only about 17 minutes deep. But what the hell happened? So the Toronto Star broke this story. And I know that because there's an episode of Toronto Mike with David Ryder the morning after the story broke.

And that was a very popular episode it might almost be as popular as this one but give us a little tell us like what went down with john tory sex scandal and how we got to where we are and then we'll just like unravel well i mean you you got the inside scoop there from david rider who did the there was like like a lot of things at the toronto star uh that story was a team effort but it certainly the heavy lifting was done by david rider he was the sort of primary reporter on it he was uh getting the tips and investigating them thoroughly and the rest of the team sort of started pitching in when we had enough to go on um to like call different people and start trying to check it. But I mean, it's unclear to me.

This is like certainly a personal life scandal. The original lead of a column I was going to write when it came out was something like what you just said, John Tory sex scandal. Like who would have thought that? Like these words don't belong in the same sentence. It's unclear to me, even still, as a journalist who's, you know, concerned a little bit, at least with accuracy, how much sex is involved or whatnot. But the scandal certainly is that he had a relationship that he has acknowledged with a member of his staff, a mayor's office staff.

with a member of his staff, a mayor's office staff, while she was a member of his mayor's office staff. That relationship persisted after she left his staff. But, you know, a lot of, as I think probably, Ryder probably explained to you, like a lot of his work was trying to find out enough details about the relationship to know if it was obviously improper or if we should conclude that it was likely improper. And, you know, that like when did the relationship start?

Was the nature of it? Was it affecting the workplace business? And all of that. And basically when we got to the point where we were ready to publish, because we started to understand, you know, that at least he was in a relationship with a subordinate while being the mayor of Toronto, the chief executive of the city. There's a power imbalance there. Yeah, and that in today's climate, that's considered by many people to be de facto improper. I mean, it's certainly disputed territory, whether that constitutes some kind of harassment or not um but it's certainly the kind of thing that that um and and so you know as soon as we were getting there he acknowledged the whole thing and resigned immediately like uh like hour an hour after the star story was published he held his press conference to say i'm out of here and then he hung around for a bit like two weeks um to make sure his budget got passed and then he

was out of there and he he has um essentially disappeared from the public eye entirely since then uh and what's happened is like there was going to be four basically everybody who would have thought they were going to run for mayor at some point uh thought they had another four years like they've been keeping their powder dry for a long time and since they thought this was going to be his last turn a lot of them were starting to starting to sort of make the calls and do the the background work that you do when you're thinking about running for mayor. And instead of four years,

they have like three months, right? Right, because we're going to the polls in June. And as a result of that too, though, I think like the sense that anybody could win this thing is out there. And because of that, everybody who's ever thought in a passing glance that maybe they would be mayor one day

has decided like, well, this could be my shot. So they're all singing Hamilton to themselves. They're not throwing it away. They're getting their name in. And so we have like legitimately, I think, 12 or 13, let's say a baker's dozen of high profile enough candidates that they can't be dismissed as fringe candidates. Like we will probably have well over 50 candidates,

possibly as many as 100 total. But that's often the case, like even when in the last election, there were dozens and dozens, right? But, you know, of people who have a high enough profile in the public eye to be considered actually candidates who might have at least a puncher's chance, I think there's probably 13.

Okay, I actually want to talk about these 13 people, but we need to kind of resolve that whole John Tory thing for a minute here. Okay, so when this broke, so again, the Toronto Star publishes this. I'm going to estimate the times, but maybe, I don't know, like Friday, I don't know, Friday evening. It feels like maybe Friday. Let's say it was like 6 maybe. Am I close there? 6 p.m. Friday.

And then I think the, or maybe at even 7 p.m. maybe. But, you know, it breaks. And then I think he had his press conference at 8.30 p.m. Right. So like a couple hours later, he announces he had an inappropriate relationship with a City Hall staffer, and he's going to resign as mayor of Toronto. So how, and maybe tell us if you knew before the press conference, because David Ryder said they were tipped off he was going to resign

in his press conference. But what was your reaction when you learned he was resigning? Were you surprised? A little bit. I was surprised at how quickly it happened. Let's say that. I thought there were several ways it could go. And, you know, David Ryder started to hear tips

that he might be considering resigning. And then by the time he had announced his press conference, he was hearing from people that he might be considering resigning and then by the time he has announced his press conference he was hearing from people uh that that he was going to resign uh some other reporters at the star were hearing the same thing uh and so i sort of had that advance notice they shared that information with me because it's hard for me to like step back and say this was my reaction because what what was actually happened is that I was writing and rewriting a column that was going to go as soon as this happened, right? Because it had to be in the next morning's print paper. We wanted it up online. I'm the city columnist, the guy who writes opinion stuff and analysis and context about city issues. So, you know david rider and and his uh bureau colleagues ben spur uh and alisa uh alicia

had had written you know the main story i was watching the press conference and revising an already written column uh to go with it but i had basically i wrote a column saying who would have thunk this scandal would come and what does it change about everything we know about John Tory or thought we knew about John Tory, whose whole brand is like no scandal, no drama. No story, Tory. And and. And so I had to revise that very quickly to acknowledge that he was he was actually quitting as a result of it. Right. acknowledged that he was he was actually quitting as a result of it right so um but but here's here's the thing is that i thought even in the lead up to it um and in terms of like how surprised or

shocked i was how quickly that happened was much more surprising to me than that it did happen because uh as i wrote in a later column about whether or not he would reconsider at a time when doug ford and others were saying maybe he should reconsider. It's not that this is a career-ending scandal for any given politician. It's that it's the kind of scandal that goes so against the grain of everything John Tory wants to be known as. He's a guy, almost every politician has this narcissistic need to be liked. But John Tory is a guy who really doesn't like being disliked. He wants even the people who disagree with him to think he's a decent guy who's in it for the right reasons, who's trying to work with them.

Like that's been who he is all along. He's a guy who has taken pride in sort of like having an upright life and being no story Toryry like that bland works being sort of that he learned at the knee of bill davis as a young man being kind of his his political calling card so you could somebody like rob ford would have this would have been just a footnote right right um and for lots of other politicians it would be like, this is a difficult time for my family. I acknowledge that we crossed some lines in the office. The young woman and I have still a decent relationship, and I've talked to her quite a bit about what we could have done differently, what I could have done differently, whether or not you know you know but it's it's like survivable for most politicians and not uh career ending but i think like that involves being willing to stand up potentially for months and potentially for even longer than that while people continue to like throw mud at you and keep

bringing it up and you become known as like you know, the guy who cheated on his wife with a young girl from the office who like every time people reference you, every time your critics are accusing you of something, this becomes brought back up. And so, you know, as I wrote, it's like, it's not a matter of whether a politician who wants to like

be involved in a mudslinging contest could come out of this standing up. It's a matter of how much mud is John Tory willing to stand there and have thrown at him and keep smiling and trying to govern in the midst of that. And the answer with John Tory has always been not very

much, right? Now, what about the speculation that by resigning and essentially disappearing because i haven't heard much about uh where john tory's been at the last couple of months but that ends the you know digging by reporters at the toronto star and other media outlets like maybe there's more to this story but once you resign and disappear, maybe there's less impetus to follow up on those threads. It definitely makes it less of a pressing emergency, right? Like if you find out that there's a drunk driver

behind the wheel of a car with your kids in the back, that is a situation you have to shut everything else down to go and deal with. If you find out that your children were given a ride home yesterday by somebody who, it turns out, was drunk yesterday, and you take precautions for the future, but it's less of a like, stop everything and let me go deal with this. And I think at the SAR, our reporters have continued to follow up

on the lingering questions they have about this. I think, you know, but some of the times the answers you get are not satisfactory and you keep digging or you don't. But also sometimes the answers you get are not really news, right? And so don't lead to greater reporting. So I think John Tory's conduct as mayor of Toronto, and it will also be still the subject of an integrity commissioner report, which he, before he left, you know, to his credit, I guess, requested that integrity commissioner look into this matter

and report on the extent of wrongdoing in it. That report, that Integrity Commissioner will be able to interview his sort of like staff, former staff, anybody else involved, and give us any information about how concerned we should be or give us the information for us to judge how concerned we should be or give us the information for us to judge how concerned we should be that that there was something more nefarious going on but i i think like he doesn't get a get a jail free card for that and i think we'll still be talking about his legacy as mayor but um but like certainly uh accepting consequences up front does change the nature of the investigation that's going on into you, right?

Well, specifically, I've seen expense reports of city-funded trips to Europe at the beginning of the pandemic. I think it was London, England, if I'm correct. But where the executive assistant to John Tory was part of this travel. So you have what you have. And again, I just want to be careful because you said the incorrect job title for the person we're talking about. What is the job title for the unnamed person?

I don't remember the precise job title. Not executive assistant. And the star chose not to identify her mostly because we don't want, we don't think she did anything wrong necessarily, right? Like we don't have we don't think she did anything wrong necessarily right uh like we don't have any reason to suspect she did anything wrong and so uh we haven't gone to great lengths to make it impossible to discover who this is but we don't want google results for the rest of this person's life this to be the top thing that ever comes up right well i'm with you in fact as i told david her job i concur i don't name her either yeah her job was um was like booking his trips and planning his travel

right so she's like the tour director of the office so non-executive she would be somebody who would be on those trips like by virtue of of that being the job uh and and yet that at that add a whole element of like well if you're dating the person you're going to europe with um on the city's dime like the city is paying to send both of you there um like is this doubling as a romantic getaway is it like like i know that these are the questions you guys are asking but uh like the mayor of a city you typically don't think of the mayor of a city as of going to you know international events and maybe uh you just you would ask questions right like like like how much of this is a city funded trip between two people having a inappropriate relationship yeah i do i do think those questions do come up and I think there are a lot of added legitimacy

to them in these cases. Our mayors do travel internationally, you know, for conferences, for like research into what best practices are elsewhere, but also like trade missions and things like that. Rob Ford did it. David Miller did it. Like every mayor does it.

Fair enough. But again, it's like when there's this mixture of business and personal, and especially when it's a secret mixture of business and personal, it raises questions that aren't otherwise there. People always, like certain, especially sort of like in the Toronto Sun or like the talk radio crowd, but like there's always questions about city politicians traveling abroad, right?

And how legit it is, right? Because by city budget standards, it's pretty high priced compared to like, you know, photocopy bill or whatever, or like the transit pass they use to get to the zoo. Right, Right. And, and so often the results are like hard to show like, oh, we went to a conference on how cities are, are implementing speed bumps or whatever. And, you know, I learned some things that maybe will be useful one day. And it's like, well, that was, you know, $25,000

well spent for you and your staff to go or whatever so there's always those questions right right um i the question the the thing is is that there's a whole added dimension to them when you have this personal relationship involved yeah because they were hiding a personal relationship that was not disclosed so now i'm thinking what about we talked about this last time you were here, but, you know, we talked about this and you can confirm this, although I did get this information from another Toronto Star journalist, but John Tory was receiving $100,000 a year from the family trust, the Rogers family trust. And that was known, at least reported, before he ran for re-election again. But yeah, so he was a personal friend. That's so messy. A personal friend of the late Ted Rogers. Go ahead.

And an executive at Rogers. And he says he resigned most of his other jobs when he became mayor of Toronto. most of his other jobs when he became mayor of Toronto, but his, he said like his place on the family trust, advising the family trust on, on, you know, their corporate holdings and all of that was like a sacred dying wish that he,

like a dying promise he had made to Ted Rogers and he couldn't turn his back on it. And so he kept that job. And as a result, um, declared a conflict of interest whenever anything Rogers related, which given that Rogers is a part owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs and all the properties that Toronto Maple Leafs sports and entertainment owns,

also does business directly with the city is like one of the largest communications company in the city. One of the largest corporations in the city. It was a lot of items where he's declaring a conflict. And if I may, as an avid cyclist, Mr. Keenan, if I just may, a letter from Mark Shapiro

of the Toronto Blue Jays requesting that ActiveTO not shut down Lakeshore because it was, in Mark Shapiro's opinion, affecting attendance at the Dome for Blue Jay home games on weekends. Also Rogers-owned, yeah. If you don't know, Blue Jays in the dome

owned by Rogers. Because they didn't name the dome after the guy. So after the company. And there's a statue outside. We don't have a statue of Joe Carter, but we have a statue

of Ted Rogers. Touch them all, Ted. Touch them all, Ted. You'll never buy a bigger team in your life. Oh my goodness. Okay. So, but see,

this is just kind of what once, this is about like optics and how murky all the waters get. Now that water was murky before we learned about the inappropriate relationship. Yeah, but just on that thing though, like everybody knew that he was still advising the family trust. It was only later that the Star reported he was earning $100,000 a year for that. He was being paid this token honorarium of $100 hundred thousand dollars which is like half his salary as mayor right like right um and a lot of a lot of people in this city would consider that to be uh like

really solid full-time salary right um and and yet the the thinking uh with john tory seemed to be like well when you're as rich as I am, that's an insignificant sum anyway. Like it's barely, it's like a dollar a year man kind of thing, right? Like it's symbolic. But it does like raise all these questions. And Chloe Brown, who was a candidate for mayor in the last election, kept bringing it up as like,

you can't have this like two full- this, like, two full-time jobs, draw two full-time salaries and serve both masters. You have to focus on the job at hand. And so, anyhow, I mean, that's something, again, that goes away now, I guess. But the reason I bring it up, Mr. Keenan, I'm calling you Mr. Keenan now because, you know, you're on the stand here

and I'm cross-examining you, of course. But I'm bringing it up because, again, we're not naming this woman that he had the inappropriate relationship with. I agreed with David Ryder in the Toronto Stars thinking. I've never named her. I've never blogged her name, tweeted her name, or said her name on this, and I won't. But in the case where she's, let's say she's removed from City Hall

and she's placed in a business that perhaps Rogers has an ownership stake in, it's all too close for comfort. Yeah, and that does, the part about placing is like a subject of some question. But I mean, certainly her job after she left City Hall was with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. And so the question is like, well, was she placed in that job? Did somebody pull some strings to get her that job? Are those strings different? And this, this comes up in exactly this situation where if,

if you're an office staff member of John Torrey's, uh, you expect him to give you a good reference like any of us who do a good job, expect our boss to give us a good reference like any of us who do a good job expect our boss to give us a good reference and possibly even uh put in a word for us like keep his ear to the ground like part of the future career-long benefit of working for somebody like john tory is that he's got one of the most extensive rolodexes in the city right he was like born into the ruling class of this city has worked for the one of the big five bay street law firms which his city, has worked for one of the big five Bay Street law firms, which his family founded, has worked for the largest communications company, has worked at the provincial government, has worked as a backroom boy in the federal government, has worked at City Hall.

It's like whatever you want to do with the rest of your life, your former boss knows people who maybe, if he liked you, if he thought your performance was good, he can put a word for you again when you're in a romantic relationship with him it changes the nature of how that's perceived like suddenly you realize we can't be having this relationship and working together especially if we're moving to some further stage especially if my marriage is on the rocks as it may have been i don't have the insider details of that but we have david rider has reported this sort of timeline of of what we've heard there was geographical gaps at least yeah yeah uh john tory and his wife barb

uh own both a condo in downtown toronto and a property in flor Florida. And she was living through the pandemic in Florida, pretty much full-time, because he was doing, you know, I think the original rationale was that he's bubbling with people at City Hall to try and run the city, right? Like, you know, we all had our social distancing bubbles where you're like, you're allowed to have contact he was bubbling all right whatever so you know joe cressy the people of the emergency management members of his office staff um and it was during that period of sustained

distance that this relationship began we are told and but but we also are told that at various points before this became public knowledge um it became family knowledge, that his wife became aware that the relationship was going on, and that there were questions about whether or not this relationship would end, questions about whether or not the marriage could survive. And so, you know, in that context of a relationship where potentially the relationship itself is at a, could become more serious or could be ended, you know, maybe the question of like this, we shouldn't be doing this when we're working together becomes more pressing. And then it's like, well, you need to,

one of us needs to go get another job and it'd be hard for it to be me. Like, so, you know, yes, the question is there. Did he pull strings? Did he do anything? Because there's a lot of jobs, Ed, outside of IHAL. I assure you that reporters at the Star, very good reporters at the Star, have pursued those lines of inquiry and have nothing of substance to report.

I assume that very good reporters at other media outlets who are in competition with us and trying to scoop us on all these things are also pursuing those same lines of inquiry. And if they uncover something that seems newsworthy or improper, I imagine we'll read about it. But like I don't, having outlined all those questions and reasons why I think this is a legitimate area of concern, I don't have any reason,

nothing I can point to to suspect that there's any evidence of actual wrongdoing in that regard, and that may change. Okay, because outside of City Hall, there's a million stories in the Naked City city hall there's um a million there's a million stories in the naked city ed there's a million jobs in this city and yeah this job is 30 what 37.5 percent of mlse is owned by rogers on that note advisor and again we got to get to

mayoral election that's coming up but advisor to the rogers family trust but he was unable to in his two pointpoint whatever terms as mayor of Toronto, unable to get Rogers cell service in the subway. Oh my God. That is such a for me it is

enduring frustration. Like it's just absolutely absurd. And when you move somewhere else and you get used to being able to just use your phone on the subway, because that's, of course, why would you not be able to? And you can use your Rogers phone on the subway. If you go to D.C. or New York City.

I was in Paris, France, and I was in the subway using my Rogers phone. If you've got your roaming package, you can use it, absolutely. So, you know, the infrastructure exists in the subway, which was like enough of a, you know, given the way things can tend to work in this city, it was enough of a belated thing by international standards that the infrastructure was actually installed in the subway tunnels to allow cellular service down there. But then the company that had won the contract to do that

and administer it is not Rogers, and it is not Bell, and it is not Telus, which are the three major companies that dominate the cellular service market in Canada and own the cellular networks across the country, right? And they share each other's networks, but they own the rest of the infrastructure. And basically, my understanding is that when the guys who did build it said, okay, here's how you get in, they were like, nah, we're not doing that.

If the TTC invites us to install our own infrastructure, we'll do that. But we're not using your stinking network. We're not paying you, but never mind not paying you. We're just like, we're not enabling service in the subway. And so those big companies are the reason you cannot use their products in the subway because they refuse.

And there are, I think um from what i understand sort of tenuous but possibly like there's something to them arguments where they say oh it's not a good enough network and all of that we would put in something better and all of that but the point is is that like technologically there is no hurdle to overcome here the infrastructure already exists and is already installed there and somebody just has to flip a switch and the people who own Rogers and Bell are refusing to allow that switch to be flipped. Now, one of the mayoral candidates, multiple mayoral candidates

are promising to solve this issue because it has become front of mind as a safety issue. It's a safety issue like this poor kid gabriel uh got stabbed to death in the subway and i was writing about that and i for for reasons i wrote about like i was more heartbroken than usual like i have a initially thought he was a classmate of my son's when i heard the news through families in the neighborhood i learned that he's basically a former classmate of a lot of classmates of my

son's, but he went to a different school. But he was a neighborhood kid in our area. He's the same age as my son. He was in the same grade as my son. He was killed at a subway station right close to my house, fairly close to my house, where I have spent a lot of time sitting on that very bench with my own children. And so it was hitting me particularly hard. And the next day though, I was riding the subway and I saw these posters up about the new like app you can use to report safety concerns on the TTC, like in real time. And it's just like so frustrating the realization that like, even if I had that app app i could not use it in real time because i have no cellular service down here in the subway and and so it's it's a safety issue now

and so multiple mayoral candidates are promising to solve it uh anna bylau is saying basically that she would withhold city business from those companies until they caved on this um i don't know if freedom mobile has the bandwidth to take all the city's business or like one of those other smaller companies but uh like they're they're all saying we're going to solve it somehow um but but they're solving it involves us believing that they are able to coerce and or entice uh these big cell companies to play ball and i i don't know what what the the odds are that that that's actually going to happen but well you know it certainly should be an issue. And if these companies are, if public outrage

was moved the levers for them, we would see it on a whole lot of other things, right?

Well, when you were here in early January, we were talking about safety on the TTC. This was a

big hot button. It sounds, it feels like it's only got worse since then. Yeah, it hasn't gotten away as a pressing concern. And I've done a lot of thinking about it and some writing about it.

And I do think it's worth us taking a step back to say there are 2 million rides a day on the TTC, more or less. And there have been four murders on TTC property over the last year. That's not great. But it also, it's not like a war zone where you're going to be caught in a crossfire every day on your commute to work. where you're going to be caught in the crossfire every day on your commute to work um it's still rare uh compared to a lot of other situations and a lot of other risks to your life um but it is

the number of violent incidents not just deaths but violent incidents um has has gone up legitimately over the past couple of years and it is is a level that I don't think any of us are comfortable with. And I think it combines in most of our minds or in most of our impressions, and I think we may have talked about this last time, with the presence of homeless people sleeping there, with disarray, with service problems, to lead to an element where it doesn't feel safe and it doesn't feel stable. It doesn't feel maintained. And so that's going to continue to be an issue. It may well be an issue that helps define this mayoral campaign. And I think the big solutions are multi-pronged

and a little bit complex, but I think they're there. There are ways to make this better. Okay, Ed, we're going to pause right there because I feel like we're warmed up now. I'm going to open things up with a question from a listener named Leslie that's going to introduce this new mayoral election that we didn't see coming

when you were here in early January. You're like, oh, we got some time here. So obviously, you know, FOTMs drink Great Lakes beer. You and I are going to be hanging out at the GLB Brew Pub tonight. So shout out to Great Lakes beer. Lasagna in my freezer for you, Mr. Keenan, courtesy of Palmopasta. Did you eat the last one? I did, yeah.

Okay, just making sure. I don't want them to pile up in the freezer. Don't worry. Lasagna does not go uneaten in my house. the lifespan of lasagna, once it crosses the threshold of my home, is measured in minutes, not days uh so no love to hear it so you got a new one i got another one in my freezer for you you're leaving

with another excellent meat lasagna from palma pasta go to palmapasta.com ed did i give you a measuring tape last time i did you did oh i did and okay courtesy of ridley funeral home and they are it's a use very useful measuring tape because it's like a seamstress's measuring tape or whatever, the flexy ones. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what I'm giving you is, this time I'm giving you a flashlight. Like, we almost lost power. I had a flicker yesterday during the rainstorm. I was going to be

reaching for my Ridley Funeral Home flashlight. This is yours. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. Ed, enjoy responsibly. Look at that. I'm not just warming up myself. I got more gifts for you, okay? You didn't get this last time, okay? Moneris.

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yeah quality quality speaker you're going to hear Al you need a bold speaker to hear the bold talk on podcasts uh such as yours and i imagine um uh moneris's shout out to moneris and i want to tell you ed because you're a brand as far as i'm concerned there's an ed keenan brand regardless of what station you're on the radio i read you in the newspaper i want to tell you about a company that can take your brand to the next level. Okay, so if you've been struggling to get your message out to the world, if you're looking for a way to

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Matt and Jared at the moment lab, and you can learn how you can, they can help you achieve your public relations goals. The moment lab, Ed, they're there to help you achieve your public relations goals the moment lab ed they're there to help you buddy i will keep that in mind hopefully you don't need the crisis point where i uh feel like i require help yeah yeah no crisis management required okay let's talk about let me read the question from leslie and then we'll get into this this is an important time so i should have recorded that opening ramble but i just wanted you to warm up now i'm going to start recording the podcast you ready absolutely so let's kick this off

with a question leslie writes with the crowd of centrist candidates so centrist is actually in so with the crowd of centrist candidates for mayor are we in danger of splitting the vote and electing a right winger like mark saunders what's our best option if we want to elect a progressive so that's a big question but it's going to introduce these 12 potential mayors i know there's more candidates than that but the 12 have like a realistic chance of winning so we won't count frank d'angelo we won't count some of these fringe candidates who simply will not win okay there's one thing i want to uh frank can win before we get into that i think there's a lane um open now we talk a lot about how since amalgamation the city has sort of uh gone between left and right right you had like bell lastman the conservative populist then you had david miller

the ndp affiliated um like progressive downtowner and then you had rob ford the angry populist and then you have john tory who's sort of the center right but like maybe he's you know whatever he is um but it can you know and we so we talk about that conservative liberal split or conservative progressive split but we don't talk a lot about the like uh sane versus nutso bananas split that we're like half of our mayors have been from cloud cuckoo land uh like mel lastman uh right who you know before a trip to africa would would talk about his hosts dancing around with bones through their nose roasting them in a cannibal cauldron

for instance or things like that and then of course Rob Ford whereas David Miller whether you liked him or not was kind of a slick guy a polished professional John Tory you know

give or take one scandal a polished professional. John Tory, you know, give or take one scandal, a very professional guy. Liked him or not, he was the opposite of Rob Ford. He was like, you felt like at least there's an adult in charge. So if you think

that the electorate swings back and forth, then maybe it's time for some B-A-N-A-N-A-S again. So is that Frank D'Angelo? Are you calling it? It could be. Are you calling it?

I'm just saying it could be. Okay, so that's it, though. The listener's question. Okay. Are we in danger of splitting the vote? Yes. Yes. For sure.

And no matter what kind of mayor you want, there's a big danger of splitting the vote uh because we we have like a first past the post one round system there's no runoffs thanks to uh doug ford um uh and and so like potentially somebody could win this thing with less than 20 percent of the vote and they win the strong mayor like authoritarian like governed with all support of one-third of council powers so i mean if you do the math even if like at 20% of the vote if your turnout is the same as last time we could be talking about like a few hundred thousand people in a city of three million right are gonna elect a virtually all-powerful mayor um so yeah vote splits do become a thing

absolutely yeah i mean of course and that's how kirkheady was uh voted mayor of baltimore uh in the wire yeah yeah no absolutely and it like chicago of all places so chicago is famous for having like corrupt politics like uh something like% of the governors over the last 20 years have wound up in jail. The mayors of Chicago, like it's famous for mayor daily governing like for 20 odd years. And then his son governing for 20 odd years after that and being sort of pseudo authoritarian ward healing,

like all controlling bosses of the city. Like that's that's the the rap on Chicago. But that of all places, they have a runoff system now in place for their elections. And so an unheralded candidate just won in a runoff, you know, because in the first round, the progressive vote was splitting. And in the second round, when it was a mono and mono runoff, he came out and won. They have a better electoral system than we do. But we're not going to get that. We're not getting that here.

That makes too much sense. Yeah. So we have that first pass, the post, which is essentially whoever's the biggest number of votes is the winner, regardless of what percentage of the whole we're talking about.

That's right. And so, so you wanted to use this as a way to get into... Yeah, so here, I actually want to get into it. It's just such a long list where there's a danger I'm actually going to forget some of them, but you go ahead. If I can think of some of them.

And I don't, obviously, we're early here, but the next time we get together will be early July. This will have happened. Like, we're going to have a new mayor of this city. So we'll try to roughly keep it maybe we'll keep it like biggest name recognition i don't even know how to do this because there's some bigger names but maybe we start with the former uh chief of police like so we talked okay so if we're gonna talk um like on the right wing of the spectrum of

potential candidates okay let's do it that way we can can do it that way. Sure. Possibly, Mark Saunders is, at the starting line, the most high-profile or the most likely of those further right candidates. So you've got Mark Saunders, the former police chief, who never seemed even a little bit comfortable in public life. I've never seen somebody whose job involved giving a lot of speeches who seemed to actively dislike giving those speeches as much as he did. In a city where maybe people are uncomfortable with the idea of a former police chief being mayor,

maybe they're not. Maybe some people think that's what we need. But so there's him. And then alongside him him let's put uh anthony fury the broadcaster true north uh media guy former uh opinion editor at the toronto sun who i think uh has is is a less of a front runner but still uh has a high enough profile and and is maybe the only well the only candidates of the ones i intend to get into who's who's been an active participant sort of in the culture wars like the

the um and so you know he's there as well um you have a former city councilor rob davis who um Rob Davis, who I think is a dark horse, like an underrated candidate. He last held elected office in the 1990s, but he was a longtime city councilor and a conservative. What neck of the woods, like what neighborhood, or sorry, riding, I guess, was he the councilor? Do you remember? I believe it was the old city of New York. In don't know why I don't remember this name. Maybe in the 90s I had better things to do maybe.

Like I wasn't covering city council at that point, but I believe it was the old city of York. I'm just looking it up now while we're. Okay, that's Allentonksville, I think we call the old city of York, Allentonksville. Well, that's Francis Nunziata's. Right. Yeah, he was the first black city councilor

in the 200 year history of the city of York. Okay. Okay, that's the other sideyear history of the city of York. Okay. That's the other side of the Humber River. Gotcha. Okay. So please continue. Okay, so we got just a recap here. Mark Saunders, Anthony Fury, Rob Davis.

You deem these on the right side of the political spectrum. Yeah, and you can add Giorgio Mammoliti, who at one point, again, back stretching into the 1990s, I believe, possibly even the 80s, like in the administration of premier ship of Bob Ray, was an NDP member of provincial parliament who then sort of became a centrist populist in the mold of, John Nunziata, while he was a city councilor and then during the rob ford years became sort of like the thumb uh who was rob ford's like kind of like enforced right-hand man and uh and he is uh sort of i guess a right-wing populist now his his dedication and devotion to this city's government is demonstrated better perhaps by nothing than

that uh months ago he was a candidate for mayor of wasaga beach um and he lost that election right yes uh but he is back uh and apparently still owns property in the city of toronto and uh is planning to run for mayor here uh he i also put him into the the right wing set side of the spectrum because i think if he has any hope to win it's going to be as a right-wing populist candidate um then then like let's say we move to the center um and on the staking out a position on the center right now is brad bradford uh previously uh city planner an avid cyclist who i believe is still an avid cyclist uh yep uh housing deregulation advocate and one-time uh earnest supporter of defunding the police who has been reborn as the brainchild of uh conservative meme lords and and uh backroom boys

uh to sort of be the like the law and order candidate who still likes to ride his bike but is otherwise trying to stake out the center right like john tory but faster he's he's repeating a lot the slogan um like a strong mayor of action. He's going to be a strong mayor of action. To emphasize, because his slogan is kind of like, like enough talk, it's time for action. But he's one of the candidates or the candidate who's most openly saying sort of like,

these strong mayor powers that let me just steamroll council, I'm using them, baby. I'm using them because enough talk time for time for somebody what we've had is mayors who are afraid to just like be fascist no i'm kidding he didn't say that but like he's really leaning into the like strong mayor powers to like like enough talk let's get things done and i think there's a uh a lot of us out there who who that resonates with like the idea of just getting crap done i think a lot of people some of whom even were openly admitting it when they saw the strong mayor powers were saying like

i don't like what this does to democracy but somebody has to be able to do something right like done um no it's unfortunate though that he can't run for mayor of bradford because this does to democracy, but somebody has to be able to do something, right? Get shit done. It's unfortunate, though, that he can't run for mayor of Bradford, because Brad Bradford, mayor of Bradford, those signs are really cool. That's right. I feel like the fact that he is an advocate, I've had

a long conversation with him at the opening of the GLB Brew Pub, where we're going to be tonight, Ed Keenan, and we were just talking, we just talked cycling the whole time. We talked beer and cycling, right? And we talked about our different routes we like. And he really does,

he does walk the walk, except he's riding the ride. He's not walking the walk, he's riding the ride. And you can get fooled, I think, when you hear somebody is an avid cyclist who actually bikes Toronto streets, you would think, oh, that's a left-wing pinko. That guy's on the left side. He'sid cyclist who actually bikes toronto streets you would think oh that's a left

wing pinko like yeah that guy's on the left side he's a cyclist but uh not that's not that's an urban legend everybody i'm not here to even though don cherry says it's true and so the other thing about brad bradford is that he had been appointed not the official statutory uh number one deputy mayor who's j McKelvey, but he had been appointed one of the ceremonial deputy mayors by John Tory in this recent term, and his portfolio was supposed to be getting housing built, right? And so the person who used to have that portfolio

was Anna Baila, who for true terms was sort of John Tory's right hand, one of the ceremonial deputy mayors but also like the housing portfolio person like the person supposed to oversee tory's housing policy um and anna byla has never uh i'm putting her uh slightly to the left of Bradford in that center spectrum positioning, where I think she's never given up her identity where she identifies herself as progressive, but the people who are mostly called progressives on city council don't identify her that way. She still has strong ties to the labor movement, her that way um she still has strong ties to the labor movement um but she for instance voted to remove the jarvis bike lanes under under um and her she has uh nick cuvalis the campaign guy who

was behind rob ford and then also uh on john tory's team has been talking on her behalf about how you know she's the only hope of saving the city from bike lane pinkos like Brad Bradford. So, but I think she also is trying to position herself as a centrist who will consider Tori's legacy, but has some progressive cred. And I think, you know, today as we talk, she made an announcement at Ontario Place to try and let's do the Science Centre here instead of this spa. She, you know, so I put her there. Then maybe a little to the left of her in terms of how this

opening positioning is going is Mitzi Hunter, the Member of her in terms of how this opening positioning is going is Mitzi Hunter, the member of provincial parliament from the Liberal Party, former candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party, who I believe, like John Tory, was the head of Civic Action, the civic organization. I think she succeeded John Tory in that role. She wants to succeed him in another role here she's from scarborough she previously called herself the subway champion while running for office there in scarborough because she was like everybody else running for

office in scarborough not allowed to like lrts um but you know she she's the one who has been talking again about ranked balloting which you and I were just talking about, and the electoral system. She has renounced the strong mayor powers. I feel like as somebody who's primarily concerned with the city, I'm just getting to know her a bit more as a politician. Um, but you know, in these early days, she's, she wants to be a great centrist uniter, but she's kind of maybe in the weirdo left, right spectrum of Toronto politics, positioning herself just a little more on the progressive side of some of these issues to Bilal and Bradford. Um, quick question, Mr. Keenan, uh, she's an active MPP.

She is, uh, she will have to resign before nominations close. So she's got about a month to resign that position. She has said that she will resign, that she's not planning to leave the race and stay at Queen's Park if the campaign's not going well. I get the sense that at least, you know, that maybe she's done at Queens Park either way.

Like if this mayoral run doesn't work out, which, you know, you wouldn't bet a lot of money on it. Like I wouldn't bet against her necessarily, but I wouldn't bet in favor of her. It's like just such a crowded, wide open race. But she says she's going to resign and she has like a few weeks to do that. Okay, so if you're an MPP,

you need to resign to run for mayor, at least at some point, as you said. But if you are a city councillor, like a Brad Bradford, you do not need to resign. You can basically run for mayor, and if you lose, you're just a city councillor. That's right.

Typically, and this is like kind of a loophole that exists because of the by-election right there is legislation that says federal members of parliament and sitting mpps cannot run for municipal office while holding on to their other job uh there's in a typical election you can't run for mayor and city councilor at the same time. So it doesn't come up. There's a by-election on, which means, oh, it's a get-out-of-jail free card.

Or a get-out-of-the-unemployment line free card for some city councillors. But even if he loses, he raises his profile and he can run again next time. It's one of those things where, to me, it's a no-lose for Brad Bradford. Yeah.

I'm going to circle back around because I just remembered I forgot a high-profile guy on the right wing. So do you want me to continue to the left and come back? No, pick up this righty first. Okay. So Stephen Holliday, who has confirmed that he's thinking about running,

has not confirmed that he will yet hasn't registered yet um but he he is uh probably he he inherited from his father his etobicoke seat on city council right and also his father's um parsimony uh his dislike for any city spending on anything except vacuuming up the leaves from people's lawns in etobicoke which is a boutique city service that existed only for people in etobicoke and parts of scarborough at a certain point well and not all of etobicoke right no but there are certain points where there's a lot of i don't get it here no sidewalks and a lot of um lawn a lot of trees now i when i lived in the suburbs of washington dc i had this service where they had these trucks that just came up so you still had to rake it to the

you rake it out to the curb gotcha and then a vacuum truck comes in and now my house in dc had like a forest it backed onto a ravine and like but even on my front lawn there were like 15 trees like small ones and big ones so this was a lifesaver for you no no yeah because like once we missed it and they had already done two and i but i had got them all raked up but it's like like i i think i put out like 36 bags and that was just like the remnants like the leftovers um so we would have been talking hundreds and hundreds of bags so i get it but it's like for a guy who doesn't has never seen a dollar spent at city hall right that he wouldn't call like outright almost corruption um like it's

a weird thing to to have as your one worthwhile city service so you're putting steven holiday you're gonna put him if he runs he's between saunders and fury yeah yeah yeah um he he's like uh he he has been against like bike lanes and he often has a nimby openly nimby take on he he often says things like that these neighborhoods are mature and they don't need more development that like we we shouldn't be uh changing the single family home nature of a lot of these neighborhoods he doesn't like bike lanes uh he doesn't like taxes he doesn't like spending he's the most economically conservative or or economically like conservative member of city council he shares with the late rob ford a penchant for being the only vote on the losing side of an issue,

which conveniently allows him to get quoted in the paper when you do the pros and cons. But so he's thinking about it and he would be over there on the right wing of the political spectrum, you know, potentially splitting the vote with those guys or picking up

those votes okay i'm glad you glad you corrected yourself there so in the center here we've got brad bradford yeah at the center right by allow yeah i said that right okay mitzi hunter yeah um anyone else before we get to the uh the left wing pinkos boy. I'm just trying to think, uh, because it's possible I am, uh, forgetting someone else. Um, there's this Whitby MP, uh,

who I'm like really unfamiliar with a federal liberal who just announced she's getting in a former, former federal liberal. she was an MP representing Whitby. Um, and she, she's just entered the race. I think maybe because she's held elected office recently,

she needs to be mentioned. But as I say, I was out of the country until very recently, and she's not a known figure at Toronto City Hall. So her name is Cesar. I'm trying to remember. Did you not know you were coming over here today, Ed? Come on. Man, there's so much that's going on here. Inner city

balloon races. It's Selena, Cesar, Chavez. And I haven't even brought up Ontario plays yet. Okay, so let's get to the left candidates. You've got Josh Matlow, sitting councillor, know often presented himself as the leader of opposition against john tory um has has sort of launched in a fairly high profile

fashion uh right away has attracted support from um a lot of civic leaders so like kathy crow the anti-homeless homelessness activists and street nurse, uh, John Sewell, the former mayor and activist and former journalist, um, Erica M. Uh,

M F O T M. Erica. Yeah. Kate, Kate and Swappen. Uh, so, you know,

both political and cultural figures. so I, I mean, I think he's on the, the center left. He, he would identify himself as a progressive. He once ran for the Liberal Party at another level of government,

but he does not identify himself as a member of any political party. He is not embraced as a teammate by the NDP people at City Hall, but he often is voting the same way as him and making the same kind of speeches. And at the start of the race, he would have been the highest profile sort of progressive candidate. For a while, it seemed like he might be the only one

other than Gil Penalosa and Chloe Brown, who both ran last time and are running again. And I think both did fairly well last time uh gil panalosa came second uh but you could say almost by default he came second chloe brown placed a distant third but given how little profile she had at the start of the race and how little money she spent uh surprisingly strong third place showing. So they're still running again, but might be like outside chance, like they're in Rob Davis territory.

If I was setting the odds myself. And then you've got Olivia Chow, who has confirmed she's thinking about it, but has not yet officially entered the race. But all indications I'm hearing are that she is setting up a campaign and preparing to launch. So she, of course, ran for mayor last time. She was a former school board trustee,

metro councillor, city councillor in Toronto, then a federal member of parliament, the widow of the late Jack Layton, who was the Bonjac leader of the NDP, and for a time, very short time, sadly short time, leader of the opposition federally. And she is the stepmother of Mike Layton, who a lot of people thought would be the progressive candidate for mayor this time.

But she also, I think, so I think unless Penalosa or Chloe Brown do something to surprise us, or to surprise me, and I think jolt Torontonians into the race, which is possible, but I think that sort of

progressive lane is a contest between Olivia Chow and Josh Matlow. So there we are. And it's worth noting Olivia Chow fairly Josh Matlow. So there we are. And it's worth noting Olivia Chow fairly recently finished third in the mayoral election, right?

Because that's right. Because John Tory and Doug Ford defeated her that year. That's right. And I think she started that race. So that Rob Ford was running for re-election

in the midst of the crack scandal like the the meltdown following his admission that yes he had smoked crack there was this big police investigation going on he was going into rehab he was still running from for re-election and olivia chow early on led the polls uh and was supposed to win this is like shades of barbara hall back in 2003 for anybody with a long enough memory to remember that but like seemed almost like well this is going to be the inevitable anti-ford candidate the pendulum swinging the other way um and through that campaign rob ford of course handed off the baton to his brother doug after he was diagnosed with cancer right um and john tory uh got into the campaign um and and i think there the ballot box question was kind of a binary

like ford or not ford do we want more Ford? Or do we want to end the Ford show? And then I think there was like a subsidiary contest to that to say who is the not Ford candidate. And I think in the early stages of the race, John Tory beat out Olivia Chow as the consensus not Ford. She still got, you could look it up there,

but I think it was between 20 and 30% of the vote. Well, you see, I remembered very clearly that there was a sense where if you voted for Olivia Chow, because we have this first-past-the-post system, which I despise Edward Keenan, I felt like, oh, if I vote for Olivia Chow, that might help the Fords, right? So you would be, I'll vote for the best chance

of defeating the candidate I want the least to win. And too often in this so-called democracy, that's the case. It's like, I have to strategically vote against the candidate I want least to win. And that's actually, interestingly, part of the math uh people who are supporting olivia chow this time are doing going in is saying in this first pass suppose system which

maybe hurt us last time and routinely hurts the ndp uh in federal and provincial elections maybe if you can win this thing with only 20% of the vote, and Olivia Chow is such a strong NDP-backed candidate, like she gets the same 20% to 30% she got last time, that could win outright. She doesn't need to expand her base beyond that potentially, although she certainly will try. But that could be a winner here, right?

Fascinating. Okay, I'm just looking at all these names you've dropped and yeah it's going to be very interesting how this shakes down and you must be like licking your chops as a guy who gets to cover this and write about this in canada's largest newspaper because we just came off the boring boring af election okay where we all know who is going to win and we knew it wouldn't be close, and then blah, blah, blah, like, what's exciting about that, and here we are, where I'm just looking at these names you dropped, like, there'll be, even just for the progressive vote or whatever, Josh versus Olivia, and you got your center who's looking to, you know, you got your Mitzi Hunter versus Brad Bradford, and then you got the Anna Bailao, and then you got your right-wingers,

Mark Saunders is in there. And he's going to have, you know, you know, oh my God, Mamaliti's there. And then you have these, you know, we didn't mention them in this part of the discussion. But, you know, you have your

Frank D'Angelo's. Yeah. And I don't know who else will be like that. I know there's some names that were on the ballot last time, but I ended up getting like only a handful of votes.

Blake Acton. You know, so fascinating. This were on the ballot last time, but I ended up getting like only a handful of votes, like Blake Acton. There's a, you know, so fascinating. This is going to be quite the, uh, quite, it is.

And I am looking forward to covering it. I mean, there, there is the, um, the factor of like worrying. Have you ever gone to or watched, um,

there's one, traditionally there was one debate in every cycle back when we used to have a lot of debates right uh where like all the candidates would get on stage at the same time and it would be like oh there's 48 people running for mayor here's all 48 of them and it's like they get one minute each basically like it's not a debate it's like they ask a question and then it's like speed round the whole time and ben kerr would sing a song or something. Yeah. Everybody has 30 seconds to introduce himself. And then we're going to ask four questions and each person's going to have 30 seconds to respond to the question and then it's

done. Right. And I worry a little bit about that factor here at the kickoff of this, like in terms of trying to cover it myself or trying to, I mean, there's a team of us at the star, like in terms of trying to cover it myself or trying to i mean there's a team of us at the star but in terms of me as a columnist trying to get my head around it it's like how much time and attention can i spend looking at any given candidate and um and i am in the way excited so because of the first past the post stuff that we've already talked about yep i have a streak of fear running through me in this election about what could happen and like even if i like the winner uh that results from that kind of vote split i don't like what it like i i want the winner to represent the will of the people of toronto almost more than i want it to be somebody I agree with. Because I think there's fundamentally more important. The democracy of the city is more important than my view on any given issue.

Mostly. I'm not going to suggest. Let's say you come up the middle or something and you win this thing. Let's say 19% of the vote. Okay. Who knows what the vote. I'm sure it'll be a pretty high vote turnout. Because whenever you have these elections where you don't know who's going to win, usually that results in a pretty high vote turnout,

I would imagine, but that's my speculation. Okay, so let's say 19% you've won. It's not illegitimate. That's democracy in action. That's the rules that we have. That's the system, yeah. But it's like, you know, let me do the math on this. That's, you know,

81% of Torontonians who voted for someone else. Like, it does seem to detract from legitimacy. And quite possibly, like, voted for, would have voted

for anyone else, right? Like, depending. If you get breaking news on your phone, will you announce it on this episode of Toronto Mic'd here? I will,

but I need to change the settings on my watch because I get a lot of, like, sports breaking news that's actually like somebody hit a home run or like some member of the Columbus Blue Jackets scored a nice goal and it's like why are you alerting me to that on my watch like as if it's no you gotta raise the bar for breaking news if it's gonna make a noise like I need to me to me it's all about the audio

notification I'll take that as like a just a uh what do you call it like a notification that's visual or whatever but once a noise is made by my phone like literally like i have a time of day where it better be yeah at this time of day you actually have to be one of these six people to make a noise on my phone and you know i include your children you know your your mom or whatever like my phone if ed keenan calls me at 3 a.m., my phone won't make a sound, okay? This is by design, so yeah. But so, okay, so I have that fear,

but I'm also excited as a Torontonian for an election campaign in which we actually are gonna have the potential to discuss issues where the result is not known, where there's a chance that people can put forward ideas for how to do things or what we should do, a vision for the city, and that vision could win, right? That could become fact.

If enough people say, hey, that's a good idea, the field is wide open enough that you can win it on the debates. You can win it on your policy. You can win it on your policy. You can win it on your campaign. It's been a long time since that felt like it was really the case. So as both a writer and as a resident, I'm looking forward to that element

with the deep reservation that I don't know. Now, our best hope, and this is your questioner kicked off by asking this, Leslie, My best hope, and this is your questioner kicked off by asking this, is that either, in fact, by them, like the field has to narrow at some point, right? And there's two ways that's happened historically,

is that midway through the campaign, the halfway point or whatever, somebody looks and say okay this not this is not happening for me so i'm gonna back out and maybe i'll endorse the person that's closest to me right that who's doing much better already than me right i i can put them over the top um and then the field narrows that way um so you know you kind of have like almost like primaries here through public opinion polling in the early stage of the race. Josh Matlow or whatever. Or historically that's also happened just like the public makes that choice and narrows the field,

even though the names are still on the ballot. There was a point in the 2003 race where Barbara Hall was supposed to be the inevitable mayor and John Tory and John Nunziata were running against her and David Miller and Tom Jacobek. Right. But basically, Barbara Hall was seen as inevitable. And then it was thought that this backroom boy,

corporate guy, John Tory, might stand a chance because the establishment wanted him. He's like the family camp compact candidate. But the John Nunziata was like the other maverick with a shot at it right um and what wound up happening is that through the campaign david miller attracted some attention he had this island airport thing that was uh and his broom he brought in robert f kennedy jr to attract attention and endorse him uh which in retrospect looks a little different. He's an anti-vaxxer now, right? Yeah, and he might primary Joe Biden.

Oh, I heard that, yeah. But he's an anti-vaxxer. That's become his big thing. Back then, his big thing was keeping water clean, which is maybe a nicer thing to be in the eyes of many of us. Like he was the waterkeeper guy. be in the eyes of many of us like he was the waterkeeper guy. So, but basically by the end of the summer, because the polls showed David Miller surging basically into a dead heat with Barbara Hall and John Tory, I think a lot of people saw that and were like, Barbara Hall was supposed to win.

She never closed the deal. She stalled out. And look at this guy skyrocketing. And if you watch the polls over a two-week period, it's like she collapsed and David Miller cruised to victory. And it's because basically the public decided, oh no, this is the guy. You've got to ride the hot hand.

If you're the center left, this is the guy, right? Right. And so it wound up being almost the two-horse race between David Miller and John Tory on Election Day. And so something like that could happen again where essentially three or four candidates maybe emerge as the actual frontrunners and people vote based on that.

And so people could withdraw and make that the actual case, or it could just be that like in the public mind, it's like, well, these are the people who got an actual shot. So this is how I'm making up my mind. And I think if you are like your listener there, Leslie, was it? Leslie. A progressive who's worried about vote splits. It's like progressives talking amongst themselves and organizing and whatnot need to sort of at a certain point say, oh, this is the horse we're going to ride based on the early performance and lets everybody get in the bus, right?

Or on the horse or whatever metaphor you want to use. A horseback gets very crowded very quickly. And if you're on the right wing too, it's like, is it going to be Holliday? Is it going to be Saunders? Is Bradford actually your right wing guy or not? Whatever kind of candidate you like, what's going to happen early in this campaign, I predict,

and it may not happen exactly like this but is you're going to see like olivia chow and josh matlow and gil penelosa attacking each other right like you're going to see the centrist candidates bylau and bradford and mitzi hunter like clawing out each other's eyes to try and differentiate each other from each other right because like this person this person who's jockeying for the same votes as me, that's the threat to me. And that's my hope to win is to get this slice of the votes. I think that's really unhealthy,

but hopefully after the early round of that, what you see is sort of like a few consensus champions of the polls sort of here, right? Like whether that's conservatives or whether that's progressives or whether it's like a very specific position on a high profile issue. Like if there's three people who all agree on it and that's the most important issue. Like our best hope is that we see that sorting, and if they don't sort themselves, then the voters are going to have to do that.

And if the voters don't do it, then yeah, you wind up electing somebody or leaving the field open for somebody you hate. Buckle up, Keenan. It's going to be a hell of a couple of months coming up here. Did you... Yeah, okay. We'll take an intermission here.

That's okay. Just a short intermission. Take an intermission here. That's okay. Just a short intermission. Take an intermission here. I'll play some music, and we'll be right back with Ed Keenan. Ed Keenan. You got a diamond. You got nine men.

You got a hat and a bat. And that's not all. You got the bleachers, got them from spring till fall. You got a dog and a drink and an umpire's call. Is that a fly ball? Or is it a seagull? Coming in from the lake Just to catch the game It's the last inning Our guys are winning Dave's put down a smoker, a strike And you got no doubt What do you want? Let's play ball

Okay, Blue Jays Let's play ball. Okay. Okay. Blue Jays. Blue Jays. Let's play ball. It's a beautiful evening, fans. At the ballpark. And the game starts. Warm summer breezes.

And the sun's going down. And it's all dark dark at the ballpark. That's okay, it's a night game. Come on, Ed, do it. Okay. Okay. Blue Jays. Blue Jays.

Let's. Let's. Play. Play. Bowl. One more time, Ed. Okay. Okay. Blue Jays. Blue Jays. Let's. Let's. Play. Bowl. One more time, Ed. Okay. Okay.

Blue Jays. Blue Jays. Let's. Let's play. Play. Bowl. Oh, too early. Okay, Ed.

Seventh inning stretch here. Ed, if you have any old tech, like old antiquated technology devices, maybe a smartphone that doesn't work, don't throw it in the garbage, Ed Keenan. Never do it, because those chemicals end up in the landfill. You go to RecycleMyElectronics.ca Find out a safe depot near you where you can drop that

off, and thank you to EPRA proud sponsors of Toronto Mike's for just accrediting and ensuring that these places available on recyclemyelectronics.ca are doing the right thing.

Here we go, the big hit. Okay, home stretch here. This election's got me. I mean, holy smokes. What would we have talked about if this all happened? Well, we might talk about the opening of the Blue Jays season,

the start of baseball season. I'm excited about that. Yeah. We're going to back out their coaching this year. Not for the Blue Jays. Not for the Blue Jays., the start of baseball season, I'm excited about that. Yeah. I'm going to back out their coaching this year. Not for the Blue Jays. Not for the Blue Jays. That would be a mind blow here.

Right. So where do you coach? Are you allowed to reveal that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I coach one of my daughter's house league teams in the West End of Toronto. All right.

Good luck to your daughter. It's good, so. Yeah, I know. I always love it when Blue we did a great episode so Keenan that's funny Keenan Keegan

those names are similar Keegan Matheson was here a couple of weeks ago to set us up for the 2023 season Blue Jay season and we both left

that conversation realizing that we don't need to play the regular season the Jays have won the World Series hold on you know the other thing

we would have talked about I just want to put this in there okay because then I have a couple of notes of things I do want to take a touch on. Yeah, yeah, because you've got actual questions and stuff. But I went as a young man, as a teenager, to Cardinal Newman High School in Scarborough. Okay.

There are currently two members of the Toronto Maple Leafs who also attended Cardinal Newman High School in Scarborough. Can I guess who? Yes. Bunting. Yeah, that's one. Yeah. And a newly arrived...

Okay, help me out here because it's not... Ryan O'Reilly. Right, okay. Who did not... He didn't attend for the full four years and all of that,

but he went for a year while he was... That's exciting. He came here to play hockey and then... So yeah, it's like for people who went to my high school, it's just for people who went to my high school

it's just kind of like hey, Cardinal Newman's own. There was one game where O'Reilly got the hat trick and Bunting scored another goal

and it was like something like 60% or 70% of the Leafs goals in that game were scored by alumni of my high school which is kind of

a wicked thing. I don't think the Leafs have had a member from my, the last player who played for my high school team was Drake Barahowski. Oh, wow.

Do you remember Drake? Yeah. So Drake, the original Toronto Drake, if we want to get technical about it. Before we leave this subject, the one thing is that Ryan O'Reilly, obviously he came here to play hockey in Toronto. He did not play for Cardinal Newman's hockey team,

which I did play for in my days. Really? What position did you play? I played right wing. Okay, well. Like my place on the political spectrum as well. I was going to say it, obviously. But Michael Bunting did play and was a superstar for the Cardinal Newman Knights

hockey team because he was like undrafted in the OHL until he was an overager. Yeah yeah because the ohl won't let you play in the high school team yeah no exactly and so it's very rare for an nhl player to have played on the high school team but the you know the coaches the former teachers of mine and his who i have been in contact with are very proud to have coached him uh and and like it's just uh a cause for celebration out there on this

Garba Bluff so love it love it love it love it love it so Ed again

you have a new relationship with a new old relationship with AM640 so what is it they just call you when somebody's

taking vacation or somebody's sick so yeah the branding there has changed to 640 Toronto 640 Toronto okay they got rid

of the global news radio they tried that global news radio 640 Toronto. 640 Toronto. Okay, they got rid of the Global News Radio. They used to be Global News Radio 640 Toronto. Yeah, TNR. And then before that it was AM640 was what you would say all the time.

And now I think it's just 640 Toronto. 640 Toronto. So you're just like a go-to fill-in guy? Are they going to give you your own show? Are these questions

I should ask tonight when I have the program director on the mic? As of now i am uh i am the filling guy yeah i mean i think um typically like prior to that i had a relationship with news talk 10 10 where i used to have that sunday night show but even after i ended my sunday night show for a while i was a filling guy and it was like people plan vacations. Jim Richards was going on vacation for two weeks. They slot me in,

et cetera. Then, uh, when I began my relationship with six 40, I never had a, a show there, but I did like, I filled in for Oakley.

I fell in for Kelly Katrara. I fell in a lot, uh, for, for Alan and during the lunch hours. Um, and so, uh,

so, you know, now I think, again, they're going to have a roster of a few regular fill-in hosts because I think the idea being that, like, if you have the same voices all the time, then listeners become familiar with them. They become personalities of the station. So I'm happy to be in that role. I think you might have got that position because they cut ties with former MPP

and fill-in guy at 640, Peter Sherman. Yeah, before I left, he was... There might have been a gap. It was me and Sherman, it seemed like, for a while. And Arlene Bynum. And Bynum is still there. Arlene is still a regular fill-in host. Will she be there tonight at the GLB brew pub?

I am not sure. I have not been... I have not been, they have not shared, even given how I've outlined my important high ranking position at the station, they have not shared the guest list with me. So it will be a pleasant surprise if she is there. But yeah, so I mean,

that's the gist of it. And so it's like when, and you know, so we'll see how it evolves but the idea is like if people are going on vacation or if they're sick like they can call me and see if i'm available uh and there's a there's a short list of us who are going to be on that and there'll be regular listeners and that's like probably the perfect amount for me right now, filling in on vacations and stuff, because I like doing it for a few days or a week at a time. It's still exciting for me.

Like the thing about podcasting, but also radio, live radio is that it has part of that performance element. Like you get that energy from it that you get, like if you were ever in your school play or whatever, like you can scratch the itch. I'm also talking about a lot of the same issues and expressing myself on them in my newspaper columns,

but that's a, it's a different kind of energy because it's like a solitary process. And it's like, you write a draft, you edit it, you think about it some more, you do it. But then you put it out there too and then over hours and days people react to it. Whereas like live radio or you've got this live performance aspect where like first of all,

can we get through it without ruining everything? And second of all, will it be good? But also it's sort of like it exists in this moment. It's not days and days of drafting and redrafting or hours and hours and then days and days of fallout from it either. It's like it's happening now. We are listeners and broadcasters sharing this moment together, connected through the miracle of auditory technology.

And then like one of those flowers that bloom only for one day a year, and are so beautiful, and then fade when it's over till next time. 1 a.m. Oh yeah, it's called the 640 Toronto. One 640 Toronto host who will not

be at the GLB Brew Pub, because I asked specifically about this gentleman, John Oakley will not be at the GLB Brew Pub because I asked specifically about this gentleman. John Oakley will not be there. So there's a name because John Oakley is just kind of a private guy. He's never been on this show. He's probably the only 640 Toronto host

who hasn't been on Toronto Mic'd. So I thought, okay, if he's going to be... I know, I'm going to get that right. But I need to get it right for tonight anyways. But if he was going to be there, I'd be like, oh, I'll get him on the mic and he can make his debut. But John Oakley apparently not scheduled to make an appearance tonight at the GLB Brew Pub. Well, that's a shame. That is a shame. It's a shame.

Okay, before we say goodbye, you've been amazing. There's a lot here to digest. If there's anything on your mind, you can, of course, spit it into these microphones. But can we talk a little bit about Ontario Place? I know we talked about it last time you were here. And I know, you know, of all the issues that are going to be election issues, like, you know, TTC safety and affordable housing,

blah, blah, blah. But transit, of course, in addition to safety. But Ontario Place, where are we at exactly? Like, is there anything we can do to stop this? Talk to me. Let me give your listeners a preview. This weekend, exactly like is there anything we can do to stop this let me give your listeners a preview uh this weekend yeah um uh i will have a column in the toronto star alongside a story by my colleague david reiner about ontario place and basically both of them um talking about me making an argument

that it should be and could be uh a defining issue of this electoral campaign. I think, obviously, fear of crime, the budget, like there are other big issues on people's minds, affordability of housing, but I think there's a recipe in Ontario Place that the kind of island airport had as this galvanizing issue for David Miller where it was important in itself, but it also symbolized galvanizing issue for david miller where it it was important in itself okay no it was important

in itself but it also um symbolized a bunch of other things right and i think like the way that ontario place is being foisted on us the way that it's sort of a giveaway of a public asset to a private company the way that it is um just trashing our relationship with the waterfront. But also the way that Ontario Place has been, used to be, owned by us, for us, dedicated to us, a good public space for everybody to enjoy, has been left to rot. And most of its attractions shuttered and neglected and shut down.

And now the best we can hope for is to give it away to a company who will privatize that space and we'll never get it back. I mean, I think there's a lot, not just that it's important in itself as a massive piece of land, but I think like the things it stands for

in a city where a lot of our infrastructure has been left to rot under our feet, where a lot of public assets seem to be given away for pennies on the dollar, where the interference of the premier in city life and city business is an ongoing concern. I think there's a lot here that resonates just beyond that one site, too. And so I make the argument that it could be and perhaps should be a big issue in this election campaign.

Anna Bailao and Josh Matlow both held press conferences today as we speak, Bailao and Josh Matlow both held press conferences today as we speak, outlining their opposition to the plan and how they would change it. Anna Bailao is basically going to ask the premier, let's do Ontario Science Centre instead. Josh Matlow is going to try and play hardball and say that he won't consent to allowing a land swap that's supposed to take place where the city gives some of its property to the province, vice versa, to enable this to happen.

Other candidates will come out wherever they are on it. Mark Saunders, of course, his most recent gig before running for mayor was like a patronage position overseeing this development of Ontario Place. So presumably he's in favor of the provincial plan, thinks it's good. But, you know, I think it does have the potential to be an issue that resonates.

And part of it is like if voters keep asking about it, think it's important, want to put pressure up. Like ultimately this is provincial land think it's important, want to put pressure up. Like, ultimately, this is provincial land, and it's a provincial project, and there's very little the city can do to stop it if Doug Ford is determined to make it happen. But if anything is going to force a reconsideration, it's a public outcry that could be galvanized

in an election campaign. It could be, like, given voice in an election campaign. It could be like giving a voice in an election campaign by becoming a big issue and a mayor having a mandate to try to call it off. Doug Ford has shown in the past that he will change his mind and cave to public pressure. So, you know, it's... Oh, like with the Green Belt.

It's possible. Initially, sort of, yeah. And then he caved to a different kind of pressure in revisiting that. I got my good eye on this Ontario Place development primarily because I absolutely love that space and I literally visit it maybe five days a week. Probably five days a week.

It is a dynamite space. And I think the last time we were here, I talked about I went there by myself and then I was shocked by like how nice it was to wander around there, even in it's sort of like maybe because of its semi abandoned state. Right. And then I went back there with my daughter and then like,

I, I, I do think when you walk around there, whether or not you find the charm of the amend and rides or whatever, uh, as charming as I do, I think like to take in the scope of it out there on the water of the amenden rides or whatever uh as charming as i do yeah i think like to take in the scope of it out there on the water in the forest and like what what it is as a public park what it

could be with just a little bit of tlc right as a public park right right um i think the idea of like raising that forest and putting a big glass box in there for a, for a water park, you know, the therm people sometimes push off again, push back against the luxury spa characterization. But like,

even if, even if it was just all water slides, even if you just called it a theme park, like boxing it in and charging admission in like, why would you do that there out on the water when you have a beautiful park there? Why? Why?

And they want, how many public dollars would go towards this? And then, none of it makes sense to me to be quite honest with you. The plans come from building an underground parking garage

for like thousands of cars that people are estimating because that land is landfill, right? Like the land there is right like that the land there is basically like in the lake right it was put there by us like ontario base is built right they moved the water of course like we built those are fake islands like front not front but it was like uh herbert or what was it was way up like yeah you know lakeshore boulevard at the very least was on the lakeshore at the time um And so, you know, I've seen estimates,

and they're, at this point, just ballparks based on the typical cost of these things and expected things, not the kind of inflation that you see when you actually get the walls open when you hire your contractor, and he says, oh, your wiring needs to be replaced. Like, of half a billion dollars or more

for that parking garage that's going to be public money. This is a boondoggle. Okay, Ed, you got me all warmed up here. of half a billion dollars or more for that parking garage that's going to be public money. Wow. This is a boondoggle. Okay. Ed, you got me all warmed up here. Okay, so next time you're here, we'll have a new mayor, so we'll have a lot to discuss here.

This was quite the conversation from the inner city angels balloon race to the mayoral election. I can't wait to see you tonight at the GLB brew pub. We'll do another 90 minutes on Ontario. Round two. Ding, ding. We'll do another 90 minutes

on Ontario Place in the next next episode but true or false did you once investigate uh running for city council yourself edward keenan i did uh i i thought hard about it um and even approached um some political figures who were supportive of that idea. And then I realized, first of all, more than anything else, why would I do that to my family? And also, I don't know that I would like that job better than the job I have. And I don't know, and I still don't know, that I would have more influence on city affairs in that job than I do in the job I have now. As a city columnist at the Toronto Star, I think I can influence public policy to the extent I'm comfortable influencing it

and potentially, you know, with the Toronto Star, push hard and get more action on things than any individual city councillor can. Well, I'm glad you're still writing for the Star. I love reading what you write, and I love these quarterly visits. I can't wait until your next one. If you want to make a, I don't know if you will do this, but

would you make a prediction, like who wins this mayoral election, so I can pull the clip and play it for you next time you're here, and we can either laugh at you... We're going to have to record like 13 different versions, though. Smart. That way, I'll make sure you different versions though. Smart. That way I'll make sure you got it wrong. Okay. Yeah, I honestly would not bet money on it

at this point. I think it would just be silly to just make a prediction. That said, probably Matlow. Or Bailao. Or you know, maybe Bradford. Could be Olivia Chow. What about Mitzi Hunter? It could be Mitzi Hunter. I think she's... I'm feeling

Mitzi Hunter at this point. I'm not saying this is who I want to win. I'm just telling you who I'm feeling at this point. Then again, it could be Saunders. But no, yeah, I mean legitimately, I think all those people we just named have in my eyes almost an equal shot.

So stay tuned, everybody. It's going to be a heck of a campaign. I was going to quote, who's the Joe Buck? Is it Joe Buck? You said, see you tomorrow night. That's like a Joe Buck baseball call.

Maybe it is. So, Ed, you ready? See you tonight. And that brings us to the end of our one-thousand. That's a ballgame, folks. That's a ballgame. Bring. That's a ballgame. Bring back Vin Scully. Okay.

That brings us to the end of our 1,232nd show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Edward Keenan is the Keenan Wire. Follow him on Twitter while they're still at Twitter. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta.

Mineris is at Mineris. Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada. The Moment Lab are at The Moment Lab. And Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. See you later tonight live from GLB Brew

Pub with Greg Brady, Kelly Cotrera, Alex Pearson, Edward Keenan, Danny Stover, Amanda Cupido, and an assortment of others who wander by. Don't you dare miss it. See you then! But I wonder who, yeah, I wonder who

Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of grey Cause I know that's true, yes I do I know it's true, yeah I know it's true How about you? Are they picking up trash and they're putting down roads And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes

And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am But who gives a damn Because everything is coming up Rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Warms me today

And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Because everything is rosy and green Well, I've kissed you in France And I've kissed you in Spain And I've kissed you in places I better not name

And I've seen the sun go down On Chaclacour But I like it much better going down on you Yeah, you know that's true Because everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow warms us today.

And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Cause everything is rosy now, everything is rosy, yeah. Everything is rosy and gray, yeah. Rose in gray