Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Edward Keenan: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1831

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

In this 1831st episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with The Toronto Star's Ed Keenan about what's making waves in Toronto. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Happy New Year. This is Ed Keenan and a city columnist for the Toronto Star. Live from New Toronto, this is Toronto-Miked. Very good. You nailed it. Well, you say called open. There's only one thing that occurs to me. That's right.

I didn't have time to write a whole sketch. Welcome to episode 1,831 of Toronto Mike. An award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. That's new, Ed, okay, award winning. Order online at greatlakesbeer.com for free, local, home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma pasta.com for more.

Fusion Corpso, Nick Aeini's. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Building Success, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recyclemyelectronics.c.a.c.comiting to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921.

Joining me today, returning for his quarterly. Hey, hey, hey. It's the Toronto stars Ed Keenan. And for those of you who have a reminder set up on your phone, it's like a week late. Right. And we apologize for that, but it was a statutory holiday last week.

And so Mike's giant team of, like, engineers and professionals would have had to be paid double time. So we just put it off. I like that you're conscious of my budget. Oh, budget. I said the B word. I feel like this is a peewee's playhouse. So everybody out there, like I have fallen behind.

So update me, what's the award? What are your rewards? Firstly, I'm hurt that you're not all up to date on all things in the TMU. I fell into a deep sleep for years or whatever. We'll get into it. But I won, this is in December, I won a very prestigious award. It's the Canadian podcast award. And I won, I got to look up the correct title, but it's something like,

and this is in the entire country of Canada. Right. My podcast won best news and current events or something like a big, heavy title like that. You've been nominated for this before? Yeah, I have been nominated. Because I think I was once nominated against you. Like that this matters podcast that I. And you probably won, right?

No, no, we didn't. I don't think we won. You're not sure. I remember when we were nominated, and then I went to check it out online, and I could see that we were like, head to head. I would love to lose to you.

And then it's lost to the sands of time who won that year. Who would beat both of us? That would be one hell of a good podcast. That's exactly it. So I guess, I don't know. But it's the entire country of Canada. So at the National Newspaper Awards, or the National Magazine Awards,

wherever I get nominated and inevitably lose, I'm always kind of hoping that I lose to a French language one because I have no way to gauge how I stack up. It's like, wow, wow, that's a whole Quebec has its own industry. Right. Well, I won, okay? Hey, I don't have to worry about, you know, who beat me. Yeah, no, thank you.

Yeah, deservedly so. Now, ask me what I get. Like, do I get a plaque? Do I get a trophy? Many thousands of dollars? Like the Nobel Prize? I got a PNG file. A PNG.

Hey, okay, there you go. That I embedded on Toronto mic.com. That's what I got. And also, I get to add it to my intro. So I rewrote the intro. Once I won that, first of all, I poo-poohed the whole thing for years. When you weren't winning. Right.

I'm like, who cares? Right. Who cares? My guest yesterday won a Grammy, and I always think of that public enemy line. Chuck D. goes, who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy? Right. You know the line. Until you win one.

Yeah, but if I want a Grammy, I wouldn't shut up about it. It's like Colbert with his Peabody Award. Okay. Yeah. Up on the mantle. Well, so this is how I am with the Canadian podcast award. I kind of poo-pooed it, like whatever.

What does this mean? It means nothing. And then now that I've won it, I feel like I'm going to lean in. Yeah, yeah. I will now be henceforth Toronto Mike Award-winning podcaster. No, absolutely. Absolutely. There you go.

Hey, that's good. I got another question for you. Yeah. Here in New Toronto, yeah. On 4th Street. Yep. There's a fish and chip place.

Like just on the side street It's called New Toronto Fish and Chips Is it any good? It's like legendary Yeah Ah okay Oh you gotta try it this place

I discovered it by accident By like parking nearby For when I was going to Unrelated business And when I was coming back to my car I said to my daughter like Wait does that say fish and chips On the side of that I built

Because I You know I think the city used to be lousy With with good fish and chip shops Right And now you kind of have to like mark your mental map for where they are because there's a diminished number of them. Well, because they all turned into cannabis shops.

Yeah, no, exactly. Cannabis and shore. What do you mean you were in my hood on unrelated business and you didn't drop by for great legs beer? Well, I should have, but I assume that you and your highly paid staff were, you got a pretty heavy schedule. Like if I dropped by, I could be interrupting an interview with a Grammy Wimmer or something like that.

Yeah, Rob Bowman, who won a Grammy for writing, I think it was for his Stacks Records. He wrote a piece of for Stacks Records. This guy, honestly, he was just yesterday, so he's top of mind. But he knows everything about Stacks Records and Muscle Shoals. And we talked about Jackie Shane. And he's working on a book about Jackie Shane because he had a lengthy conversation with her before she passed. I'm telling you, this guy, Rob Bowman, one of the city's great treasures.

Yeah, no, that sounds great. Right after a keynote. You know with the podcast, and then I'm going to check out the book on Stacks Records. Oh, yeah. His book is, they based an HBO series on his book, in which he's a talking head. And that HBO series, which I've seen twice now, is spectacular. Okay. I'm telling you.

You're just playing catch up. Okay. So I asked you a couple questions off the top. Now it's your turn. How is your Christmas, Ed Keenan? My Christmas was very good. My Christmas was very good. Like more joyful than restful, which is usually.

the case with my Christmas holidays because like my wife and I both have come from very large tight-knit extended families where almost everybody still lives in the GTA and so Christmas is kind of a multi-day marathon of trekking from you know Scarborough to to the west end of Toronto and then out to Whippy and and all around and so it was it was good it was very good very festive And then we had a softball tournament Which is perfect, seasonably appropriate. Yeah, it was in a dome called Mississauga Stadium, which is like a dome o'place over a soccer field.

Right. Well, I do a lot of dome soccer stuff. For a softball tournament and divided it in half and put two fields on there. And it worked out pretty well. It was actually kind of fun. You know, I did once participate in a slow pitch tournament. in the dome. In the sky dome?

In the sky dome. Yeah. So they made it three different diamonds. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. And the timing was such that, like, I remember one of my games started at 4 a.m. It was called Round the Clock, I think they called it.

This is going way back when I played Slopich. But, yeah, so I have, that's why I thought, okay, oh, maybe it's in the dome here. So it sounds like you had a good holiday. So we can start, I think we start really light. Sure. Before I get really heavy and then, you know, we're going to get into it, okay?

I feel like I feel like starting Uber light with you, Ed Keenan because my thoughts are all kind of heavy right now but I got multiple notes about something called UK celebrity traders Okay

In fact, I'll just quote the VP here And then you can respond Sure, sure I just finished watching the Celebrate UK edition I'd never watched before What a fantastic season High drama, great characters, highly recommend. And then in the discourse we had following,

it was basically VP wondering, has Ed Keenan seen this UK celebrity traders? I have not seen it yet. I have seen it in my streaming recommended for you options, but I was recently watching the new season, the Canadian season. And then after that, I watched, the first season of Traders Ireland

and then I realized there was another season of the UK I hadn't watched yet and I think the Canadian streaming services have recently added all these foreign language versions including the original and so

I've been like boggled but I actually have seen a lot of online chatter about the UK celebrity one and I haven't watched it yet but it sounds like it was awesome. Well you're the first person who ever told me about this franchise called Traders. Remember I made a joke about traitors? Remember TIA?

The 80s or 90s global TV drama. So that was my... Back when we used to have a lot of Canadian TV dramas, I guess we got Law and Order Toronto, but... Well, you know what? We'll never go away is... ENG? Well, that's... Street legal?

Okay, shut out. So, you know, they brought back, so I had Cynthia Dale over, and they rebooted. Street legal? In the last five years, they were... rebooted street legal and I asked Cynthia like what happened and she seemed really like bitter with the lack of love it got and that it wasn't like marketed properly but they absolutely have brought back they needed to get like retro Ontario on the case of promoting it because uh because I do think there's a lot of love for street legal there's a lot of love for retro Ontario yeah there sure is

there's a lot of love but what I was I was gonna talk about was Murdoch mysteries is that a drama I feel like I can I ask you can I ask you as a proud of Firstly, are you a proud Canadian? I am sure. Just making sure. Have you ever seen an episode of Murdoch Mysteries? I have not. I'm glad you're honest with me.

Most people lack the courage. Tell me the truth. You said it was that a drama? It's like, you don't know. I'm not sure. I assume so. I believe it to be popular. It is a fiction show.

Yeah, it takes place in the olden days. It is fiction, absolutely. But I think it's popular and it's been on forever. Right. Yeah, no, yeah. And people watch it. I am a proud Canadian. but I'm very selective in my Canadian cultural products that I am a that I am a big booster

of or even aware of. Okay. So like there are some. It's like you grow up watching, um, um, little as Mr. Dress Up or Littleis Hobo or, or the beachcomers. Right. Um, and all of that. But, but I've never been one of these people who, who thinks I should force myself to watch

like a kind of like poorly produced like. mediocre drama series just because it's made in Canada. Right. Now, really well-produced, mediocre drama series, I'm all in for that. Okay. I think we're getting better. Like, I think we grew up, you and I are similar vintage. We grew up where, if it was Canadian, it was probably lousy, and I feel like that's

no longer the case. Yeah. I mean, I think that's probably true. Certainly with, like, comedies, too, over the last couple of years. And maybe comedy, like, we think of, I thought, I grew up thinking of, of us as like sketch comedy being a particular thing. Kids in the Hall, SCTV before that, half the cast of Saturday Night Live, like over many years being Canadian and all of that.

It was like, this is kind of our thing. And so there's kind of a carve-out in my mind. But like I don't remember particularly feeling, I'm trying to remember a single Canadian sitcom from the 80s or 90s that I, they actually watched. And then there was like the newsreact. room, like in the 90s, Ken Finkelman. And, that was very good.

And there was, uh, uh, Don McCuller's show went from, from Kensington Market. Yeah, I, I'm just blank. I'm just thinking,

uh, there's Liberty Street. There were a couple, but, uh, but, okay, but, you know,

but in the last few years with Schitt's Creek and Ken's Convenience and, and there seems to have been a lot. And, but one thing I remember from my childhood, and I don't know if this is like, digital filmmaking,

has shifted things a little bit. But it seemed to me like even when a show was like well written or the actors were fine, the production values on Canadian shows seemed to be kind of like cheap. And that didn't affect appreciating a children's show so much or even live TV. Right. But then when it came to like, especially dramas and sitcoms where there's this suspension of disbelief thing involved, then yeah. I know exactly what you mean. It looked like the production values, like you said,

but it looked like it was filmed on videotape. Like somebody's home movie and the lights were a little too bright. You could recognize a Canadian show just by looking at it. Like you don't have to hear it. Yeah. I'm with you, Ed, but we've come a long way. Schitt's Creek is universally lauded. And now the hottest show in the world,

I don't know if this is true. I've read about it. I haven't seen it yet is like a horny hockey show. It sure is. Yeah, and I haven't not watched that yet. And I think it's in the Q2, there with Traders UK celebrity. because apparently, yeah, it's the talk of everything.

It's just the talk of the town. And I think it's a Canadian and a Russian hockey player making love. Yeah. So tune in, buddy. Love affair. Okay. Yeah. So stay tuned.

Maybe we'll review heated rivalry on the next Ed Keenan episode of Toronto. Okay. We will have to. I will watch it between now and then. Okay. It's a date. It's a date, my brother here. Okay, so that's the lighter portion.

I'm going to get heavy. Oh, no. We're going to just get to our record. get the programming. Right into the heavy. But you know, not yesterday. Two days. Yeah, when was January 6th?

Oh, that was two days ago. The Feast of the Epiphany. Right, right. The 12th day of Christmas. Joey C told me that. Joey C. was the music director for CKFH well before our time at Keenan. But he told me that.

And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Okay, 12 days of Christmas. Was he here on the feast of the epiphany? Yes. He was here. Did he bring you mer or frankest or gold? He brought me wine from his personal collection. And he brought me wine.

brought me chocolate. And on the label, it was like Joey C. Chocolate. Like, it's like if I just bought a bunch of chocolate and I put labels on it, Toronto Mike chocolate. Yeah, you might as well do that. Maybe I will. Maybe all these Great Lakes cans that you're taking home with you. Thank you, Great Lakes beer.

Maybe I'll get like a sticker and I'll put it on and just say Toronto Mike beer. Before you get into the heavy stuff, speaking about labeling stuff and stickers, in the wild, we were driving. Well, I'm excited. We were driving down Windermere to war. towards Lake Shore Boulevard and the Gardner. There one day, my daughter and I. We were on our way to one of our multiple times a week

softball practices that take us all around the 905. And right there at a red light, we were behind a Jeep with like four bumper stickers on it. Yeah. And one of them was a Toronto-Make bumper sticker. This tickles me pink. And my daughter was like, is that the lasagna podcast that you're going?

Is that it? I was like, yeah, and she was like, why would he have that? I was like, probably because he's a fan of, or either that or he's been a guest. Well, I can tell you, as you know, there was a sponsor of the show called Sticker You, and they sent over Toronto Mike stickers, and not only guests, because a guest would receive one back then, but also there was a period of time where if you, like, wrote me an email and said you love the show and you were within biking distance, I would drop a sticker in your mailbox. Hand deliver it.

So that might be somebody who took advantage of that, that was during the Sticker U era. So there you go. So just out in the wild. I love it. We spotted a fan. I love your daughter. Proudly flying the flag. Your daughter connects it to you because you're probably not seeing a lot of Toronto Star stickers on cars when you're driving around.

No. I mean, where we do see Toronto Star stuff, I mean, you see a lot of places. Not as many newspaper boxes as you see, but there's still variety stores with the Toronto Star logo on their signs from the days where, like, that would be sponsored. They often don't sell it anymore because a lot of variety stars have gotten out of the business of selling single paper. newspaper. It's hard to find one. I never when I was on the star. But also like at sporting events and all of that, it's like, like if you go to a Leafs game,

it's like over the exits or whatever, there's like we're sponsored. Okay, but at Lake Shore and Windermere. The food building has the Toronto Star logo all over it, right? Because Toronto Star remains the sponsor of the food building. But yeah, but right there at Lakeshore and Windermere, you're right. There are not a lot of other things that I'm involved in where you randomly spot Complete strangers advertising it for you. Well, because I know your daughter loves the palm of pasta lasagna.

So let me not go any further. Before we get heavy, let me just tell you, I do have in my freezer upstairs another palm pasta lasagna for you and the... Well, she will be very, very grateful. Absolutely. She's too young for that beer, right? Make sure you don't... Give that to your wife.

She is. Yeah, I will give that to my wife. Super light lager. Yeah, the super light lager is very good. And there's a... Yeah, you got a fighting weight. This octopus? Yeah.

I want you to tell me what your wife thinks of the octopus wants to fight. It's called Fighting Weight, so it's like a light version of the octopus wants to fight. All right. I want a full review. And I want to give you a Ridley Funeral Home Measuring tape. I know you collect these. You have a drawer for them.

They are useful, yeah. And of course, the podcast that I produce for Brad Jones is called Life's Undertaking. So you subscribe to that. It'll win an award one day. And since I'm shouting out podcasts I produce, I'm going to shout out the Fusion Corp, Nick Iini's podcast called Building Toronto Skyline.

We're going to record a new episode tomorrow. So subscribe and enjoy these fine podcasts. And the last note on this, and then we're going to get heavy here. I'm threatening to get heavy. Now that I'm an award-winning podcaster, I feel I have the gravitas. I can get heavy with you.

But I want to say to the listenership that if you have a drawer, not full of Ridley Funeral Home measuring tapes, but full of cables and old phones, maybe there's a blackberry in there, Motorola flip phone from 1996. Who knows? Don't throw it in the garbage.

Go to Recyclemyelectronics.ca. Put in your postal code and find out where you can drop it off to be properly recycled. Oh. See, in 2026, we're not missing around. That is the ASMR measurement. Ed Keenan.

Let me just... Wait, are we already reviewing heated vibemly? It's getting hot in here. It's getting hot in here. Okay. So, Ed, you remind the listenership. I don't need the reminder, but you spent a period of time covering Washington, D.C.

politics for the Toronto Star. Yeah. From 2019 until 2020, I was the Washington Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star. So I lived in the Washington, D.C. area. I reported, you know, from the Capitol and the White House in the streets of Washington, D.C., as well as I was the American correspondent at that point. Yes.

And so I traveled around reporting on the United States as well. And where were you on January 6th, 2024? Do I have the right year? Yeah. No. No. No. Twenty-twenty-five.

You mean the famous January 6th. Yeah. That was 2021. Really? Right, because Biden won in 2020. and then Trump went again. Of course. And so the inauguration was in 2021.

It's all happening so quickly. And so it was as it happens five years ago this week. Right. I was on the step, well, I spent part of the day on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., witnessing, photographing, taking notes on, writing about like the siege, the insurrection at the Capitol. And I, earlier in the day had been over, over, on the National Mall towards the White House, there's the ellipse there. And that's where Donald Trump was giving a speech, encouraging Mike Pence and Congress

to reject the results of the election and encouraging his supporters to march over there and make sure they did. And so I filed a story on that and immediately. And then by the time I could get to the Capitol building, it was well underwear. So I didn't get inside the building, but I spent quite a lot of the day on the steps where people were engaged in, like, hand-to-hand combat

with the police trying to guard the entrances who remained through the day. Like, even after, there were big waves of people who got in and then reinforcement, Capitol Police tried to block the entrances again. And, you know, there were people using barricades to smash the windows of the Capitol building there. and it was a fascinating moment in history. I was there, yeah.

Even hearing you recount it, all these five years later, it's wild that happened. Yeah, I'll tell you something, five years later, it's the strangest thing for obvious reasons. Like, but, so that day,

there was this weird mixture of people there. Like, you encounter at most Trump rallies, Like there's a lot of like people who are dressed up, like more so even than other political candidates at a Trump event and among the mega faithful. You get more people who like are like dressed and behaving as if they showed up to a tailgate party. And so there were like on the outskirts of the Capitol building, even while it was all underway, there were people like Uncle Sam guys on stilts and like people with their families like singing songs and shouting things. and like, as if they came in for a picnic, right? Right. And then there's guys in like full fatigues

and like souped up for combat. Like militia. Yeah, yeah. And with like flack jackets on. And I didn't see any like guns. And I, you know, in the photos and whatnot, it doesn't seem like a lot of people are heavily armed with like firearms. But I did see people with,

like batons and clubs. I did see the people with like the zip ties. A lot of the guys had like walkie talkies. Like, you know, like little headsets with like remote communications. And so it's like there's these tactical crew there, who showed up to assault the Capitol building, right? And they did with thousands and thousands of other people who kind of got whooped up into this riotous mood.

So that day, after all that had happened, right? And like as it was underway, of his cabinet were resigning and disgust, right? Like, people were abandoning him. We know from later that Republicans inside the Congress building were phoning the White House and basically saying, this is it, right? Like, you've gone way too far. Like, we're done.

You are done, right? For good. Like, you're going to be impeached over this. And then in the days afterwards, like, what happened was that for the first time since the Civil War, essentially, um, National Guard troops, like the American military was called in and inhabited the capital. Like they were literally sleeping there at night on the floor of the Capitol building. That's where they were being housed.

And they erected giant barricades all around it and all around the whole, the government complex, right? To protect it from further attacks and whatnot. And this eerie scent suck in, and enough so that, you know, after, the inauguration, before the inauguration, I'm trying to remember the specific timing. The Republican-led Senate held an impeachment trial. And many, the most numbers of, like, a president's own party in the history of the United States voted to impeach him, but he narrowly avoided the two-thirds, like, he narrowly avoided being formally impeached, which might have also barred him

from ever running for office again. And the speech that Mitch McConnell gave at the time said, like, he is responsible for this attack on the government. It is unconscionable. It is likely criminal. But now that he's no longer the president, it's not really a political impeachment matter. It's a criminal matter.

And he can and should be tried criminally for this. Like, that was the Republicans at the time, right? And so to now, and then there were, like, people were, you know, arrested and put in jail. and then Trump came and won again, and there's a bit of a revisionist history on his side about what exactly happened that day. Of course.

And now they're, you know, they're champions. All these people got pardoned. And so the cycle of history there is like so kind of bizarre. Because that day, standing on the steps, like as I was going home, and I think I put this in the piece I wrote, was that somebody, I overheard a conversation. Like this is the one day, I think maybe the only day, there may have been one or two other times,

but I think it may have been the only day that I was in the United States covering it, that I had my press pass hidden under my coat. Like I was trying to be incognito, because reporters were getting beat up, camera crews were getting, like having their equipment trashed. It was like a dangerous seeming place for a news reporter. But so I was standing beside these two guys,

and there's one guy said to the other guy, like, everything's changed today, that's for sure. Everything is changed. Nothing will ever be the same. And I thought, like, how right he is, but probably not in the way he thinks, because he had thought this was like a majestic statement that they had made, the people had risen up and spoken. Right. But I was thinking, like, Trump, the unsinkable, like, this sings, right?

Like, this is like, you can't try to. Like, his stranglehold on the Republican Party would end that day. It's broken now, right? And for a month or two months or even six months, it seemed like maybe it was. And then they all started going back to him because they think, well, he's still the, he's still the bumpkin whisperer, right? He's still the ones who can bring us all these people out to vote. So, you know, that is what it is.

But it's fascinating to look back five years later for sure. It was fascinating to be there. Right. And a little bit scary. So you were there. It was scary. We were all what we, us normies are watching it on TV as it unfolds. And it did feel at the moment like this is the end of the Trump era, a power, Trump, this is it.

Like the Republican Party will seize back control of the grand old party and Trump, it won't become the Trump party again. It felt like that was the moment. But looking back five years later, because I wanted to give that context of where we were, you know, five years ago this week and where we are this week in 2026. I wonder what your thoughts are, in hindsight, if Biden was simply too kind to Mago when Democrats had the power. Going back, if they could do it differently.

That's such a hard thing to say, right? Or to evaluate. Like, in retrospect, the specific qualities that made Joel Biden, Biden, and all of it. You can make an argument in retrospect in that, you know, you watch how those dominoes did fall and you say the first black president, Barack Obama was elected. His magnetism and success in a way led to opening the door for this racist backlash where the guy who demanded his birth certificate and was willing to say the stuff nobody else would say

could become the next president, right? That doesn't mean Barack Obama could have done something differently to prevent it. But it is like you can see this led to that. And I think Biden, especially given his deteriorating sort of like his age-related declines towards the end of his term, I think we're a factor in really opening the door for a Republican and Trump in particular to come back. I don't know that the Justice Department had a lot of good cards to play that they didn't play. Like there are still people who think now they shouldn't have persecuted those January 6 people because it looks political, right?

It looks like you're, you know, the criminal charges that were brought against Trump. When you're bringing, when the current government is bringing charges against their opponents who are the former government, it always is going to look partisan, right? Even like, which is why there's a tradition of not doing it, right? There's a, it's, um, and why even like some legal scholars think you can't do it, right? Which, which doesn't really make sense. But I don't know that more aggressively pursuing Trump and trying to put him in jail, um, would maybe only have made him more of a martyr, right? Well, obviously, this is hindsight being 2020.

Yeah. But, but, but I mean, and the other thing that Trump, that Biden tried to do, and I think you can conclusively say that this was a failure. It's like the biggest spending, like infrastructure spending, stimulus spending, like just anti-poverty spending, like in American history, or at least certainly since the New Deal, maybe like on the scale of Johnson's like just society reforms. And while I was there reporting on it, like almost all of it, like really targeted like not exclusive to, but really targeted at places like West Virginia and Alabama and like,

and Appalachia stuff in particular, right? Like the middle of Pennsylvania in between, you know, you got Philadelphia on one side, you got Pittsburgh on the other side, you got Alabama in the middle. That's the famous James Carvile saying about Pennsylvania. But like that Appalachian, central Pennsylvania, depressed area. where the industrial base had fallen apart and people were on fentanyl and all of that. All this money targeted to restimulate those places

and put money both directly in the pockets of people who living there, average people, as well as trying to rebuild industries there. And it didn't work, right? Like his thing was like, maybe they're motivated by racial resentments, Maybe they're motivated by this anti-woke stuff. Maybe they're, but maybe that's what happens when you feel like you're losing your place in society and you're broke and you can't get by and you're looking for somebody to blame.

So maybe if we fix the economic trouble, and I'm not saying he fixed the economic trouble, but I'm saying no government of either party has spent so much money trying to fix those economic troubles in such a short time and been so villainized for it, right? Right. Right. Right. And then those people, you know, voted against, well, against Kamala Harris, right? So, so I, like, I just don't know. I don't have the good Monday morning quarterback what the Democrats should have done or what Joe Biden should have done, given that he was the Democrat there.

Except that maybe, my understanding, and I wasn't there by the time the rematch was happening, right? but my understanding is that Biden legitimately thought himself which he's not like in cloud cuckoo land all the time he's having age-related declines he's obviously not mentally as sharp as he used to be but it's like like a lot of us have

have had relatives where you say he has good days and bad days and on his good days I think Biden thought I'm the only one who can beat Trump I beat him last time. None of the rest of these Democrats have a chance. Like I'm our best hope, right? Yeah, I see that.

And that's why he ran again. But I think in retrospect, if he makes himself a lame duck, like 18 months before the election, says, I'm not running again, there's a big open primary and maybe Josh Shapiro and Tim Walts and Kamala Harris and all of that,

but they have a full primary where they really mobilize behind somebody. But then you all. also opened the door to the possibility of a mom-dami in New York kind of situation, like a Barack Obama, like a less prominent, less usual suspects guy coming out of the woodwork and running, or gal, person coming out of the woodwork and, you know, catching lightning in a bottle and riving a wave, riding a wave. I mean, Bernie Sanders for a time, you know, before seemed like he might be that kind of guy. But like maybe the Democrats had a

had a chance at that if they had run a normal primary, right? No, but. Absolutely. But yeah. Because when we talk about this hindsight 2020, like I mean, I know from my, you know, I'm a double major at U of T. I've got a history degree. This policy of appeasement never works at well, okay? So it just felt like maybe this, what I see is like an appeasement of this character, this Donald J. Trump,

that has resulted in what's happening today. And the reason I said we're going to do a little heavy before we get late is that like personally, it's just speaking for myself, and I haven't talked about this on the podcast, and I haven't written about it and I haven't, you know, whatever. Like, I can feel this weight of what's happening right now. I feel it. No, no, it's, it's very heavy. And I think like the shooting, the immigration customs enforcement teams. Yeah, Renee Good, and Nicole Good. In Minneapolis, of all places, where when I was in the United States for the largest street mass protest movement in American history,

the Black Lives Matter sort of chapter two, because originally it was coming out of the St. Louis. But like the real mass Black Lives Matter protests were George Floyd, like got killed in Minneapolis, and that sparked that. And now these ice team in Minneapolis again, it's just, but I mean that that's shocking but it's like the most shocking polarizing viral like video viral ready

moment in a what's become normal there for how these crews of like fake police like you know anonymous masked like yeah and seemingly answerable to no one um crews of people in unmarked vans going kidnapping people off the street.

They're kidnapping people on the street and we see it, I don't know, you're on Reddit or something and you're looking at, you're watching the video. And there's no, there's no checks and balances. There doesn't seem to be any informed. This gentleman who shot, her name was Renee Nicole Good. She was 37 years old.

She was driving away. As you know, you've probably seen it. Yeah. But shot in the head died yesterday. and then you see the president come out and basically tell you that what you're seeing is not actually what happened there. And I'm just going to get a quote, the last line of George Orwell's 1984. And then we'll get back to your thoughts on this, Ed Kiann. But the last line is,

the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. Yeah, and this is Hannah Arden, basically. says that is the style and the one of the defining qualities of fascism, right? Like of authoritarianism in Nazi Germany and fascist movements is that

the misinformation and propaganda and fake news, which a lot of people won't remember that the term fake news was coined by opponents of Donald Trump to refer to the kind of like meme-famous. fake facts that were being circulated on social media in support of President Trump

and attacking like Hillary Clinton and his opponents. And then he adopted it to refer to the mainstream media and repurposed it. See, I don't even know if I knew that. Like Daniel Dale, my predecessor as the Washington Bureau chief at The Star, who now works for CNN as a fact checker. But he, like, built his international name fact-checking Donald Trump. and documenting thousands of outright lies, right? You could call them like, oh, maybe he's just misinformed sometimes,

except he stays misinformed. Right. He can be corrected a million times, and his lie becomes more ornate, more baroque. He fills in more details. Right. This whole fantasy land, and they elaborate, is that the thing is not to actually convince anybody

that he's telling the truth. it's to make people question whether you can ever know the truth at all, like to completely devalue the truth so that in a world where one side's going to say this and the other guy is going to say that and who can know, who can, who can know what's right and what's wrong? Well, what do my guys say? What about the, what does the party that I belong to say? Right.

Because that is the truth. And that's the only way we're going to gauge it because it's unknowable now. Like that's the defining quality of fascism, and that's what we're seeing from Trump now. And I think it's, there were a lot of people, and in my analysis from Washington, a lot of the people I talk to and a lot of my own sort of suggestions, because I was writing less outright opinion columns from Washington

and more sort of reported analysis pieces. They were opinionated or point of view based, but not. But a lot of it was, you know, saying he's moving in this authoritarian direction. There's this disrespect for the rule of law. There's this demonizing of his enemies. There's this, like, idea that only loyalty to him matters and not to the Constitution, not to the institutions of the United States,

like that everything should serve him. And there's, you know, all these markers, right? Yeah. But I think he was encountering within his own inner circle, like a form of check imbalance inside the White House in that he wanted to be sort of accepted as president by the establishment so he appointed a lot of like qualified competent experienced people who were pushing him back and holding a leash on him

and what he learned in his first time was like, I won't make that mistake again. And now it's much more open, much more transparent. And in addition to the domestic stuff that we're talking about, which this ice stuff just scratches the surface. I mean, there's the attack on Venezuela, which, again, it's like not to sugarcoat like, like it's not necessarily bad news for Venezuela and Venezuelans

that that, like, dictator president was deposed, right? But just a meritless, groundless surprise attack on a foreign country. where you send your own military in and, and kidnap the president and bring them back to your country, like, and then announce, like, we're taking over.

Like, we're deciding who the new president is going to be, and it's, sure, the vice president can do it. As long as she's playing ball with us and gives us her oil and all of that, it's like, like,

it, well, Ed, if he can do that unilaterally, because he didn't, you know, because he deems it a security risk to the United States of America in their, you know, the Monroe Doctrine, if you want to go back to history,

but your sphere of influence, in our backyard, there is a security risk, therefore we can do whatever we want to protect the American people. What the fuck prevents him from coming into Canada and saying, we control Canada now because we deem a security risk and it is our neighbor to the north? No, well, and it was just about a year ago that Tom started talking about, like started more often talking. There were, like, reports like, like just over a year ago that he had joked about Kaking Canada, the 51st state in a meeting, private meeting with Trudeau and all of that, right?

And people started like, hmm, and then there was all this, oh, it was a joke. And then he started publicly making that joke about a year ago now, right, in January last year. Right. And then launched this massive trade war and all of that, right? But it's also with Greenland, right, with Canada, is that at the time, and this keeps happening with Trump,

It keeps happening with fascists all the time, I think, where it's like, you're not sure how to seriously take something. And maybe he doesn't even know how seriously to take it at first, right? But then it has a way of becoming reality. And I'm not trying to sound the alarms and say, because I think we did talk about this about a year ago. We did, but I don't think the American military is about to march over our border. But I don't think it's as far-fetched as it seemed a year ago,

and I don't think it's as impossible as it would have seemed five years ago, right? because, you know, the State Department, the U.S. government puts out, like, meme tweets after the launch into Venezuela saying, this is our hemisphere, right? Like, fuck around and find out, this is our hemisphere. Like, this is Monroe Doctrine stuff right up. Like, we are the bosses of this hemisphere and we're going to do whatever we want. Guess who else is in that hemisphere? Guess who else has oil that they like and critical minerals and all of that, right? Fresh water, you name it.

We'll launch the trade war to make them do what they want. The tariffs were designed to economically cripple us to a point where we were basically saying, like, please take us over. And so, I mean, I think my own estimation is that the still unlikely but not impossible chances of a military invasion, like an actual takeover, that Greenland should be more nervous right now than we are. but I don't think anybody in Mexico you know this like drug trafficking

I'm making finger air quotes here but this like drug trafficking justification like he's already sort of put Mexico on notice but he's put us on the list with fentanyl like he has come out and said there's a security risk to our country you and I vote know that this fentanyl thing is bullshit everybody doesn't matter

he knows it it's it's a and you might say out there listening, you're probably too smart to be thinking this, but somebody might say, why would he bother with that fake justification? It's not to convince us or like some international criminal court. It's to try and like provide a fig leaf under American law to justify it, right? Just like this drug trafficking security concern is, again, that's to satisfy the American courts that what he's done is legal and that they should put Maduro in jail, right? Like, it's like not, He doesn't expect anybody to believe it, right?

Except maybe some people on the street. So yeah, I mean, it's tough, difficult time. Okay. I don't know. I mean, I'm understanding it, but I don't know, I don't know what else to do about it, what else to say about it. Like from the point of view of Canada, I think,

I mean, what we can do, we don't have a lot of cards to play if the American military shows up at the border, right? Period. And economically, we got a hard slog if the Americans are going to fight us every step of the way. So you try to keep things going, but as quickly as possible, diversify, which is what Carney was talking about, which is what everybody's been talking about, is like, can we open up? And it's going to take a while for these options to be anything like to, to, play the role that American trade has traditionally played,

but if we can trade more with Europe, with Asia, if we can have security partnerships with other NATO countries, other like like-minded democracies, if we can disentangle ourselves and make ourselves less dependent on the United States, as much as we can, and as strong as we can, right? But we are not going to scale up our military. I laugh more because it's like out of desperation or anything than because it's funny.

But there's no way we're going to scale up our military to be able to mount a serious defense against a concerted American military invasion if that's what they want to do. I don't think that's what Trump would want to do, though. Because if you look at what they did in Venezuela, it's not a full-scale military takeover of the country, not like Iraq or Afghanistan. It's a targeted assault, like bomb.

and a tactical team going in to decapitate the government, not a military occupation, right? Again, I'm not saying that. So that's best case scenario. The RCMP might want to, yeah, figure out, I don't know. Well, you know, so you said Greenland, of course, you're right, that might be the next target here. And I was just reading what they're going to shoot first,

ask questions later was the quote I was here. And like, so, I mean, we have, that's an attack. on NATO. Of course, we're NATO. Yeah. But here we are where, like, I'm living my day to day. You know, I got to make money. I got to feed my family. I got kids in university.

You know, you got to give them a healthy, emotional, secure upbringing. I got a 9-year-old and 11-year-old. You know what it's like to be a parent. And I'm living my day-to-day. I'm out there. I'm biking. I'm listening to music. I'm watching the CF&Y documentary. I'm having discussions like I had we yesterday of Rob Bowman. So I'm living my day to day,

but it's absolutely a weight I could feel, which is that I don't trust that this president of the United States won't use military means to take over our fiercely sovereign nation of Canada. And I don't at all trust,

because I thought maybe the hope will be that if he gave orders to invade Canada, the army would refuse. But I don't have even a 1% belief as a commander-in-chief, his military, would say no to any orders. gives.

Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't be a good bet. I mean, we'll have to see what happens in domestic politics in the United States over the next year or two. I mean, there is starting to be a fear of, of, no midterms. Yeah, like, for example. And I mean, and I feel like I have, like, I should be the one talking you off the wall here. But it is like, here's the thing is that it's like the possible future. you can't imagine are not certain, right? Like, there's a lot of things would have to happen.

And one of the, among the scary things about this Venezuela situation and what it means, and what it pretends possibly for Greenland and NATO and all of that, is just that the new stated American foreign policy doctrine, like the, not the Monroe doctrine there, once again evoking, after all, invoking, after all these years, the Don Roe doctor now because of Donald Trump. So my thing is that, like, you just never know when you're having a Franz Ferdinand moment, right? Because nobody knew at the time that anybody would ever remember that guy's name 100 years later, right? Or 150 years later.

It's like, or you split the difference. I'm not good at it. But, you know, but 110 or 100, however many years ago it was. Like, there are conditions shaping up. So you've got Russia is at war with Ukraine and sort of barely being restrained. Well, there's a lot of things restraining Russia, including its own actual military capacity, it turns out, right? but also the need to maintain certain kinds of international. Like it's already become a, it was immediately a pariah and subject to sanctions and all of that,

but it needs to keep working relationships open with some countries, oil relationships open with, you know, you've got China in the Far East. So if the American government's policy, and really the United Nations and the international order of institutions that we all talk about as being sort of like the foundations of this international law structure that's governed for the last, like that we've lived under, and certainly Western democracies have embraced and considered sacred for 100 years or so. the U.S. it didn't require the buy-in of all the superpowers in the world or all the countries in the world, but it did need the U.S. to be like the cornerstone of it, right? The biggest, strongest, richest country in the world

is in favor of this and is willing to live by these rules, and so you get a working majority, right? Without their participation, it all just falls apart, right? And so if the U.S. government's position now, is we are the dictators of this hemisphere, right, of North and South America. This is our turf. And Russia can take Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

Can we create the USSR? And China can do whatever the hell I want over there in East Asia, right? And like, I don't know where India falls into this. I don't know what the positions are in Africa. But if this is just basically the like three major military, powers of the world, this is how we're going to go. Then, and in the West here, Western Europe and North America, we have the NATO alliance where like, yeah, an attack on Greenland would invoke Article

5 where every other member of NATO is immediately at war with the aggressor. And the aggressor is the superpower member of NATO. Right. I mean, where are we then? Right. Like, I don't know. And, but also it's like that's the moment if there's a crisis that could lead to a NATO-on-NATO war in the West, potentially, like with France and Germany and the UK and the UK and Canada fighting against the US.

I mean, it's like unthinkable. Like, I don't even know how you get into a hot war, how that works, right? But if that is the prospect, then Russia, nobody's checking them. their ambitions to reunite the old Soviet Union, to do whatever they want, right? And in South Asia, in wherever they want. Like, it's like the, the, if we're preoccupied with our own defenses or our own inter-NATO conflict, like all the old allies are fighting each other, um, actively or, or by other means, right?

like we're not stopping a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. We're not stopping, you know, Russia from like Newky and Ukraine if it wanted to. Like, I mean, it's like, I don't know. Like, and I don't want to necessarily invoke, like, I'll come across seeming naive. I'm not an expert on the politics or military implications of any of these places or things. I don't want to pretend. I have some kind of like deep, like, well-researched knowledge of all the implications in all of these places. But just in the biggest building blocks picture of like, how did shooting this one obscure royal family relative lead to a world war?

It's like, well, the pieces of a world war you could see in the former allies of NATO sort of being at some kind of battle with each other. and Russia then being unchained to pursue its ambitions in its former sphere of influence in the USSR, and then China having no checks on its own, like imperial ambitions in the Far East, right? And so, stay vigilant. That's scary. And so what you hope for is that the butterflies flap their wings in different directions and that that is possible to imagine that that kind of chaos gets unleashed somehow. but it's possible to imagine

a hundred other routes that that are nowhere near that scary. Some of them are still disturbing. But they're not like apocalyptic, right? And some of them could be, it could be that Trump winds up being again an aberration and the U.S. steps back from it, right?

If it does, there's still a concern about the lasting damage to the U.S. and to these international institutions and all of that. But yeah, it's like, you warned everybody this was going to be the heavy part. Now you've, well, here's why I look at this episode. It's a two-hour chat with Ed. The first hour is on this subject, and I'm going to pivot to your sweet spot, which is a more hyper-local content.

I don't cover this stuff like, and so over the last year, I haven't been in regular contact with, like, I still read a lot and all of that, but I'm not like interviewing experts all the time and stuff, right? I'm not contacting people inside the American government to try and get a story on what they think and all of that. And so, so like, you know, once we start talking it out and thinking it out, there's a lot of scary possibilities there, but I don't want to anybody to think that like I have. No, I'm not even thinking of you as Ed Keenan, Toronto Star Journalist. I'm actually thinking of you as Ed Keenan, smart family guy.

Trontonian who has some interesting perspective because he was covering Trump for the Toronto Star for many years. I just am also looking for some kind of validation or reassurance that like I'm not alone in what I've been carrying and it was a lot with the Venezuelan what happened in Venezuela. And then with what I'm seeing from Minneapolis with ice and what happened to Renee Nicole Good. And then I saw like in a memorial for her, I saw some ice, you know, these seemingly anonymous can do whatever they want, ICE agents or federal immigration officers was like talking trash about her and kicking over candles and stuff. It's just, it's just a lot that I'm carrying because I know if he's got this list and it has Venezuela and it's got Greenland on it and it's got Mexico on it. I know it's got Canada on it. And I love this fucking country.

and I feel like if we don't talk about it, who will, because I'm sure I'm not alone in these feelings I have right now, this ball of anxiety, I'm ready to fight with the resistance. Like, I know I can see what's coming, and I just hope I'm wrong. Yeah. I mean, I do still think that like any kind of like actual military invasion of Canada by the United States is unlikely and likely, and that's partly based on it seeming to me like it's almost unnecessary.

Yeah, yeah, because most of what they want from Canada, they can get through economic pressure. I mean, that's what he said. And so there is a strong will at times in Canada when it's made explicit to resist that, right? To fight back. But I do think it's like, there's something satisfying to me about Doug Ford's approach to this, right?

Which is to like stick up his middle finger and pour out bottles of booze, and say, you know, I'm going to shut off the electricity and let the southern bastards freeze in the dark, right? And by southern, he means Michigan. But I'm not sure that's going to be, that that's actually the most effective way. Like, it's like there's probably a way that this has got to be stick handled, where we preserve some. we try to strengthen our economic and military and sovereign independence, right? Try to strengthen our own government and what it stands for,

while expanding our economic base but also not getting like economically buried by the United States, not provoking a military invasion. So in Mark Carney, we trust, is what I'm hearing here. But I don't even know that it's in him I trust. as in as much as it is, because I'll tell you one thing, and I wrote a piece about this right after. Like when he was last in the Oval Office, I was really uncomfortable and kind of disgusted

watching him sort of like kiss Trump's boots, like talk about what a great president, transformative president he's been, and laugh at his jokes and kiss his ass, right? And Trump kept saying, I think these guys are going to go away very happy. And I was thinking, I hope it's worth it. Like, I hope the deal we got is worth becoming a lackey here or appearing to be a lackey, right?

And it turned out there was no deal. And it turns, like any, in fairness, from what I can read and follow, he's not, like, pursuing some kind of policy of being a lackey. Like, there's a lot of other irons in the fire and options underway and all of that. but so so i'm frustrated watching that right but i don't know what the better plan is like i just don't i honestly don't know right how do you there is part of me that says like the way you stand up to a bully is by by like letting him know that it's going to be painful for him right like i i wrote this in a piece about trying to resist the Americans.

And if we were in a trade war with the Americans, they are much more important to our economy than we are to theirs. But we, in such a war, are willing to accept a lot more pain than they are, right? The Americans don't give a shit about the economic war with Canada. American public, like members of the mega-faithful, are, I suspect, willing to accept very little personal hardship in the name of war with Canada, right? And so it's like when the advice with a black bear,

like is fight back, make a lot of noise, all of that, it's not because you're ever going to win a fight with a black bear. You are going to lose. If that black bearer decides it wants to kill you, if it's hungry, you're screwed, right? But if it's just annoyed with you, and you can quickly convince it that you're more trouble than you're worth, right? Right.

That like he doesn't want a bruised nose. He doesn't want to kill you enough to take a couple bruises, right? Like that's what you have to do. Like that's how you fight that war, right? But if then he kind of backs off, if it's always a halfway thing. And this is part of the frustrating thing with Trump, is that like he makes a policy, he walks back from it, he keeps it there a threat.

Like, it's worth remembering that the trade agreement he is trying to renegotiate because it's so radically unfair to the United States is his trade agreement. Right, right? It's the new NAFTA that he forced on everybody, like that he negotiated and signed the last time he was president. That's the one he now wants to rework and all of that. And so it's like he likes having, being able to threaten people at any given moment. It's like the way he conducted business, like to talk about how it's like a mafia kind of thing,

his approach to world affairs isn't even to try and provoke just gangsterism in itself. But it's the idea of always being able to apply pressure and threats. And it's always like, hey, nice business you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it. But it's like, well, okay, now you've made your payments. You're okay. until the next time I want something, right? Until the next time, right?

It is like resolving these things and having them solved, Trump doesn't see any benefit of that, right? Like he always wants to be able to extort something next time, right? So other than hoping that Trump goes away sooner rather than later and that Trumpism kind of fades out with him, I don't know what the strategy is for like, dealing with him other than damage control, right? Like as much as you can.

But nobody wants to be, like nobody wants to be Neville Chamberlain in this World War scenario we're talking about, right? Like nobody wants to, and yet, yeah, and yet. Well, and let's take a deep breath. Here, let's do this, okay? Let's take a deep breath here.

You and I right now, knocking on the old wood, here we are, free members of the sovereign nation of Canada, as we speak. I got a timestamp it. Things could change quickly. 305 p.m. on January 8th. So let's take a deep breath. Let's leave that subject matter.

I did warn you it would be heavy. Yeah. I do feel better talking it out, though. Good. You know, you and I will get our baseball bats. We'll do what's necessary. Okay. I'm going to turn the chant, bring it home here now.

Okay. So I mentioned that yesterday Rob Bowman was in the basement. So Rob Bowman, musicologist. I forget the proper title, but it's a big title about how he's a professor of music stuff and he knows a lot of stuff, but he did a book called The Flyer Vault, and he visited for the first time when the Flyer Vault book came out. Do you remember this?

The Flyer Vault? Okay, so it's very, very interesting. Maybe you were in the States when this came out. I can't remember. But his co-author on the Flyer Vault was a guy named Daniel Tate. Daniel Tate today is probably better known for his work behind Integrity T.O. What do you know about Integrity T.O? A bit. I think it's Daniel Tate. is Integrity, T.O. As far as I can tell. Right. He had reached out to me.

From the Flyer Volt to Integrity Tio, that was the pivot. He reached out to me to, like, have a coffee. He had also asked me if I would appear at one of his events, like his launch events. And I didn't take him up on that. I don't know enough about him and his Integrity T.O. Have you had him on? Have you talked about him? But I had him on as the Flyer Vault guy before the Pivotteau.

I think COVID caused a pivot with Mr. Tate. Yeah, yeah. It seems like he's doing a lot of research and like, arming up sort of like center right or right wing. He seems to be a Brad Bradford guy. Yeah. Or like that part of the political spectrum, for sure. And to be a sort of like, you know,

Olivia Chow has this sort of like, she doesn't have it. but there's a progressive, like, non-party advocacy group, right? And then we heard of ABC, which does not stand for anybody but chow. It's another or something city, a big city, a big city maybe? A better city. A better city, that's it. That also attended to be sort of like a right-wing version of that.

And I think Daniel Tate's doing that. I mean, part of my discomfort with that, and it's like, part of, Like, when they first sent me the invitation, I was very busy, and I didn't have a lot of time to, like, both in my personal life, but in my professional life, I had a lot on the go, right? But then when I go to their website, I just see a lot of what looks like race baiting and fearmongering over immigration, right? And stuff. And that, no matter how good your research on other stuff is, the fact that you never miss an opportunity to put, asthma Malik or Jamal Myers in a big scary picture, like that all the politicians you seem to attack

seem to be not white people, that you're sort of blaming immigrants for all kinds of stuff. And so I'm providing a broad sweeping brush to describe my quick analysis of what I saw there in a quick look at like, who the hell are these guys? Should there somebody even want to talk to? And from that social media and website presence, I was like, yeah, probably not.

Then I hear, but Daniel Tate is not going away, I don't think. He seems to be showing up to a lot of meetings. He's doing a lot of research. He's armed with a lot of information. He may well, him and his group may well, I may have, my instant analysis may have been wrong, and I should take another look. But that was what it quickly looked like to me. But he also seems like he's going to be a persistent presence here

in like somebody who wants to be involved in the debate. and if so, I hope it becomes a productive part of it. Am I right that serious crime in this city, Toronto is down? Yeah, yeah. And depending on which serious crime you're talking about, it could be way down, like murder. We just had like a record year. Like since the early 1990s,

we haven't had as few murders as we had in 2025. Most of the other major crime indicators were down and some down more or less last year. I mean, the one thing, to say is that some of those indicators we've come down towards, like from previous highs, right? That there was like a

spike during or after the pandemic and we're now getting closer to the rates. And I don't have like the dashboard in front of me, so I'm trying to remember all the specific categories of those indicators. But it's like

in some categories when you're looking at major crimes that include like assaults, car thefts, major theft, break-ins, like murder, sexual assault, like almost all of those categories are, I believe all of them, at a certain point late last year anyway, were down, some dramatically and some not so dramatically. The one thing is that if you looked at a chart,

like a 10-year chart or 20-year chart, you would see that we're coming back down towards where we were just a few years ago, right? So like we, some categories of crime had spiked and are now unspiking, or at least did for this year. But it's not like 2025 was some like apocalyptic new high in crime. And that's what it often seemed like to me in some of the reporting and some of the, some of the pre-election politicking that was going on was like kind of like,

did we have reached new levels of mayhem in the streets of Toronto that we, can never recover comment. It's sort of like, well, we just had like the lowest, like this is like a remarkable drop off and murder and I have done less looking into the why of it than I probably will soon, especially if it keeps up because there has to be an explanation for it. Or it's just a weird blip outlier where like a lot of people didn't kill it. Oh, I know, I know. We're united because of a threat from a foreign nation.

It's brought us together. Wouldn't it be nice to think so? But yeah, yeah. Crime was down in 2025 in most categories. Some things like car theft. I know we had some high profile... Like car theft ring get broken up, though. And so that might be why it's down.

Like there may have been concerted resources, both in the city but also if the federal and provincial governments, like this is like international crime syndicates doing that kind of stuff. right? And so that's probably what cuts down on, like, eats the car theft number back down towards what we might have considered reasonable five years ago rather than the sort of like all-time highs it had been at recently, right? But murder, I mean, again, I don't know if, like, there's a major truce in a gang war somewhere, or if, like, something happened in the drug trade, whether it's people being imprisoned or, like whether it's policing related or whether it's some other factor.

But you would think that like a good chunk of murders that happen in, in, not just in Toronto, but in any city are like not just crimes of opportunity, but crimes of passion, right? Like two people who know each other, who are otherwise nonviolent regular people, like somebody, like you cheated on me or whatever, domestic violence, friendship violence. You beat me out for a Canadian podcast. they get out of control, right? Like, stuff like that, right? Right.

But then a lot of the other ones are, whether they're actually gang members or not, are like gang or criminal culture related, where, like, organized crime figures are enforcing their own contracts, or turf wars, right? Or people who are armed because of the criminal lifestyle, they already lead, get into an argument that would otherwise be a fist fight,

but instead tunes into a shooting match, right? Like that, those are the two major kinds of, well, let's say there's three. Like, one is domestic violence, which a shocking and disturbing number of men kill their partners, right? And some women kill their partners too, but overwhelmingly there's a lot of men-on-woman intimate partner violence, some of which is fatal. And then there's like the kind of,

murder mystery murders where like people for the boat like people who are otherwise not in the criminal world at all kill each other for personal or monetary or whatever motives and then and then there's but i i have to think that like when we when we have a lot of shootings in the streets and whatnot a lot of it is uh gang and organized crime related sure and i don't know like if that's where it fell off like that's where it fell off like that That's what I think we, this is why I say, we need an expert. Digging into the Y would be interesting.

Absolutely. Because I think if it's something we did, there's something we're doing, we should keep doing it or do more of it, right? Well, it's interesting. This is 2026. So we are having a, I don't know if you know this,

there's going to be an election, a municipal election later this calendar year. And we've already said the name Brad Bradford. I think I brought them up. Yeah. I know you brought up Olivia Chow. Walk of Life, who follows me and I follow the walk

of life on blue sky. That's where we're hanging out at, blue sky, okay? What did Supriya call us? Twitter refugees, is which, yeah,

that's okay. And Walk of Life had a question last episode, but they don't have that grok on the blue sky. There's no GROC, there's no AI, we don't invite any AI.

No one's putting anybody in bikini picks or anything of that nature. Walk of Life writes, could you ask Mr. Keenan? He calls you Mr. I don't know,

I assume it's a he, but I actually don't know the gender of walk of life. Right, okay. I'm just hearing the dire straight song in my,

my head and it's a male voice there. Okay. Could you ask Mr. Keenan for his thoughts on the possibility of John Torrey running again? And if he has any updates on, oh, actually I'm going to do one at a time here. This is the million, I think this is the big question.

So here, what do you know? Let's, we can get into these in more detail as you want or don't want. But let's go. I think Olivia Chow launched her re-election campaign today. Unofficially, but very certainly, right? When she unveiled her budget for this year,

the proposed property tax increase of 2.2, which is, I have to say, significantly lower than I was in the pool of Star, Toronto Star, City Hall-related people. It was like not an actual pool where we put up real money, but we were trying to name the number we thought we'd see in the company chat. I had said that I thought it would be 2.2 plus the 1.5 city building fund, right? Because I thought 2.2 is the inflation rate right now. They'll go for just inflation plus the city building fund, which you can kind of also still point your fingers at John Torrey who are introducing it, right?

He also tacked it on top of a bunch of his. But they didn't do that. They went 2.2 including the city building fund. So that's 0.7. That might be an interesting number for a couple. different reasons. And I'm going to have a column coming out soon that says some of this. But because 2.2 happens to be the actual inflation rate right now. And so this is inflationary, including that city building fund, no asterisk to say, you know. Because people are done. The operating budget is inflationary, but then we logged on the service fee and the gratuities. You got to keep it simple. Yeah, yeah. Would you like a 20% surtax on there? Okay, but also in 2021, John Torrey's lowest property tax increase of his time in office was 0.7% plus the city building fund, which adds to 2.2, right?

So it's also, she and John Tori share this, this mark, right? Like, he didn't have a lower property tax increase than her lowest one. Right. All right. So there's that, right? So I think that, and it's a, there's a message of austerity at the city government now that maybe is not 100% in line with her earlier message. But it's a sort of like, let's tighten our belts and make do with the consolidate the massive gains we got over the last couple of years when we had much larger. Property tax increases.

and when the provincial government agreed to take all this gardener off our books and when we secured this money for refugees from the federal government and all of that, right? But it's also like libraries being open seven days a week has been a big thing for her and she pitches that as an affordability thing, right? There are services available to you and your children, your family, through the library. Now seven days a week, more widely available. School nutrition programs. if you talk to Olivia Chow

she talks about school nutrition programs like John Torrey used to talk about traffic congestion and stuff like it's like in her mind it is like one of the biggest things you could possibly do and that she has done and I don't know that a lot of people who don't have children taking advantage of it or even all that consciously aware but they're expanding another 50 I think or 60,000

to check the number another tens of thousands new people being added to the school nutrition program funding that she has been so proud of, capping TTC fairs, like both not raising them this year, but also having a Metro Pass-style cap on debit taps and stuff that's coming up. So like, there's not some other lavish new social program

other than that, but I do think it's like, she's saying all of these things are to make life more affordable for families in the city, and after a couple years of difficult need necessary raising of property taxes. We've now built that in and we're going to try and keep it low. So I think that is unmistakably from her. And given what otherwise I think are her priorities,

like this is an election flag that she's planting, right? So now, I have talked to John Torrey recently, sort of on background casually because we were seated beside each other at an event and he said, and I hope, I don't, we didn't have any official on the record conversation, but I did chat with him about it, and the sense I got is that he's legitimately still making up

his mind, or he was as of a few weeks ago, right? And that he doesn't believe there's he thinks he's well known enough and famous enough like the people of Toronto know him well enough

that he doesn't think he has to rush to make a decision like it's not like an extra month on the campaign trail is going to make or break whether anybody's opinion of John Tory changes right so he legitimately

I think is still on the fence about whether whether I think he thinks he can win but I mean I think he believes he can but that would be a factor. Whether he's still hungry for the job and wants to do it, whether he thinks or the people around him, the people he trusts, still think he's the right guy for the job.

And also I think whether he wants to put himself and his loved ones through that again, like especially given the way he left last time, you know, that stuff's all going to be back out there again. But also there's the lifestyle stuff of it, right? So, but I think he would like to have the job again. I think he would like to feel needed again. I think he thinks he still has things to contribute,

but I don't, as of at least a month ago, say, I don't think he legitimately still hadn't made up his mind but didn't seem to feel like he was in any real hurry, right? I also have chatted with Brad Bradford since our last conversation and actually as a result of our last conversation because I had written about him a few times around the same time, too, and, like, with some speculation about what he might be thinking and what I think, like, is behind his race.

So his message to me, like, and to you, his message to you was, tell him to have me back on, I'd be happy to talk to him about it. But his message to me was, like, he thinks he can win. That's why he's running. He's not like a golden parachute out of, like our dignified exit. He said like, well, that was a speculation on my part.

If he wanted a dignified exit, he says, um, the fact that he always said he believes in a two-term limit and that he would automatically limit himself to two terms, that's the dignified exit. He, he was never going to run again because he had always said two terms and I'm out,

right? Um, and so, but, like he, a lot of the stuff we were talking about last time, and not everybody will have listened to the, last time, so I can just say.

But I think... Bradford listens to every Ed Keenan appearance on Toronto. Well, I think Brad Bradford listens to things that are about him. I mean, if he's any kind of good politician and potential mayoral candidate, he has his staff, like, watching for things. And when they find out, oh, there's a segment on this radio show or this newscast or this podcast where they're discussing your mayor-old run, they clip it for him, right? See, that's the staffers are clipping it.

but I think Brad actually listens. He may well. He goes on a bike ride and listens to Toronto Mike. So, but, but so he thinks, and I think this is in line with what I was speculating, right, though, is that, but I think he, he thinks it more wholeheartedly than my own hand, handicapping. But, but certainly he thinks if he runs, he's going to win. And he thinks he can win a three race against Tori and Chow, and he thinks he can win a head-to-head with Chow. He thinks, you know.

but I think he thinks he's the new blood. He's the energizing one. What he said to me was that this is either elections are either like stay the course elections or make a change elections. And if it's a make a change election, which he's betting it is. And he thinks that some of the discontent over crime and the fear of crime that it is documented in polls. It's not just... Well, this is CP 24's fault. But the crime, affordability,

and general, like, even upset over, say, like, the haulout of the Finch West, but a lot of things like that. The discontent over the way Toronto's going is going is going to make this a change election and that Tory is not a change. No. Right?

Tori is, he set the terms here that Zhao has just sort of carried on a different flavor of the same thing in Brad Bradford's eyes. So, you know, Chow is not the change candidate anymore. She's been mayor for three years, right? And so if people are lucky to make a change, he's got some name recognition. He has been the leader of the opposition at council for the last few years.

And then he would point out, too, that, like when David Miller upset Barbara Hall and John Torrey was the dark horse in that one, a lot of people, like Barbara Hall, was the prohibitive favorite, a lot of people thought, well, it could be John Nunziata or it could be this kid, John Torrey, who's always been a backroom boy, but that the establishment really likes, like, those are the options. And when David Miller sort of took on the mantle of being the agent of change after Mel Lastman, he had been the leader of opposition on city council there, right? Like, he was not thought to be a great prominent mayoral candidate, but

he had been the guy with the MFP inquiry. He had been the guy that Bell Aspen shouted at during city council meetings. He had been the standard bearer as the leader of the opposition. Brad Bradford thinks he's that guy too, right? And so... But you know, the supreme difference here is that we have had a mayoral election with Brad Bradford on the ballot. We have.

And I remember he just... And again, I actually... I've been very clear about this. I like Brad Bradford as a human being. I'll go for a Great Lakes beer of him tomorrow. He comes to many of my events. I loved seeing him at TMLX 21 at Palma's Kitchen. Okay, that was not very long ago.

But Chris Sky was barely beat out by Brad Bradford. You remember that he was wrong. Yeah, yeah. No, no, Brad Bradford did not do well. And I think... So what is the difference? I think he would say the difference is that he's been the leader of the opposition for four years, that he won't have Anabailau in the race.

Well, three years, right? That, you know, I think, again, I didn't ask him directly this question. So you should have him on and ask him. Well, firstly, of course, he'll be back. I would love to have a one-on-one of a bride. And I'll ask him. But I think the reason why I would say, I think maybe he'd be justified in thinking that things will be different

is, first of all, the current polling gives him a good thing. And that, like Matlow, Mattlow got more votes than him in the election. But like Matlow, he kind of got squeezed out at the last minute by like, you know, there was a certain number of right-wing people who were going to support Saunders because Doug Ford was endorsing him, right? But if it looked like it was like Baylau versus Chow in the last week, especially after Tory endorsed bylaw, it became clear, this is the two-horse race and everybody heard it between those two horses, right?

And so that Bradford and Matlow both saw their potential votes collapse, you know, and they underperformed at the ballot box, they underperformed their mid-race polling, right? Partly because of that phenomenon, where if John Torrey had instead endorsed Bradford, maybe things would have been different. If Doug Ford had endorsed Bradford, or if either of them had endorsed Matlow,

that would have been fun to see. But, um, but yeah. So, I mean, and then I think he's had this time since then, where he's been pretty much actively campaigning for mayor. I mean,

he's on the trial, signed with his baseball bat. The reason I pose with you and other guests with the baseball bat is for Brad. Like it's a wink to Brad Bradford. Right. There you go. So, so anyhow,

that's where he's at. And that's what he thinks he's doing. So I mean, he think he's... So stay tuned. Yeah. And I mean, so here's the other interesting thing, though,

is that when you talk to Bradford, the most appealing part to me of what he talks about is, is almost like using the, the strong mayor powers, not for like, overriding counsel with the veto and all of that, but that a strong mayor, part of the strong mayor changes were that now all the senior civil servants are appointed by and answer directly to the mayor, right? They used to answer directly to city council, the city manager and whatnot, right? And so then what he thinks you need to do and what he thinks like Bloomberg did was like appoint really smart, quompetent people into

important jobs like transportation chief and and other running departments of the city and empower them to like get crap done and he says as a former bureaucrat he understands that the bureaucracy is holding up a lot of things that needs to be done and I think for a lot of people on a gut level there's a really appealing thing to that message and I think as somebody who's watched city hall for a long time my question is whether you can do it in Toronto right like whether the sort of commissioner system in New York, where you've got Jeanette CityCon, or you've got a police commissioner,

you've got a, like these public works people, who are essentially little dictators over the bureaucracy, right? Like who can steamroll things and make them happen, despite, you know, city council be over there fighting. But meanwhile, the guy who's responsible for, building subway lines is just getting it done, right? Like, I just don't know if Toronto City Hall can work that way or not. And so I'm skeptical, but I'm not close to the possibility that more can be done.

And I do wonder with Olivia Chow if one of the things she should have done earlier in her term is get her own, appoint her own hand-picked senior service servants. It's one thing that she has said more recently. And I mean, as recently as like a year ago, but still like, you know, or the last time she came to talk to the Star editorial board was like, you know, now we're starting to see a bureaucracy that she appointed. Like some people have moved out and retired and whatnot, and she's done searches or had people do searches.

And so, you know, the head of the TTC now and the new traffic zone, who was just announced this week and the other department heads, Parks and Recreation had and are now people that have been appointed under her watch and so now she can get the bureaucracy rowing in the same direction

and the question is like why didn't you do that immediately then right? Like and the answer I think when we asked her that was like first of all you give people a chance right?

see if they'll row in your direction and whatnot. Some of them have lived a long career there and she wants to work with them, get their institutional knowledge, but also see if they're going to start moving in the direction she wants to go or not, right? And okay, fair enough, but she only had three years, right? Right. And so it's sort of like if at the end of three years, she's starting to say, well, now my Avengers are assembled.

Right. Now witness the power of the fully operational. operational chow star at Toronto City Hall. Right, you want to see more? Check me on the ballot. And you get to see the rest of this. It's a teaser, right?

Right, I get that strategy. Hey, so we're at the three-quarter mark. Yeah. How are you doing? Like, do you need a little break? I could take a little break if you got pitches to do and stuff. Don't hit your head is what I'm saying here.

So while the great Ed Keenan, I would like to remind the listenership that they should be subscribing to the Toronto Star, so Ed can continue to write his excellent columns about this city. It's always must-read stuff, the Ed Keenan stuff. And that's how it works.

You know, if you want good journalists, columnists, like Ed Keenan, you got to pay. So the Toronto Star is where you get all that good stuff. And a lot of great Toronto Star people are also FOTMs. I have on on the reg. I'm thinking of the people like, who am I thinking of? I'm thinking of Mike Wilner, for example, or David Ryder. Love that guy.

And even he's freelance now, but I got a lovely postcard. from Peter Howell, his 10 favorite movies of 2025. And I plan to watch every single one of those movies, Mr. Howell. That's what I'm going to do here. And I want to shout out Mark, who doesn't miss an episode. He says that John Tori is filling in this week for John Moore on the Mighty 1010. And that could be history repeating because in 2014, he was doing radio hosting until the day he confirmed he was running for mayor.

So I was just telling the listenership, Ed Keenan, that maybe John Tori filling in for John Moore this week on 1010 is history repeating where he does his 10-10 hosting and then he confirms, I'm running for mayor. May well be. May well be. Okay, so we got half an hour, and this is going to be more rapid fire stuff because I have to clear the track.

Do you have an update on the new island fairies? This is a listener who wrote it. I do not, unfortunately. That's good. See how rapid fire that was? We just keep that going there. Okay. Can I ask you about the Finch LRT?

Oh my gosh. And the speed of running much slower than promised. All right. So it's a fiasco. And my initial reaction was, oh my God, Rob Ford was right. And I was wrong.

And not just me. All the smart people were wrong. And Rob Ford was right. But it doesn't appear to me that it needs to run that slow. I think now, I think it's a fiasco that it is running that slow, that it launched that slow. I think it's crazy.

I wrote it and I just could not believe how slowly we were going. Yeah, yeah. But it's almost like when you ride on the Spadina street car, I have been frustrated for a long time by how it stops at all these red lights. And then, you know, everybody makes their left turns and all that. And it's like, why are we doing this? Like, why are we slowing down here? Signal priority or something.

But on the Finch West LRT, just to give you an example, it's like we're cruising slow enough that there is a bus passing us, right? But not only that, and that bus is in traffic and we're in a dedicated lane. Right. We're not nobody in front of us. So we're going this slow on purpose, right? There's nothing in front of us. But then we get to a red light and we stop at the red light.

And then there's an advanced green for left turning cars for 15 seconds. And there's only two cars there. So there's not even actually any cars turning, but we're just sitting there waiting for the advanced green. And then you proceed to the other side of the interaction where the stop is. And then when you stop at that stop, the doors remain open for 30 seconds, whether or not a single person gets off, not a single person gets on. It's not like the subway where like the doors are only open for five seconds if there's nobody there.

Right. It's not like a streetcar that doesn't even open the doors if there's nobody there. Right. It's like the doors are open for 30 seconds. And then they close the doors. And then we sit for, I timed it on my. my stopwatch at one because I was so astounded. One minute and ten seconds at the stop, not moving after the doors have closed,

and then we start cruising again at a comfortable 20 kilometers an hour or less. I bike faster than that. And so, so yeah, it's, it's, it was ridiculous. So if they were testing stuff and working out kinks in the software and all of that and they can actually get the cruising speed up a little bit, that will be one thing. city council and the TTC both took dramatic action and this might wind up being the silver lining of it, right, to order, demand proper signal priority,

not just for the Finch LRT, but for all the downtown streetcars too, which that proper signal priority would mean that they can hold green lights so that they can get through them. They don't have to stop. Or they can advance quick, quicken the cycle so that they're not waiting at a red light as long and it would also reverse the turn,

the left turning priority so that the left turns would get their green arrow after the streetcars have gone through, not before, right? Right. And so the combination of those things, let's wait in six months and reevaluate the Finch RLRT or more importantly too, let's see how the Eglinton Cross Town rolls out

because if that Eglinton Cross Town operates at anything like the speed of the, Finch LRT, that's a much bigger scandal, right? Because that's a much bigger, more important cross-town transportation line. You know, there are people inside the DTC who can say the Finch West LRT is mostly a neighborhood transit service, right? It's like a local bus run. That's why it has an astounding 19 stops in like 10 kilometers, right?

is because, because, like, how come I could throw a football further than the two stops here? Like, well, how come? Oh, well, because there are senior citizens who need to get off right in front of the church there or whatever, right? Like, it's like every block there's a stop. I think that was a mistake, but they made that mistake anyway. Egglinton's not like that, right? Eggleton may still have too many stops, but most of it is underground. And if the above ground portion keeps the entire line running at, like,

an average speed of 15 kilometers an hour or something, rather than traveling at a subway-like speed. We've sunk a lot more money and a lot more of our transit future into that. But, sorry, this is supposed to be a rapid fire round. The silver lining to this might be, if they can fix Finch so that it runs in a reasonable pace, then they also have used that example to overcome the idiotic inborn, like, objections of the transportation department to properly

running the streetcar service, which should be the jewel of our downtown transit network and instead has become a bit of an embarrassment over the last 10 years. Like, it will almost have been worth it if we get all of our rail service moving fast. And if I was running for mayor this year, that would be one of my key slogans. Like Mondami in New York said the buses will be fast and free. And I would just say the street railway is going to go fast, right? Street cars go fast. Are you Ed Keenan prepared on this Toronto Mike award-winning podcast?

Are you ready to declare you're running for mayor in 2026? I am not. I am not. I busted Brad Bradford's chops. I am not even considering it, right? I will not run if nominated. I will not serve if elected. Okay, now here's a question that came in from Milan.

So, Milan writes in. This is tied into what you just. From Italy, or just from somebody named that? Just somebody named Milan. No, not the city. I've been to Milan, Italy, believe it or not. But this is not the city. This is a man.

The Eglinton LRT, comma, can we expect Doug Ford to tie it to the upcoming municipal election? I have already seen online posts blaming Mayor Chow for both the Finch LRT, signalization issue and for the ECLRT rolls off the tongue delays. Both are, of course, designed and built by MetroLinks. I just fear that there's some room for cheap political points in an election year. Yeah, I think it's a bit rich to blame City Hall for the opening rollout problems.

I do think that there's some City Hall blame in as much as the TTC has been preparing for this transition. But the TTC was trying to do a lot of expectations management. partly because there's stuff they're saddled with from Metro Links, which is a provincial agency that's built these things and signed the contracts for the maintenance and all of that. But I think the mayor starts to answer for what's happening in a few months anyway on Finch West. If we can't fix it, if the TTC can't get it fixed,

we don't have good explanations of why it can't get fixed, I think you start to wear it at City Hall. But I think the timing of the opening and maybe, the soft launch stuff, I give him a bit of a pass. The Eglinton Cross Town, should it ever open, you know,

we're hearing towards the end of this month and, you know, but who knows, we keep hearing, it's just like, well, every time you come over, every quarter. It's tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

And so, assuming it opens before the next time I talk to you, it's a big assumption. I am now guessing that there are going to be some, there's going to be some, initial disappointment at the launch conditions similar to Finch West, just because a lot of

this stuff about the schedule and the number of trains that would run and the average speed and how the signal lights are going to be timed was negotiated like a year or two years ago with Metro Links and Metro Links have been running their testing under those conditions or whatever, right? Right. So hopefully they incorporate some of the lessons learned into the launch, but I still fully expect right now that for the first week it's open when I go and ride it and you do and all the people across the city do we're going to go yeah in a room for improvement do you want to

ride it together so again like is that a yes or no I sure sure if you ignored my very legit question you and I ride it together that opening day and yeah I don't know we can even record that could be fun that could be fun um maybe we'll see what that opening day is um But, uh, doing a podcast, the live podcast. Yeah. We just ride it all day. I would do that. Do you remember in the, like, 80s?

Yeah. Like, okay, first of all, you remember at the C&E, like the, um, there was, the roller coaster was called the chum wildcat. And it was like the hosts of 1050 chum, hit radio, 1050 chum, uh, would always be promoting the chum wildcat. Uh, anyhow, you probably don't remember. I'm trying to, because I, I work there at 80s. but you're talking earlier 80s. Yeah, yeah. So I'm talking when I was a...

Right. Before I ever worked there, when it was a top 40. Like Mike Cooper's there? What's going on there? Mike Cooper, I think it was Coop once rode the Chum Wildcat for the entirety

of... He sat there and told me all the boat. Yes. The year before they did, the guy was in the Ferris wheel for the whole fair. Which is one thing because in the Ferris wheel carts,

it's like a little private thing. The roller coaster is actually roller coastering. Right. Yeah, yeah. So, And then he would be sometimes on the air. Like they'd put a mic up to him and he'd be talking.

The mic to Mike Cooper, absolutely. So, his pre-CFTR years. We could ride it all day and all night for an entire week. No, I'm into it, man. And do podcasts the whole time. I'm into it. Hey, let me ask you another question here. I don't lightning round so well, do I?

You know what? I said to myself, we got to get it down to two hours. But then I have this thought, like, if it goes $2.15, what are they going to do? but I'm going to try to keep this two hours. So as a municipal election issue, the Eglinton Crossdown and the Finch West LRT, I think whether we start to see improvement and adaptation on them in the months after they launch

is a bigger election issue than the problems with their launch. The question comes in for you, Ed Kinnon. The uploading of the DVP and the gardener. Is this a frozen issue or is it still happening? Oh, it's happening. It's happening. But there, and I mean, I think it's happening. in phases and all of that.

There's like, my understanding, at least the last I checked into it, was like nobody at City Hall seemed to think there was any reason to worry that it wasn't going to happen. But some of the questions about like, well, why hasn't it actually like... Well, is there any talk of the timeline

or when it's official? Like, I think it's like ongoing. Like, it's like there's... Okay, it's just the Milan says... Like, the money has already arrived to Toronto. Like, the province is already paying for this stuff and all of that, right? Like, it's off the same.

city's capital books. It's like the official paperwork or whatever for is a bit more complicated, I think, but it seems to me like it's all underway is what I've been told recently. And Milan might have... Well, Malone says the council and the mayor

held their part of the bargain. This is Milan talking. Staying quiet about the science center in Ontario place. Can we trust Doug Ford to follow through on his end? Mark it on your calendar is that I said. No, no. I mean, like, crap can always happen,

but I have no reason to believe that the Premier is trying to welch on this. Okay. Yeah. All right, good here. Now, I think the Premier wants the Gardner and the DVP to be his. I think he doesn't want the city to be able to monkey with them, right? but I do think he would like a little more credit like when the construction works done and all of that

but he's like the highway man right he's trying to build a tunnel under the 401 he's building a 410 extension 403 extension he's made the 407 east free he might he might make them you know like like this guy the highways are his thing and so I think he likes the man loves a car he wants the gardener and the DVP

to be under his umbrella and he's already shown us that unlike his days at City Hall at the provincial government, prices no object. He's willing to run up the credit card endlessly. All right, so you're now comfortable, Ed Keenan, in our last 12, 13 minutes here because do you know the name Lanrick Bennett Jr?

Does that name mean anything to you? I can jog your memory. Should it? Well, if you're dialed into like cycling in the city, so he was the bicycle mayor of Toronto, which is that no one votes for this, I don't think. I don't remember going to the pole.

Cargo, like, a trailer that said, like, the bicycle mail and stuff like that. Maybe, but he's an advocate for cycling in this city. And if you're kind of in that world, as a cyclist, I'm pretty good. I very likely have encountered him, but even with the description, the name is not still. Even with it, like, a name like Landrick Bennett Jr., which has some heft to it. Really, I feel like I should remember Lanark. Right. Yeah.

You know, I like the name. Because it's either a Game of Thrones character or. Right. Just like Lannister, I think. So Lannrich Bennett Jr. does, much like Brad Bradford, Lannick Bennett Jr. comes out to TMLX events. We got to get Ed Keenan to a TMLX event in 2026. Maybe one at Great League's brewery.

I'll see what I can do. I'll get you some public poster there. So he sent me this today. So I'm trying to do this proper, which is read what he responds to. Like a journalist named Keith Bonnell. Okay? Yeah.

I'll admit it. When the Toronto Star asked readers to vote, for one way to improve our city. I thought they might be drawn toward the whimsical or the lighthearted. Maybe a gondola. That's not a wimcical, like, I want a gondola. That's me talking now.

I'm going back to Keith here. Maybe a party. But what star columnist Ed Keenan got instead was a reminder that people care about the health of their community and the well-being of others, the winner of our one great idea project, part of a year running Toronto the Better series, and unveiled today is a meaningful and perhaps achievable way to help some of the most vulnerable.

So there's a link to this. It's a very positive post. That was very positive. Yeah. From Keith. From Keith. Who's like not a disinterested observer. He is a city editor at the Toronto Star.

Okay. And Lanark Jr. It's funny. I know him as Landrick Bennett Jr. I know this man, I think, fairly well. I've gone on bike guys with him. I like him very much. but on social media he goes by Lanark Junior Bennett

so I'm not sure what to say about that like I'm not sure I've asked him this in the past and I know he's listening right now so I need a refresher on why is it inverted why is the junior is like his middle name yeah we need the I think he told me and I forget okay so this is Lanrick and he sent this to me today to share with you so he knows this is going down

and it's not too uncomfortable it's so fair stuff that's fine I so want to give Ed Keenan and the Toronto Star kudos for providing spaces for these great ideas. But when you have, quote unquote, five, number five, transform select bike paths, ravine trails, and side streets into linked skating routes in an iceway network, someone named Jeremy Nelson, okay?

Unquote. I'm shaking my head. Forget about our need to hit transform T.O. numbers to elevate Vision Zero to have an idea that purposely places, vulnerable road users in a more danger, danger, in more danger by removing infrastructure that is built not just for people riding bikes, but for those who use mobility devices, it loses all credibility. It's too bad.

This thought project for sure would have been something I'd bring forward to students I collaborate with. Now it's just an example of clickbait. Frustrating. Did I do a good job reading the Lundick? Sounds like he's fun at parties, this Lundrick. Well, I want to get you guys to the same party. No, that's the most sanctimonious bullshit fucking thing I've ever heard, right? No, I mean, Lannrick may have a disability that prevents him from understanding like humor or whimsy or anything like that.

And so I don't want to pick on people who have that kind of condition, like those people who can't detect sarcasm or irony or anything like that. Sure. Some random reader suggested the Iceway network. It was included in the long list almost because it's so. silly. Many people voted against it. It ranked where it ranked in the voting. Number five. The readers. Yeah, yeah. But it also, if we had put a list of the things that had the most votes against, it was in the top five of that too, right? I think it actually ranked like, what number five? Yeah, okay. So anyhow, but like, like, learned to take a joke, Lannick. Like, you just think it went

over his head. Like that, it's like, you're right. Some people, I've been. I mean, obviously, Lannrick there is thinking of like, or not Lannrick, the person who suggested the Iceway Network is the canal system in, in Ottawa, right, where you can bike all over the place. And, and so... Wait, do you mean bike or skate? Skate, skate, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's saying in the winter, side streets, sidewalks, bike lanes, let's just turn it all

into a skating network. It's kind of a fun idea to think about. Cyclists can use ice skates too. I hate to say those vulnerable No users are allowed to IceK2, right? So our motorists. Maybe we take all these cars off the road to hit our Transform T.O.

But it's an unfeasible idea on the surface because installing the refrigeration equipment under the road like we have under our ice pads is a non-starter. So everybody knew it was a non-starter from the start. So the tongue was included in the long list like the, like the, yeah, like a lot of things. I don't know if the person who suggested tongue was in their cheek,

and I don't know if the people who voted for it, tongue was in their cheek, but like the, I think the initial idea there too was that there would be like a downtown pilot project for the area around the Bentway that would specifically be like a mega-linked path. Yeah. Not so you could commute to work.

Isn't that happening? But so that you could get around. and we have some version of that happening. But, like, really, though, the... I mean, Landrick may well be a very nice guy, but that message is the kind of thing where I get it, and I go, oh, no, somebody from Cloud Cuckoo Land

has sent me a hectoring sanctimonious, off-topic message that makes me understand that they don't even understand the point of this, right? As an opinion columnist and an opinionated guy, I did include a bunch of ideas in there that I think would be actually, like, actively bad for the city.

like new highways and stuff. I actually just think these won't work, but I included them in there because I thought if readers want to vote on this, they can vote on this, right? And they did. And what I was impressed by was that our actual metal podium finishers,

I think having more public bathrooms is really actually something the city should definitely be doing, right? I think that kiosks in parks is not just achievable, but like quickly achievable, like allowing people to sell, like have little coffee stands and stuff like that in not just the big fiascos like at the beach and at high park where you get into a 20-year contract, but like little things in little neighborhood parks, put a few chairs out and have an espresso bar. Sure, let's do it, right? And then the winning one, which was I was really impressed why, because it's actually kind of a hard, like a,

It's not a sloganeering thing, right? It's about how to provide better mental health care for people in conditions of psychosis within the shelter system without institutionalizing them in hospitals, possibly against their will or possibly where they resist it. And it's a pilot project that's already been proven in Montreal. So the voters actually came through and it wasn't close. Those were the top three by a fair margin over everything else. So yeah, the Iceway Network, though, it would have needed some more time at the workshop if it was ever going to actually turn into a legitimate idea.

But, yeah, it never occurred to me that it would really piss people off like that. Now, Lanrick, who, again, and I love that we can have this conversation because I think Landrick probably listening, he kind of whatever, right, right. And again, I can speak with great authority that you're both caring, compassionate, smart people

who live in the same city. Yeah, and presumably we're both people who are like fierce and vocal advocates for a bigger, wider, expanded, protected bite network. Yes. He probably uses it more often than me, but I'm a regular three-season user of the bike network. So I think we're on the same side of it, but somehow like any suggestion that anybody would have any fun that would come at the expense of a single 500 meter stretch of bike lanes that are buried in snow. really tips them off and prejudices them against the whole months-long project

with hundreds of suggestions from readers. It's like, good for you for sticking to your guns, Landryk. Yeah, I'm glad we got this dialogue. Because what I will say is a guy who's a Strava friend of Lanrick is that there'll be a day like maybe last week. Or this week, I guess.

We just got back to school, right? This week there might be a snowy day. I will be biking at 8 a.m. of my 9-year-old daughter and we bike to school. And then I'll go first. a longer ride after we drop her off. I'll go for a long ride, I'll do like 10, 15K or whatever just to get the morning started, and I'll

post it to Strava, because I put all my rides on Strava, and I'll see, oh, Lannrick was also out doing a similar thing on his e-bike, not that I have any judgment. No judgments there, no E in mind. But I think Lannick and I, we maybe suffer from the same idea, which is when

it's snowy and cold, a lot of people think all the sane cyclists of Lough, you, are three Cs and cyclists. But we're still out there. Like, I'm still, if I got a concert downtown,

I'm going to bike there tomorrow. The statistics about bike share usage in the winter months is actually surprising to most people, surprisingly hot. Everyone but me in Lannrick. So, yeah.

Okay, much love to Lannrick, much love to Brad Bradford, and much love to the Toronto stars, Ed Keenan. I know we took an hour off the top. Although we did some traders talk very quickly there. That's true.

There was a lot of heavy because I'm feeling it. I've got some homework. Now, I got to watch the traders UK celebrity. Leslie Taylor on the live stream is also letting you know that it's apparently spectacular. All right. Looking forward to it then. That's a great endorsement.

But I can't wait until, I guess you're going to be back in early April, probably the first Thursday of April. And we'll see in this rapidly changing crazy world in an election year municipally. And who knows what's going on in that fascist dictatorship we were talking about. A lot's going to change. at least you'll be here for a couple hours and we could talk it out. Sounds good. So thank you for doing this. Absolutely.

Thank you for having me, as always. And don't forget your lasagna on the way out here. I will not. I would not be forgiven at home if I did. And that brings us to the end of our 1,831st show. Go to Torontomike.com for all your Toronto mic needs. Consider becoming a Patreon at patreon.com Toronto Mike.

And much love to all who made this possible. Again, that is Great Lakes Brewery. Ed's got his fresh craft beer here from GLB. Palma Pasta. He's going to have his lasagna from palma pasta.com. Nick Aienes. I'll see it tomorrow. Nick.

We'll record a new episode of Building Toronto Skyline. Recycle My Electronics.C.A. who have re-upped for 2026. Much love to the good people at EPRA. And Redley Funeral Home. Pillars of this community since 19. See you all Monday. This is going to be interesting, Ed, in the basement together, meeting for the first time. Supria DeVetti and Rushme Nair.

Two women who were on AM talk radio recently and both decided that it was too toxic. I need to get out of here. So Supriya, Rushme, together here in the basement. Monday. See you all then. You know,