Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - John Lorinc on Ontario Place: Toronto Mike'd #1380

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

In this 1380th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with John Lorinc about his career in journalism, Spacing, and everything you need to know about what's happening at Ontario Place. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Electronic Products Recycling Association, Raymond James Canada and Moneris. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1380 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

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Season 5 of Yes, We Are Open. An award-winning podcast for Moneris. Hosted by FOTML Grego. And Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Today, making his Toronto Mike debut is John Lawrence. Welcome, John. Hey, how are you?

Good. Nice to finally meet you. I'm glad you made the trek. Glad to have you here. Yeah, thanks very much for having me. Now, you don't have all the time in the world. You're a busy guy. Where are you off to next? Like, do you have some engagement? So, the West End Phoenix is having a telethon

for the Ontario Place cause, and I'm going to go and be interviewed by Sarah Harmer, which is kind of exciting, and I'm going to try to figure out how to do my Jerry Lewis routine. Wait, let me get this straight though. Hold on.

So you're going to come straight off of your Toronto Make debut and then you're going to be interviewed by Sarah frickin' Harmer. This is how I understand the afternoon to play out. Yes. Do you know how blessed you are? You know, not that you're being interviewed by me.

That doesn't mean much. But Sarah Harmer, one of the greats. That's amazing. Yeah, I know. I'm really looking forward to meeting much. But Sarah Harbour, one of the greats. That's amazing. Yeah, I know. I'm really looking forward to meeting her. And she's like, she's followed the Ontario Place thing quite closely. And

I've interviewed her once or twice before on environmental issues. And she's very active in that space. Okay, so it just so happens that this event, this is an event the West End Phoenix is hosting. Does it have a proper name? Is it like Telethon for Ontario Place? Do you know if it has a proper name?

I believe that's the... Let's quote that. Yeah. Coincidentally, the gentleman who's responsible for the green room, which means you'll see him later today, is FOTM's listeners of the program know him as the VP of sales.

So VP of sales, Tyler Campbell, he's like managing the green room. And I actually was messaging him and said, let Sarah know she should be on Toronto Mic. And apparently I got the word from Tyler that Sarah is very, very receptive and into the idea, but then punted it to her management, which is always a bad sign. You don't have management, do you, John? No, you're looking at it. See, that's what I like. I like it when I can talk directly to the talent, book

the talent, the talent just comes over. I don't get the whole, hey, book it through my management, not with John Lawrence. No, it's a very streamlined operation. You yourself and you. Okay. So what I want to do is because we're going to, you know, cook with gas here and we're going to do this in an hour, is I want

to learn a little more about you and I want to learn a little more about you and I want to talk a little about spacing. And then I really hope that you and I can have a deep discussion about this Ontario Place boondoggle. Like, I need to know everything. Are you my man for this? I'll tell you what I know. I've been following it for about a year and a half.

So I think I know a bit. Well, every quarter, Ed Keenan comes over and we hash out what's going on in the last quarter, but he's not due till early January 2024. I need some John Lawrence to tide me over. So again, I'm glad you're fine here. And shout out to Sean McAuliffe

who is an FOTM. And of course, we're going to talk spacing in a moment here. But quick note, I saw J junk house at the horseshoe tavern last last night tom wilson is a great fotm and i gotta say junk house rocked i'm just here to say they were amazing i don't know if you're a junk house fan i you know i i don't listen to music too much anymore for some reason so i but you listen to old music or did you just you know i listen to music when i'm driving and increasingly. But do you listen to old music or did you just... You know, I listen to music

when I'm driving and increasingly I listen more and more to just podcasts when I'm driving. I don't like having things in my ears and so I just like to listen to city sounds when I'm out and about. The ambient, that makes sense. And you are a rare guest who decided not to wear the headphones and maybe

is that part of it? You just don't need to have stuff, you know, forced into your eardrums. Yeah, I prefer not. I'm not sure wear the headphones. And maybe, is that part of it? You just don't, you don't need to have stuff, you know, forced into your eardrums. Yeah, I prefer not. I'm not sure why. Okay, well. Too many rock concerts when I was a teenager, maybe. And when you were a teenager, do you want to shout out a couple of the bands

that you were into at the time? Like, were there a couple of bands in particular you'd like to check out back when you were a teen? Well, different points, you know, the Who, so I'm carbon dating myself. And then into the 80s, the specials and

madness and that whole police picnic thing. Shout out to the Garys. Okay, so that's like the second wave of ska you got going on there. Cool stuff. Okay, so John, give me a little background when you realized you wanted to be

a journalist. Were you always interested in sort of chronicling the ongoings of the big smoke here? Give me a little of your origin story. Well, I've always been involved in journalism in some way. I made a paper when

I was a kid and put it out in front of the house and I was in the newspaper club and I was in the yearbook in some way. I made a paper when I was a kid and put it out in front of the house and I was in the newspaper club and I was in the yearbook in high school. And I studied math at the University of Toronto, but in my spare time, I got very involved with the student newspaper and then went on to journalism school and then I've been freelancing ever since

and started writing about city issues in the mid 90s okay do you want to shout out maybe some of the uh stops along the way again we're gonna maybe slow down when we get to spacing because there was a big anniversary and speaking of ed keenan i wrote the p i wrote i wrote it for ed if he put his name on it i'm gonna be very angry but i did read the piece by ed keenan and the Toronto Star. But whereabouts? I mean, I could do it for you, but tell me some of the stops along the way where you've contributed your work.

So I started as a summer intern at the Kingston Whig Standard, and I made a stupid mistake, and they fired me. What was the mistake? There were two people who were involved in local politics who were kind of middle-aged pear-shaped guys with bald heads, who were balding.

And I misattributed a quote to one of them who turned out to be the publisher's friend and the publisher was not amused because the friend was not amused and then I was suddenly a freelance writer. And then, so I've been writing business journalism at the beginning of my career for Canadian Business Magazine and the ROB. And then, you know, I got into writing about more about politics for Saturday Night, which no longer

exists, and Toronto Life. And then, you know, then Spacing. We'll come to that in a moment. But I have a very typical freelance career, which is to say that I write for anybody who pays me. And, you know, I end up specializing in certain topics like cities and climate. I mean, I will say your mistake there, confusing the two pear-shaped balding Kingstonians.

Not as bad as my mistake when I sat down with a gentleman thinking I was talking to Chris Tate from Chalk Circle. And it turned out it was Chris Tate from the Lazarets. Like it was actually same name, local musician, working for like a marketing advertising firm, completely different human being. So I feel like, you know, but who's going to fire me, right? Well, you know, if I made that mistake now they'd

send a text to the web editor and say could you correct that and it would be done but I worked for a guy who was sort of a legendary hard ass editor who liked to sort of throw summer interns overboard every now and again just to show the

other people who's boss right and that sounds like we call the other people who's boss. Right. And that sounds like it, we call them dinks. That's a dink. Yeah. All right. So before we get to spacing,

you have written some books. Let's, this is the time now for you to let me know the, the books that John Lawrence has written. I'm talking about you in the third person. So what books has John, have, have you written?

So a long time ago, I wrote a sort of investigative book about scams in the franchise industry in Canada. And I've written three other books about cities, one called Cities, a groundwood guide, Dream States, which I just published last year, and The New City, which was a book that came out in 2006, which was kind of a survey. And Dream States is about smart cities and technology and urban utopias. And then I've co-edited a bunch of anthologies as well. Look at you. That book you put out last year, what specifically was it about? So, the kind of jumping off point was the Sidewalk Labs controversy, which I covered

quite extensively for Spacing. And it looks at this kind of big family of technologies that kind of come under the rubric of smart cities. And so this is all sorts of things, from facial recognition to various traffic control technologies. And there's like a lot of them. And so it's kind of looking at how these technologies impact our urban areas, right? Like what do they mean when we kind of let these technologies loose in our cities? And, you know, how should we think about them? And, you know, are they doing good things or bad things? So that's what that was about. And, you know, it's a topic that has a lot of, you know, legs, like people are really interested

in it because, you know, we live in the world of chat GPT and, you know, all sorts of AI applications. And so there's a lot of talk about technology. Absolutely. No, good work. Now, a couple of nice notes came in when I said John Lawrence. Finally, I feel like it's long overdue. We got to get John Lawrence on the program. But Hadley Obadiak, I hope I'm saying his name right. John Lawrence knows things, pretty much all things. And then a couple of hashtags he uses for you.

It's TO Polly and ON Polly. So very exciting there. Scooter Dobson wrote in. Do you know Scooter Dobson? I've seen Scooter's tweets on my news feed, yeah. Great guy. Does so much to tell Toronto about itself. And then I got another comment from T-Dot.

Well, I got Sean McAuliffe said to let you have it here. So we're going to talk spacing now and then Sean's name will come up again. And then I'll save T.Residence comment for when we segue from spacing to Ontario place. Okay. So when did you get involved in spacing? And then John, I'm hoping you'll,

like, I feel like I talk about spacing, like everybody knows what I'm talking about. Because it's the 20th anniversary of spacing, give us a little like bio on spacing. Like what is spacing? Give me the whole spiel. So I wasn't a day one person at spacing. So spacing was a group of, you know, then young people who were sort of organized in a group called the Toronto Public Space Committee. young people who were sort of organized in a group called the Toronto Public Space Committee. And they decided that they needed to sort of push back against some city regulations against postering and, you know, sort of got organized and started doing some activism and then decided, you know, kind of on a lark to put out a magazine. And so that was spacing. And what was interesting

about spacing is that it's configured horizontally as opposed to vertically. So you'd notice it on the newsstand. And so it had been going for a couple of years. And then I noticed it one day at Book City on Bloor Street. And I had a story that I was working on for Toronto Life and they spiked it. And so I, you know, so I emailed Matt and said, you know, are you interested in this? And we met at the World Class Bakers on St. Clair and Christie, which no longer exists. And, you know, we've been working together ever since.

So spacing, the spacing's mandate is to sort of look at, you know, public space issues, but defined very broadly. So we talk about everything from of look at, you know, public space issues, but defined very broadly. So we talk about everything from, you know, urban design and park benches to, you know, to encampments, to transit, road allocation, all sorts of things. So how often are issues of spacing published? So we do three or four a year. It kind of depends. published? So we do three or four a year. It kind of depends. And they're out, you know, they're on the newsstand, better, you know, better bookstores, and you could subscribe to it.

And then we also have an active blog, spacing.ca. And that blog also brings in, you know, commentary and news from other cities in Canada. And, you know, we, you know, we have all sorts of, you know, all sorts of stuff on that blog. And, you know, the philosophy of the blog and the magazine is that you don't need to be a quote unquote journalist to write about, think about, know things about the city. We want, you know, we, we try to cast the net broadly and make it, you know, something, make it a conversation that's available to people who live in the city. That's the basic prerequisite. Okay. Can you name check some people currently involved with spacing, if you could?

Because I know you dropped the name Matt and stuff, but who are these people? So Dylan Reed is the editor-in-chief. Dylan is also the founder of Walk Toronto, and he's a big activist in pedestrian issues, which are important in the city, given the way people drive. Sean McAuliffe is one of our co-founders. Todd Harrison is one of the co-founders. I'm going to miss names, and I apologize. We'll fix it in post yeah okay um julie fish is our art director and she does amazing work in making the magazine look great we have contributors like lynn bowerman who does spacing radio we have a whole range of people who are freelancers they're you know young people who are, Kanil Chowdhury is a freelancer, Sakina Saeed is a freelancer.

We've had people, you know, contribute who are involved in urban planning and so on. I think it's important that, you know, everyone knows this exists, spacing. Like, I feel like it's, sometimes there's like this sense of this downtown, you know, click. Meanwhile, you know, here we are in Southern Etobicoke. You know, it's a reminder, spacing's there for us too, right? This is available at spacing.ca. And you have the milestone birthday, which is literally, this is the December 2023. That's 20 years of spacing.

Like, are there any parties planned? Any 20th anniversary celebrations I can come and crash? What's going on? Well, so unfortunately you asked this question exactly 24 hours too late because we had the 20th anniversary party at 401 Richmond yesterday. But there's an exhibit of spacing. There's a spacing exhibit at 401 Richmond at the Urban Space Gallery that's going to run until the end of January.

And I'll just say, just pick up on a point you made. Our interpretation of what the city is, is we try to cast the net broadly. We don't sort of look down our noses at the suburbs. We find that there's incredibly interesting stuff going on outside the core, and we have contributors who are writing about that. Two of the younger contributors that I mentioned, Canule and Sakina, do that. And Sean has done amazing work in walking tours

in the inner suburbs. And just getting away from this idea, which is a wrongheaded idea that, you know, that the interesting and cool part of Toronto ends at St. Clair or Bloor Street or wherever you want to draw the line. Right. I will say I have witnessed Sean doing, I biked by him doing a walking tour here in New Toronto. I have seen it with my own eyes. So yeah, I actually, you know, you know, we're going to have that event at the West End Phoenix that's happening now.

I want to check it out too. I saw a list of everybody. A lot of FOTMs on that list. Richard Underhill, Kurt Swinghammer, Kevin Hearn, Barenaked Ladies, which means you're going to get Tyler Stewart shouting out and trying to think of the others. There's so many great.

We talked about Sarah Harmer being on that bill and James B. He's there, right. You know, rocking and rolling. And Dave Bedini, of course, Mario Static.

So Bedini, who I used to joke with him that like the West End Phoenix, okay, we're West End of Toronto, but like only till maybe Junction, like don't go West of the Junction. Then he did put out, I feel like maybe it's because I said, hey, don't forget there

is Toronto west of the Junction, but he put out a Mimico issue. And so, you know, I'm a little west of Mimico, but only by like a hair. But yeah, Toronto is such a big freaking city. I didn't realize how big Toronto was. I should have known. But like me and my buddy Mark Carey decided we would bike the peripheral border of Toronto. So we did a bike ride all along the peripheral of Toronto. And man, it's a big city.

That's a long trip. Yeah, it is a big trip. Did you know there's a whole, you know what, because I live near High Park and I'm always in High Park and there's a park that's way bigger than High Park. Did you know that? There's Rouge Park. Did you know that?

Oh, there are huge parks up in the, you know, the ravine system. I, you know that oh they're huge parks up in the you know the the ravine system i uh you know when i was in university i had a job driving a truck for rogers and i had to deliver uh like dead converters and uh from one you know from one warehouse to another so i did all my deliveries and then i just drive all over the city and um that's and it's a big city massive city and uh sometimes we forget that because it's such a city of neighborhoods, right? And you kind of like, so hyper local, but massive city. Okay.

So you're here now, you're comfortable. Do you drink beer? I do. Okay. And it's not a loaded question because some people are like, I used to drink beer and I enjoyed it too much and I don't drink it anymore. But I do want you to know, John, that I have some Great Lakes beer for you.

Good, thank you. And I have a big question for you. Do you enjoy lasagna? I do. Very much so. I have a frozen lasagna for you from Palma Pasta. And just before I move on from this, I will say we are now talking on Sunday, December 3rd. This coming,

so yeah, you're off to the West End Phoenix telethon for Ontario Place, which I hope to bike over and check out myself. But, next Saturday, which is December 9th, from noon to 3pm, TMLX 14 is taking place. This is a free event.

It is the 14th Toronto Mic Listener Experience where people like you, John, you come out to Palma's Kitchen on Seminick Court. It's near like Mavis and Burnhamthorpe in Mississauga. You get a free meal from Palma Pastas. They'll take care of you. You can get yourself a nice pasta meal. And Great Lakes has a cold, fresh craft beer for you.

And we're doing a live recording and people like you jump on the open mic. You say, hi, happy holidays. It's amazing. So I'm just letting anyone who can hear my voice right now know that you're invited December 9th to TMLX 14. That's great. If you show up, that'd be amazing. If you are otherwise occupied, that's understandable.

Two more quick gifts. There's a wireless speaker that you're taking home with you, John. You didn't know you were getting all the swag, did you? No, no, I didn't. I knew about the lasagna. Who tipped you off about the lasagna? Just about everybody I know who knows you said, oh, there's going to

be a lasagna. Oh, that's Kurt Swinghammer. Swinghammer's music. Okay. That is a wireless speaker and Moneris is giving that to you, so you can listen to season five of Yes, We Are Open, which is an award-winning podcast hosted by Al Grego.

He went out east and to Newfoundland, so he went to the Maritimes in Newfoundland, and he spoke to small business owners, and he collected their inspiring stories so entrepreneurs like us can be inspired. And it's season five. It's already dropped. You can check it out.

Yes, we are open. That's your homework there, John. Great. Thank you. And since we're talking great podcasts, two more. One is called Life's Undertaking. It is the Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home podcast. And I get to co-host that one.

And Brad has sent over a measuring tape for you, John. And you never know what you need to measure. And you sent over a measuring tape for you, John, and you never know what you need to measure and you've got a measuring tape now. And of course, the Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, that's hosted by Chris Cooksey. If you're looking for best practices and good advice when it comes to investments, you want to subscribe to the Advantaged Investor podcast. All right, John, I'm going to do a lot of listening here, but I will chime in with questions because I'm quite passionate about this subject.

I promised TDOT resident I'd segue with his comments. So he wrote in, perfect timing for John. So much to talk about with Ontario Place plus Science Centre and everything in between. And TDOT writes, if the Auditor General report shows that the entire Ontario Place redevelopment plan is biased, like the Greenbelt deals, what happens next? So you don't have to

answer that question now, but you have to build the story and then get to that. Where do we begin with this? What is happening with Ontario Place? I will hang up and listen. So the way, the place that I begin this story about what's happened to Ontario Place is that in the mid-90s, the Ontario government began to really kind of cleave

off parts of it and privatize it and bring in brand advertising. And they were doing this because it was popular, right? So you had bums in seats and you could bring customers to these brands. And so gradually, I think it lost a lot of that kind of interesting energy that it had from when it opened until that period. And then over time, the traffic goes down for whatever reason. There are other alternatives. There's Canada's Wonderland. And, you know, by the early 2010s, it's sort of, you know, seems to be like a spent force. And the provincial government closed it in 2020, in 2012.

There were lots of, there was a lot of discussion about what to do with it. You know, should there be condos down there on the parking lot? You know, what are the, you know, is it a casino? Is it what? And so our former mayor, John Tory led a task force kind of looking at what, you know, potential future for Ontario Place. And it came out with a report that was delivered to the provincial liberal government at the time. And they did one, they took one recommendation and that was the creation of Trillium Park, which is this really great space on the east end of Ontario Place, which used to be basically a parking lot and a sort of service area

and created some really excellent landscaping. Yeah, go ahead. I'm going to chime in on the Trillium Park to say I measure all my rides with MapMyRide, and then I export it to Stravik. That seems to be where everybody is. And I can tell you, probably three, maybe four times a day,

I bike to that Trillium Park, and I do that loop. And I just absolutely love what they've done with Trillium Park. It's a great space. And one of the reasons it's such a great space is that it, you know, it brings a new vantage point to the waterfront and to the, you know, the skyline, which didn't exist before.

And Waterfront Toronto is doing that kind of thing at the eastern end of the harbor. So it, you know, it was very well done, really good landscaping, really good urban design. And it opened in 2017. And then it was really a soft launch. And I don't think a huge number of people sort of were using it. And then the pandemic hits.

And then everybody is stuck in their houses. And people were looking for new places to be outside. And we've seen this enormous amount of development along the waterfront in the downtown area, around Liberty Village and so on. And so more and more people began to kind of explore Ontario Place and kind of rediscover it, you know, to use the, you know, they use the tired old expression from the Ontario government's promotion,

but rediscovering Ontario Place and, you know, they use the tired old expression from the Ontario government's promotion, but rediscovering Ontario Place and, you know, finding this kind of interestingly spooky kind of environment there with the old amusement park and the old, you know, the pods that hadn't been used. And the, you know, the entry point is Trillium Park. Trillium Park. And, you know, I think that what was happening is that more and more people were using it. And there was more discussion about that, you know, in social media and so on. And it kind of generated this momentum. Now, at the same time, the Ford government takes office. You know, the premier is very intent on kind of doing something with Ontario place. He's like a, you know, Ontario is open for business kind of guy. He's like, let's not get hung up in process kind of guy. And he's also a person who was frustrated by his attempt to redevelop the Eastern waterfront when his brother was the mayor.

And that was really a big kind of you know, it was a turning point moment in Rob Ford's mayoralty. So they do this very rapid call for proposals, which for your listeners is basically inviting, you know, bidders to come in and, you know, kick the tires and come up with ideas. And in that call for proposals, the very first page, it says, we are looking at anything you can do as much as you want with any space um on that uh you know on all of ontario plays and you know when i i've posted the from that i've posted a screen grab from the beginning of that call for proposals and you know even though i've read it many times i find it shocking because essentially they were putting a for sale sign on the entire Ontario

place, which without any process. Um, and so eventually they chose, um, in early, um, let me get my timeline. In 2019, they chose, uh, Thermae, which is this Austrian spa company. Um, they chose the, um, uh, they chose, um, sorry, I'm getting, I'm having a mind blank, but the company Live Ant that does the, you know, that has the big stadium there, the music stadium, and then a third company, a Quebec firm that does outdoor experiences. And that begins this process where THRM and Infrastructure Ontario, which is an agency of the province, which is sort of tasked with building this thing, to begin hiring consultants and urban designers and planners and architects to sort of really put sort of meat on the bones of this idea. And the first renderings of the therm project

came out in 2021 and they were by the architecture firm diamond schmidt which is a local firm fairly well respected has a long history here and i think there was a big negative reaction because essentially what people saw is that here was a very large glass building that was essentially taking up the entire West Island. And I think that the negative reaction was really heightened by the fact that, as I mentioned, during the pandemic, people were rediscovering Ontario Place

and using it and sitting on those benches. And in fact, Ontario Place was encouraging this. They put up basketball courts and they wanted people to come in there and they wanted people to use this space. And so there was this kind of mixed message because people were enjoying this space that they hadn't really had forgotten about

for all sorts of reasons, right? There were people swimming and people playing basketball and walking. I think Ben Rayner is swimming there right now. Yeah. I mean, you know, I went swimming. So I'm a child of the 60s and 70s. And for me, the idea of swimming in Lake Ontario is like, it's a huge mental block.

And if Sean is listening, I know Sean McAuliffe is a great advocate of swimming in the lake, but I remember, you know, I remember going to the Island when I was a kid and the lake actually stank, right? It was like, it was like,

I'm a child of the eighties and, uh, we were, no, it would be, that's what, that'll give you a, in your inner ear infection,

the E. Coli, they were at the Humber river. You know, if I were going to sunny side that they were dumping waste into the lake and the E. coli levels were too high and nobody swam. I tell this to my kids too. I have a 21-year-old. Nobody swam in Lake Ontario in Toronto in the 80s.

Yeah, except at Hanlon's Point. Right. Because Hanlon's Point faces out. Right. Sandlands Point faces out. And then there was this group that began swimming at Pebble Beach, which is on the outer edge of the West Island, and it's led by this guy at U of T, Steve Mann, and a group of people who they've dubbed it Teach Beach. So generally, the broader point is that there are lots of people

using Ontario Place for lots of different reasons. We have this situation where we have an incredible amount of density and intensification, thousands, tens of thousands of people who are living in rather small apartments, no backyard, crappy balconies. And so we need this open space. We need more open space in the downtown. And this is what people were discovering. downtown and this is what people were discovering what's concerning to me is the the lack of transparency so we are going to bounce around a little bit i'm going to kind of pick your brain here as i make sure we stay in our targeted time here but like right now so if i bike right now in fact i might do this later today but uh i did it yesterday when i biked ontario place uh when i approached ontario place right by the budweiser stage there. The Martin Goodman Trail has a, there's a large, tall, black, wooden fence that running the whole until,

what is the official name of the park that has the Anuk Shuck? I think it's Marilyn Bell Park. Okay, yeah, it's Marilyn Bell Park. So basically until there, because that's the new way you get into the West Island because the old way has now got a security guard. Because every time I forget, like it's like I'm on autopilot and I'm turning right.

This young woman runs out of her little hut thing there and then kind of tells me I can't go there and then I say, oh yes, sorry, I forgot and I go around. But they have these tall black wooden fences now aligning Martin Goodman Trail. I don't understand why we don't have even like

the cutout view spot. You often see for safety purposes when there's construction, there might be fences or whatever, but usually you can see what's going on on the other side. Like it just seems strange how high and non-transparent

these fences are. Well, I think that all the people who are involved in building this thing understand that what they're doing is not popular. And if you could see through the fences, you'll eventually see these contractors who have been hired by the province cutting down trees. And, you know, we just came off a summer of horrendous weather and forest fires, you know, we need all the trees we can get. And we, you know, so we're going to cut down all these trees, which doesn't make any sense to a lot of people. And I think, you know, these trees are, you know, they're, you know, used for bird

migration. They're, you know, they're cooling. They've got, they're just a wonderful aesthetic. And that's what you could see if you, you know, if there were those cutouts, you would see that activity and it wouldn't look good. No, it wouldn't. And I did sneak in there the other day and there's literally nothing happening yet. Like it's just a big parking lot,

but I feel like I'll find a way, like, I don't know, I'll find a way. Maybe it's a big selfie stick that I get higher than the wall and we'll keep an eye on what's going on over there but it just seems like they're hiding something from us drones or I'll kayak on the other side and figure it out we got there's a way but and we will at the end

of this conversation we'll talk about how it's like what's next because in fact maybe we should jump to it now just in case but it was referenced by t.resident who says the auditor general report is coming when is this auditor general report due when are we supposed to see this thing so i'm hearing that it's going to be out in 24 um so it'll take some time this is actually not

a bad thing because i'm i hoping that that office does a thorough job. The one that's going to drop first is about the Ontario Science Centre move, which is coming in a couple of weeks, as I understand. Okay, so this is a question from T-Dot. It's a good question. So obviously this report is coming. You said it'll be in 2024. We'll see this report. What if that report, we don't know what that report is coming. You said it'll be in 2024. We'll see this report. What if that report, we don't know what that report is going to show, but what if it shows that the development plan is, I don't know, similar to the Greenbelt deals where it's a greasy AF, I think that's the technical term the Auditor General will use. What happens next if that's the case?

Well, so I don't know the answer to that question, but just like to give it a bit of background. So there was a lot of media reporting about the Greenbelt. The NDP made a lot of it in the legislature. The Auditor General began an investigation about these kind of sticky deals, and then the RCMP is involved. So I don't know if this is the trajectory of the Ontario Place deal, but I think that what was going on is that there's a complete lack of transparency as to how this deal was put together. There are a lot of people involved in it who have very close ties to the government, to the Premier's office. And I think at the center of it is this 95-year lease that the government gave to Thermae.

And they've refused to disclose the terms of this lease. And so, you know, we really have to think about what this is. This is a century-long deal. And how do you write a century-long deal? Can you think of anything in this area that's been around for a century? And there are, of course, things that have been around for a century. Very few of them are businesses. Businesses don't tend to last that long. And what was the deal like what you know what is the company paying the people of ontario for to uh you know to use that site is it a nominal amount is it a

you know substantive amount and what are the residual rights like if they can't make the uh the spa work let's say in 20 years years, the spa just becomes impossibly expensive to operate because it uses natural gas boilers. And they have to kind of turn it into something else. Well, what is that other thing? Is it a casino? Is it condos? All of those questions will be answered by that lease. And if they're not answered by the lease, you could ask the question, why doesn't the lease answer those questions? And I'm hoping that the auditor general really is able to sort of get inside

that deal. And then, you know, we can see for ourselves. Now there was a, and you'll, you have the facts on this, but there was an environmental review of Ontario place,

but disregarded the actual spa that would be built. What's the, I want you to put forward the truth here, but they said, okay, we'll do the environmental review, but we will exclude the actual spa. Do I have that right? So early in the Ford government's term, they changed the environmental assessment rules and they created this kind of loophole.

And the loophole was expressly created for the Ontario Place deal. And so essentially the argument is, is that Therm, because it's a private company, doesn't need to go through an environmental assessment process because the environmental assessment process governs the activities of public agencies. Now, this is a specious argument because it's a public

agency that created the opportunity, that did the call for proposals, and brought in a private contractor to carry it out. Then, you know, what's happened in the last week is that, you know, after the deal between the province and the city of Toronto, the provincial government introduced legislation which kind of formalizes all of that. And it says that whatever goes on in Ontario Place is exempt from environmental regulations, from heritage regulations, from all sorts of provincial laws. So the way you could think about it is that the province is covered by this great cloth

that is the Environmental Assessment Act, except that there's a big hole cut in the cloth that fits exactly over Ontario Place, and that's where the rules don't apply. And you could say, well, why is that? Why is that? Well, we should ask that question.

And I don't have an answer to that, but I think that the, you know, I'm hoping that the Auditor General answers that question with his review because laws are there to apply to everything, not to the things that are convenient and you could exempt the things that are inconvenient. Just, it's not what laws are for.

It almost sounds like, okay, yeah, we did a study and the the the island airport is really quiet if we exclude the airplanes right exactly it's you know it's it's getting it's creating the conditions to get to the answer that you want okay again pardon me for jumping around it's just my brain is full of things here uh i can you be more specific about what the plan is to clear cut the trees and what the status that is? Have they, I know they moved the bell. Like, so I, you can still, people, this is a, I had this, was it Allison from Cycle Toronto felt, thought that you couldn't get at the West Island anymore because there is, we used

to get at it through Trillium Park and they put up a big fence and then they found out because I go in every day and they, people were using the rocks and going around the fence. So they extended the fence like an extra five feet anyway. There's still a way, but I'm not a trespassing kind of guy, but maybe I should be.

Okay. So you can still get at the West Island. It's that bridge by the, I think it's the Budweiser stage entrance or whatever. So you can still get there. Oh, they moved the bell. There was a big giant bell there

that has been moved. Have they cut any trees down yet? So the trees on the West Island have not been cut down and the agency that's overseeing the contracting has not put out a tender to get a company to come and cut those trees down. There has been a tender

and I think it's been awarded for tree removal on the East Island and on the Centre Island around the Budweiser stage. And these trees are being removed, as far as I understand, because part of the rehabilitation of Ontario places, fitting it out with sewage and water systems that are adequate for all the people who are going to be there.

And that required some tree removal. So that's the exact state of the tree situation. Okay. Okay. I did read like a statement from certain arborist companies that were like, we will not like bid on this job. There was one, there was one big, big company. And I have a friend who's an arborist, and he said that to cut down the

trees on the West Island is a three-week job. So it's not like they can come in overnight, one night, and just remove everything. But it's not a long time, right? And it can be done in the winter. So it's a thing that

people who are caring about Ontario Place should watch out for. They are. Now, the behaviours that we're discussing here, it sounds almost like again, it almost sounds like somebody is hiding something because they know how stinky this is.

This is what infuriates me. Okay, please, more specifics. Actually, no, let me... Many places I want to go at once. I'm almost overloaded here. But I did see Olivia Chow yesterday because she marched in the Lakeshore Santa Claus Parade and I took my two youngest to it. So, shout out to the Lakeshore Santa Claus Parade. What exactly happened last week with Olivia Chow and Doug Ford, where it sounded like she made a trade of sorts, where she kind of decided she'd back off interfering with what's happening at

Ontario Place. Please tell us for the record, what happened last week? So the deal between the province and the city included provisions that said that they, that allowed the province to go ahead with the planning of Ontario Place. And the city, the city's planning staff had been reviewing the development application for the last year or so. And the province said, okay, we want to go through that process. So that process has basically been terminated. Now, it was never the case that the province was obliged to do what the city asked, because the province is the order of government above the city and can always do what it wants. And so what the province did as part of this deal was basically re-gift themselves powers they

already had, right? So they always had the power to do whatever they wanted at Ontario Place. It's provincial property. It's provincial jurisdiction. The one sort of wrinkle in this is that there seems to have been an agreement, and I don't know how binding it is, that the parking garage, this is the five-level, 2,100-spot parking garage, which will be built in the lake, which is to say under one of the big surface lots, is now going to be moved to a spot around the Better Living Center on the C&E grounds.

And this is an interesting change because the idea behind having the parking garage right next to the spa is that you could drive into the parking garage. It'll be warm in there. It won't be snowing. You can go into a tunnel that gets you up to the ticketing area and go indoors all the way to the spa. And on a day like this or a day in the middle of January where it's really cold, you know, that's a big bonus because you don't want to walk around with wet hair after spending four hours in a tropical humid environment. So I'm not sure whether this is a thing that, a shift that Therm is going to like.

And so that's something else that people have to watch. I completely missed that detail. It all kind of came out and then there was some discussion. It was an underreported detail. That's what you're here for, John. Yeah. And I wrote a column about this in Spacing last week. To me, it's a big deal.

And I'll just give you a brief explanation why. So when the province put out the call for proposals in 2019, which dozens of firms responded to, they did not say there's going to be an underground parking garage. They said, you have to make do with whatever parking is available. And then they gave it the deal to Therm and to Live Nation. And then suddenly there was a parking garage. And so all the companies that had bid on this project

were denied an opportunity to fashion their proposals on the assumption that there would be an extra 2,100 indoor parking spots. And I believe that the reason that that happened is because everybody came to the realization that if you want a year-round amenity, which is what Thurm wants to do, you have to deal with the middle of November to the end of April. And that's a time when you do not want to spend four hours in an 85 degree tropical environment and then go outside with wet hair. And, you know, again, if people were reading what's written at the blogspacing.ca, they would already know this detail. But you wrote there that it wouldn't be much closer than the surface in front of BMO Field that we have there, right?

Yeah, it's basically about, I would say it's about 200 meters, 250 meters from where the entrance would be and like, you know, is it going to be a tunnel? Is it going to be like sort of a walkway that's covered? I don't know. It seems like

a problematic change from the point of view of Therm. And they haven't said anything at all. Wow. And I asked. Of course, yeah. You're doing great work here. Good job on this on the Penske file here,

John. Okay. So in the same article that you just wrote, this blog on spacing.ca, you mentioned that the parking garage, is it really half a billion dollars? So the province has never formally released an estimate on the cost of the parking garage. There were media estimates that based on what developers will pay for a parking spot and so the number that floats around is 450 million dollars uh so these were based on interviews with people who build parking garages as part of their development proposals um i i think it's probably a safe bet

i mean the other thing about this parking garage is that you are literally building it in the lake right so every time you take a shovel of soil out you're going to get a shovel of water back in so there's uh you know they have to deal with different types of ground conditions than you would if you're building a condo at young and blur um and it's going to be expensive and you'll have some pumps running on that thing until the end of time. And they'll be expensive. Wow. Okay. So in total, how much, you know,

taxpayer money is being pumped into this private spa at Ontario Place with the, whatever, the 95-year lease? Well, so I think that the really important detail here is that we do not know, and the province has not anteed up this information. So there's a sort of back of the envelope, $450 million for this parking lot. The province has said that it'll take $250 million to upgrade Ontario Place, to deal with shoreline erosion and to put in new sewer and water systems and all of that stuff. Now, this is a number that

was floated in 2019. So we all know how much inflation there's been since then. So I don't consider that number to be an especially reliable number. And one of the things that has come up, because Therm got a lot of pushback about the amount of space it was taking on the West Island, is that they're going to build this extra space around the Thurm site that will be public open space. Now, that has never been accounted for either. So I don't think it would be impossible to imagine that almost a billion dollars will go into that site.

And we're not even talking about the Ontario Science Centre move now. That was literally my next three words to you, Ontario Science Centre. How does that fold into all this? Well, so the idea that the province has sort of landed on is that the parking garage is the foundation of this new sort of slimmed down Science Centre pavilion,

which will be connected to the pods that Ebb Zeidler built for the original Ontario Science Centre pavilion, which will be connected to the pods that Ebb Zeidler built for the Ontario, original Ontario Science Centre. But those pods are very, you know, they're very deteriorated. There's a great deal of work that needs to go into them. There's a lot of work that needs to go into, you know, just building this new Science Centre. The province has promised, you know, last week to remediate the old science center and turn it into something that can be used

by people who are living in the Don Mills and Eglinton area. So there are lots and lots of numbers that are not accounted for. And it feels like we're sort of in a recession. The province is running a big deficit. How much money do you want to sink into this thing that's it's a real question you could be a fiscal conservative and

ask that question so it feels like and I remember when I because originally Ben Rayner and I would have chats on this program and he's a huge fan of Ontario Plays and we were talking about chaining ourselves you know we're going to chain ourselves to the I don't know the Cinesphere or something or whatever and then Ed Keenan comes on once every quarter and then basically you know we're gonna chain ourselves to the i don't know the synosphere or something or whatever and then ed keenan comes on once every

quarter and then basically you know it was matt elliott actually he was matt elliott i think who came over and he we were talking about ontario plays and he's like you know there's nothing toronto can do to stop this like he was just very like you know this is ontario uh ontario owns this land they can do what they want there's nothing we can really do to talk to do to stop it. And then as we proceed and then the dealings with Olivia Chow last week and on and on, sometimes it feels

a little bit like helpless. Shout out to Neil Young. Like how do we stop this? And I'm looking to you now, John, to assure me that it ain't over yet. Like it's not over yet. Where are our big hopes lying in terms of somehow preventing this therm private spa from being built on Ontario Plan? Well, so professionally, I'm invested in bringing information out, right? And I think that what I'm really curious about is what the Auditor General is going to come up with,

and then how the provincial government is going to respond to that information. And I remember when the Sidewalk Labs thing was going on, and here we were, it was Toronto and a handful of activists, like Bianca Wiley, against a company of such humongous size that it was almost difficult to think about. And the arguments and the politics pushed them away and we could all be thankful. And we look at the intrepid reporting

that was done by the Narwhal and the Toronto Star about the Greenbelt and the truth came out and now the RCMP is going around asking questions. So there's a lot of truth that needs to come out so far. Still to come out and hoping that the different institutions

and activists who are watching this kind of push for that truth to come out. Well, I'm glad that you're on this and I'm glad that Spacing exists and happy birthday to Spacing. I missed I'm glad that you're on this and I'm glad that Spacing exists and happy birthday to Spacing. I missed the party by 24 hours. I know also I wasn't invited, John, so I also feel like I need to maybe make it,

send a note to Sean. Come on, Sean. We usually have a launch party for each of our new issues, so you have to come to the next one. What time was that party yesterday? Was it an evening party or an afternoon party? It was seven to something. See, I would have

turned it down anyways. I was going to see my buddy Tom Wilson and Junk House at Horseshoe Tavern. But still, I like to be invited just so I can say no.

You know what it's like, right, John? Okay. So, funny thing is we're live streaming at live.torontomic.com and I just popped in real quickly and I saw a funny comment

from Andrew Ward who said, he wrote, my wife just said, all this for a fucking spa, which I find is a funny comment, but where I'm going to take that comment. That could be the title of the book. Then eventually.

Honestly, absolutely. So because I live in Toronto and I love the waterfront trail and I'm literally in Trillium Park and in the West Island. I used to do it all in one go and now they make me break it into two. Thank you very much. Whatever construction that is. But I am very passionate about what's happening at Ontario Place and I hate the proposal with Thurm.

But I am reminded by FOT and Mark Weisblatt. He reminds me that like only 1% of people seem to be upset about this. I don't know where he's pulling that number out because it's a fun number to pull out. There's no actual study to suggest that. But I am curious, is it just Toronto, some people in Toronto that are concerned about what's happening in Ontario Place?

Or is there concern from Ontario beyond the borders of the 416? Like, how many people are upset about this beyond Toronto? You know, in all candor, I can't really answer that question, but I want to leave you with another thought, which is that, you know, the mayor has talked about this, and I've written about it, that there's a really easy solution to this, which leaves win-wins all over the place, which is that the spa can be placed on the C&E grounds, where there's an abundant amount of parking and just lazy land. And from Therm's point of view,

they're close to the BMO place, they're close to the X Hotel, they're close to these other kind of amenities, and literally at the edge end of a subway line, if it ever gets built. And so to make better use of a space that's already being used for, you know, these kind of attractions, and then allow the rest of Ontario Place, that's not Live Nation, to be that park that we so desperately need. And it's a win-win, and it's a better business deal for Therm, and I just don't understand why they don't go for that. Sold.

Where do I sign? John, you sold me. That sounds too ideal. You ask Mark Lawson and John Perniak, who are the Therm executives and lobbyists involved, and maybe they'll have an answer for you. Is there a caught wind of some kind of a Therm shaming campaign that's coming? Do you know anything about that? No.

I got to find out what that's about here. John, we only had an hour, but it's all killer, no filler. I can't believe I opened up for Sarah Harmer. This is kind of like a dry run for you, right? Like now it's going to be even easier to have the conversation with Sarah because you just did this with Toronto Mike. Good luck to Sarah Harmer, but thank you for dropping by and filling us with info.

When this Auditor General report comes out, whatever happens after that, I might be pinging you to see if we can do an update. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Happy to do that. And that brings us to the end of our 1,380th episode

of Toronto Mic'd. You can follow me on Twitter and Blue Sky. Gotta hedge the bets there. I'm at Toronto Mike. You can follow John Lawrence on Twitter. What is your Twitter handle again? Is it J Lawrence?

What is it? It's at John Lawrence. John Lawrence. And John Lawrence, spell Lawrence for us all. It's not the traditional. L-O-R-I-N-C. Okay.

And spacing.ca is where you go to find out about all things spacing. One thought when you were delivering, I don't know, you were picking up these

converters for Rogers way back in the day. Today we have a place they could go to get those converters properly recycled. It's recyclemyelectronics.ca So if anyone listening has any old electronics or cables, devices, tablets that

are broken, whatever, don't throw it in the garbage. Go to recyclemyelectronics.ca Find a depot near you where you can drop it off to be properly and safely devices, tablets that are broken, whatever. Don't throw it in the garbage. Go to recyclemyelectronics.ca. Find a depot near you where you can drop it off to be properly and safely recycled so those chemicals do not end up in our landfill. Much love to EPRA for that. And much love to Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, who's hosting us all next Saturday

from noon to three. Everybody should come out and be there. Raymond James Canada, Manaris, and Ridley Funeral Home. My next guest on Toronto Mic is tomorrow when Sportsnet's Ken Reid makes his Toronto Mic debut here in the basement.

See you all then. Stay a while, if you can With folks who will be tomorrow's faces Kicking the traces, showing you places In Toronto, that's people's city Where love takes hold Makes old dreams happen She makes you feel things So buried feelings

Take on old meaning In Toronto That's people's city guitar solo Winter's white in People's City Green ravines make summer pretty When leaves start to turn Then the rainbow burns That's when you learn

That you're in Toronto That's people's city Yes, people's city We're in Toronto So nice to be here Yes, it's nice to live here very very very nice in people city