This week, Norm Di Pasquale, Program Manager for NoJetsTO, returns to the program to discuss the City of Toronto’s recent victory against Premier Ford’s plan to pave Lake Ontario and add jet planes to the Toronto Islands. Tune in!

It’s no secret that Shopify’s C-suite is filled with right-wing sympathizers, going beyond just their apologetics for Trump and their defence of his ludicrous lie that we are a fentanyl den. There has been a fair share of controversy over the Shopify e-commerce platform explicitly removing the “hateful content” ban for merchants using their services, with the end result being that they now allow products to be sold which deny the Holocaust, with a cut of revenue going back directly to Shopify for providing the infrastructure.

In the most high-profile incidence of Shopify’s complicity with the sale of hate material, when Ye—formerly known as Kanye West—attempted to sell a t-shirt emblazoned with a swastika to promote his song “Heil Hitler”, Shopify initially refused to take down the listing, and in the end said they only did so not because it was Nazi merchandise, but because they were concerned about fraudulent transactions.

To have Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify, feign concern over antisemitism in the National Post, for him to fearmonger about Canada no longer being safe for Jews like him and I, while at the same time he profits from Holocaust denial? Calling it a joke would imply that this is funny, but it is not. The absurdity of the Shopify C-suite is not amusing, it is dangerous to the fabric of Canadian democracy. Indeed, according to recent remarks by Shopify Founder and CEO Tobi Lütke, it appears he is openly contemptuous of our democracy.

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Starting things off last night, Mr. Lütke tweeted that the reason the Billy Bishop jet expansion was blocked was because of the “retired, unemployed, unemployable, and useful idiots”, implying that the poor, the elderly, and the disabled do not have valid perspectives that belong in government consultations with the public.

But in less than twenty minutes, Mr. Lütke would stop merely implying that some votes shouldn’t count, and start to outright say it. Here, he posits that anyone who is retired and receiving their pension should explicitly be categorized as a “dependent” and stripped of the right to vote.

Riffing off this in a back and forth with Eric Thor, a banking executive working for TD in Ottawa, Mr. Lütke described it as a “good system” when Mr. Thor proposed that those who have an annual income higher than $100K should get additional votes for electing government officials, scaled to their income level, while those below the basic personal amount would not be allowed to vote at all. When interrogated about this today, Mr. Lütke doubled down, mounting a defence that he would want only five votes “max”, not over a hundred. He claims that by giving the wealthy more of a say over who governs the country, we will “reward productive people with leverage”.

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To translate this, by “productive”, he means the rich. He describes the “unemployable” in derisive terms that harken back to Nazi Germany’s descriptor of “useless eaters”, an epithet used to label those who could not perform work for the regime, and thus those whose lives were forfeit.

It is not an exaggeration to say that attitudes like Mr. Lütke’s are a threat to freedom and democracy. These billionaires wish to force us back into serfdom, a lower class of human who can be exploited for all we’re worth, and then discarded and disposed of once we’re used up. You can argue over exactly which label to apply to Mr. Lütke’s preferred system, but it is clearly not one in which human life has inherent and equal value. His philosophy is a cold, Darwinian attitude which has caused tremendous sorrow in the past, and will do so again if it is allowed to take hold.

In our current political environment, we are offered on one hand the dictatorship of capital that the Shopify C-suite proposes, a world in which capitalism abandons even the pretense of a democracy. But on the other hand, democratic socialism provides the opportunity to reassert control over our society, to take back the power from the billionaires who seek to divide and degrade us.

The choice here is not a difficult one. I am a socialist, because I believe in democracy. And the Shopify gang are capitalists, because they do not.

In 2012, the former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, and the former Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, made a joint announcement that they had reached a deal to build a second bridge between Detroit in Michigan and Windsor in Ontario, over the Detroit River which serves as the natural border between them. There was already an existing bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, and a tunnel as well, but as the current bridge facilitates 25% of all freight between Canada and the United States, and the tunnel cannot serve large trucks, the monopoly held privately by the Moroun family became a concern, and competition was sought.

Due to political roadblocks preventing the Michigan State Government from using any taxpayer money on the project, Canada agreed to pay 100% of the costs for building all the infrastructure, and in exchange receive 100% of the tolls for the decades it would take to pay off that large debt—minus operating expenses, also covered by Canada—and then, once the debt had been paid off, split toll revenue 50/50 after operating expenses. This was a reasonable and fair arrangement where, due to Michigan’s internal issues, they consented both to Canada taking a greater responsibility over this binational project, and to us receiving an equivalent financial reimbursement for doing so.

Even better, in May 2015 we announced it would be named after Gordie Howe, Mr. Hockey himself, a Saskatchewan man who played the first 25 years of his career with the Detroit Red Wings and won them four Stanley Cups, and the memory of whom leads Windsor children to prefer the Red Wings to the Leafs to this very day. Naming the bridge in his honour was meant to be a great monument, symbolic not only of the general friendship between our two countries, but the intimate closeness between Detroit and Windsor that makes them feel like one city rather than two, with people regularly crossing back and forth for work and to see their friends and family.

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Anyway, that way of life is completely fucked now. I need not elaborate at great length about how the relationship between our country and the Yankees has deteriorated rapidly since Trump’s second term began. His threats to make us the “51^st State” have been incessant. Lord knows they would rather make us a territory without voting rights at all.

Nonetheless, Carney has lowered our nation’s elbows and caved repeatedly on domestic policy, only for Trump’s trade envoy to say we don’t get any credit for these unilateral concessions and need to give up even more, which we also, assuredly, will not get any credit for either. As author A.R. Moxon once said:

And in the case of the Gordie Howe Bridge, named after Mr. Elbows himself, Carney has once again forced Canadian elbows down. Trump has altered the deal, and Carney must pray he does not alter it any further.

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It was in February earlier this year when the trouble began for the bridge. As the New York Times reported it contemporaneously, Matthew Moroun of the Moroun family—the very same Moroun family which controls the Ambassador Bridge and whose monopoly spurred the creation of the Gordie Howe Bridge—met privately with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, and Lutnick then proceeded to call Trump shortly after the meeting.

The end result was that Trump quickly proceeded to publicly threaten to refuse to open the bridge as it was planned to later this year, demanding a cut of the tolls. And despite contradictory statements to the public about what Carney conceded, in a deal that has not actually been shown to the public, the Toronto Star reports today that Canada will have to continue paying all the operating costs, but instead of being able to use all net revenue to service our debt—debt we incurred on behalf of the Yankees—we will now surrender half of the net revenue to a slush fund designated by the Trump regime. By every manner of it, Carney has caved.

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And despite the numerous commentators interviewed for that Star piece that say Carney had no choice but to surrender, that the alternative was keeping the bridge closed, I say this is a false dichotomy. Appeasing Trump has only led to further appeasement. He will surely decide at some point in the future that the deal to open on July 27^th won’t be good enough, and that he needs us to give up even more! How do we know he will not tear up this contract, as he just did the last one?

We have a third option. Close the Moroun family bridge. They lobbied Trump to cause this. We are in a game of chicken, and we have the ability to cause direct financial damage to a single family, who has less capacity to weather it than our federal government. Would this be an escalation? Of course. Unfortunately, Trump has never allowed us to deescalate, no matter how many times Carney has abandoned his campaign promises and surrendered bits and pieces of Canadian sovereignty.

We have no choice but to stand up for ourselves, or we will soon find that our country no longer exists in any meaningful fashion. We elected Liberals who claimed they would fight for independence, only for their sole disagreement with Conservatives to be how quickly they can surrender our independence.

If this bridge opens on Sunday under the new arrangement, it will symbolize just how weak Canada has become. After all, the United States will have built a bridge…and they will have made Canada pay for it.

I love football. I’m not particularly good at it—or any athletics, really—but whether it’s clubs or national sides, regardless of the genders of the players, and regardless of the prestige of the tournament or league, I just love watching 90 minutes of footy. After Canada won gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics for Women’s Football, I was hooked on the game, and my first kit was for Canada’s national side, had Christine Sinclair’s name on the back, and was proudly emblazoned with the number 12. I eagerly flew to Vancouver in December 2023 so that I could watch her retirement match for Canada’s national side at BC Place, literally renamed Christine Sinclair Place for the night to honour Burnaby’s hometown star.

I travelled for dozens of hours by train to get from Toronto to New York City two summers ago, so that I could watch Canada play Argentina in the semifinals of the 2024 Copa América, where we were invited by CONMEBOL to participate and ran so deep that our men’s team faced up against Messi himself. While we lost, watching that match at MetLife Stadium, and cheering with our small Voyageurs supporter section, was an absolutely electric experience I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Mind you, I have also felt burned by Canada Soccer in the past, after the revelation that cheating through the use of drones to spy on opponents had been a prevalent tactic inside the organization, affecting not only the adult level but the youth teams. I took a short break from watching Canada’s national teams and Toronto FC, as they were the implicated organizations, but I never lost my love for the game, and watching the people of Toronto come alive these past few weeks as we hosted our six matches for the FIFA Men’s World Cup, I’m heartened to see more people fall in love with the game in the same way I did.

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Let us address the criticisms of both Toronto’s involvement in the tournament bid, and FIFA itself, because there are many. There were significant cost overruns that the previous Mayor of Toronto, John Tory, forced his successor Olivia Chow to take the financial hit for. Only Toronto and Vancouver participated as Canadian host cities in the united North American bid with the United States and México, as other cities found FIFA’s financial requirements and policy demands to be far too burdensome. Data indicates that Toronto will not see much financial gain, if any, from hosting these six matches.

And as for FIFA, while it does fulfill the technically necessary purpose of coordinating international football, it is also a hilariously corrupt organization that gave Trump the “FIFA Peace Prize”, to the mass ridicule of the world, and appears to have revoked a red card against a United States player in this current tournament due to Trump making a personal phone call to demand it! At the same time, the United States refused to let the Iranians stay in the country for their matches, while FIFA refused to put their matches in México instead. There’s a lot of dirty stuff going on with how the United States is taking up their share of the hosting duties, and with how FIFA operates as an organization.

With all that said, to say it was a “mistake” for Toronto to host these six matches for the Men’s World Cup would itself be a mistake. Yes, by all accounts, it was not a profitable endeavour, and Toronto will not make money from holding the event. But I am a socialist, and I do not judge the inherent worth of something by how much “profit” it generates. I would rather look at what hosting this did for our city on a holistic basis, and when I do look from this perspective, I’m very proud of what we accomplished.

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Firstly, Toronto pursued the RapidTO project of transit priority lanes for street-running trams primarily because fears over congestion during the FIFA Men’s World Cup created the pressure to increase the capacity and speed of public transit. The fact that we will have lasting infrastructure changes that improve the way our city works is itself a massive boon, even if it is not counted as “profit”, and it likely would not have happened without the pressure forcing the issue. Our transit system largely worked as necessary to serve the demand for these six matches.

From a wider perspective, I frequently hear criticisms about our atomized capitalist society for lacking “third places”, locations outside your workplace or your home where you can congregate with other people and socialize without the expectation of having to spend money to be there. On this basis, if there was any benefit to hosting during this tournament, it is that we spawned a proliferation of third places, not just at official city-designated locations, but across the entirety of the city.

Whether you’re a Torontonian or were just here to visit for the tournament, you had something to share with the people around you. Streets downtown were literally taken over with veritable hordes of supporters for the national sides playing matches down at BMO Field, braving through dangerous heat warnings. The coach for the Portuguese men’s team spoke of how much he loved the BMO Field pitch, and how disappointed he was that we wouldn’t be hosting any more games after Portugal played Croatia here for a Round of 32 match.

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I agree with this man’s assessment of BMO Field, a stadium I enjoy returning to time and time again, and while Canada likely won’t be hosting another FIFA tournament for a fair bit of time—either by ourselves or jointly with another country—we certainly have the capacity to host smaller tournaments for CONCACAF, like the Gold Cup for national sides and the Champions Cup for clubs, tournaments held for both men’s and women’s teams.

The love of football has awakened in the people of Toronto in a way it previously had not before, and it fills me with joy. We should not let this tournament be the end of our ambition to host international football matches, and we should not be satisfied with just the occasional friendly. The people of our city are hungry for more footy, and they deserve satisfaction.

For the sake of disclosure, as I’ve mentioned in previous columns about Nate Erskine-Smith, I helped Nate’s 2023 run for Ontario Liberal leader, back when I still worked in political organizing. I did not involve myself in his aborted 2026 leadership run or his Scarborough Southwest by-election run, as I have fully left all political work to pursue journalistic work instead, but obviously many of these people are friends of mine, and thus I naturally have some bias that I want to make sure is disclosed prominently.

As Nate Erskine-Smith confirmed last night at his goodbye party, after he vacates his Federal seat as the MP for Beaches—East York, he will not be pursuing the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, or seeking any provincial seat as an MPP. As such, this “goodbye” is not merely one from Federal Liberal politics, but Ontario Liberal politics as well.

In that regard, while the vast majority of those attending were Nate’s allies and friends from over a decade of holding public office, I also noted a few rivals and obstacles from both the Federal and Ontario Liberals, who sought to block his path at every turn. Perhaps they thought they were paying respect, or perhaps they wanted to make sure he was truly leaving, but they notably kept to their own corner, away from the central masses.

Aside from those strictly in the Nate Erskine-Smith camp, there were also a handful of New Leaf Liberals who didn’t necessarily back Nate, but appreciated his willingness to critique the Ontario Liberal establishment. In that same regard, the only contender for the current Ontario Liberal leadership race to attend was Eric Lombardi, who may be notably more right-wing than I am, but shares a fundamental view that the establishment’s politics is flawed and must change.

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Naturally, the mood at the event, held at a brewery in East York, was bittersweet. Many people were upset about the way things played out for Nate, with accusations of malicious behaviour by the Ontario Liberal establishment described in greater detail in this previous column of mine. There has certainly been a pall cast over the idea of progressives engaging with the Ontario Liberal Party to any degree.

But there was also some hope for the future of Nate’s political movement. In 2024, Nate Erskine-Smith first announced he was stepping down, and threw his support behind his preferred successor, Tanveer Shahnawaz, the long-time manager of Nate’s constituency office in Beaches—East York. Of course, we all remember that Nate was convinced to stay to become Trudeau’s final Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities.

As Nate described last night, he cleared that move into Trudeau’s Cabinet with Tanveer when it happened, since he had already publicly endorsed the latter as his successor. Now, Tanveer’s patience and understanding has been rewarded; Nate, leaving for real this time, has once again endorsed Tanveer as his successor, and Tanveer’s team has launched a website for him, with a secret basket ball minigame that the web developer was really excited to show off to me at yesterday’s party.

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Of course, it’s not as easy as Nate simply picking his own successor, nor should it be. The Liberal Party of Canada is supposed to hold open nomination contests, so that the Liberal members of the riding can pick the person they think is the best. Prime Minister Carney, on the other hand, has established a tendency of making undemocratic closed appointments to nominate Liberal candidates, exemplified by recent Toronto by-elections in University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest.

This obviously raises some concern as to whether Tanveer or his two declared opponents, Claire Seaborn and Summer Nudel, will even get the chance to run in an open contest. Indeed, some well-connected Federal Liberals at last night’s party told me they believe the Prime Minister will make an appointment here as well. Yet Nate, while speaking on stage, insisted that he has told Prime Minister Carney that he expects an open and democratic nomination contest, and Nate creating this public pressure will make it harder for the Prime Minister to get away with an appointment.

As for Nate’s own future, though? Apparently, he’s not actually sure yet. The Toronto Star has reported that he met with Mayor Chow earlier this month to consider running for Toronto City Council, where he would presumably try and take Brad Bradford’s ward as the latter vacates it to challenge for the mayoralty. If that is Nate’s plan, he’s not ready to commit to it publicly. He may very well choose to shepherd a new generation of political candidates in his image, and his push for Tanveer is a hint that this will likely remain a large priority for him.

In any case, the current phase of Nate Erskine-Smith’s career is over. Only time will reveal what comes next for him and his faction. I look forward to seeing what happens.

Oh boy howdy, don’t you folks love political interference in essential infrastructure projects! I sure do love having the design of my essential infrastructure altered for political considerations! Haven’t we all been looking at the plans for Alto High-Speed Rail and asking ourselves “hmm, how can this involve more political interference in the design process?”

If that remark resembles you, then boy do I have exciting news to rock your world! Alto High-Speed Rail is about to get fucked! Steven MacKinnon, Minister of Transportation for the Carney Liberal government—and notorious enemy of unionized labour—has directed Alto to pursue a “southern corridor” option for the Alto HSR alignment between Toronto and Ottawa.

What this means in practice, according to a very helpful graphic provided by the Toronto Star in their above-linked piece, is that Alto will no longer take a straight shot from Toronto to Ottawa. After Peterborough—a small locality only included as a stop because it was on the direct path between Ontario’s capital and Canada’s capital and could easily be bypassed by express trains—Alto will now have to add hundreds of extra kilometres of track to curve downwards towards Kingston, and then back upwards towards Ottawa.

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Even if an “express” train bypasses Kingston, another small locality mainly notable for being a university town, this large detour will likely add at least an hour of additional travel time between Toronto and Ottawa. This defeats the entire purpose of “high-speed rail”. Such a capitulation to Kingston will compromise the entire nature of the project, and we now risk more detours and curves being added to satisfy other small municipalities that may legally be considered “cities”, but are in reality small towns with orders of magnitude smaller populations, best served by existing VIA rail intercity service.

Adding all of this additional track will not come at a free cost. It will massively balloon the cost of this infrastructure project by billions of dollars, and at the same time make the infrastructure function at a significantly degraded level, all to satisfy a small town that, if I may be rather blunt, does not deserve to have this. I apologize for the offence that the people of Kingston will surely feel…but it is true. They do not deserve to ruin this for the rest of us.

To be fair, there were some valid criticisms to be had of the route before Minister MacKinnon issued this edict for a Kingston stop. Indeed, is it really necessary to have two stops in Greater Montréal, one in Montréal proper and another just a short distance outside in Laval? But on the other hand, anglophone Canadians are being absurd if they think that Québec City, the capital of Québec, home of the National Assembly, and a significant cultural heritage site, should not have a stop.

As for Trois-Rivières, just like Peterborough, it is right on the straight path, nestled between Montréal and Québec City, and thus can be easily bypassed by express service while also served by local high-speed trains willing to go a couple dozen km/h slower than the absolute peak.

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I understand that Kingston will naturally feel left out, but what they fail to consider is that Alto will be assimilating VIA Rail’s Corridor assets, including their trains and track subdivisions. They are not being abandoned, and they will have the ability to access Alto HSR by transferring from conventional intercity rail. They may indeed benefit from being able to use some Alto right-of-ways rather than operating on freight rails, and thus even a train limited to 160 km/h may at least reach that speed more often and not be limited to a crawl to prioritize CN Rail’s freight traffic.

But as for high-speed rail, it is an infrastructure project meant to move large volumes of people quickly between large population centres. It is intended to not only replace a significant quantity of highway traffic, but also to get rid of the massive amount of air travel between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montréal, replacing fossil fuels burned in the air with electrified trains. This is actually why Air Canada is part of the Alto consortium; they want to replace these competitive domestic flights with more profitable flights to international destinations, and have you transfer from air-to-rail on one itinerary.

Under this design paradigm, a smaller town only makes sense to be a local stop if it’s already on the straight path and will not cause a track detour that degrades performance for the vast majority of passengers. The local/express modality of train service does not work if a local stop cannot be easily bypassed by express trains, and you will spend far less time at peak speed if you are slowing down for a passenger stop, or for a curved track segment to avoid derailment.

The capitulation of the Carney Liberals to Kingston will fundamentally compromise the Alto High-Speed Rail project in a way that cannot be mitigated. It will be worse for the vast majority of passengers, to satisfy a small town that as of the date of publication has refused to densify around their existing intercity rail station.

If Kingston increases their population, builds up their local infrastructure, and transitions from a town into a proper city, there could be a case for them to have high-speed rail. But right now, that case does not exist, and if they force this, they are going to ruin Alto for the rest of us.

Today, Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada of Montréal—formerly the Liberal MP for Hochelaga and briefly a Trudeau cabinet minister—stated in an interview on Radio-Canada’s Tout un matin that her own husband, who is black, has been randomly stopped by the SPVM without explanation “at least five or six times”, and that this is clearly an example of systemic racism perpetuated by the police.

In the wake of a massive racism scandal rocking the SPVM, implicating sixteen different officers, and in the face of the stubborn insistence by CAQ Premier Christine Fréchette that the sick practice of cutting off the hair of black people and collecting the braids as trophies was “not systemic racism”, it’s very important for Mayor Ferrada to, in her own words from today’s interview, “[call] things what they are”. I fully agree with her interpretation, and I am disgusted by the excuses pink-skin politicians make for the SPVM as they violate black people.

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On a different note, ten days ago, the same Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada of Montréal said she would support a new municipal by-law to make it illegal to criticize or “insult” the police. Her justification for this brazed violation of the Charter right to freedom of expression is a push-poll paid for by the SPVM officer’s labour union, and she has also explicitly said that those ticketed under the by-law must not have the right to “be able to contest it in court”, violating the Charter right to due process.

Now, pardon my confusion for a moment, but, uh, what?

Mayor Ferrada thinks that the SPVM are perpetuating systemic racism, and says that we need to call it out. Mayor Ferrada also thinks that it should be illegal to criticize the SPVM, and illegal to challenge such tickets in our courts. The line between criticism and “insult”, as she phrases it, is fully in the eye of the beholder, and surely, an SPVM officer could feel very insulted that Mayor Ferrada has accused them of being a racist!

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Does the Mayor of Montréal understand that the by-law she seeks will hurt people like her own husband? Clearly she understands that her privilege as Mayor hasn’t protected him from the racism of the SPVM, yet she wants to give them the power to arrest black people for “calling things what they are”? Does she think she would be invulnerable to the Leviathan she would impose upon her city, that the by-law of her creation would not undo her?

There really isn’t much else to say for this column. Further paragraphs would mostly consist of repeating the above with different phrasing, so I will spare my readers. All I can say is that Mayor Ferrada’s 180-degree turn confuses me greatly, and I would greatly appreciate if she could clarify whether she thinks the SPVM are systemically racist, or whether they should be literally illegal to critique.

But she simply cannot espouse both views at once. This is farcical, and she owes Montréal clarity.

After nearly three-quarters of a century on television, and decades more on the radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Hockey Night in Canada is coming to an unceremonious end, cancelled by the Rogers family conglomerate in order to pursue greater profits for their veritable dragon’s hoard of gold.

No longer shall Canadians be able to watch the National Hockey League play the national sport on the nation’s public broadcaster, funded solely by tax dollars. Foster Hewitt’s classic words bidding “Hello, Canada, and hockey fans, in the United States and Newfoundland”—a quote so old it comes from a time when Newfoundland and Labrador were a separate British dominion and not a Canadian province—will never be heard again on the CBC.

To call this damaging for CBC/Radio-Canada would be an understatement; this is positively cataclysmic. Mind you, I’ve shunned the NHL for a fair bit of time now; I see no reason to financially support a league that welcomes Carter Hart and his fellow conspirators with open arms. And yes, I do use the phrase “conspirators”, as the only reason they were found not guilty is that the judge decided the evidence proving their guilt was inadmissible on technicality. I’m not watching the NHL, or the AHL, or the ECHL, or the OHL or QMJHL or WHL. The whole men’s pipeline is rotten, from my perspective.

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Nonetheless, my individual feelings clearly are not those of the Canadian public. An NHL player could murder someone on the ice with a gun, and their first thought would still be “it’s okay, he’s good at puck.” Hockey Night in Canada was one of the few remaining pieces of “appointment television” in our individualistic, atomized society; a large portion of the country sat down at the same time to watch the same show, and it built community.

The fact that it was accessible for free, funded by the CBC’s government-allocated budget, only made this experience even more universal as we entered the age of premium satellite and cable packages later in the 20^th Century. Yet things took a turn for the worse in 2014, when the NHL decided they could make more money by selling the rights to the Rogers family, for their Sportsnet network of premium channels. The CBC was still allowed to broadcast Hockey Night in Canada, but it was now produced by Rogers, and the CBC saw significant losses to advertising revenue, resulting in many employees at our public broadcaster losing their jobs.

This sublicensing arrangement from Rogers to the CBC was the status quo which persisted until yesterday. While this recent form of Hockey Night in Canada has been a decaying and feeble mockery of its former self, it was at least a token throw from the capitalists towards the working masses, preserving a smidgen of free access to men’s hockey on Canada’s public broadcaster. Capitalism hadn’t taken quite everything, yet.

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Anyway, that’s over now. Rogers may claim they “tried” to make a deal happen, but the reality of the situation is that they stand to make far more money from keeping all NHL games exclusive to a paid subscription package. They think Canadians are addicted to the NHL like it’s heroin, and that we’ll all shove wads of cash in Ed Rogers’ face to get our next hit as if we’re dope fiends. It’s hard for me to call their cynicism wrong, considering how many of you just watched Carter Hart play.

The CBC says they will replace the time slot with athletes doing Olympic-style competitions, and I cannot overstate just how much worse that is going to perform for their ratings. There is no universe in which Random Skiing Competition #37 is going to fill the gap of Hockey Night in Canada for Canadian audiences. This course of action will be a disaster, and could be the death knell for our public broadcaster.

Thankfully, however, there is a solution, a highly competitive hockey league to which the CBC does still hold the rights. Growing in popularity each and every season, the PWHL represents the peak of the women’s hockey pyramid in North America. It already has a strong established audience in Canada—as the massive victory parade for this year’s Walter Cup champions, the Montréal Victoire, demonstrates—and the CBC is the primary rights holder for Canadian broadcasts. Further, the CBC retains the legal ownership of the Hockey Night in Canada brand.

If our public broadcaster is smart, they have a path to avert annihilation. Don’t meekly cower in fear! Broadcast the PWHL as the main attraction of Hockey Night in Canada show, aired on Saturday night in prime-time, the same time slot it’s always had. Go band for band with Rogers and the NHL! Punish them, and steal away viewership from their league!

After 74 years on television, Hockey Night in Canada has been murdered by capitalism. Yet the potential exists for the show to be reborn, like a phoenix…and I dare say that a PWHL Hockey Night in Canada might be even better than that which came before.

For decades now, Western society has decried the censorship and restriction of internet usage in countries like China, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, deploying catchy and memetic phrases like “Great Firewall of China” to rightly criticize the limitations these nations have placed on access to the global internet. While national intranets exist in these places, information and communication is controlled to shape political trends.

Yet now, Western countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, and soon my very own Canada, are rolling out strict Photo ID requirements to access the internet. Australians will have to attach their Photo ID to their social media account, destroying any semblance of anonymity. Britons will be forced to attach their Photo ID to any pornography they browse online, giving the government a window into their most private and vulnerable fantasies. And now Canada seeks to pursue similar laws to their cohort of Commonwealth realms.

What the West has condemned when performed by Second World nations, they now eagerly embrace themselves. Politicians have explicitly stated that privacy must now be sacrificed “for the safety of children”, yet it is patently obvious that you cannot determine who is a child without obtaining the private information of virtually everyone who uses the internet.

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And even if you could magically separate the adults from the children without learning any of their private information—which you can’t—have we considered that children also have a right to access the internet? They deserve to be safe, of course, and they should have guidance from their parents on how to be responsible on the internet at their respective age level.

But we must recognize that access to the internet, the ability to learn from all the grand sources of knowledge and to share your thoughts and beliefs with others across the world, is a fundamental human right, the basic freedom to learn and speak made manifest in the digital age. And the intention of politicians to propagandize our youth and limit their access to objective knowledge is only confirmed by Hillary Clinton’s assertion last December that the problem the United States has with TikTok is that it showed young people proof of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and made them sympathetic to Palestine.

That, in itself, should tell you that this is no innocent measure to “protect children”, but instead a devious ploy to limit your freedom. So wherever you live, if you’re looking to escape regional content and access restrictions for websites, and assert your right to connect with the rest of humanity, to learn about the world as it really is and not as your politicians have told you, then this is your quick and easy guide to tunnel your internet traffic through another country.

Step One: Rent a Virtual Private Server

In order to tunnel your internet traffic, we’re going to create a Virtual Private Network (VPN), an encrypted tunnel between the connected device and a network in another place. This technology has many legitimate uses, as it’s necessary for remote workers to securely connect to offices, and for multi-office organizations to bridge their campuses into one virtual network. I personally use one for this publication when I’m away from my home office, so that I can access and save all the data I store on my local server such as photographs and interview recordings.

Because of this, only the most authoritarian countries can limit VPN usage at the current moment in time. They’ll require more advanced techniques than this article can cover, but for countries that are having individual websites check based on the location of your device, a VPN is a perfect solution, as you can tunnel your phone or computer’s internet traffic through a country that doesn’t have those limits. While I’m currently located in Canada, I could easily make my traffic route through a country like Iceland. And if in the future Iceland adopts a similar Photo ID policy, then you pick a new VPN out of a different country instead.

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There are many people who will use commercial VPN services like Mullvad for this purpose, but I would recommend against paying for someone else’s VPN. These companies play a constant cat-and-mouse game of having their servers blocked by malicious actors, only to obtain new servers until those are blocked as well. You also run the significant risk of commercial VPN operators keeping logs of your browsing history, as the encrypted tunnel only protects you from third-parties; the server you’re connecting to over VPN sees everything you do.

As an individual, your own private VPN will be much more inconspicuous, as it won’t have a massive volume of traffic from around the world, and can be hosted on a normal cloud server from a mainstream company that won’t have their IP address range blocked. So for Step One of this guide, you’ll simply need to rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) from one of the many, many cloud providers that offers it. The important thing is that whichever VPS provider you pick, ensure their datacentre hosting you is in a country that doesn’t enforce Photo ID for internet access; going from one censored place to another won’t help you!

If you pay in cash or with a regulated bank, then your anonymity will be pierced at this stage, but this may be okay with you if you’re going to use your VPN to engage with the internet under your real name and “stand on business” as the kids put it. If you are seeking anonymity, though, then there are VPSs that can be rented with privacy-preserving cryptocurrency like Monero. In either event, read the terms of service for your VPS provider to ensure they allow you to host a VPN on your server, and make sure you stay within the bandwidth limitations of your pricing plan. Once the VPS is acquired, move on to Step Two.

Step Two: Install WireGuard

At the end of Step One, you should have access to a VPS running some form of Linux. The exact flavour doesn’t matter, as long as it has a command line and the ability to install software packages. There is only a single tool that you will need to install and configure on the VPS, and then you will be able to connect to it using any computer or phone of your choosing.

WireGuard is open-source software, built up by various contributors over the years into an extremely robust and secure VPN solution, and licensed for free to the entire world, not charging even a single penny. The benefit of the open-source nature of the code is that, if a security flaw exists, it will not be hidden, but rather discovered and then patched out by the community. In proprietary software, a flaw can be concealed by malicious actors, as the code cannot be read by the public and thus is harder for security researchers to root out. As such, let me assure you that WireGuard is one of the safest programs you can install on your device, and even safer as long as you keep it regularly updated.

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Depending on your device and operating system, installing WireGuard will follow various different processes. Thankfully, by looking at the WireGuard install page, you can easily pick the option that works best for your devices. For your client, you can download a Windows installer or use the Mac, iOS or Android apps available on those devices stores. For your VPS, you’ll use this same page, and it will tell you what to type into the command-line interface in order to install WireGuard with your package manager. Regardless of whether your Linux flavour is Debian, Fedora, Arch, or another thing, your server will have a version of WireGuard you can install.

Once you have installed WireGuard on both your VPS and your computer or phone, you will be ready to proceed to the third and final step, where you will use WireGuard to bridge the encrypted tunnel between you and the free and open web. Exciting!

Step Three: Jack In to the Net

On both your VPS and your client devices, you’ll need to generate public and private keys, and through a mathematically-secure process known as asymmetric cryptography, use them to create the encrypted WireGuard tunnel. First, generate keys on the Linux command line on your VPS. Then, use the graphic user interface on your client app, be it a computer or a phone, and import the .conf file storing your VPS’s connection settings.

Once both your VPS and client have the configuration set, all that’s left to do is turn on the WireGuard VPN, and jack in. If it’s working right, your phone or computer will now be sending all internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel to your VPS in another country. You will be able to turn your WireGuard VPN on and off at your leisure, in case you need to access something on your local network instead of through your VPS, like a printer or a TV streaming box.

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This, right here, is the end of your easy step-by-step process to find internet freedom. By routing all your internet traffic through your new, self-built VPN, you can evade regional restrictions on information and communications, and enjoy the full wealth and bounty of the greatest repository of human knowledge ever built.

So whether you’re a teenager seeking to assert your rights in a world that sees you as merely the property of your parents, or an adult who simply has no patience for “showing your papers” to the government, you have the full power and means to seize back control.

It is time to transcend the censorship regimes that seek to divorce humanity from itself. Civilization exists in the blips of light that stream across the hundreds of undersea cables, sending our hopes and dreams blazing across the world. Every single human being has citizenship in cyberspace as their birthright, and it is the connections we forge with each other that will prove the ultimate salvation of the human soul, regardless of the cynics and pessimists who seek division.

The internet is free. It will remain free. Glory to the Web.

This is not a piece about the Walk With Israel. Enough words have been written about the Toronto affiliate of the Jewish Federations of North America and their annual street march and fundraiser in support of the State of Israel. With a bigger turnout each year than Israel Day on Fifth in New York City, it is the largest annual Zionist demonstration outside of Israel itself.

In the 2026 iteration held yesterday, Toronto Police estimate that roughly 60,000 Jews and allies marched down Bathurst Street in support of Zionism and the State of Israel. They started their march from Temple Sinai on Wilson Avenue, the synagogue I grew up attending, where I had my own Bar Mitzvah. They set out from this holy space, personally escorted by the Toronto Chief of Police Myron Demkiw and joined by Liberal and Conservative MPs, so that they could all publicly profess their enthusiastic support for a genocidal regime which has transitioned from apartheid to a full-blown extermination campaign against Palestinians, a second Nakba to eclipse the first.

To say I don’t know what to feel about this would be a lie; I know exactly what I feel. I feel shame and disgust toward my own people. I feel alienated from my Jewish identity, as I see it twisted by Zionism into an instrument of genocidal terror. And I have written very explicitly about what I described as, in my own words, “mathematical proof that our views are largely terrible.” But while such anti-Zionist views may be a minority among Canadian Jews, my perspective is apparently not a solitary one.

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This year, for the first time, various Jewish groups in Toronto held the Jewish Diaspora Fest, a small, humble gathering of neo-Bundists seeking counterprogramming to the massive Zionist gathering that is the Walk With Israel. Obviously, many pro-Palestinian activists, including many Canadian Jews, chose to simply attend counterprotests of the Walk With Israel directly on Bathurst, and make their displeasure with Zionism explicit to the marchers. In the case of the roughly fifty or so Jews and allies that attended the Jewish Diaspora Fest, however, there was instead a desire to create space for Jews alienated from our mainstream organizations to sort out our feelings.

Personally, I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, Palestinians are rightly tired of Jewish “allies” navel-gazing more than we actually take direct action to support them. But on the other hand, the discussions had at the Jewish Diaspora Fest, facilitated by various speakers in a teach-in format, were explicitly conscious of this kind of failure, and focused to a large degree on how Jews can be better allies to Palestinians in their struggle for freedom. One speaker from Toronto Jewish Families spoke very explicitly about how their primary job right now is supporting Toronto Palestinian Families, as they seek to make the TDSB a safe place for Palestinian-Canadian children to attend school.

And Sarena Sairan, Executive Director of the United Jewish People’s Order, a socialist Canadian Jewish group celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year, spoke very frankly to me about her distaste for the large portion of our community that participated in the Walk With Israel. Both of us acknowledged that the massive disparity in size between the tens of thousands of Jews who marched for Israel and the handful who attended the Jewish Diaspora Fest is a disheartening reality for pro-Palestinian Jews. Yet Ms. Sairan, and many of the Jews who joined her yesterday, clearly care more about being on the right side of history than the popular side, and they refuse to be demoralized.

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In terms of programming itself, while the Jewish Diaspora Fest certainly didn’t have the sort of bombastic trappings that the Walk With Israel has with their corporate-sponsored carnival rides, the low-key atmosphere had its own kind of quaint charm, with folk music and hand-printed zines conjuring images of anti-war hippies in the 1960s. Pro-Palestinian Jewish parents were clearly delighted to have a space to bring their kids; these children, not grasping the racist and obscene politics behind the Walk With Israel, could easily feel left out when they hear about other Jewish kids going there and doing all this “fun” stuff.

And while this first Jewish Diaspora Fest may be a modest beginning—indeed, Zionists have mocked the smaller size compared to the Walk With Israel—all the organizers behind this event, and the people who attended, were excited to think about what the second iteration will look like next year. They have a long-term vision to build up anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish cultural institutions, and they are eager to get to work on making that vision a reality for the alienated Jews seeking an ideological home.

Overall, though, I hope these efforts by allied Canadian Jews actually manifest into something concrete for Palestinians, whether they’re living under occupation in Palestine or here in Canada. For as much as I do care about my community…right now I care about Palestinians more.

In the year since Mark Carney and his Liberals won a minority government—and the slightly smaller period of time since they illegitimately stole a majority through the craven practice of floor-crossing—the Prime Minister has governed contrary to his “elbows up” campaigning, repeatedly adjusting Canadian laws in order to appease the Trump regime in the United States.

While the Trudeau government brought in the Digital Services Tax, ensuring that companies which earn revenue in Canada have to pay corporate income tax on that revenue, Carney removed it at Trump’s whim. Indeed, the official government press release from June 2025 explicitly tells the Canadian public that the Digital Services Tax was being removed in order to hopefully solicit lower tariffs from Trump.

Did that happen? Of course not. Just a few months later in September, Carney would remove retaliatory tariffs on the United States, conceding defeat to Trump and accepting that the tariffs would remain, while public commentators in the peanut gallery crowed that trying to stand up for Canada was pointless. Did Carney then proceed to restore the Digital Services Tax that he gave up on the condition of lower tariffs? Again, of course not! We gave that up for nothing, and got nothing in exchange.

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And now, when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) attempts to impose an equal playing field for Canadian broadcasters and international streamers, Carney steps in again to compromise Canadian interests on behalf of the Yankee Empire.

Currently, Canadian television broadcasters have to contribute 30-45% of revenues towards the production of shows and films with Canadian crews and cast, known as “CanCon”. Streamers, on the other hand, only have to contribute 5% of their revenue, an order of magnitude less. To partially equalize this, the CRTC recently stated they would use their regulatory authority to lower broadcasters down to 25%, and raise streamers up to 15%.

But after U.S. corporate lobby groups and Yankee political officials condemned the idea that their streaming companies would have to return their individual success back into Canadian cultural institutions—like all broadcasters and streamers here already have to do, and like many countries around the world require of broadcasters and streamers operating in their respective territory—Prime Minister Carney moved swiftly.

He has directed the CRTC to cease this proposal, claiming the well-established practice of CanCon which supports our local artists will “fall on Canadian consumers through higher prices”, a recklessly neoliberal perspective towards cultural works. Carney’s capitalist background restricts his vision, only allowing him to picture artistic expression through the exploitable lens of “content” that can be packaged and sold.

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Can I assume that Mark Carney and the Canadians who elected him are proud that Ambassador Pete Hoekstra praised this decision? Is it fair to assume they’re also proud that Trump and Hoekstra have revived their 51^st State annexationist talk, and that Canada is rewarding it with even more capitulation on our domestic laws? Are these things that make you feel good about being Canadian?

And your elbows, Canada, where are your elbows? You boasted to the world of your extremely robust and prominent elbows, which would remain upward as long as the Yankees threatened to conquer your nation and make you the 51^st State! Yet the only elbows I see on your arms are weak and floppy, atrophied from lack of use. Canadians may not wish to hear this, but the truth is that from the global perspective, Canadians are willing supplicants bowing at the feet of our Yankee masters and begging for table scraps like an animal.

We have willingly sacrificed our authority to write laws in Canada in order to appease a fascist empire to the south. Any time Parliament passes a bill that Trump or his advisors do not like, they get Hoekstra to whine about it at a public event, and then Carney comes to heel like a well-trained dog and follows the U.S. Ambassador’s commands.

And worst of all? The debate over this capitulation will be waved away by news of Carney’s next capitulation. Our country will be sold away bit by bit, piece by piece, until Carney has accomplished his recently-stated goal of helping Trump “make America great again” at the expense of everything Canadians value and hold dear.

Get ready to keep losing, Canada. This is what we voted for.

But before that, Matt shares some personal details about his family life which are truly astounding. Let us assure you, however, this story is quite real. Tune in!

The Albertan secessionist movement is trucking ahead, with Premier Danielle Smith avoiding a court ban on a secession referendum by holding a referendum about holding a secession referendum. Behind that secession movement, independent journalist from The Orchard Jeremy Appel came on It’s Getting Pretty Late with Jake Landau to discuss in detail how separatists have doxxed the private information of millions of Canadian citizens in Alberta.

Since then, we know that the group in question, the Centurion Project, led by Albertan separatist David Parker, have refused to cooperate with Elections Alberta demands to cease using this registered voter’s list, which was obtained by them from the separatist Republican Party of Alberta. We also know that the Centurion Project has backing from Republican organizers in the United States, and that some of this Albertan voter data has now been seen in databases owned by Yankee companies and located inside the United States.

Finally, we know that an extensive period of time, various figures linked to the Trump administration have been meeting in person to coordinate with various Albertan separatist groups. The truth of this matter is obvious to us: the United States is sponsoring the Albertan separatist movement in an attempt to carve out part of Canada, and in all likelihood seize Alberta’s natural resources for themselves. In this regard, it is clear that the Albertan separatist project does not seek to create a true nation, but rather a Yankee resource colony, in the same fashion that Katanga was carved out of the Congo in 1961 to feed Belgian imperialism.

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After decades of brutal and racist colonial rule under Belgium, both under the form of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo, on June 30^th, 1960 Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba proclaimed the independence of his nation, the Republic of the Congo, from the colonial masters. Yet less than two weeks later, a political rival named Moïse Tshombe declared the secession of the province of Katanga from Lumumba’s Republic.

The Union Minière du Haut Katanga was a Belgian corporation that controlling mining rights for the region, extracting much of the natural resource wealth of the Congo away from the Congolese people and towards Belgium. UMHK provided financial backing to Tshombe’s separatist Katanga, and the Katangese Armed Forces would be led and trained by Belgian military officers operating as mercenaries, and also hire pink-skinned mercenaries from France, Italy, and neighbouring settler-colonies like Rhodesia and South Africa.

By January 17^th, 1961, Lumumba had been replaced in a coup d’état, captured, and sent to Katanga, where Tshombe’s Belgian puppet regime murdered him in cold blood. This provoked massive international outrage, and while the United Nations Operation in the Congo would engage in armed conflict with the Katangese Armed Forces in an attempt to end the Congo Crisis, the murder of Patrice Lumumba is perceived to this day as the final and lasting subjugation of the Congolese people to Western interests.

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This is a primary example of what we call “neocolonialism”, where direct colonial administration is supposedly removed, creating a thin veneer of independence and autonomy, while in reality the colonizer uses violence to impose a puppet regime that will continue to steal away the wealth of the indigenous population for the benefit of the imperial core.

Obviously, there is one primary difference between the Congo Crisis and the situation in Alberta. In the former case, the Congo was the colony, and the Belgians were the colonizer. But in the latter case, Canada is itself a settler-colony which has committed significant atrocities against a wide slew of indigenous nations in North America. What we must consider, however, is that the natural resources which the Albertan separatists and their Yankee patrons are after tend to be located on indigenous lands, which will bear the brunt of the environmental damage.

Most importantly, as lopsided in favour of the colonizer as the numbered treaties between First Nations and Canada are—indeed, signing modern treaties on a nation-to-nation basis is a basic priority for real reconciliation—First Nations inside the borders of Alberta are insistent that at the very minimum they want these treaties respected, and a justice of Alberta Court of King’s Bench agreed that this was plainly unconstitutional.

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The fact that Alberta’s secession question would be a blatant violation of indigenous rights, and that the courts have ruled as such, is the entire reason Premier Smith has to perform the farcical routine of holding a referendum about a separatist referendum. But the Belgian backers of Katanga had zero concern for violating indigenous rights, and with Premier Smith’s musings about erasing the indigenous rights section from the Canadian Constitution, it’s clear that neither the Albertan separatists nor the United States behind them have any compunctions against performing more of the colonialism they’re already so familiar with perpetuating.

We need to be prepared for what is being telegraphed so obviously here, the kind of actions that the United States and other imperialist powers have imposed upon sovereign peoples in order to subjugate them. For if we do not act swiftly to root out this menace in Alberta, it will be transformed by the Yankees into a new Katanga…and after sampling one bite of this country, the United States will surely have another.

The Ontario Liberal Party has officially released the written decision in the appeal launched by Nate Erskine-Smith after his loss of the party nomination in Scarborough Southwest, and the verdict is in: his claims are all summarily dismissed, without any serious consideration.

Interim Leader John Fraser and Party President Kathryn McGarry have both thanked the three-person Arbitration Committee, and insisted that now is the time to bury the issue and focus on winning the upcoming by-election in Scarborough Southwest. Yet upon reading the actual published decision, I can’t help but wonder whether this was a kangaroo court designed to squash the truth rather than reveal it.

And since many journalistic outlets have simply quoted parts of the decision rather than the entire thing, here is the link to the full written decision, which you can pull into a separate tab as we walk through it together with my analysis and commentary. I have also embedded the PDF into this column, so you can download it if it ever gets removed from the Ontario Liberal website.

Decision Appeal Re Scarborough Southwest May 24 2026

208KB ∙ PDF file

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As p. 1 of the decision summarizes, and as reported by my own publication, Mr. Erskine-Smith lost on the final ballot to Mr. Hafiz by a slim margin of 19 votes, 718 to 699. Citing irregularities, which he summarized in a post on his personal Substack, Mr. Erskine-Smith filed an appeal to the Arbitration Committee of the Ontario Liberal Party in accordance with the party’s internal rules and procedures.

In p. 2, the panel led by David Zimmer as Chair (former Liberal MPP and Cabinet Minister), Jennifer Norman (current Mediator for the Ontario Labour Relations Board), and Adam Goldenberg (Yale Law School graduate and current Partner at McCarthy Tetrault) describes the appeal as being held on May 20^th in Toronto, where I confirmed with my own scouting on that day that it was held at 18h00 ET on the fourth floor of the Sheraton Centre across the street from Toronto City Hall, and according to my sources lasted until roughly midnight.

Then, p. 3-4 of the decision, concluding the summary, describes Mr. Erskine-Smith’s allegations of irregularities that would invalidate the result, only for the Arbitration Committee to declare that there were no irregularities that affected the vote or the integrity of the meeting, and that “Ahsanul Hafiz was the true winner of the vote”, summarily dismissing the appeal.

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Breezing over p. 5-8 shows basic procedural rules for this hearing that show that all parties and their legal counsel agreed on basic standards for how the appeal would be settled. Not only were both Mr. Erskine-Smith and Mr. Hafiz represented by counsel, but also the Returning Officer for the nomination contest, who is kept anonymous in the written decision, but my sources confirm can be identified as Sean Torrie, whose day job is as Litigation Counsel at Beneva.

But curiously, in p. 9-11, the Arbitration Committee explicitly declares that the rules for nomination contests are “more flexible” and that “candidates may be appointed by the party without any nomination vote at all.” While technically true, I would not boast about such things in the lede of a decision that is supposed to claim there was indeed a fair contest!

Going into p. 12, the Arbitration Committee, with the consent of all parties to the appeal, leans upon the precedent of Supreme Court of Canada decision Opitz v. Wrzesnewskyj (2012), a split 4-3 decision in which failures to ensure voters had ID were not considered by themselves enough proof to overturn a general election. Using Opitz as the framework, Mr. Erskine-Smith needed to prove not only that irregularities occurred, but that they happened in a way that allowed unqualified people to vote, and that this happened enough times to influence the result.

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With the conclusion of the basic ground rules and framework for determining this appeal, so does the agreement between involved parties in this case conclude. Launching into p. 19, it is declared that “[Mr. Erskine-Smith] has not established that any individual who was not entitled to vote voted at the nomination meeting. Nor does the evidence call into question the integrity of the nomination process.”

In p. 21-22 it is conceded that 34 more ballots were counted than there were voters struck off the list of Ontario Liberal members in the riding. Yet in p. 23, this is counter-intuitively argued as evidence that these are ballots that all went to eligible voters, despite clearly raising the spectre that they weren’t!

According to p. 24, Ontario Liberals voting in Scarborough Southwest would attempt to obtain a ballot from a Deputy Returning Officer, and if the DRO determined they did not have suitable credentials, they would be deferred to a credentials table run by Milton Chan, Legal Counsel for the Ontario Liberal Party, with a form indicating their name and the deficiency in their proof of ID and residency. If credentials then approved them, their form would be designated as such. Scrutineers from all nomination contestants were present in the room to witness this throughout the day.

The Arbitration Committee claims in p. 25 that only five people had a ballot issued despite the objections of a scrutineer. Further, in p. 28, Returning Officer Torrie asserted to the Arbitration Committee that 20 voters had their credentials form approved by Mr. Chan without then being struck off the voters list, reducing unaccounted for votes to 14, lower than the 19 vote threshold which Mr. Erskine-Smith lost by.

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Yet in p. 31, Mr. Erskine-Smith asserts that there are 14 credentials forms marked “not eligible to vote” where those voters were then, inexplicably, crossed off the voter’s list and granted ballots anyway. Confoundingly, the Arbitration Committee asserts in p. 32 that this is acceptable because they could have simply come back later to vote again despite being deemed ineligible…even though such a thing would obviously prove to be a breakdown in the “integrity of the nomination process” as the Ontario Liberal Party puts it themselves.

Further, there is an irregularity which Mr. Erskine-Smith and his people alleged that is not included in this appeal decision at all, and that is the missing ballot tally sheet. Every DRO is handed a tally sheet along with their stack of blank ballots. A ballot is only valid if it has the signature of the DRO at the bottom, and at the end of the day, the tally sheet has to be included with the ballots and show that the number of blanks at the start equals the number of the blanks at the end plus the number of names struck off the voter’s list. This is a further breakdown in the basic accounting measures that ensure the integrity of the contest, and it goes completely unacknowledged.

Going into the rules for how ID was actually verified on the day of voting, Mr. Erskine-Smith contested in p. 38 that people were using electronic copies of documents rather than paper originals, and also using paper originals that were not in the approved list of acceptable proof circulated before the meeting. On the former point, the Arbitration Committee fairly points out that in other Ontario Liberal contexts, “original” does not necessarily mean paper, and that an original document can come in an electronic format.

On the latter point, however, the argumentation borders on the absurd. Through p. 45-46, the Arbitration Committee rules that the Returning Officer had the power to change the list of acceptable ID at their whim in the middle of the voting period, and that they even have the power to grant voters ballots despite having no proof of ID at all. When you combine the arbitrary granting of ballots to voters with the vote total discrepancy listed above—something the Arbitration Committee curiously did not consider as potentially related—there appears to be a large gaping hole in this entire process.

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In p. 53, it is claimed that Mr. Erskine-Smith failed to note that Mr. Chan could be biased against him until after the meeting, when bias claims are supposed to be raised at the earliest practicable opportunity. Yet members of Mr. Erskine-Smith’s team insist that they did note this, raising the question of why such contrary testimony was not included by the Arbitration Committee in this written decision. Surely someone isn’t telling the truth here, and the written decision needs to address that a factual discrepancy exists and decide what the reality of the matter is?

Concluding the bias section, p. 55 elides over my report of an Ontario Liberal shadow campaign waged by supposedly neutral party staff assisting Mr. Erskine-Smith’s opponents, simply stating that “the Ontario Liberal Party is a volunteer-driven organization and there are only so many of us who are willing and able to give of our time to support the party and its activities.” This only seems like a good argument for delegating partisan nomination contests away from parties themselves, and into the hands of Elections Ontario to manage professionally with the backing of public funds.

On the topic of ballot secrecy being regularly pierced by voters taking photos of their ballots, the Arbitration Committee waves this away in p. 58 by saying it is merely evidence of a “lively nomination meeting attended by diverse array [sic] of voters”, and that without proof of it being connected to a vote buying campaign, there is no concern to be had here. Again, in p. 59 the Arbitration Committee claims that Mr. Erskine-Smith’s team delayed in raising a complaint, while from the public viewpoint his team has raised these complaints from the beginning.

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As such, p. 60-61 summarily dismiss the appeal, and affirm that Mr. Hafiz will remain the Ontario Liberal contestant for Scarborough Southwest. Even if we take this at face value, Mr. Hafiz will have a great many questions to answer regarding his calls for political violence against opponents of his family in Bangladesh. But we have good reason to not take this written ruling at face value, considering the way in which it addresses, and refuses to address, various pieces of evidence.

This entire affair has raised significant doubts as to whether the Ontario Liberal leadership contest in the fall will be conducted in a fair manner. It is obvious why Mr. Erskine-Smith may no longer find the prospect of running for this leadership attractive, although his credentials as an outsider being persecuted by the establishment have certainly received a boost with grassroots voters in Ontario.

I can see the argument for Ontario Liberals disappointed with this ruling to keep their membership and try to vote in a better leader in the coming months. Nobody wants to completely cede control over their political movement. Yet there is also a valid argument for simply leaving the Ontario Liberal insiders to rot by themselves. Why provide them your time and your labour and your money, when the Ontario NDP and the Ontario Greens are both viable alternatives?

If the Ontario Liberal establishment thinks this story is over, they are sorely mistaken. This is a moment that called for transparency and reflection, and instead they chose to insist that the blatant inconsistencies right in front of us mean absolutely nothing. And while the Ontario Liberals have had some good polling, the next election is still years away, and bitter infighting may well cause them to crash back down to Earth.

For several years now, I’ve had the occasional dream where I find myself in a rather curious room, a cross between the bridge of the starship Enterprise and a cramped submarine deck. I couldn’t place it to a memory, and wasn’t sure if it was something I had seen as a child on a trip, or whether my sleeping brain was creating fiction.

What I realized, upon arriving at an event held by Save Ontario Science Centre organizer Jennifer Alexander and starring Toronto City Councillors Josh Matlow and Jon Burnside as well as architects from Moriyama Teshima, the firm founded by Science Centre designer Raymond Moriyama himself, was that this room was indeed a real place.

Looking at the displays that had been put up showing space that could be reused inside the three-building Science Centre campus, I saw one of the schoolrooms for visiting classes of students, and it was exactly this space that has haunted my dreams. I finally realized that I had been in this room with my class on one of our own field trips, and it hit me viscerally at the moment that my younger siblings, one a baby and the other a toddler, aren’t able to share these same experiences that I had.

The thought of making sure this space is accessible to the next generation was only exemplified by what I heard repeated today by many Torontonians. Person after person took the microphone during the Q&A to talk about the various things they saw children love at the Science Centre and that they wanted the next generation of children to enjoy as well. In that room, I saw a group of people bound by a shared vision to do better for their kids, and if you’ll pardon a rather non-scientific adjective, I thought it was magical.

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As Councillor Matlow made clear to me during his scrum with the press after the conclusion of the panel, Mayor Olivia Chow has not updated him or the rest of Toronto City Council on her so-called “new deal” with Premier Doug Ford for the municipal government to take occupancy of the Science Centre campus and run their own programming.

In Matlow’s view, Toronto has to figure out exactly what the community wants to do with each of the different spaces within Buildings A, B, and C, and then they can make a proposal for splitting costs to other levels of government and private sponsors based on the expected total for the project. While Councillor Burnside didn’t stay long enough for the press to scrum him, he did mention that costs are something to keep in mind for every planned use.

As Brian Rudy—Partner at Moriyama Teshima—put it in his own remarks and during the Q&A panel, the likely future for this building is multi-use. Thankfully, everyone present wants to resume some form of science museum programming, but due to the sheer size of the facility, there is an understanding that it can best serve the community by doing a few different things, especially as Buildings A and B featured large and empty halls during the Ontario Science Centre’s years of operation. These buildings also featuring an IMAX Dome theatre and a live theatre respectively, each with hundreds of seats.

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And as various people took the microphone, there was a veritable fountain of suggestions as to what these uses could be. Some suggested reopening the class and teaching spaces—those same that captivated my dreams in the lede above—for K-12 students, college and university students, and even adults doing continuing education.

One woman, who worked for more than thirty years at the Ontario Science Centre, talked about the importance of Kidspark, an educational playground that integrated science lessons intuitively into fun activities that kept kids engaged, and then another woman immediately piped up to mention how she and her friends got memberships solely so they could take their kids to Kidspark repeatedly and burn out their energy. For my part, this is exactly what my own mother did with my sister and I, and thus I can vouch for the success of this parenting tactic in keeping high-energy kids busy.

Further ideas for redeveloping spaces included a community market in the entry hall of Building A, increased community access to the ravine around the building through trails, a museum of museums featuring different satellite galleries from other museums, and a beekeeper who wants to restore the former apiary at the site and provide honey to the public. In every case, these ideas were put forward by thoughtful citizens who want to see the City of Toronto restore this space as a multigenerational hub.

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If a restoration of the Science Centre campus is to happen in the Don Valley, however, it will require both financial and political capital. Councillor Burnside himself said that between Mayor Chow and her aspiring challenger Brad Bradford, neither have talked about the Science Centre so far during this municipal election period.

On October 26^th, Torontonians will vote for our Mayor and our City Council, and it will be essential to the revival of the Science Centre for Toronto to pick a group of elected officials with the political will to accomplish this task. The details are up for negotiation, but the holistic desire to bring this space back to life is a necessity for any candidate.

If this group of committed people manages to succeed in even partially reoccupying the Science Centre campus, it will be a victory. And while it may be a long and winding road for the community, the government and the architects to work toward that reopening date, I look forward to the time when I can finally take my sister and brother with me to the Science Centre, and show them the place that we’ve kept alive in our dreams.

Film: Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe — Release: May 14^th, 2026 — Format: DCP 2K

The year is Universal Century 0105. In the wake of the failure of the Neo Zeon movements, the hand of the Earth Federation has tightened its grip around spacenoids and the colonies. Fascist jackboot thugs known as Manhunters are sent into the streets of Earth to deport “illegal aliens” into space, while the rich and powerful hoard what little arable land remains on our planet. The dominance of the Earth Federation is maintained through the use of mobile suits, piloted mecha that have replaced fighter jets as the military doctrine both on Earth and in space.

Yet the tyranny of the Earth Federation does not go unopposed. Hathaway Noa (Ono Kenshō / Caleb Yen), son of One Year War veterans Bright and Mirai Noa, takes the nom de guerre of Mafty, and leads an eponymous ecoterrorist movement against the same corrupt Earth Federation that his father has fought for decades to protect. In this, he is opposed by Colonel Kenneth Sleg (Suwabe Jun’ichi / Aaron Phillips), commander of the anti-Mafty Circe Unit, and mobile suit pilot Lane Aim (Saitō Sōma / Kieran Walton). Caught in-between Hathaway and Kenneth is the titular “nymph sorceress”, Gigi Andalucia (Ueda Reina / Megan Shipman), a kept woman discovering her own agency after a lifetime of exploitation.

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Now, if terms like “Universal Century”, “Mobile Suit”, “Neo Zeon” and “One Year War” have zero meaning to you, this is where you turn back! Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe is a highly rewarding film for fans deeply engrossed in Gundam’s decades-spanning metanarrative, but the Hathaway trilogy is simply not a good entry point for those unfamiliar with Gundam.

In order to grasp the context of this film trilogy, adapted from the Hathaway’s Flash novel trilogy written by franchise creator Tomino Yoshiyuki from 1989 to 1990, you need to have seen, at a minimum: Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979-80 (43 episodes), Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam from 1985-86 (50 episodes), Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ from 1986-87 (47 episodes), and the feature-length film Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack from 1988. And last, of course, you must see the first Gundam Hathaway film before watching Nymph Circe…or re-watch it considering the previous Hathaway film came out five years ago and your memory may be fuzzy.

I can’t blame prospective Gundam fans for finding the Universal Century timeline daunting to enter. If you’re looking for a bite-sized chunk of this setting that’s largely self-contained, I recommend the six-part miniseries Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, which is a great way to see whether the style and tone of Gundam fit your taste, and can be watched in a single night. However, if you are already a fan of Gundam, and have been waiting decades to see the tale Tomino-san wrote of Hathaway Noa after the Axis Shock, this film will exceed your expectations.

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The pinnacle of Gundam, in my opinion, is the seamless fusion of grand political conflict with intimate interpersonal drama. Each entry has commentary not just on politics as an abstract concept, but how we as human beings are supposed to connect with each other. “Newtypes”, akin in Gundam to Star Wars’ Force, have evolved the psychic ability to sense the intentions and feelings of others. The Earth Federation sees the potential of this power to bridge human understanding, yet instead they abuse Newtypes to create terrible weapons of war.

Both Lane and Gigi in the film are Newtypes, and while one is a military pilot and the other is a sex worker, there are strong thematic parallels in how they are both exploited for their minds and their bodies by members of the Earth Federation in order to enrich and empower the imperialist elite. I find the use of Gigi’s character in this way, comparing the exploitation of a soldier to that of a sex worker, to be an incredibly inspired piece of political commentary.

Further, I greatly appreciate the depiction of Hathaway’s own Newtype abilities; he is quite literally haunted by Newtype ghosts, terrified to connect with living human beings in the same way he did with those who now persist beyond death in his dreams. He is shown as increasingly neglectful of his own mental health, descending into ideological antifascist fervour to the detriment of his own sanity, to mask the trauma of his ordeal at the Axis Shock.

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Yet it is the visceral nature of the Earth Federation’s fascism that makes Nymph Circe and the novel it’s adapting feel more relevant than ever. I watch the film, and I see the Earth Federation commit heinous massacres as the witnesses struggle to send evidence of the war crimes to media, and I see the Earth Federation government use their close ties to the elites who own mainstream media to suppress the war crime footage from public consumption, and then I see the Manhunters drag “illegal aliens” off the streets and out of the airports somewhere they’ll never be seen again.

But when I see these things in the film, I do not see the thin veneer of science fiction. The entire concept of Gundam slips my mind, as I am drawn to mental images of the United States and their paramilitaries like ICE, perpetuating horrors in the name of imperialism. In the Hathaway subseries, I see incisive social analysis that has only grown in resonance, speaking not to a far-off world of robots and space colonies, but rather the real fascism that has manifested in our lives today.

With a brief aside to musical score, Sawano Hiroyuki returns from several previous Gundam projects to compose the OST, and his orchestral suites for Nymph Circe iterate in an interesting way on the leitmotifs he established for the previous film. Curiously, for the opening and closing tracks of the feature, licensed music from SZA and Guns N’ Roses is chosen rather than featuring Japanese artists, and while the lyrics of these licensed tracks are admittedly thematically relevant to the plot, the style of the music is unfortunately quite incongruous with Sawano-san’s compositions.

Overall, Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe has a great deal of substance, with a lot of meat on the bone for seasoned Gundam fans looking for nuanced political and personal drama amidst the spectacle of mobile suit combat. I eagerly await the conclusion of Hathaway Noa’s trilogy.

Every five years, Statistics Canada conducts a national census of the population, collecting very important information about the shape of Canadian society, and for the 2026 Census, the deadline was May 12^th. Don’t worry if you missed it, though; fines only start to kick in after several months of dilly-dallying on your part. The first formal census to take place in what would later become Canada was that conducted in 1666 by colonial administrator Jean Talon, the Intendant of New France, who conducted it largely by himself on a door-to-door basis.

The enterprise has obviously grown a great deal since then, covering a population several orders of magnitude larger, recognizing and respecting a wider variety of backgrounds and identities, and taking into account questions and problems that 17^th century colonizers couldn’t have even begun to imagine. With that said, both the 1666 Census and the 2026 Census will serve the same core purpose: allowing the government to make informed decisions and smarter choices.

However, if we really want the government to make the best decisions possible, with the largest sample set and with numbers updated much more frequently, there are some changes we can make to the current system. We can make the census happen every year, and we can make everyone take the long-form census.

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First, a note on legalities: Technically, Section 8 of the Constitution Act, 1867 requires that a census be held at a minimum of every ten years, but in 1971 the Parliament of Canada passed a law doubling the frequency, bringing it to the once-every-five-years ordeal we have today. Clearly, the constitution is interpreted as setting a minimum, and we can conduct the census much more frequently if we wish.

Further, considering that the results of the census can take roughly two years before every piece of data fully trickles out of Statistics Canada, we have to consider that various levels of government in Canada will be using information from the 2021 Census until 2028. Even if we assume that the lead time can’t be shortened due to vital work to clean up and analyze the data, we would benefit from an annual census that at least keeps us to a static two-year gap, rather than the dynamic two-to-seven year gap that exists right now.

And in terms of the burden of completing the census, the short-form census takes roughly five minutes to complete, while the long-form census can take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes depending on how you answer specific questions. In any case, this is clearly an order of magnitude less burdensome of a time commitment than filing your taxes, which we do expect people to complete every year. The census also comes through a single government web portal, rather than needing you to pay for your own software as tax filing does.

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Regardless of the long-form vs short-form census issue, performing the census in Canada once every year would not be an unreasonable ask of the population. And when we take into account the small time burden that the long-form census asks of Canadians, it raises the question as to why everyone doesn’t receive the long-form census as the only census?

While the short-form census contains basic demographic information, 25% of Canadian households instead receive the long-form census, asking additional questions regarding “the social and economic situation of people across Canada and about the dwellings they live in.” The long-form census is handed out randomly to ensure a non-biased sample, which is why to the disappointment of nerds satirized in The Beaverton, you cannot opt in voluntarily.

There’s a fair argument that the random samples means not every Canadian needs to fill out a long-form census, but the counterargument is that by making the census feel like a burden, a vital source of data for government planning can be politically attacked. This is not a hypothetical; former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government cancelled the long-form census entirely before 2011, forcing Statistics Canada to put a disclosure on the data released in 2012 that they must “exercise caution” comparing the 2011 results to previous years. Our picture of Canadian society in 2011 is still incomplete today in 2026 due to the Harper policy.

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Thankfully, the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ensured the 2016 Census would include the long-form questions once again, limiting the damage to a single cycle. Nonetheless, giving every household the long-form census would build resilience against a future attack on Statistics Canada along the same lines as the 2011 assault.

And providing them the funding to conduct the census once every year would greatly benefit all levels of government, giving them access to information that is much more fresh and thus more relevant to the current situation at hand. The time commitment on individual Canadians will be insignificant, but the benefits for government policy and planning will be immense.

Most importantly, though? We can make that sad nerd from The Beaverton piece happy again. And isn’t that what politics is all about?

Oh boy.

I’ve written recently about the shadow campaign that Ontario Liberal insiders have waged against Nate Erskine-Smith in the run-up to today’s nomination contest. In an attempt to claim a seat in the Ontario Liberal caucus at Queen’s Park to bolster his leadership aspiration, Nate chose to seek the nomination in Scarborough Southwest, as there is a vacancy and the riding is adjacent to the one he represents federally.

Acrimony had already brewed over Ontario Liberal insiders using their resources to campaign against Nate, with party executives and caucus staff supposedly sworn to neutrality openly supporting his main opponent, Domino’s Pizza franchise mogul Ahsanul Hafiz. But after today’s voting, which lasted from this morning until 16h00 ET at Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute in Toronto and was conducted using a ranked ballot, the bitterness has only festered even further between Ontario Liberals.

By a final count of 718 to 699 votes on the second round, Ahsanul beat Nate by a slim margin of just 19 votes; in the first round, Nate led by 9 votes, but after the bottom two candidates were eliminated, their votes were reallocated towards Ahsanul in larger number, giving him the victory. Yet Nate and his people have not accepted the results, alleging that there were improprieties. And regardless of whether the result was fair, there are serious concerns about Ahsanul Hafiz’s suitability as a candidate.

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In terms of the vote, while over 1400 people participated, Nate Erskine-Smith alleged to a gaggle of press outdoors in the rain that his scrutineers witnessed a large degree of irregularities, although as Policorner reports he would not elaborate on any specifics until he hears the details from every member of his team in the ballot counting room.

According to the claims of one scrutineer for Nate speaking to me privately, hundreds of voters were supposedly allowed to cast ballots in this nomination contest without providing ID. While this does happen in general elections in Canada, it has significant limitations to restrict abuse, requiring strict standards for attestation. In the Ontario Liberal Party, however, their official rules for nomination contests allow the Chief Returning Officer under Section 58 to arbitrarily determine whether someone without ID can still be granted a full ballot, based on their personal judgment.

Currently, these allegations are extremely fresh, and lack substantive evidence to conclusively prove that they did indeed happen. It will be important to see which claims Nate and his team make publicly, versus what this scrutineer has claimed privately to me. It will also be important to see if there are any witnesses independent of Nate’s campaign who can corroborate that these events occurred as described.

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What is even more concerning, however, are various materials posted by Ahsanul Hafiz to his Facebook page. Fifteen years ago, on July 6^th, 2011, Ahsanul shared a disturbing video on Facebook entitled “Brother rapes his sister”, captioned “She was Hurting [sic] for days, and could not walk!” While I am unable to confirm whether the linked video depicts a real sexual assault or merely a simulated one, I believe that viewing such disgusting material, let alone sharing it, is extremely disturbing.

In addition, on multiple occasions in 2013, Ahsanul made Facebook posts calling for the death of political opponents in Bangladesh, including Abdul Quader Mollah, who was later executed by the Bangladeshi government in controversial circumstances. He also made posts calling for violence, claiming political opponents would “lying in the jail hospital”.

As his LinkedIn profile states, Ahsanul obtained his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Windsor between 2003 and 2007, and as his campaign website’s biography section boasts, he purchased his first Domino’s Pizza franchise in 2012. Thus, it is evidently clear that Ahsanul Hafiz was an adult man when he made these comments, fully responsible for his words and actions; they cannot be waved away as the stupidity of youth, and even if he had been a teenager when he wrote these things, it would still be vile.

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These posts may be roughly fifteen years old—indeed, noted Nate opponent Quito Maggi is using their age to downplay them—yet they are still highly problematic for Ahsanul and the Ontario Liberal Party that just picked him as their nominee. How did this man pass the party’s greenlighting process, in which they are supposed to perform a background check and discover exactly these sorts of issues?

It seems implausible that they would be unaware, as from my research, it appears that knowledge of these posts has floated around Ontario Liberal circles privately for months, and that this information has also been known to the Ontario NDP and Ontario PCs as well. The latter two parties have surely been sitting on this information, hoping that Ontario Liberals would pick this guy for Scarborough Southwest, and that they would then be able to use their opposition research to crush the Ontario Liberal campaign.

Now, it appears the Ontario Liberals have walked into exactly such a trap by opting for Ahsanul Hafiz over Nate Erskine-Smith. And if there were irregularities that affected the outcome of the vote, the full magnitude of this self-inflicted error would become even more pathetic than it already is.

To call this scenario a mess is, quite frankly, an understatement. The fallout from these events on the Ontario Liberal Party’s future will be more substantial than people realize. It will significantly impact how Ontario Liberals are perceived…and they may discover their poll numbers will stop looking so rosy.