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.

Some Liberals, both federally and in Ontario, really don’t like Nate Erskine-Smith. This certainly isn’t every Liberal—I myself helped him in his first provincial leadership run in 2023 when I was still active in political organizing—but we exist in a very harshly polarized environment, where people either like him or they don’t like him. There is no neutrality when it comes to the topic of Mr. NES.

To draw the clearest parallel, Avi Lewis is to the Federal NDP what Nate Erskine-Smith is to the Ontario Liberals. Those seeking a progressive direction based in grassroots organizing are sympathetic to his desires for change, while the right-wing party establishment seek a leader who will protect the status quo, and the people who benefit from it.

All of this is fine. Ontario Liberals—including myself—will rank their leadership ballots in the contest this fall, and determine which path they want to go upon. But there’s a wrinkle, you see: Nate is accelerating the timeline.

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Taking the criticisms of a lack of provincial seat to heart, Nate is currently running in the Ontario Liberal nomination contest for the upcoming by-election in Scarborough Southwest. And on Saturday, May 9^th, he’ll either become the official Ontario Liberal candidate for that riding, or his loss will cause him to flunk out of the leadership race early.

Obviously, getting into Queen’s Park as an MPP will help Nate level the playing field with Rob Cerjanec of Ajax and Lee Fairclough of Etobicoke—Lakeshore, his two current rivals for the leadership contest—absent Navdeep Bains jumping in—both of them Ontario Liberal caucus members. On the flip side, if Nate loses the nomination contest, he would naturally lose much of his steam as a leadership race candidate, as it would raise fears of another leader who can’t win a seat.

Luckily for Nate, this by-election is in the riding immediately neighbouring his federal one, where he has community ties he can leverage and avoid being perceived as an outsider parachuting in. Unluckily for Nate, his enemies plot and scheme against him in the shadows.

As Ahmad Elbayoumi has reported at Policorner, Nate’s two primary opponents in the riding contest, Ahsanul Hafiz and Qadira Jackson, have agreed to quietly tell their voters to rank each other second, and push Nate to the bottom of the ballot. This itself is not problematic, as Nate used a similar deal with Yasir Naqvi in his failed 2023 leadership campaign. The operative word, however, is failed; sometimes voters don’t listen to cross-endorsements, and sometimes even if they do it’s still not enough.

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Where things begin to get murkier are the rumours that Rob and Lee, Nate’s current leadership rivals, are quietly providing resources to Nate’s riding opponents. It appears they agree with the belief that eliminating Nate here will clear their path more easily, and strategically I can’t fault them, even if I do find it a little underhanded for my taste.

Truly bothersome, however, is information disclosed to me by several sources, indicating that there are Ontario Liberal Party staff providing assistance to Nate’s riding opponents. More explicitly, there are staff employed by the party, funded with political donations, and staff working in the Liberal Caucus Services Bureau, funded by the legislature. Neither of these groups of staff should be anything other than neutral in these affairs, as party staff are supposed to run these contests, and LCSB staff are supposed to serve all caucus members regardless of internal party debates. Individual MPPs can allocate their local staff at their pleasure, but it may also come at their peril.

Ontario Liberal Party President Kathryn McGarry supposedly demanded both party and LCSB staff remain neutral, yet in practice their assistance to Nate’s opponents makes this demand transparently one-sided. Members of the Ontario Liberal Executive Council and Provincial Council, voted in by party membership to manage the party’s affairs, have been told by those that claim to “report” to them that they have no right to even know who works at LCSB, yet members of LCSB are claimed to be interfering in the party affairs they’ve been elected to manage!

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Thankfully, through investigative work, I have confirmed the identity of an LCSB employee who indeed was present at the campaign office of Ahsanul Hafiz, one of Nate’s riding opponents. Michael Fontein, an experienced staffer previously employed in high-ranking roles under various Federal and Ontario Liberal bosses, and also a riding executive in the same riding Nate is running in, is currently receiving a salary from LCSB doing regional field work. Coincidentally, and unrelated to this story but worth disclosure, he is also a former acquaintance of mine.

Witnesses can confirm that Michael has been repeatedly seen at the campaign headquarters for Ahsanul Hafiz. Furthermore, LCSB staffers, unlike party staff, would have no reason to visit for any business regarding the race, as administering it is intentionally kept far away from them, and even party staff rarely physically visit a campaign office. We can thus rule out the possibility that Michael might have been there on a neutral basis, although we cannot confirm the exact activities he undertook while there.

Furthermore, whether these staffers are there during work hours or on their own time is moot; we would never expect an Ontario Liberal staffer to be allowed to volunteer in their off-hours for a Doug Ford Tory MPP, so we already accept that their free time can be restricted in order to limit conflicts of interest, and LCSB staff putting their thumbs on the scale is certainly a conflict of interest in the judgment of the Ontario Liberals I’ve spoken with and used as anonymous sources for this piece.

Nonetheless, this race will conclude on Saturday, and either the schemes by Liberal insiders will succeed against Nate Erskine-Smith, or he will overcome them and get one step closer to his goal of party leadership. But even if Nate does win this nomination, I fear that the sabotage efforts will not cease, and indeed that the backroom manipulators could withhold resources during the by-election to spite him.

In any case, while the Ontario Liberals are currently polling well, an election is far-off, and with this self-sabotaging civil war, the Liberal Party may yet still grasp defeat from the jaws of victory. Only time will tell if they’re capable of getting it together.

The genocide of Gaza continues, despite the diverted attention of the world. Yes, Israel has become more preoccupied with expanding their genocidal settlement campaigns in Southern Lebanon and waging imperialist wars of aggression against the people of Iran. And of course, Israel has resumed the intensity of their settlement project in the West Bank, with recent Israeli terror campaigns dedicated to scaring Palestinian children away from attending school.

But none of this means the Palestinians in Gaza have been given any sort of reprieve from the total extermination campaign that Israel has waged against them. “Distracted” would not be the right word, as Israel’s other actions require just as much consideration, but the attention of those seeking justice has certainly been split. Thankfully, the Global Sumud Flotilla has not forgotten the people of Gaza, and has sailed out in order to aid them. Unfortunately, the Israeli military acted swiftly today to hinder their efforts.

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While previous interceptions of aid flotillas to Gaza have occurred much closer to Palestinian waters, the assault by the Israeli navy earlier today occurred over a thousand kilometres away, in international waters off the western coast of the Greek island of Crete. The flotilla’s communications were jammed with electronic warfare, and hordes of drones swarmed the boats. Supplies intended for Palestinians in Gaza, including food and medicine, were stolen in an act of piracy, and Israeli soldiers held flotilla members at gunpoint and kidnapped them, taking them back to Israel against their will.

According to the Global Sumud Flotilla’s website, 21 boats were hijacked, and 179 people kidnapped by Israel, while 63 boats full of aid and flotilla members remain sailing onward to Gaza. And to be clear, if these remaining boats do reach Palestinian waters, that would be completely fine, and Israel would still be committing severe acts of piracy by hijacking them there. You see, the operative word here is Palestinian waters; Gaza does not belong to Israel, and it never will.

Condemnations from world leaders have been swift in the aftermath: Italy and Spain have both demanded the immediate release of their citizens, and Reporters without Borders has decried Israel’s kidnapping of three journalists who were onboard the flotilla to report for international media outlets. But in Canada, despite our own citizens being among those kidnapped today, our government falls silent.

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Via the Canadian Press wire service, the two Canadians kidnapped by Israel today are Marie Tota and Umir Tiar, who live in Ontario and Québec respectively. The Global Sumud Flotilla has been in contact with their families, but aside from a general comment from the Israeli Foreign Minister that the kidnapped persons will be sent back to Greece, we have no knowledge of the safety of these two Canadians or any of the flotilla members at large.

And again, while several other countries have decried Israel’s kidnapping of their citizens and attempted to extend consular support, these families have heard nothing from the Canadian government. They remain in the dark, deeply concerned for their well-being, not knowing what Israel will do to them, seemingly abandoned by the Carney Liberals to Israel’s predations.

I reached out to Global Affairs Canada’s media relations office to ask whether they’re aware of the kidnapping, have taken any action to secure the release of these two Canadians, and whether they will impose any consequences, but they did not respond to my request for comment in time for publication, and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand has not made any public statement on the matter.

And considering the precedent of past situations in which Canadians have been kidnapped by Israel, or worse, murdered by Israel, I trust that Minister Anand will do nothing. She will allow Israel to continue violating Canadians, and the Carney Liberals will continue selling Israel the weapons they use to do it.

If Canadians want to change the Carney Liberals behaviour, they’ll need to impose more severe consequences. But as it stands, with their current majority, I wouldn’t expect them to stop any time soon.

While the capital-B “Budget” only comes once a year, Canadian Finance Ministers have the leeway to introduce additional budgetary bills in-between their annual budgets. The exact length and depth of these seasonal “economic updates” vary based on the particulars of the day, and while they don’t involve all the pomp and circumstance of a proper annual budget, they are still significant packages of legislation, and votes on these bills are a matter of confidence.

In terms of this Spring Economic Update, the Carney Liberals have presented a plan primarily focused on neoliberal economics and the attraction of private capital, at the expense of the affordability concerns that are heavily plaguing Canadians right now. If you’re one of the people struggling to keep afloat in this economy, don’t expect anything significant to help you here.

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Mind you, there are some measures in this legislation that are good, and likely attract universal support. Streamlining access to the disability tax credit and adding more funding for safe sport initiatives are both nice policies, even if they’re just trimming around the edges of systemic social issues. And promises to fight financial crimes, while vague, would obviously be welcome if they materialize; a ban on cryptocurrency ATMs will cut down on a massive conduit for money laundering.

But there are also less savoury things snuck into this omnibus package, which would likely be controversial if they were presented upfront as their own separate legislation. Without specifying details or limits, the Carney Liberals plan to allow police officers to search through Canada Post letter mail and packages, a second swing at the decried “snooping provisions” of the failed Bill C-2.

And just as vague are their stated plans to “modernise [sic]” airport governance, and delegate air travel complaint resolution to a private organization. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is openly floating the possibility of privatizing core national assets, increasing my anxieties about the Carney Liberal austerity plan.

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Going into the core economic policies of this legislative package, we see that the balance lies firmly on making Canada an attractive investment opportunity rather than making Canada an affordable place to live. Much touted is the new Canada Strong Fund, an investment vehicle being endowed with CAD$25 billion in public funds, plus additional private capital invested by individual Canadians in some sort of advantaged structure.

Canada’s adoption of a sovereign wealth fund is confusing, as one is typically used to capture tax revenue from natural resources during a fiscal surplus, and then diversify the money into a variety of international assets according to an apolitical strategy. Instead, Canada will be investing borrowed money while in a fiscal deficit, refusing to impose any sort of windfall tax on oil and gas companies in the wake of their profiteering off the Iran War, and the money will go towards major domestic projects designated by politicians, raising questions of the suitability of investments picked.

Further, the idea that the government will back the fund’s returns implies that “major” projects which can’t obtain financing due to their lack of returns will be subsidized by taxpayer dollars. In addition, most Canadians are nowhere close to filling up their TFSA, RRSP, FHSA and other tax-advantaged investment vehicles, if they can even save money at all. Sliding another one of these kinds of subsidized or advantaged accounts on top of the pile is merely a new way to widen the wealth gap, the rich growing their hoard of gold while the poor live paycheque-to-paycheque.

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The Spring Economic Update does have one pro-worker set of policies, if you’re considering the skilled trades. Billions of dollars are being allocated to help ensure more apprentices can actually pass their Red Seal certifications, including a CAD$10,000 lump sum, an additional CAD$400/week income top-up in training, and a CAD$5,000 bonus for those who obtain their Red Seal. While these will address some of the issues that cause people to fail out of the skilled trades, there are other issues that aren’t tied to money, like rampant sexual harassment pushing women away.

And this only helps the segment of people currently trying to break into the trades, without doing much else in the short-term for the working class to address the affordability question. If you’re already a certified journeyperson, this does nothing to increase your wages—indeed, additional competition from others in your trade may lower them—and if you’re not in the trades at all this does nothing to immediately address food or housing costs.

The one token measure that the average Canadian does get in this regard will be a small cut to Canada Pension Plan contributions; according to the Spring Economic Update, an individual earning CAD$70,000/year will now pay CAD$133 less in annual CPP contributions. For such a small reduction in individual payments, I can’t see this slash to the CPP as a positive; taking money away from your own retirement savings is like robbing Peter to pay Paul, and multiplied over an entire generation of Canadians doing the same, there will be a great societal cost.

In conclusion, this legislative package offers very little for the average Canadian. If you’re wealthy and have money to spend, this will help you pull even further ahead, but the rest of us will be left behind as the consequence. It does not appear that the Carney Liberals will take the affordability issue seriously any time soon.

Gerrymandering, the practice by which a political leader manipulates district or riding boundaries to create an advantage for their in-group in winning elections, is a scourge upon democracy. It is in fact the quiet death of a democracy, the degeneration into competitive authoritarianism, where elections exist but are neither free nor fair.

The name itself stems from a centuries-old meme, dating to the early history of the United States post-revolution. In 1812, then-Governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry performed this corrupt practice, and the term “gerry-mander” was originated by political cartoonist Elkanah Tisdale as a portmanteau of Governor Gerry’s last name and “salamander”, since one of the manipulated districts visibly resembled the shape of this amphibian.

And for the Yankee Empire, gerrymandering is indeed as integral to their cultural identity as baseball and apple pie. Frequently, politicians have utilized this tool to rig elections in their favour, packing voters in such a way as to maximize the number of seats they win, while reducing the number of seats their opponents win. Rather than voters choosing their leaders in the United States, it is the leaders who choose their voters.

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And since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 2019 that gerrymandering was not a question that federal courts could adjudicate, there is essentially no legal remedy for voters against gerrymandering. Fast-forward to 2026, and the Yankees have slipped even further into competitive authoritarianism, with Republicans explicitly gerrymandering seats in their states to ice Democrats out, and Democrats now returning the favour in blue states.

Canada, in contrast, has built a consensus at both the federal and subnational levels that riding boundaries should be drawn by an independent body, not merely a multipartisan group but rather a non-partisan group. In the 1950s, Manitoba was the first to delegate the power of drawing boundaries away to such an independent group, and nationally the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act would do the same before the 1968 Canadian Federal Election. This distinction shows the strength of our democracy in comparison to the Yankee Empire’s competitive authoritarian regime.

The only exception to this status quo was a feeble attempt at gerrymandering Prince Edward Island in 2006, where then-Premier Pat Binns’ Conservative government threw out the independently-drawn riding boundaries after they would have caused incumbents to be redistricted. This backfired, however, as PEI would throw out the Binns Conservatives en masse in 2007, flipping the island to a Liberal majority under Robert Ghiz.

Binns’ attempt at gerrymandering failed primarily because it did not actually create much strategic advantage, and voters found it distasteful. But twenty years later, Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta’s United Conservative Party is carrying out a much more advanced gerrymandering strategy, one that is unfortunately very likely to succeed.

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Two days ago, Alberta’s Conservative majority passed a motion in the provincial legislature against a helpless NDP opposition, throwing out the boundaries drawn by the independent commission and creating a new partisan group that will draw alternative ridings. The Smith Conservatives plan to break apart NDP ridings in the urban centres of Edmonton and Calgary, splitting the NDP voters up into new rural-urban hybrid ridings where they’ll be outnumbered by rural voters whom are firmly right-wing.

This rural-urban voter dynamic will increase the effectiveness of the gerrymandering strategy. These new boundaries will not follow any organic divisions of communities or neighbourhoods, but will rather be designed to neutralize voters by pairing them with opposite-minded ones. Furthermore, while right-leaning PEI voters took offence to the gerrymandering twenty years ago and may have broken for the Liberals, Albertan Conservatives today have quite literally zero moral standards, and will vote blue no matter who.

Indeed, while Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP can make their complaints, they have effectively no recourse. The ANDP has already hit a ceiling for seat count due to their limited popularity outside Alberta’s urban centres, and their only victory in modern history involved two right-wing parties splitting the vote, a scenario which no longer exists. If they lose their foothold in Edmonton and Calgary to gerrymandering, Alberta will fully collapse into one-party Conservative rule, with not even the pretense of an opposition remaining.

Premier Smith’s plan to enshrine decades of Conservative hegemony will ruin any notion that Alberta is a democratic society. It will degrade into competitive authoritarianism, where the Notwithstanding Clause is used regularly to violate civil rights, and the only shifts in power will come when one Conservative replaces another. There will be no place for ideological debate outside the confines set by the Party.

This is no way for a society to live…yet it is exactly what Alberta is about to become. And I have no faith that Albertan voters will turn away before it’s too late.

Premier Doug Ford has been on a rather turbulent flight these past few days! After boasting years ago that he refuses to use a private jet to fly, claiming the cost to taxpayers is too high, and after making a point for years of flying commercially in Economy Class so that he could be seen travelling with normal Ontarians, Doug Ford has radio’d air traffic control to alter his flight plan!

Earlier this week, Ford’s office confirmed that they had purchased a pre-owned Bombardier Challenger 650 from the 2016 model year for the Premier’s use. This expense was valued at CAD$28.9 million, and would replace Ford’s previous use of temporarily charted jets, rented in recent years only on the rare occasions where the Premier actually needs to travel far from Ontario.

Ford’s defence of the purchase is that Québec has purchased three Challenger 650s, and the Federal government has purchased six Bombardier Global 6500s. Yet unlike Ontario, who has arranged this jet for VIP travel, Québec and Canada are using their ordered jets for actually important work, like air ambulance service and military operations. There is no comparison between the value of a working jet and a VIP sky limo.

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Needless to say, both the NDP and Liberal opposition in Ontario pounced on this private jet purchase without hesitation, dubbing it the “gravy plane”, a reference to the “stop the gravy train” slogan of Doug and his late brother Rob during their time in Toronto municipal politics as councillor and mayor respectively. Indeed, calling it the Gravy Plane is some of the best narrative-shaping that the opposition to Ford has accomplished during all three of his terms.

Even the staunchly right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation put Ford on blast for purchasing the Gravy Plane, with their Ontario Director Noah Jarvis claiming Ford wants to “cosplay the life of the rich and famous” while “ordinary taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet”. This criticism is very potent, as Ford’s government has instituted cuts so severe that our health system is now in crisis mode, and education will become inaccessible to a large swath of the province, all while Ford insists that Galen Weston has a right to gouge us to death on grocery prices.

Even worse, as the Challenger 650 has limitations regarding the runways it can land on, many of the remote airstrips in Northern Ontario, the most justifiable place for the Premier to fly regularly, will not be able to take the Gravy Plane. Considering all these factors, the public blowback against the Gravy Plane was intense enough that the Ford government has made a U-turn midair, and promised to sell the Challenger 650 he just purchased “as quickly as possible.” Thus, the situation is settled, the story wrapped in a nice little bow, nothing to worry about.

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Except for one thing. One teeny, little thing. You see, it turns out the Government of Ontario has never been the legal owner of this jet. Contrary to reporting by the Toronto Star and the CBC and all the international media who cited them, the specific Challenger 650 in question is not the legal property of Ontario, and never has been!

On Twitter, Steffan Watkins, an expert in tracking plane registrations and movements, tracked down the exact Challenger 650 in Canada’s database of registered planes. Since the plane has been identified as being made in 2016, and having been previously registered in two specific places before Canada, Mr. Watkins has identified exactly one Challenger 650 in Canada which matches the profile of the Challenger 650 which Ontario allegedly “purchased”.

In truth, the Gravy Plane has never been registered to the Government of Ontario, but instead to a private aircraft management and chartering company known as ACASS Canada Limited. We do not know exactly what contract has been arranged between Ontario and ACASS, including the actual structure of the deal, because journalists didn’t bother to do the basic investigative work of seeing who actually owns the plane!

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If the people of Ontario are to be the ultimate loser of this transaction, there must be a winner on the other side that we have not identified. Perhaps ACASS is simply managing the plane on behalf of Ontario, or perhaps the plane was never actually intended to go to Ontario in the first place. There is too much about this story that we do not know.

As such, the media cannot wash our hands of this story. There is further investigative work to be done before we can understand what Premier Ford is planning, and we must question the unfounded assumptions that mainstream reporters have run with in their coverage. Until we do, the truth will not be revealed to us.

As most people are aware, even those who are not interested in footy, FIFA is hosting the 23^rd edition of the World Cup this summer in North America, spread across the United States, Canada, and México. And considering the current state of political affairs in the Yankee Empire, there has been some concern over their hosting of FIFA matches, as many temporary visitors from around the world, many of whom are not white, will be forced to contend with the normalized presence of racist ICE thugs in airports and on the streets.

Indeed, people from multiple African countries participating in the World Cup will be forced to pay a USD$15,000 bond to enter the United States for the games. This outrageous sum is not solely for fans, but also extends to players and coaches as well. In regard to Iran, Donald Trump has threatened the “life and safety” of the Iranian team if they choose to attend, and FIFA has rejected Iran’s request to move their games from the United States to México, undoubtedly the safest of the three host countries.

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Yet it is now Canada which falls under scrutiny for creating an unwelcoming atmosphere towards a national football association. On April 30^th, FIFA will be holding their Congress in Vancouver prior to the World Cup, an occasion on which they can conduct their governance of football globally. Regardless of whether a nation has qualified for the World Cup, all national associations recognized by FIFA are entitled to send their delegates to participate in the Congress and have a say in the future of the sport.

As such, it is Canada which must issue visas to delegates attending this international body, an organized event which Canada considers legitimate and participates in themselves. Yet The Guardian reports that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has denied visas to the three primary delegates attending on behalf of the Palestinian Football Association. This is curious, as Canada claims to now recognize the State of Palestine, and these are delegates from a body sanctioned by the Palestinian government, a body which has been a FIFA member since 1998. On what basis does Canada refuse their participation in the FIFA Congress?

On this basis, I reached out to Minister Lena Diab, the Liberal MP who Prime Minister Mark Carney has placed in charge of this portfolio. As I phrased it to her press secretary, “Can Minister Diab conform whether IRCC will allow any Palestinian delegates to attend the FIFA Congress? Are Palestinian delegates from the state that Canada recognizes allowed to attend any international conferences in Canada at all?”

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Minister Diab’s press secretary did respond, in a sense, but insisted to me that without a signed consent form from the three barred delegates, they will not provide details regarding this case. Speaking more generally, they insist that “visa applications are considered on a case-by-case basis based on the information presented by the applicant” and that regardless of nationality, all visa applicants must comply with eligibility and admissibility requirements.

Yet there has been no other case of a country’s delegates being denied the ability to enter Canada for April 30^th’s FIFA Congress. It is only the Palestinians, to public knowledge, that have been treated in this way. Further damning, The Guardian’s reporting indicates that the Palestinian delegation was planning to discuss FIFA’s recent decision regarding matches played in Israeli settlement colonies.

Absent a change in the Carney government’s policy, or absent alternative Palestinian delegates that Canada will allow, it appears Palestine will be shut out of international organizations yet again, one more example of the Palestine Exception. And for all that Canada can claim to “recognize” Palestine, our recognition clearly means nothing when we treat them this way. Today, it is not the United States nor Israel who are closing the door on Palestinians.

No, today, it is us.