Copy, paste, sprawl
When I say "infill", you say "sprawl"! Plus, a swing and a miss on electoral reform.
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Last week, I launched my ko-fi.com page where folks can leave tips if they like the work I’m doing. While a lot of writers and creators monetize their newsletters or online ventures through subscription models, I felt like that wasn’t right in this context considering the shrinking news and commentary scene in the city. So, rather than charge everyone to read the Sewer Socialists, I thought I’d leave a virtual tip jar out instead.
I’m so completely overwhelmed by the response I got from folks. I knew you were all amazing, but the support I have received over the past week has been beyond my wildest dreams.
The support I have received has allowed me to pay for the Concerned Hamiltonians fact-checking site I started, which is incredible. I am going to keep updating that site and holding that dark money group accountable as long as they think they can buy our democracy with weird newspaper ads and half-baked social media campaigns.
Thank you again to everyone who has shown support thus far. I can’t thank you all enough. Here’s to bigger and brighter things on the horizon!
Fill in the ______
When I was about 7 years old, my family moved from Fessenden to a new subdivision further south on Upper Paradise. The 2.7 kilometre move deeper into the Mountain and away from the Escarpment’s edge transported me from a 70’s/80’s style suburb to a quintessentially 90s’/00’s suburb. The yards were greener, the amenities were further away, the streets were wider, the people were more isolated. Few neighbours talked regularly and even the most cordial of relationships quickly devolved into passive aggressive hostility. Someone’s flowerbeds were too ugly, someone’s car was too loud, someone’s kids walked on someone else’s grass.
My experience in the suburbs was unpleasant, to say the least. I felt stifled, trapped, alone. Rather than learn to drive as soon as I was able, I put my energy into school and my first part-time job: working as a cashier at Fortinos. Getting to my shifts on time meant leaving my parent’s house at Upper Paradise and Rymal and walking at a brisk pace (read: gay speed) for about 30 to 45 minutes to Upper James and Rymal.
There were spring mornings where I would stop along the way and watch the deer grazing quietly at the corner of Garth and Rymal. Mist hanging in the early morning air that was quiet and heavy and holding onto a little of winter’s cold, but still carrying the unmistakable smell of warmth and thawing soil. I would pause and watch as does and fawns would tug at the greenery, unbothered by the world around them.
Over the years, I would experience fewer and fewer of those tranquil mornings. My peaceful walks to work would be replaced with harrowing marches down mud-soaked and construction-debris-riddled sidewalks. The fields through which deer bounded were replaced with more single detached homes. More cars, more people living in isolation, more sprawl.
From 1999 to 2014, a good portion of the land in the neighbourhoods surrounding me changed uses, being developed at an ever-increasing speed. Meadows, farmer’s fields, marshes…all paved and filled in and built upon. The map below shows the extent of development over 15 years, but does not show that, of the agricultural fields that dotted the landscape in 1999, none remained by 2014, having either been paved over or falling into disuse.
I moved out when I was 22, relocating to Ainslie Wood to be closer to school, friends, and my new job as a teaching assistant at Mac. And while I never thought I’d return to the suburbs, I couldn’t now even if I wanted to.
In the six neighbourhoods in the far southwestern corner (what used to be nestled up against “old” Hamilton city limits) of Hamilton mountain - Falkirk, Sheldon-Mewburn, Ryckmans, Allison, Kennedy, and Carpenter - the average price for a single-detached home on the market as of today is just a hair shy of $1.4 million. For a townhome, it is slightly over $750,000.
Plugging those numbers into the FirstOntario credit union’s mortgage calculator gives us a figure of $8,150 a month or $97,800 a year for a single detached home. For a townhome, that’s around $4,375 a month or $52,500 a year. If we go off the CMHC’s definition of “affordable” housing (which is 30% of a household’s before-tax annual income) and don’t count any of the other expenses associated with housing like property taxes, gas, hydro, water, internet, etc., then those single detached homes might be affordable to about 9% of the city’s population. The townhomes could be within reach for about 15% of Hamiltonians. But for an average $1.4 million dollar home on Hamilton’s southwest mountain, you better be pulling in a yearly income of over $325,000 to make ends meet.
When I read this week that The Upper West Side Landowners Group - a consortium of developers including Spallacci Homes, LIV Communities, Starward Homes, and Really Living (among others) - had appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal in a desperate bid to revive the flagging project, my heart sank a little. The proposed development is slightly beyond the boundaries of those southwest mountain neighbourhoods where I grew up and raises major questions about what kind of housing we need and where we need it. I had thought that the province’s walkback of the 2022 urban boundary expansion forced on Hamilton had ended that project, but there’s apparently still some life left in it.
The proposed “Upper West Side” project seeks to push the boundaries of the urban further in an effort to make rich developers even more money while simultaneously doing nothing for housing affordability and adding more inefficient, car-centric development to a city that is already suffering the consequences of years of unrestrained urban sprawl. And, adding insult to injury, the consortium has the audacity to claim that their megasprawl project is actually “infill”.
So let’s look at the past and present of the “Upper West Side” and what to expect in the event that the project has a future.
This ain’t no Lincoln Square
I’m going to pull out some of my planning school knowledge for this bit, so enjoy this glimpse into 1/4th of my education.
The proposed Upper West Side development is a 2.5 square kilometre (approx. 618 acre) assemblage of existing parcels of land between Glancaster Road in the west, Twenty Road West in the north, Upper James on the east, and Dickenson Road West in the south.
The block is already home to a few things. There are many active farmer’s fields in the area, though the consortium’s view is that the agricultural development in their proposed development space is not worth saving. Their website indicates they commissioned an “Agricultural Impact Study” in 2018, which “confirmed that the subject lands were not ‘Prime Agricultural’ lands”. They are able to claim this because the study found that “the lands lack any active specialty crop enterprises”, “the lands are not economically viable as an agricultural use given the high land values imposed by surrounding urban development”, and “the lands are not designated agricultural by the Province or City.”1
There’s a reason for this. Much of the land in the study area was rezoned by the city in 2015 as part of the wider “Aerotropolis” plan. Aerotropolis, also known by the official name “The Airport Employment Growth District”, was first pushed by airport and business executives in 2001 and slowly churned its way through local and provincial bureaucracy before the former Ontario Municipal Board allowed for the rezoning of these lands 14 years later.2 So, while it is true that the lands are currently not zoned “agricultural”, they were as recently as 9 years ago and select parcels remain farmland to this day.
Using the city’s Interactive Zoning Map, these are the current zones in the block:
This is my quick rendering in the free, open-source mapping program QGIS, so don’t go using this for any official planning business or anything.
Most of the land is designated either “Airport Prestige Business” or “Airport Light Industrial”. There are notable blocks of Rural zoning and some “Open Space”. But there are also designated Conservation/Hazard Lands. All of these are designated “P5”, which is the city’s classification for lands you can’t build on because they might flood. Which makes sense; on the aerial imagery available through Google Maps, small ponds and rivers are evident in the landscape.
There are a couple of prominent existing uses in this block. The web of streets coming off Upper James on the above map is the location of the HSR’s Mountain Transit Centre, also known by the loving name the “Bus Barn”. The city is planning on opening Bus Barn 2.0 on Wentworth Street North at some point to ease the overcrowding at the Mountain Transit Centre (where some of the busses are forced to live free-range outdoors), but the current centre won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
Closer to Twenty Road West is the “Really Living Centre”, which is a church and community centre operated by the Seventh-Day Adventists. “Really Living” is actually listed as a developer in the Upper West Side consortium, indicating they have some kind of connection to the proposed development.
Between the church and the Bus Barn is the former Sharples Greenhouses. The 32.4 acre plot of land is presently for sale for a cool $20 million. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in it, though, as it has been on the market for over a year now. That’s likely because about half of the property is “Conservation/Hazard Land” and unsuitable for development.
On the other side of the block, off Glancaster Road, is the former Glancaster Golf Club. The golf course was active from 1988 to 2015, closing shortly after the Aerotropolis rezoning, though the owners indicated they were ready to retire after decades in the golf business.3
Within the proposed development area, there are 5 inventoried heritage properties and 2 “registered non-designated” heritage properties. This means that the properties aren’t protected, but have been listed as having “cultural heritage value or interest”. One of those properties is known as the “Marshall House” or “Rose Farm”. The land was first settled in the colonial era in 1805, but the current Gothic Revival farmhouse was built in 1874 by Alexander and Marcia Marshall, serving as a home for the couple and their seven children until the late 1920s. A municipal heritage report from 2020 read:
A high degree of craftsmanship or artistic merit is demonstrated through its well executed masonry construction, including low hip roof with curvilinear modillions or brackets, segmental arch wood windows and doors and dichromatic brick quoins.4
Included with the municipal report was an old photo of the home which is, today, hard to view from the street for the hedge of trees surrounding the structure.
Back to the present: The Upper West Side development wouldn’t actually take up the entire block, at least initially. The 2.5 square kilometre area for the proposal includes the Really Living Centre, Rose Farm, and the former Glancaster Golf Club, but not the Bus Barn, Sharples land, or any of the properties on the southeast corner of the block. There’s a chance that, if the plan moves forward, the developers will try to expand the area (their plans sure indicate they will, more on that in a minute), but none of that is certain at the present moment. The proposed Upper West Side development does include a fair amount of the “Conservation/Hazard Land” in the block, though.
So what’s the history of this development and why are they going to the Ontario Land Tribunal right now?
Outlook: hazy
According to the developers behind the proposed Upper West Side development, they began working on the plan as early as 2006, even before the urban boundary was expanded for Aerotropolis. But one problem persisted in their efforts. Even with the 2015 urban boundary expansion, two huge holes remained. And those holes just so happened to be where they wanted to build.
Holes be damned, the Upper West Side consortium started their assessments in 2019 as a way to “soft launch” their development. Even if there were still barriers to getting shovels in the ground, by initiating the process, they could make the case to the city that they had already sunk costs into the development.
Shortly after Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives came to power in Ontario, they began fiddling with legislation in a flagrant attempt to benefit developers. The Upper West Side developers were one of the first to make a pitch under the new legislation to fill in what a planning consultant representing the consortium told the Spec were “[literal] holes in the doughnut in terms of the urban boundary.”5 A week later, on July 14, 2020, the consortium “launched” what they called the “Twenty Road West development plan” which promised housing for 16,000 residents, $200 million in immediate revenue, and $60 million in annual tax revenue.6
But, in October of 2020, the city’s Planning Committee unanimously struck down their request because, as the city argued, any changes should happen “as part of the Municipal Comprehensive Review (MCR) and not through a privately initiated application” and that “The combination of the City’s existing Vacant Residential Land Inventory (VRLI) and intensification opportunities satisfies the land supply requirements of the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS).” As the motion succinctly noted: “There is no need to bring additional lands into the urban boundary prior to the completion of the MCR…”7 In 2020, council stated that we had enough land available for development within the existing urban boundary to meet projected demand, so converting this rural land to urban land would not get us any closer to building the amount of housing we think we need.
It was at that October meeting of the Planning Committee that the consortium’s consultant first raised the theory that the Upper West Side development wouldn’t be sprawl because there was already development happening near it. No, instead of sprawl, the development would be infill.8 More on that in a minute.
In March of 2021, just 6 months after council rejected the Upper West Side consortium’s plea to expand the urban boundary for them, Hamilton’s municipal representatives were debating the specifics of the MCR noted in their October 2020 opposition. Rather than make a decision without public input, council decided to survey residents on how the city should grow - have 75% of new development occur within the existing urban boundary and 25% in formerly rural “greenfields” by expanding the urban boundary by 1,340 hectares (of which 10% would likely be the two doughnut holes of concern for the Upper West Side folks) in a scheme called “Ambitious Density” or keep the boundary the same and have 100% of new development occur within the existing urban boundary. Surveys were collected through the end of July, 2021 and, by that November, we had our answer: 90.4% of Hamiltonians rejected the idea of an urban boundary expansion. The passionate and dedicated organizing of groups like Stop Sprawl HamOnt was critical to the success of this campaign. Amazing community members went above-and-beyond to educate residents on the issue and convince nearly 20,000 people to participate in a voluntary mail-in midterm survey about urban sprawl (which, despite a developer-funded countersurvey and subsequent attempt to create distrust of the mail-in survey by developer-backed research teams, was an entirely legitimate form of public engagement).
Up against a developer-funded front group called Hamilton Needs Housing, the SSHO folks showed that commitment to a principle could defeat even the monetary weight of the development industry. While the Upper West Side consortium wasn’t officially a sponsor of Hamilton Needs Housing, they were connected to the lobby campaign through fellow members of the West End Home Builders' Association, a developer and landlord lobby group for Hamilton and Halton-based construction and real estate companies.
Council had their answer and, in November of 2021, voted to reject urban sprawl and refocus development within the existing urban boundary.
One year later, after Ontarians rewarded the Ford Tories with a second majority and after Hamiltonians elected a new council, the provincial government turned around and imposed an urban boundary expansion on Hamilton against the wishes of the city’s residents and municipal representatives. Going even further than the “Ambitious Density” proposal, the province imposed a 2,220 hectare expansion on the city. Though smaller on the map than the more egregious expansions around Elfrida and Miles Road, the province’s map clearly showed the two doughnut holes in the Upper West Side were filled in with the strawberry jam of urban sprawl. It wasn’t known at the time, but later reporting indicated that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing favoured “unnamed third parties” who may or may not have had a financial interest in expanding the city’s urban boundary instead of listening to actual experts when considering the expansion.
Anti-sprawl advocates jumped into action again, relentlessly campaigning for a reversal to the undemocratic imposition of something Hamiltonians clearly did not want. While they kept the pressure on the Ford Tories, the Upper West Side consortium was moving forward with their development plans. On September 12, 2023, the group held a virtual public meeting where they outlined their plans for the block where they presented some initial slides to make their case for pursuing development. This presentation explained their process, including their desire to move forward with a secondary plan to provide a more detailed outline of what the development would look like. This meeting was followed by an in-person gathering on October 18, 2023 at the Really Living Centre, which they billed as an open house to:
inform the community of the Secondary Plan process, longterm planning goals for the area and give interested participants the opportunity to ask questions and provide your thoughts on the proposed development.9
Just five days later came the shock announcement that the province was walking back the urban boundary expansion it had forced on Hamilton less than a year prior. The doughnut holes were back, creating huge gaps in the proposed Upper West Side development.
That was not a good week for the Upper West Side folks. Doughnut holes to start the week, and time in court to end it. Turns out that the consortium was doing a little bit more than just holding community consultations about the land. Earlier that spring, they began clearcutting the trees on the land to speed along the development. Despite their own consultants identifying endangered butternuts and a black cherry tree that was a “potential roost tree for bats”, they went ahead and started chopping them down. Even worse, the person who ended up cutting down the trees for the consortium was a contractor who said he was given an indication from the Upper West Side developers that he could proceed with the logging.10
In December, the city issued a notice to the Upper West Side consortium saying that their application to proceed with the secondary plan was “incomplete”, as they had issues with a whole array of the required studies needed to proceed. And so the Upper West Side developers marched off to the Ontario Land Tribunal to appeal the city’s decision.
As was reported in the Spec, the decision to move forward with an appeal is…odd. As Phil Pothen of Environmental Defence noted: “I think they may be making sort of a symbolic gesture.” The Upper West Side folks countered, saying they submitted the plan before the province reversed the imposed urban boundary expansion and, anyway, what the city wants is both “not reasonable” and “not required”.11
Ultimately, it seems like the consortium is trying to squeeze out a ruling in their favour which will allow them to make the case to somebody, somewhere, they they should proceed with the development. But what exactly is it they want to proceed with and why do they keep pitching it as “infill”?
On doughnut holes and filling
Because the group hasn’t moved forward with any meaningful plans, all we have are their promotional materials to go off. Developers sometimes (but not always) pull out all the stops when pitching a development in an effort to woo skeptical municipal politicians and hesitant neighbours with glitzy, glamourous, world-shattering renderings, complete with happy middle-class couples laughing, holding hands, wandering down the street as people dine on patios around them and children happily play on immaculate fields of splendiferous green.
The promo video for the Upper West Side does just that, as demonstrated by these stills:
Beyond that, there really isn’t much in the way of specifics, other than what brief glimpses we get from the video and the few maps they provide in their slides.
They’ve previously indicated that the development would accommodate 5,400 to 7,000 homes, “of which potentially 500 units…are being set aside for affordable housing.” This also includes 20 acres of park space and a possible “3.5 million square feet of employment uses”.12 Based on the promotional images, the slides, and the information provided, we get this map:
The consortium has promised a “mixed-use core” along the proposed extension of Garth Street, which could mean condos with ground-floor retail. They’ve also identified areas for “prestige employment lands”, which they indicate will be ideal for offices, hotels, and business centres. The video shows natural heritage corridors along major streets, leading into and encompassing the hazard lands unsuitable for development. There’s no acknowledgement of the heritage properties or the Rose Farm.
All the rest is up in the air. The promotional video indicates they want to locate airport industrial uses in the southeast corner of the block, but they don’t actually own that, so that seems speculative rather than concrete. But, based on the city’s current zoning, Hamilton would actually be losing a lot of airport industrial and “prestige” commercial that would, instead, be used for housing.
Their website provides little else in the way of specifics and, in some cases, contradicts other statements. The much-hyped mixed-use corridor is downplayed on their FAQ, which reads: “Mixed uses are being considered for areas especially along the Garth Street extension.”13 And the affordable units? Their website says this:
“Further details on the affordable housing will be determined through future work. Opportunities for partnership with affordable housing providers will be explored and could result in the deliver of affordable housing through the provision of land, the construction of affordable dwellings or others. Forms may include townhouses and apartments including market-rate rentals.”14
So that’s not a guarantee. And if they’re classifying “market-rate rentals” as “affordable”, then someone should tell them that almost all of Hamilton’s market-rate apartments are only affordable to people making at least $65,000 a year.
Even when it comes to transportation, the details get all muddled up. While the site talks about potential cycling and transit connections, the presentation slides recommend adding two lanes to each of the surrounding streets to accommodate new car traffic.
Ultimately, we have to assume that the bulk of the development will take the form that makes developers the most money: single detached homes and stacked, car-centric townhomes. Flashy renderings and vague promises of “mixed use” development are easily discarded when it comes time to consider the return on investment. And that’ll put a stop to all that “affordability” talk. Sure, there will be opportunities for partnerships with affordable housing providers, but if costs rise too much, those aspirations can be put aside or finessed to better fit within the business model.
Another nearby development can provide us with some insight as to what the community might look like if it is finally forced through. A new development sandwiched between Upper James and the Highway 6 expansion (on the other side of the airport from where the Upper West Side is proposed) bills itself as “a community that’s close to everything the modern family could want.” Parks, schools, retail, mountain-inspired exteriors, the perfect space for the modern family on the go. You, young professional, you want to live here because it is just like being in New York or Paris or London and you’ll have everything you ever wanted! And all starting at the low, low price of $700,000.
Then of course, there’s reality. Little-to-no retail, almost no public greenspace, accessible to almost nothing on foot. Ample space for cars and just enough room to keep away from your neighbours. Resale values in that neighbourhood are hovering around $1 million at the moment. Those units in that subdivision scooped up by investors are being rented for between $2800 and $3700 a month.
It is sometimes hard to remember that developers are sales people who are selling a product. Part of the disconnect comes from the fact that the product they’re selling is something we need. We need a space to live, to sleep, to keep our stuff. We need a roof over our heads. And they’re selling us that. But they’re also selling us the idea of home. They want that idea to be as appealing as possible, so they pitch us what we want. They tell us it will be affordable, surrounded by greenery, close to schools and small businesses, walkable and sustainable and innovative and nurturing and meaningful. But building those kinds of communities is expensive. And, at the end of the day, you’re buying the structure and the land, not the neighbourhood. So they tell us what is possible, rather than what’s really going to be there.
There’s no reason to believe the Upper West Side will be anything more than a new suburb. Smaller lots, more exposed utility boxes, a couple of stacked townhouse complexes thrown in, but basically the same as the suburb I grew up in. That I felt trapped in. That I, and most of us Hamiltonians who do not yet own property, will never be able to afford to buy into.
The added insult in this proposal is that the developers keep pitching it as “infill”, knowing that the term is trendy and is what those in the know want to see more of in the future. Their website says this:
Infill is the process of developing vacant or under-utilized land within existing urban areas that are largely developed or designated for development. Infill areas can efficiently use existing servicing or community facilities to support additional residential or employment populations.
The Upper West Side Community is an infilling opportunity because it is surrounded by existing and designated urban areas around its entire periphery and can be supported by available sanitary and water services.15
This is a wild misrepresentation of the project. Straight up alternative facts.
Proper infill development takes inefficient land in already built-up urban centres and converts the use to something that is more dense and more efficient than what is currently on the site. This means turning a single detached home into a triplex, or knocking it down and building a walk-up or cottage court or a new form of multiplex. The ideal kind of infill is the Missing Middle, which I talk about at length because it has the potential to be transformative in this current age of both climate and housing crises.
Infill increases urban density in a way that’s less dramatic than maintaining a sea of single detached homes interspersed with the occasional 50-storey condo tower. That’s why it is also called “gentle density”.
Just because the Upper West Side is surrounded by sprawl does not mean it is an infill opportunity. That means it is just filling in rural areas with more inefficient single detached housing that makes developers rich at the expense of community, the environment, and the personal wellbeing of residents.
The flashy promo materials and grand claims of the backers are little more than sales tactics. When it comes down to it, the Upper West Side, if allowed to proceed against the wishes of the community, will likely be another car-dependent suburb. Chances are it’ll be crammed with ticky tacky single detached houses on postage stamp lawns or stacked townhouses set back in a sea of parking, rather than hip, new, sustainable walkups or apartments. It probably have strip malls, rather than real mixed-use developments. It’ll almost certainly prioritize the profit of the developers over the well-being of the community.
The block between Dickenson, Glancaster, Twenty, and Upper James is home to important parts of the city’s history. There are ponds and rivers and streams running through the land. There are endangered tree species and farmer’s fields and municipal uses. It is a little slice of rural land besieged on all sides by the sprawl. Two massive chunks of it remain rural. They aren’t just doughnut holes to be filled; they’re a reminder that a variety of uses can exist in a municipality. That not every field and meadow and thicket needs to be plowed under and built upon. That land has meaning beyond the value placed on it by developers and real estate agents.
Hamilton has said no to sprawl again and again and again. It is abundantly clear the community does not want the kind of development being pitched by the Upper West Side landowners. And it is clear the proposed development will add more cars, more expensive homes, and more sprawl to our community, no matter what the proponents tell us.
We want real infill, we want real affordability, we want real sustainable housing. We want farm land and meadows and creeks and streams and spaces that are alive.
But what they’re offering us is little more than a doughnut hole.
Always just a little too far past the post
On Wednesday (February 7), MPs voted on a private member’s bill from Nanaimo—Ladysmith NDP MP Lisa Marie Barron. That bill was M-86, a motion on a Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, which would have pushed the government to move forward in a meaningful way on replacing Canada’s current electoral system. The vote failed in the House with 218 against and 102 for the motion.
Only two of Hamilton’s MPs voted in favour of M-86: Hamilton Centre’s Matthew Green (NDP) and Hamilton East—Stoney Creek’s Chad Collins (Liberal).
Three of the area’s MPs - Hamilton Mountain’s Lisa Hepfner (Liberal), Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas’s Filomena Tassi (Liberal), and Flamborough—Glanbrook’s Dan Muys (Conservative) - voted against the motion. While Muys’s vote was upsetting, it wasn’t surprising; the Conservatives benefit from and strongly support the first-past-the-post system as it currently exists, which explains why only 3 out of 117 Tories voted for the motion.
What was more surprising was seeing Hepfner and Tassi vote against the motion, even when 40 of their 157 Liberal colleagues voted in favour of it. Keen observers will remember that the Liberals were kinda supportive of electoral reform in 2015, which was the election in which Tassi was first sent to Ottawa. Aside from the argument about democratic fairness, the Liberals have the most to lose under the current system, with latest models showing that, if an election were held today, the party would win only 74 seats, despite hovering around the 30% support level in federal polling.
Plus, both Tassi and Hepfner (assuming they both run again) are very, very vulnerable if the Liberal slide continues. The Mountain could easily go NDP and HWAD has been a three-party battleground for a long time.16 Voting in favour of this motion would have at least given them something to try and woo over disaffected or marginal NDPers and Greens at the doors when the next election comes around.
It was sad to see M-86 defeated in the House. But that doesn’t mean the fight for fair elections is over. If you, like me, believe we need to ditch first-past-the-post, check out the work being done by the cool folks over at Fair Vote Canada. We’ll get there one day!
Cool facts for cool people
Toronto, a city with some of the lowest property taxes in Ontario, is debating whether to increase said taxes by 9.5%. While Mayor Olivia Chow is arguing that the increase is necessary to adequately fund municipal services, a group of right-wing ex-politicians has begun a pressure campaign to encourage council to vote against the increase. What’s really interesting about this is Toronto Star reporter David Rider’s observation that the anti-tax letter will have an “inevitable accompanying Postmedia story”. This gets to something I’ve been angry about for a while: a pressure group campaigns against something (immigration, taxes, trans rights, etc.) that was never on anyone’s radar, that position is laundered in the right-wing media (the Post, the Sun, depending on the day the Globe) and is injected into the public consciousness through repetition and fear-mongering, a small number of the right-wing base begins pestering politicians on it, those politicians take up the cause. This well-funded right-wing outrage machine is creating policy in a way progressives simply can’t. Deeply frustrating.
The culture war storm in Alberta is getting weird. After hard-right premier Danielle (Marlaina) Smith announced sweeping anti-trans legislation (recently endorsed by Pierre Poilievre), a poll was conducted by “National Public Research Canada” on the issue of parental consent for minors who want to seek an abortion. The question was odd to many and the polling firm - National Public Research Canada - does not seem to actually exist. Despite this, they claim to have received over 6,000 responses in one day (which, speaking as a social scientist who does work with surveys, is damn near impossible) and released their findings. Those findings were then uncritically published by CTV, who maybe should have done their homework instead of publishing a poll from a fake company that clearly (like a certain Hamilton-based right-wing populist group) created their logo using Canva. Since the whole thing was very weird (why ask questions about abortion hours after the premier went after trans kids?), some journalists started digging. They quickly found out that the whole thing was slapped together in Canva by the executive director of a radical anti-choice group who was clearly trying engineer outrage and pressure Smith to sandwich some kind of restriction on reproductive health into her already viscously anti-child legislation. The fun Hamilton connection is that a firm calling itself “National Public Research Canada” polled Hamiltonians in 2014 on the “likability” of some possible mayoral candidates that year, including Bob Bratina, Larry Di Ianni, Fred Eisenberger, Lloyd Ferguson, Tom Jackson, Brian McHattie, and Terry Whitehead. None of those folks admitted to commissioning the poll. It is entirely possible that the Hamilton mayoral poll was done by legit firm “Canadian National Public Research”, but that was 10 years ago and who has the energy to go check on that?
Upper West Side. “FAQ - Does the Approval of the Upper West Side Application Affect Agricultural Uses?” - Link (Archived Link)
Save Our Streams Hamilton. “What is the AEGD?” - Link; “Battle over Hamilton's aerotropolis is over” Hamilton Spectator, January 14, 2015 - Link (Paywalled)
Werner, Kevin. “Glancaster Golf Club to close its doors at the end of May” Ancaster News, May 19, 2015 - Link (Paywalled)
Hamilton Municipal Heritage Committee. “Inventory & Research Working Group Recommendations - 9445 Twenty Road West (The Marshall Family’s ‘Rose Farm’)” City of Hamilton, August 24, 2020 - Link
Moro, Teviah. “Developers pursue urban boundary expansion in Glanbrook” Hamilton Spectator, July 2, 2020 - Link (Paywalled)
Upper West Side. “Media Statement: News Release - Landowners come together to address Hamilton’s housing affordability and supply problem” July 14, 2020 - Link (Archived Link)
Moro, Teviah. “Hamilton councillors won’t move Glanbrook subdivision plan ‘to the front of the line’” Hamilton Spectator, October 7, 2020 - Link (Paywalled)
Moro, Teviah. “Hamilton expansion land developer charged after trees axed” Hamilton Spectator, October 27, 2023 - Link (Paywalled)
"" “Developers persist with Hamilton boundary-expanding pitch” Hamilton Spectator, February 6, 2024 - Link (Paywalled)
Ibid.
Upper West Side. “FAQ - Does this mean there will be housing mixed with retail and commercial properties? If there is, what type?” - Link (Archived Link)
"" “FAQ - What type of affordable dwellings do you plan to build?” - Link (Archived Link)
"" “FAQ - Is the Upper West Side Community Considered an ‘Infill Development’?” - Link (Archived Link)
Disclaimer: I was the NDP’s Financial Agent in HWAD in 2021
What a read! Out done yourself Chris, thank-you, will take sometime to digest but one thing is certain, the West End Home Builders Association is less than honest with the public.
My mind is absolutely blown by Chad Collins' yes-vote. Maybe when we pitched him on STV for our muni elections all those years ago something actually got through. Surprised and delighted.
Re: Hepfner and Tassi's no-votes; disappointing and a bit mind-boggling. Defies all sorts of logic—unless—the LPC have their own electoral reform plans in the works. One can but hope, but more disappointment here is expected.