Money, secrets, and politics
Another surprise edition looks at campaign donors, the Red Hill Valley Parkway inquiry, and the winding-down of the Jama Affair.
Oops, I wrote a newsletter when I was supposed to be recovering. My eye surgery went swimmingly (I’m bloodshot to hell, but I can see!) and, after both a faster-than-anticipated recovery and a busier-than-usual news week, I thought I’d slap together another surprise edition of the newsletter. Sorry for providing more free content and analysis!
The Cash Men
Imagine you are a prolific donor to municipal campaigns. You have been giving money to development-friendly candidates for years because you’re in the development business and, rather obviously, you want a municipal council that won’t put unnecessary roadblocks in the way of you making money.
I mean, a local government can’t really stop you because you can always appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal. Lots of your applications will just end up at the Tribunal anyway because municipal planners are overworked, but still. And if the municipality really starts bothering you, then you can go to your friends in the provincial government and get them to override those pesky municipal councillors. But that all costs money. So may as well spend a little to ensure you have a friendly council rather than spend a lot on appeals and lobbying to get the same result.
So if you’re this big time donor, don’t you think you’d have some vague idea about what the rules around donations are?
Well, if you’re Sergio Manchia and Darko Vranich, apparently you don’t.
Manchia and Vranich are two Hamilton-area developers who have come under fire for exceeding the donation limits to local candidates put in place by the Municipal Elections Act. Hamilton’s independent Election Compliance Audit Committee (ECAC) recently found that both developers gave way too much money to candidates in 2022, with Manchia exceeding the $5,000 limit by $300 and Vranich by a staggering $4,600, which is nearly double the legal limit. Then, on Monday, they found that both of them had given more to Mayor Andrea Horwath’s campaign than originally reported, bumping Manchia’s excess donations up to $750 over the limit (Vranich’s stayed the same).
Both Vranich and Manchia have been giving to municipal candidates for a while. I have records from the 2010 election where they had made donations to Bob Bratina, Sam Merulla, Terry Whitehead, and Bernie Morelli (some #HamOnt politics throwbacks there). And, on top of that, Manchia was a Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic School Board trustee from 2003 to 2010, when he was defeated by former St. Thomas More High School principal John Valvasori. Manchia ran again in 2014 in an attempt to re-capture his west mountain trustee seat (Manchia lives in Ancaster), but lost by an even larger margin against the popular former educator. So Manchia has actually run municipal campaigns before, in addition to being a donor. Part of the reason Hamilton’s ECAC noted in their report that they were “satisfied that the Contributor is sophisticated, with past experience relating to contribution limits as set forth in the Act…”
Despite this, both Manchia and Vranich say that their breaking the law was an “honest mistake”. Set aside the fact that ignorance of the law is not a defence, the fact that both donors claim to not be aware of the law is more than a little outlandish. Hell, most municipal candidate websites have a little disclaimer about the legal requirements on their “donate” sections, which require a donor to click “I agree” before sending money.
So what are the possible outcomes here?
I’m sorry to disappoint, but I have absolutely no idea. Most of the time, ECACs don’t recommend legal action. Five developers in Ottawa gave more money to candidates than was legally allowed in 2018, which resulted in each of them getting a stern talking to by the committee, but nothing else. So we’re in uncharted waters here.
Taxpayer advocates will complain that spending money on lawyers and prosecution will likely cost more than the contributions (as the Postmedia-owned Ottawa Citizen did in 2019 when their ECAC was considering whether to recommend charges against those five developers), but this is an issue of democratic fairness. Those limits are in place to create a more level playing field so that millionaire developers can’t pour tens of thousands into the campaigns of candidates they like. Sure, developers and people in the real estate business tend to donate a lot to municipal campaigns (see The Money Edition from May 18 for more on that) and they have deeper pockets than the rest of us, but that limit helps to create a municipal playing field that’s only slightly tilted toward developers, instead of one that’s full-blown developer central.
My best guess is that both Vranich and Manchia will, if found guilty, be required to pay some fine and apologize for their misdeeds. Some settlement might be reached or something else might happen to clear this all up quickly, but the important thing is that there’s some scrutiny of their connection to municipal candidates and the possibility they’ll be held accountable for violating the law.
That said, I fully expect they’ll once again open up their massive chequebooks come 2026.
In the valley below
On Wednesday, the Red Hill Valley Parkway Inquiry released its final report. The three sections total 1,078 pages, making it a hefty read.
The report lays out the facts pretty clearly. The Red Hill Valley Parkway (RHVP) has been a weight around the neck of Hamilton since 1954 when council first voted to move forward with an east-end expressway. When the RHVP opened in 2007, it was apparent that the road had been built poorly and accidents were almost inevitable. As the report notes in its second paragraph, by 2018, the RHVP had taken the lives of six people.
Particularly damning are the next few paragraphs, which lay out a timeline of secrecy and poor communication.
The city’s Director of Engineering Services, Gary Moore, commissioned two reports - one from Tradewind Scientific Ltd. and one from Golder Associates Ltd. - in 2013 and had received them in early 2014. As Joey Coleman reported last July, Moore sat on the reports until May 15, 2018 when he uploaded the Tradewind report to the city’s ProjectWise system ten days before his retirement. That September, while the 2018 municipal election was in full swing, the city’s new Director of Engineering Services, Gord McGuire, found the reports. Upon finding them, he noted that the reports both said that the RHVP “friction levels” were well below the standard, with both reports indicating changes would need to be made. That November, after the election, a Freedom of Information request was made about friction reports, leading staff to finally let council know about the reports over two meetings on January 23, 2019 and February 6, 2019. After the latter meeting, council directed staff to release the reports to the public. Council - the elected body of representatives of the people of Hamilton - had no idea that friction testing had been done on the RHVP from 2008 to 2014 and had no idea that independent reports had spelled out problems until 2019. Eleven years of secrecy, all while people were dying on a poorly designed, poorly built, and poorly maintained road. Three terms of council were left in the dark while people kept using a dangerous road.
Grieving families asked for answers in 2017, all while those reports sat in a desk. People died because information was kept private. A $28 million inquiry was held because a staffer couldn’t upload some reports to a server.
The mayor took to X/Twitter to offer remorse to the victims and say that her office will be working on the “implementation of [the inquiry’s] recommendations”.
So what are those recommendations? The Inquiry lays out six points for the city to address:
Public Works should treat traffic safety on the RHVP and the Linc as a shared responsibility among all members of the department;
Public Works should adopt a Ministry of Transportation-style approach to traffic safety;
Public Works should develop a culture of collaboration and cooperation between departments with overlapping responsibilities;
Public Works should enable information sharing between and among members of the department, including a library of third-party reports, stats, etc.
Action should be taken to ensure more consistent reports from staff to council, the media, and the public;
Work needs to be done to ensure consistency with regard to third-party reports and the responsibilities of consultants and staff.
All pretty straight-forward, though lacking much of the anti-council red meat that would have made this a flashier report into which the city’s commentators could have sunk their teeth.
The deaths of so many on the RHVP over the years are incredibly upsetting, particularly when we are told there were warnings about the problems with the road that were kept from the public.
But one critique has been missing from the formal report: the need for the parkway at all. The construction of the RHVP was contentious and became a sticking point for many in the city for decades. During the 2014 municipal campaign (when, remember, McGuire had those reports tucked away), the RHVP was a major campaign issue for no other reason than Ward 1 councillor and mayoral candidate Brian McHattie telling Spec opinion columnist Andrew Dreschel that he didn’t want to drive on it. Dreschel’s column about the issue, published days before McHattie officially launched his campaign, positioned McHattie as an out-of-touch member of the Westdale elite who couldn’t see the obvious benefits of the highway. Dreschel wrote:
“It's used by up to 70,000 vehicles a day and is credited with being an economic magnet for commercial and industrial development…It costs Hamiltonians about $8 million a year to service the loan to build the road. But by 2012 it was already generating more than $14 million a year in property taxes — with many more predicted — thanks to businesses that opened because of it.”1
The Letters to the Editor in the weeks following slammed McHattie for his stance. “It is time for McHattie to get over the controversy and enjoy the drive on the RHV,” one read. “As far as the environment goes, the only thing I could see back then that was indigenous to the Red Hill Creek was the Miracle Mart shopping cart,” read another. A particularly salty letter read: “I will be voting for individuals who want to add more roads, turning lanes, and advanced green lights to make my drive a safe one…Next time I go up the Kenilworth Access, I'll make sure I stay clear of Councillor Brian McHattie and his horse and carriage, as I don't need any more manure on my tires.” Letters attacking McHattie for his stance - even after his highly-publicized summer drive on the RHVP - continued until shortly before election day. Hell, I even got questions about it on the doorstep while trying to talk about my school board campaign.
The engineered outrage over McHattie’s “war on the car” helped to sink his mayoral campaign, all while city staff knew there were problems with the gleaming ribbon of pavement that was “used by up to 70,000 vehicles a day” and bringing in “more than $14 million a year in property taxes”.
While you don’t hear much of the RHVP cheerleading anymore, there will be a new focus on what the parkway inquiry means for a culture shift at city hall. But there still needs to be an honest conversation about our obsession with the private automobile. The RHVP is just one more road for more cars, poorly designed or not. While it is important we hold public officials accountable for their inaction on public safety, a deeper conversation about car-centricity, sprawl, and poor planning needs to happen. There would be no inquiry without a valley parkway, no valley parkway without a need to service areas planned with car supremacy in mind.
She’s got to break free
On November 25, a last ditch effort by Sarah Jama’s supporters to have her re-admitted into the NDP failed. After delegates at the Ontario Federation of Labour AGM voted to not even consider an emergency resolution on Jama and the OFL’s relationship, the last possible avenue for Jama’s return to the party came at the ONDP provincial council meeting.
For those outside the NDP: each riding association, student group, and labour affiliate (or some combination of those…I can’t remember the details, it has been a while) sends delegates to a semi-regular meeting of the party’s “provincial council”. These are events where party militants can hear from MPPs, the leader, and staff about big things in NDPland and can submit resolutions to have the party take a stance on time-sensitive things. The whole thing is basically a check-up where you get to practice for convention.
The Hamilton Centre riding association had been pushing a resolution that would have allowed Jama back into the party. In the end, the vote to re-instate Jama only earned the support of 31.6% of the voting members at the provincial caucus meeting.
The party does not release specifics on the vote, so all we really have is the final total without knowing who sided with Jama and who sided with Marit Stiles. As CHCH reported, while Jama didn’t respond to their request for comment, she did post on X/Twitter that she’s “down” to have a conversation about what happened.
But Hamilton Centre’s MPP did break her media silence shortly after. A few days ago, Jama sat down with Thomas Daigle from the CBC for a rare interview to discuss what’s happened since October, including her expulsion from the party, her censure in the legislature, and the controversial video of her speaking to a university group where she discusses the “Zionist lobby” in Canada. The interview is presently on the CBC website with the headline: “MPP Sarah Jama’s Israel-Hamas comments leave constituents voiceless”.
That headline isn’t wrong. The Ford government decided to censure Jama for her comments, effectively using their majority powers to silence the people of Hamilton Centre. While this has happened in the past - MPP Randy Hillier was censured for making racist comments about MP Omar Alghabra and for posting photos of recently deceased people online without their family’s permission while claiming, without proof, that they all died from the COVID-19 vaccine - censuring an MPP is a really bad and anti-democratic way to deal with someone you find “objectionable”. Indeed, this was little more than performative posturing on the part of the Ford Tories.
A much better way to deal with this would be introducing recall legislation. Now, I know that recall is something the hard-right loves because it allows them to target leftists with their deep pockets and wild conspiracies, but with a high-enough bar to clear and a reasonably fair process, it could be a great way to hold MPPs accountable.
California has had recall legislation on the books since 1911. The process for recalling a state official there involves:
Letting the state’s elections authority know you intend to start a recall effort by stating your reasons as an “intention to circulate a recall petition”;
Allowing the target of the recall to have a week to provide a “response” to the recall effort;
Preparing a petition that must be approved by the state elections board within ten days of their receipt of the target’s “response”;
Within 160 days (5ish months), collecting signatures on the petition. For state legislators, the recall petition must receive the valid signatures of registered electors totaling at least 20% of the voter turnout in the last election (in Hamilton Centre for this case, that would be 3,521 signatories);
Allowing time for the state’s elections body to confirm signatures and give any signatories time to withdraw their support; and
If the sufficient number of signatures is met and they’re deemed to be valid, an election being held between 60 and 80 days after the final validation of signatures. The election gives you two options: do you want to recall the office holder and, if they are recalled, who do you want to replace them?
The gaggle of anonymous accounts on r/Hamilton who are creepily obsessed with Jama keep asking “how can we get rid of her!?” only to be met with the reality that is Canadian politics. Under the California model, it would actually be possible. Jama’s top three opponents earned a collective 7,438, meaning it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine them collecting the necessary number of signatures to initiate a recall petition. Even if the threshold was higher - say 50% of the number of people who voted in the last election - that’s still 8,806 people. The media attention, anger from people who didn’t expect Jama to be expelled from the NDP after 221 days, and coordinated campaigns by the Tories and Liberals could very well garner just shy of 9,000 signatures on a recall petition.
But the Ford government is unlikely to introduce recall legislation because…obviously. During the Greenbelt scandal, Ford might stand to lose a dozen MPPs in key ridings, which could ultimately see his government toppled. “Accountability” and “democracy” aren’t exactly words I would associate with the current Tory government.
Imaginary recall mechanisms or not, this marks the end of Jama’s time in mainstream provincial politics. All the avenues for her to be returned to the NDP have been closed for the time being. Maybe, at some point in the future, she’ll have a conversation with Stiles and the other MPPs sitting with the party, initiating a process that will see her rejoin the party. Maybe she’ll strike off alone, George Galloway-style, starting a left-wing party whose central focus is the conflict in Israel-Palestine. Maybe she’ll be a left-leaning André Arthur, running and winning as an independent, targeting a constituency tired of the status quo. Or maybe the centering of a conflict 9,320 kilometres away will push progressives in Hamilton Centre - those worried about housing affordability, strengthening public health care, stopping culture warriors from attacking vulnerable kids in schools, protecting Ontario’s fragile environment, and offering sustainable, affordable, regional transportation - to look for an alternative come 2026. At this point, your guess is as good as mine.
Defaming transphobia
In January, 2022, a former ESL teacher named Carolyn Burjoski attended a meeting of the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) to “raise concerns” about the age-appropriateness of books in WRDSB school libraries. Particularly, she was worried about books with asexual and trans characters. She attended the meeting to “simply ask questions” - a favoured tactic among those on the hard-right to insert their values into the mainstream in the form of a question. “Oh no, I’m not saying these books should be banned, I’m just asking if it is appropriate that children know gay people exist?”
Scott Piatkowski, the board’s chair at the time, stopped Burjoski from speaking, worried that her words began violating the Ontario Human Rights Code. A transcript of the exchange shows that Burjoski claims some books make it seem “cool to take puberty blockers and sex hormones”, talks about children in a sexual way, and makes claims that gender affirming care makes people “infertile”.
Since then, Burjoski has made a career of this event, styling herself the “Cancelled Teacher” and doing the usual press-circuit with right-wing media. In addition, she launched a $1.75 million defamation lawsuit against the WRDSB and Piatkowski. Despite all the press attention Burjoski has directed toward herself, she still says in the lawsuit that the event has damaged her reputation and that she’s been hospitalized for anxiety because of it.
Last week, the WRDSB tried to have the case dismissed, but a judge rejected that request, allowing the $1.75 million lawsuit to move forward. This is an upsetting waste of taxpayer money (yikes, I can’t believe I just said that), and will further distract from the school board’s actual work. Instead, a culture warrior just gets another platform to spew nonsense, all while doing another lap on right-wing media. I’ll keep following this whole affair as it continues.
les «ingénieurs du chaos»
I have officially let the sun set on my X/Twitter account. It was an unceremonious end to an account that had been active for two weeks short of 15 years. A small archive of my posts exists on my now-locked account so that I can still reference them, but I won’t post, follow, or interact with posts, mentions, or DMs on the site anymore.
A few days later, Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, announced she was also quitting X/Twitter in a lengthy post on the site.
In her post, she describes how the site was once a “revolutionary tool” that has now become a cesspit of misinformation, violence, and harm. “Let’s not let the ‘engineers of chaos’ take control of our destinies,” she writes, observing that the site’s owner and the collection of far-right agents provocateurs who dutifully follow him have taken that once-revolutionary space on which so many of us relied for news, community, and commentary and have re-engineered the conversation to suit them and their needs, namely some blend of grifting, authoritarian accelerationism, and self-indulgence. An example of this is how most of the top-comments on Hidalgo’s post - comments that are pushed to the top because they come from paying subscribers who are both Musk fanboys and almost always anonymous - rely on misogyny and tired right-wing clichés about left-wing politicians spending money.
I spent a bit of time two weeks ago talking about social media, so I won’t really get into it here, but a particularly astute observation about what’s happening on platforms these days came from Christopher Mims, a Wall Street Journal tech columnist who posted on Threads that “Social media isn't dying. It's turning into broadcast media.” X/Twitter used to be a place where the conversation was driven by everyone. Things trended because big users mentioned them, but everyone could contribute to the conversation and, if they were lucky, become an internet superstar for “going viral”. In part because of how platforms incentivize things and in part because of the changing nature of these platforms, more content is being created by “creators” and consumed by “viewers”, rather than the latter doing both the creating and watching. My Instagram is a great example of this. My account used to be private and I’d only follow/be followed by friends and acquaintances who posted about their lives and, more importantly, their cats. Now, I mainly see posts from big-time creators who make content specifically for Instagram and TikTok. Social media is just becoming Regular Media and the platforms that recognize that are the ones that will succeed.
I’m mostly glad X/Twitter won’t be part of that future. As Ryan Broderick over on Garbage Day wrote about last week, the site seems to be a clearing house for TikTok videos of young women that right-wing users believe are “destroying Western civilization” whatever that means:
…it’s fascinating how after conservative internet users took over Twitter and all the normal people left, they basically now just spend all day scaring each other with random videos of teenage girls. At least 4chan users bust out Photoshop every once in a while and make a new meme or something.
One more observation on X/Twitter - I tried to rename my account “Chris Erl (Twitter Archive)” to really hammer the point home, but, when I clicked “save”, I was greeted by this notification:
Cool facts for cool people
Last weekend, Québec solidaire (QS), the leftist party making a splash in la belle province, held their annual convention. At the convention, delegates voted to only allow women and non-binary candidates run in any by-elections triggered in 2024. This led Olivier Bolduc, the party’s three-time candidate in the Quebec City-area riding of Jean-Talon to give up his membership. Bolduc said that, as a male-identified feminist, this policy will prevent good people from running. He acknowledged that straight white men have privilege, but that “when we look at the efforts that certain people have made and the contribution that some men make, we have to recognize that as well.” The resolution supported by delegates at the QS convention was in response to Bolduc’s recent candidacy, which was the source of controversy, as the party wanted a woman to run, but he shoehorned himself into the nomination. Research I’ve contributed to (including a series of interviews with party officials from all major parties in Canada) found that women have to be asked to run for office while men usually ask to run. The way women are treated on the hustings makes the entire ordeal daunting, so parties usually have to go out of their way to encourage women to seek office. So QS might have made their lives a little harder there. That, and we have to consider the very-Canadian (and now-dated) “Deb vs. Svend” argument. That references Deborah Grey, the hard-right Reform MP, and Svend Robinson, the openly gay NDP MP. Do you want someone who represents you by your gender (Deb) or, if you’re progressive, by your values (Svend)? If you’re faced with voting for 1 of 4 people: 3 women with regressive values or 1 man with feminist values, which do you pick? That’s always a fun representation-theory thought experiment.
Thanks, to the point, informative and timely, should be carried once a week by the Spec.