Ontario politics and policy for TVO. Writer and Podcast co-host, #onpoli jm_mcgrath.01 on signal
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“Canadian industry cannot persuade its boards or banks to make the big investments needed to ramp up production in response to promises or press releases from Ottawa. Only contracts from government will move the production needle, and that is what NATO demands of Canada today.”
🚨EXCLUSIVE: Federal judges tell NBC News the Supreme Court has got to do a better job of explaining emergency rulings, with frequent decisions in favor of Trump at least appearing to validate harsh criticism of the judiciary at a time of rising threats: www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...
Man of Tomorrow. In theatres July 9, 2027
The TTC built the entire Union-Eglinton subway in 5 years.
So much dystopia crammed into one headline www.404media.co/shein-luigi-...
Baseball has some funny, funny stories
the anchors for the coat hooks are now apparently rated for 400lbs when set in brick which just feels like we're daring the dog to try again and harder this time
Oh this is useful, thank you
"I love having these coat hooks again, you're the best hooker ever" —My wife @vsmcgrath.bsky.social, whomst I love
I'm gonna have to carshare a cargo van to take all this stuff to the transfer station I am extremely excited for this
oh god oh god I've become a middle-aged dad
I'm taking some time off this week before Steve and I come back with the podcast next week and so far I've done a pretty heroic purge of our unneeded belongings, replaced a kitchen faucet, and re-mounted some coat hooks the dog yanked right out of brick early in her time here.
I'd be shocked if it wasn't at least some of the same personalities
Think so!
It was absolutely bonkers and was where I first started using the phrase "people who think they can win the global class struggle with a zoning ordinance"
The year is 2010 and I'm reading about opposition to development on Ossington The year is 2025 and I'm reading about opposition to development on Ossington The year is 2040 and
anyway my brave take is that Bluesky isn't really working because you just can't launch a text-based social media platform in the era of Big Video And Picture Slop and expect it to flourish, most people don't really want to type or read
(reads the Jays score to my wife) "Commander Riker's plan is the correct course of action" — @vsmcgrath.bsky.social
Subsidized housing in Seattle is more than 10% vacant, with rents often near market. And Seattle isn’t alone. We need to focus on making the market work for the top ~80% and focus subsidy at the very bottom, subsidized housing for all is a failed strategy. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
a bunch of you really believe that trump is the unstoppable god king who can do whatever he declares and it is dumb as hell
This story is so funny - a customer's phone number somehow got listed as the support line for a barbecue company, so he just started helping out. This week the glitch was fixed and he was "retired" with a new barbecue from the company www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
there is no question in my mind that rfk jr is the most dangerous person in this administration and that his eugenicist ideology threatens the lives of millions of people www.advocate.com/politics/dem...
Honestly I was worried they were poisonous for dogs but apparently not?
lookit those paws
Something I love about Rosie: she hears the sound of chopping vegetables and comes running, assuming she will collect a tithe. (I did not feed her bell peppers.)
Didn't think I had much to say about Graham Platner's intriguing campaign—but turns out I did! The race could set us up to replay 2016-style fights all over again. Or it could provide a template for ending the cycle of recriminations driving us off a fascist cliff. www.offmessage.net/p/graham-pla...
AI Minister Evan Solomon says he used an AI tool to get briefed up on the Liberals’ last AI bill. We tried it and, well … if a human briefer briefed a minister like this, I don’t think they’d get a second call up. https://thelogic.co/news/evan-solomon-ai-podcast
* TRUMP REVOKES KAMALA HARRIS' SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION -- CNN @reuters.com
we were watching the latest episode of Ask Hank Anything and one thing led to another
my wife just called me "Temu Hank Green"
New from me at TVO, defending the idea of government-issued home designs from skeptics (who are correct in important ways!) www.tvo.org/article/anal...
I mentioned yesterday for all the troubles in America right now, Americans would never tolerate the run of the mill secrecy every level of Canadian gov't exhibits. Fear & contempt for the public that pays for it.
The highlighted quote is a good example of why trying to hash out disagreements in good faith with left-NIMBY orgs is exhausting and ultimately fruitless. The lead author on this report *knows* this isn't true, and he knows it because we had a whole exchange about this in the pages of Dissent!
possible by oct 2026 that inflation is above 5%, we're in a jobs recession, the president's approval is at 35-40%, and people will be losing their health care and food benefits... i don't think this will go how he thinks it will go
walking the dog in the ravine this past week has been pretty gross www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Millenials watching on in horror as their lifetime has witnessed the internet went from a hopeful new frontier of endless possibility to in large part "societal rot accelerator operating at the speed of gigabit ethernet"
Apparently everyone is as into KPOP DEMON HUNTERS as my kids (and I) are variety.com/2025/film/ne...
oh this is dangerous knowledge for me to possess
I have not!
"There were 359 new [GTA] home sales in July, which was down 48 per cent from July 2024 and 82 per cent below the 10-year average" seems like maybe someone should do something www.bildgta.ca/what-more-ev...
A totally valid life choice I respect.
look for the Muscle Milk in the fridge next to the gatorade and energy drinks
BUT, this Tim Hortons latte was also tepid. Either operator action or (my hypothesis) the scalding temp of high-protein milk is lower?
Usually pour the shake in stages (because the cup doesn't have room for it all) so yeah, by the time you empty the shake the coffee is definitely tepid.
I was idly curious so I tried the Tim Hortons protein latte. On every possible metric it fails compared to my usual go-to, "pour a Dollarama protein shake into a McDonalds extra large coffee."
over the years a number of provincial NDPers would say “Horgan finds Kennedy Stewart deeply annoying”, or words to that effect, but it was always off the record so I could only get that point across in my reporting so clearly anyhow, Horgan found Kennedy Stewart deeply annoying
“Trump’s pretense to ownership of public goods and public spaces isn’t some quirk to be ignored or waited out — “there goes our Donald!” — but a direct expression of his autocratic ambitions and despotic cast of mind.”
Making them wear high-visibility vests over camo is such a good joke you couldn’t write it
Chotiner isn’t even like, some kind of gotcha attack guy, his interview subjects are just a bunch of guys who have been told their whole lives that they’re the brightest boys who can do no wrong
New from me at TVO, on the morning's committee meeting and the waste of time that was Bill 9's public hearings: www.tvo.org/article/anal...
Hey, an opposition motion actually survived! Liberal MPP Stephen Blais gets a somewhat finnicky but important amendment ensuring a meeting to censure a councillor is actually called.
(There are many other amendments to be debated but this was the most consequential one.)
And that's it. Govt MPPs vote down the NDP motion, it will not be in the final text of the bill.
PC MPP Matthew Rae says govt majority will be voting against the NDP motion. Bill 9's (presumptively unworkable) structure will remain in place.
NDP amendment would remove Bill 9s current requirement that councillors only be removed after a unanimous vote of council and replace it with an order by a judge, with appeal allowed to divisional court. As initially written, Bill 9 might never be used: www.tvo.org/article/anal...
MPP Jeff Burch now reading out the most substantial NDP amendment. Makes me smile how much of lawmaking is still just someone reading text aloud for the record. (Extremely not derogatory!)
Joining you from committee at QP where MPPs are amending* Bill 9, the government's municipal integrity bill. *Maybe — opposition MPPs have proposed numerous amendments but the PC members have not, we'll see what if anything gets amended.
cool, cool cool cool
NEW: An anti-offshore wind group is targeting a Brown researcher who studies climate obstruction. It's not the first time they've done it, but there's a new twist: They're threatening to go to the Trump administration unless the university retracts the work
I was standing next to Jones when Troster asked the question (I was moderating the minister's forum at AMO)
Links for August 24th, 2025 johnmcgrath.substack.com/p/links-for-...
Scene, yesterday: Me: You okay? You're doing the pee dance Biped: DAD, that's Soda Pop
#Breaking: Premier Doug Ford‘s government is appealing a Superior Court decision from last month that found its plan to remove several Toronto bike lanes was unconstitutional.
Friendly but increasingly exhausted reminder that the most progressive place in the world can’t protect people who can’t afford to live in it, and your sign saying all are welcome means nothing when your policies say “as long as you can afford a million dollar house”
Trump says that DC having a week with no homicides was something that happened "for the first time in memory." The last time that happened was March, where there was a 16-day streak without a homicide.
You can tell yourself we are not living under a personalist authoritarian regime or you can listen to the spokesperson for that regime
new frontier in accessibility: whoever did the subtitles for BALLERINA (John Wickiverse) made sure to include at least one instance of "BRAIN SQUELCHES"
When Facebook started, Zuckerberg talked about how his goal was to build human connections. Now Meta optimizes their apps to maximize the amount of time you spend scrolling Reels, alone. Is there anything still social about social media? www.infinitescroll.us/p/social-med...
1. In the decades before Prohibition, many municipalities experimented with license-laws, regulating the sale of alcohol. Such licenses swiftly became the most valuable things dispensed by government, with profoundly distorting consequences.
Incredible split screen between 1) the fascist regime waging a propaganda campaign based on high rates of urban homelessness, and 2) America's second largest city lobbying the state legislature not to make them build more housing because of potential "unintended consequences."
possible I overcorrected on the whole "staying active while on the work trip" thing, at least according to my Fitbit app
The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.
i love logging on to the Internet and seeing heresies so old The Christ was yelling about them
Air Canada's CEO admitting to the media that their entire plan for the flight attendants' strike was "have the government say they're not allowed" and that they have no other ideas about how to deal with the strike is really a "yeah this is how Canada REALLY works" moment if ever there was one
"This is legitimately a good news item for a bunch of reasons — building lots of new homes near subway, GO, and LRT stations makes tons of sense. It just comes years too late." — @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social
Links for August 17th, 2025: johnmcgrath.substack.com/p/links-for-...
just lost $100,000 on a polymarket bet that trump would negotiate a peace deal today with putin. i was sure of it. i can't believe i lost all this money. he wrote the art of the deal.
The fact that we even have a fitness influencer going on a cable news panel show to opine about the historiography of American slavery is just further proof that Neil Postman was right.
"Among the favorite pastimes of Republican men, two stand out: first, boasting about what strong, courageous, hypermasculine operators they are; and second, publicly melting down about how pants-pissingly terrified they are of American cities." prospect.org/justice/2025...
Sounds like a big problem! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580...
Notably the province is also approving Toronto's inclusionary zoning framework for MTSAs.
Years, elections, mayors and ministers come and go and finally Ontario has approved 120 Toronto major transit station areas. Mayor Chow says the new official plan amendments approved by the province and city will accommodate many more new homes than the Tory-era policy would.
Yes! Just blame Trump!
Transit getting scraps even in states where the Democrats control both chambers and the governorships is a shanda. Hard to think of a government function that directly touches more lives and is more of a marker on the question of 'can government deliver' and ... yet.
"It could be a model for Ontario to follow — and one that the current government will likely never consider." — @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that dog brained climate denialism is coming back, but I really had thought they'd given up on that one
"Cities are facing a two-wheeled traffic jam." Bullshit. They're suffering from a 4-wheeled infestation.
t'was bsky.app/profile/jm-m...
Thought I’d try it out for myself. 🧵
Truly fantastic.
the thing about bad zoning is that we could have a magical Star Trek-style housing replicator capable of making new homes for free and it *would not solve the problem* because the law would prohibit it from working
/3 The conservative outrage over the rejection of Bork was always extremely credentialist — this man has the right schools and impeccable experience, it doesn’t matter if he thinks you can put people in jail for poetry as long as the poetry isn’t political
holey moley, I knew that Canada's rental construction was moving quick but didn't realize it looked like this www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/observer/202...
My gut reaction to this news is that the smarthome industry was close to the point of having interoperable standards and Apple is probably gonna nuke that progress (but since I'm a skeptic about smarthome stuff, I don't see that as terrible) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
on matters like this, as I understand it, courts are required to assume any government's good faith public purpose, my point is that in this case Ford et al. failed to clear even that lowest of bars and conservatives should take the L
(insert joke about the real-world example of the Roberts court in the US here)
my "yes, and" on this is that if conservatives want judicial deference to be broad enough to get a different result in this case they're essentially demanding that courts defer to the most obvious, bottomless bad faith and I don't think they'd actually like the result!
courtesy of "kids talking at camp" had some uh uncomfortable conversation at the breakfast table this AM en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Me...
I hate this timeline so much