Welcome everyone to the OnPy podcast.

I'm Steve Pagen

and I'm John Michael McGrath.

Today on the pod, the leader of the opposition gets tossed out of the house for calling the government corrupt as the skills development fund scandal continues to dog the Ford conservatives.

Doug Ford and Peter Bethlin seem to disagree over a cut to the HST for firsttime home buyers. Is it unusual for a premier and his finance minister to disagree over policy? It turns out if you look at the history, not so much.

Two controversial bills are making their way into law this week at Queens Park and we'll talk about the hubbub surrounding them.

And in your column, my column, I'll look at a new idea to fund affordable housing.

And I've got a column up on whether anyone is going to miss the fixed election date law, which Doug Ford pretty much ignored and then decided, what the heck, let's get rid of it all together.

It's Friday, November 21st, 2025. So, let's get to it.

Little sugar to start with. I almost forgot for a second there. I I had my mouth open ready to talk about your shirt.

I was primed. I was What's What's going on?

And then I thought, "Oh, wait. I got to do sugar first." For those who are listening on podcast and cannot see your shirt.

Yes.

You have You have sharks, you have manta rays, you have devil rays, you have all sorts of um

uh crustaceia. I don't There's a lot of underwater stuff going on there. And I'm thinking to myself, this must be an homage to the 50th anniversary of Jaws, which came out earlier this year, 50 years ago. But I bet I'm wrong.

Uh, well, no, that that is in my mind somewhere at all times because I do like that movie. Um, but no, I'm going to just take the wheel for a moment. We're going to do a hard left turn and I'm going to make this a Royal Ontario Museum appreciation podcast for just a minute. Uh, the ROM, of course, like us, a provincial agency devoted to education. um and uh less like us. Um also a place where I have gone and brought my kid uh for many many times uh over the last 10 years and uh incredible value out of a RAW membership if you are a a a new parent or a parent of a young child. I will just uh uh plug this. This is not sponsored content.

It's really a great place to go though. Great stuff to see there.

Great way to spend a rainy afternoon in Toronto. Accessible by subway. I cannot say enough good things about the ROM and they currently have a shark exhibit uh which I brought my kid to uh my wife and I brought our kid to uh last weekend and I'm now uh because of this podcast uh at the point where when I'm wandering through a gift shop and I see a fun shirt I was like, "All right, I'm going to buy that and I'm going to wear it on the podcast."

You didn't buy that at the ROM, did you?

I did. Yes.

You bought the shirt at the wrong

I bought the shirt at the ROM having left the shark exhibit and making my way through the obligatory gift shop. Uh, yeah.

You know, I'm not sure I intended this tie-in to exist, but the ROM's 100 years old, right? More than 100 years old,

I believe. So, yes.

Now, I don't know for sure that Oliver Mitt was the premier when the ROM opened. In fact, I suspect he wasn't, but I bet he wasn't far off. And yeah, you're looking it up as we speak right now, right? Yes. While you talk,

you tell me what year the ROM opened because I know it's more than a hundred years old. And then with any luck, I'll know who the premier was when that happened. And if it was Oliver Mowat, which then we got a

opened on an auspicious year a few months before the start of World War I in 1914.

Okay, so it was not MOT. Mo was gone by then. But uh Okay, pretty close though. Pretty close.

I'm wearing all and I'm going to do this like I do every week. Okay, there standing up showing everybody. You know what? As I look at Oliver Mitt, I'm thinking to myself, you'd look good in mutton chops, McGrath. You should try him. Anyways, Oliver Mo was our longest serving premier.

Yes.

24 years. He was the premier of Ontario. Can you imagine? 24 years. He was our third premier. He was the premier in the 19th century. So, we're going way back here. And no, just to confirm, I did not cover his administration, just in case you were curious. But it's not a premier's anniversary that I'm pointing out this week. Mo was, how do I put this? Mowat was such a political stud that even after he was finished being premier of Ontario for 24 years, he then ran federally and was in Wilfrid Laurier's cabinet for a year as the minister of justice and attorney general for Canada. And then after that, he was appointed the lieutenant governor of Ontario. So he's the only guy who was both premier and leftenant governor of Ontario. And he was appointed the LG this week in 1897. That's 128 years ago. our eighth lieutenant governor and he served in that role until his death in 1903. And if you like after we get finished this podcast, we can go visit him.

He's just buried in

buried just down the street. That's right. In Mount Pleasant Cemetery and I think I have a nerdy picture here. There we go. Now, this is several months ago, but um that's me standing outside Oliver Moit's gravestone in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. It was a nice day. I'm just in the t-shirt. And you know he it's funny for for one of the greatest premers that we ever had and this guy was all about provincial power. Okay, he's the first guy to really uh make the case for provincial power at a time when you know Sir Johnny McDonald had just established the country and it was all about you know national rights and so on and he was saying no wait uh you know the provinces uh we were provinces before we were Canada and provinces have a role to play in the future of the country. So, he has a fairly modest grave site uh in spite of the significant role he played in our history.

Well, and and I'm just going to take a moment here. Uh people might know the history of the JCPC, the I was remember the privy council

judicial committee of the privy council,

right? Um and uh this was uh until after World War II. This was the final uh tribunal of appeal if you like for uh constitutional matters.

Not our Supreme Court. You could still appeal to Great Britain. Yes. which is kind of crazy given that we were an independent country, but

not so independent as it turned out. Um but uh the reason I mentioned the JCPC is because so many of those early fights about provincial versus federal jurisdiction were settled in London at the JCPC and Mo personally like sailed to London to I I guess they steam ships by then but you know went to London to argue Ontario's case uh you know before these these colonial administrators and when he would win these arguments as he often did and that that reshaped our constitutional structure he would come back to, you know, Toronto uh to a hero's welcome because he'd won these arguments against the federal government at the time. So, uh ju just a part of our history of how uh the you know, the text of the constitution which centralizes so much power in the federal government was changed by political actors like Mitt. You know what I love about that answer? Like people should know we don't discuss what we're going to say before we go on the air here. And I don't think you knew that I was going to do a whole riff on Mowit and yet you have that in the back of your head. You just know that

we we are both nerds about some stuff. Now we should add here because as our again I don't he didn't know we were going to talk about this but our producer Matthew Omara Matthew Omera

Oh you say Omera and I say Omar stop singing. He has just put in our computers here that the ROM opened in 1914 under Sir William Howard Hurst, whom we've talked about here before. He was our seventh premier, but the actual charter to establish the creation of the Royal Ontario Museum happened under his predecessor, Sir James Ply Whitney, who was in office from 1905 to 1914 and was here's a little piece of trivia for you, and I can check a box while we do it. Whitney won four elections in a row, and the next guy to do it after him was William, Grenville, Davis, who won four in a row in 71,75,77, and 81. Should we just get to issue one finally?

Let's move on.

Bail us out. Get to issue one.

The Ontario Skill Trades Development Fund is still in the news and apparently won't go away. Just as a reminder, this is the fund, the dollars of which went to organizations that offered skills training. The organizations applied to the labor ministry for funds. They were then scored by ministry officials and obviously the idea was the better the score the more likely you were to get the money. Except it has emerged that the labor minister David Pacini kind of put his thumb on the scale for some lowscoring organizations and he ensured they got money anyway which has led to some opposition questions wondering why that would be. It got quite hot in the house earlier this week when the opposition leader made some pretty tough allegations. NDP leader Mar Styles.

It is the strip clubs and the numbered companies. It is the endless grift of a anti-democratic and yes corrupt government.

I will ask the member to withdraw.

Speaker, I will not. I

I am warning the member

And if you're on podcast and didn't see the video of that, yes, she got the boot. She got kicked out of the house because she refused to withdraw. Her use of the word corrupt, which you can't say, which we'll come back to. But I did hear something else that I have not heard in the legislature, uttered too frequently. Did I hear the words strip club used there?

Uh, yes indeed. Uh back in early November, uh our friends at the Trillium reported that a venue owned uh by a skills development fund recipient is a quote um adult entertainment club. And we're going to try and keep this segment familyfriendly. Uh the uh social equality and inclusion center received $10 million to train employees at the venue uh which is actually in the horiculture building at exhibition place. Um, additionally, there are concerns that fund money is being used to pay for executive salary increases at other organizations. Uh, and there is at least uh one example of a company currently going through a provincial audit that was still receiving money. Uh, I believe one of uh these cases has been referred to the OP. No word on whether that will uh result in a formal investigation uh much less of course uh charges.

Now, here's where I come in and say anything else. Lots more to this story. Uh so minister of labor David Pacini has said that the fund is uh intended to give the deputy minister that is uh the highest ranking civil servant in that ministry a final say with regards to uh high-risk applicants. Uh so uh something of a contradiction of of what he was saying some months ago about being solely responsible for the lowscoring uh programs that were chosen. And the the government has sort of backed off of this line a little bit this week. At first it sounded like they were um throwing the civil service under the bus, if I could uh put it bluntly. Um and and then they they seemed to modify that a bit this week to to um emphasize that no, the the the minister really did have the final say.

Let's take a step back for a second and take a look at this thing from a sort of a 30,000 ft vantage point because and we really should put this on the record. Here's the reality of governing. If you are the minister of any department and you want to circumvent the process that's been put in place, for example, do what David Pacini has done here, that is allowed. You are the minister. Let me add, however, that you have to be prepared to defend your decisions if they become public and if they eventually cause embarrassment to your colleagues or more pointedly to the premier of the day, you will suffer the political consequences. Now remember at the end of the day for governments it's about saving the silverware and the silverware is the premier. So even if the premier told Pacini to circumvent the process and favor some biders who otherwise wouldn't get money because who knows maybe they gave money to the progressive conservative party during election time or something and otherwise would not have merited consideration. At the end of the day if it blows up in your face it's the minister who's going to wear it. That's just the way things work. So let's ask the question here. Is there any evidence that the premier's office intervened and told Pacini, I don't care what the process is. These guys are our friends. Give them some grant money.

So the specific allegation here is that uh you know these these firms who applied for money were scored by the civil service and some of these firms uh scored quite low quite badly uh by the civil service received money anyway. uh despite the the skepticism of uh you know professional evaluation. Uh now what we are also learning this week, not only did firms with low scores receive public money that they might not have otherwise earned, uh the Toronto Star published an an analysis uh drawing on internal government data uh that showed that the lowest scoring applications in fact got more money on average than the highest scoring applications.

Now could that have happened without political intervention? I mean anything is possible. Uh my stats professor in university would tell you that correlation is not causation. My politics professor would tell you that correlation is a good place to start looking.

Right now again from the department of there's nothing new under the sun here.

Yes.

I do remember this happening with the former Liberal government of Ontario. This was under Kathleen Wyn and it was related to building GO Transit in York Region and the public servants made some decisions independently theoretically independent criteria used about where to locate certain GO train stations and the transportation minister at the time was a guy named Steven Deluca who is today the mayor of he said actually I'd like another station I'd like it at Kirby Street and since I'm the minister I'm going to do it.

Yes. And yes, he had to sustain a lot of blowback because uh he was, you could argue, subverting the process because the civil servants said, "I'm sorry, the numbers don't justify putting a go station there. There's not enough traffic. You're going to take, you know, anyway, we don't have to relitigate the whole thing here, but

Oh, no. Let's

No, move on. Move on.

The reality is ministers are allowed to do that." And however, let the record show that the wind government eventually lost. The Ford government came in. The station still has not been built. there is no funding allocated to building the station. So, you know, Steven Deluca is no longer the Minister of Transportation. So, my hunch is um the Ford government is not going to show a lot of interest in getting that thing built ultimately or maybe ever.

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm glad you brought this story up because it is one of my uh I I won't say a fond memory, but one of those cases that I covered uh during the win government and you know, certainly with the distance of time, I don't think anybody involved in that decision is going to defend it on the merits except possibly for the current mayor of Vaughn. Um but you know, just to to get into the details just a little bit there. I mean, one of the the key problems with that station was that um not only did it not justify uh itself based on the traffic it would generate, but it was going to cause problems up and down the rest of the line by adding that station in. And so Metroinks went through all of these contortions to say, "Oh, well actually if you if we do this instead and if we look at it this way and if you squint this way and if you know on on every alternating Sunday, it'll be fine." Um and it was just it was a very um uh let me put it this way educational uh moment for me. Uh watching what is uh Metroinks is supposed to be an armslength agency was created to be independent of the government and watching them um contort themselves to uh justify what was a really clear case of political intervention um did not make anybody look good. Before we talk about why Mar Styles ultimately got booted out of the house, I should add one more thing here. And that is if you talk to politicians, and we're going to be super fair here to everybody involved. If you talk to politicians, they will tell you, you know, yes, I know we get accused of putting our thumb on the scale and subverting the process of the pure as the driven snow civil service. But they will also tell you that the civil service has its own favorites.

Yes. and that these allegedly independent processes that the civil service puts into place to ensure that everything is scored on a completely fair, even, and transparent balance

occasionally favors their favorites as well.

I mean, that's just a

we're in the realm of politics here, people, and that does and humans. That's right. So, that does happen, too. And yes, of course, the politicians have their favorites and they want to, you know, flow funds to the people who support them, but the civil service has their favorites, too. and sometimes they like to ensure that their favorites win these competitions. So I don't know that that's what's happening here. I'm not making any allegations that that's happening here. But to suggest that that never happens and that everything the civil service puts forward is, you know, completely clean, transparent, and without favor, well, that's not accurate either. No, I mean there have I I I'm not sure if there's anything uh ongoing right now, but there have absolutely historically been cases of civil servants being charged with uh serious crimes

sponsorship case in federally. Yeah. Paul Martin's government

was the the only the only one who went to jail was a civil servant. Let the record show there. Anyways, okay, let's get back to Mar Styles. She used the word corrupt. Yes.

And was therefore booted out of the house. And for those who don't follow the ins and outs of the Marcus of Queensbury rules, why is that a no no? So saying that the government is corrupt is an example of unparliamentary language. That is a term of art in uh parliamentary politics. Uh speaker uh Donna Skellyy asked whether the uh opposition leader would take back what she said. Styles refused and she was therefore ejected. Uh we have actually recorded a whole nerds on politics YouTube video uh that people can uh watch all about unparliamentary language. Uh that one was a lot of fun to make a few years ago. So I would recommend checking that out. Um but you know the reason we have these rules uh about unparliamentary language or at least one of the reasons we have these rules is because otherwise there are no penalties for things said in the course of parliamentary debate. Styles cannot be sued for defamation for anything she says in the chamber. Now I do want to note Styles is not hiding behind uh privilege in this context. She repeated the allegation of corruption outside of the chamber where she can be sued for defamation for anything she says outside those doors. and the NDP have gone so far as to register a website and I believe we've got a picture of this whose contents start with the words I agree with Marott Styles Doug Ford and his government are corrupt and then of course they invite the reader to provide their email to the NDP and sign a petition

now when the speaker throws somebody out of the house they don't actually say I'm ejecting you they don't actually say I'm kicking you out what's the expression they used

they are named

they are named

yes

that's right which sounds very kind of um uh what's the word I'm looking for here? Like pristine. It sounds very lovely. I'm naming you. I'm not booting your ass out of here. I'm naming you.

Yeah. And it is one of those things where um there are so many rules in the house about like even how you are supposed to refer to another member, right? You can refer to them by their writing or you can refer to them as the honorable member. So actually putting somebody's name in the hansard is this thing of uh great portent. Um, and and then yeah, the the the Sergeant-at-Arms escorts you from the chamber. Uh, hopefully without having to draw his sword in the process.

Hopefully. I have not seen that yet. Anything else on this?

We've absolutely exhausted it. Never mind. Covered. Okay. Off to issue two.

Late last week, the province announced that it would be removing the harmonized sales tax on homes for firsttime home buyers, which theoretically could save people 100,000 bucks when combined with some proposed federal HST cuts. It's a big chunk of change, but Doug Ford seems to think his finance minister has made the criteria a little too narrow.

Monday, Doug Ford,

my number one champion behind me, this is where we we kind of sit down and uh he usually tries to beat me up all the time. he usually wins. But my argument to to Peter and to the the prime minister and all the premers today, why don't we give it to everyone, not just firsttime home buyers, anyone who buys a new home, we have massive inventory out there as as you all know. And 0 plus 0 equals zero. That's my argument to the municipalities. Uh if you aren't selling a home, you you aren't getting any taxes. That's my argument. uh that if we do that then we'll we'll be able to move forward.

Yeah. Just a little background to what the premier is saying there. Housing starts are off 90%.

Yeah.

So if you're putting development charges on the construction of new homes and no new homes are being built. That's the premier's view that you know 0 plus 0 still equals zero. You're not getting any revenues in. If you take all the taxes off uh yes you're not getting those development charges or or land transfer tax or other fees. Yeah. um or HST but um but people who buy homes then go buy ovens, they buy stoves, they buy microwaves, they buy refrigerators and you will pay HST on that and the Treasury will realize some revenue. So that's the idea for the again people listening on podcast who would not have seen the video. The premier was at the lectturn. His finance minister Peter Bethan Falvi was standing behind him uh keeping a poker face. No grimacing, no premier, what are you saying that for? None of that going on. Later, uh, Bethlin Falvi was asked why he overruled Ford's recommendation, and he responded by saying, "Well, you know, they'll work together on these things and they'll figure them out." But, uh, anyway, it was a funny moment where

the finance minister doesn't actually overrule the premier.

I asked Peter Bethlfi about this once about what happens when you and the premier disagree on a budgetary matter. And his answer was, it works like this, premier, it's my budget, but it's your province, right? And therefore, yes, the premier gets the final say, but of course, the minister, if he's absolutely violently opposed to something, can resign on a point of principle.

That's not going to happen here.

No, no,

no. There there's always a natural tension between the premier and the finance minister or or the prime minister and his finance minister, you know, the the the finance minister's almost literal job is to say no to new spending, right? That's why I thought the federal finance minister under Justin Trudeau, Bill Morno, I thought he had the best name for a finance minister because his job is to say more no

to everybody else. Anyway,

um and you know, I think also in the current case with Ontario, the premier is inclined to say yes when he can. Uh he he he he clearly like he he likes to say yes to people who uh you know, he he sees the government as able to help whether they are uh political friends as we spoke about in the the last segment or likes to be liked.

He likes to be liked.

It's easier to be liked when you say yes.

You know, the the finance minister, Peter Bethlin, uh, you know, much more inclined to say no. I think both, uh, in his position, but also in his personal disposition, if I could put it that way. Um, you know, in this case, the question is whether the broader tax rebate that the premier is favoring would just be too costly to the provincial treasury. Um and and we do not cover federal politics on this podcast, but I will guarantee you that a similar discussion happened federally, right? And and I want to focus on that for a moment because remember that we're talking about the HST here and the whole point of the HST when it was adopted under the uh McGinty government uh was to harmonize the provincial and federal rules around the collection of the sales tax, right? the HST is collected federally and then uh the provincial portion of that is then remitted back to uh Queens Park. And you know the time was like you had totally different rules on what was taxed provinially versus what was taxed fedally.

Businesses had to fill out two sets of books depending on which government it was. I mean, I used to I used to sell books uh in retail jobs when I was younger and books were taxed federally but not proincially and and literally I spent much of my teens and 20s explaining that to customers. It was a mess. Um so, you know, ideally you want not just the premier and his treasurer to agree, but you want the province and the federal government to agree as well. And um you know, as the premier alluded to, you know, he's he's trying to to get some kind of agreement uh not just with uh Ottawa and Queens Park, but with other premers as well. Um now, of course, if there's a breach here between the premier and his finance minister, it is not even close to the biggest or most obvious breach uh that we have seen and and seen recently, right? Um I can't think of a a really severe one in provincial politics. Maybe you can think of one, but you know, just to remind our listeners, Justin Trudeau had pretty dramatic breaches with both of his finance ministers, right? Uh the the uh departure of Bill Morno from federal politics. I mean, they tried to paper over some of the divisions there, but it was pretty clear that uh the prime minister was simply no longer taking his finance minister's advice.

The finance minister couldn't get a meeting with his prime minister. That was pretty that came out in Mr. Mo's memoir.

Yeah. and then uh obviously with Christopher Freeland even more of a a volcanic breach uh you know and and arguably resulted in the end of Justin Trudeau's political career. So you know if we're talking about a scale of 1 to 10 here where you know uh 10 is the Freeland affair. This is maybe a one maybe less maybe less than one. And of course Justin Trudeau wasn't the first Trudeau to have a problem with his finance minister over a massive disagreement. You know, we can go back. This again comes under the category of there's nothing new under the sun. Pierre Trudeau and his then finance minister. This is 50 years ago actually. Yeah, it was September when was it? September 10th, I think, 1975. Pierre Trudeau and John Turner are having a meeting, a private meeting, and there is a just a fundamental financial disagreement about whether to impose wage and price controls. The prime minister kind of wants them. The finance minister says they're not a good idea for the economy. And at the end of the meeting, John Turner resigns as the finance minister for Canada. And it it was a shock. The nation went into shock when that happened. And um I think it's fair to say that this little contr between Ford and Beth Falvi does not rise to the level of any of the examples that we have here to forgiven. So it does raise the original question. Okay. In terms of conventional wisdom and perhaps what is the best policy to adhere to here?

Is the finance minister's proposed cut to the HST for firsttime home buyers only too insignificant to prompt a return of some buoyancy to the housing industry? That's the question.

Yeah. And I think there's a strong argument that you know the premier might actually have the better argument on uh housing policy here uh if we can put it that way. Right. you know, when he says, uh, you know, 0 plus 0 is zero, right? Like that exactly what you were alluding to earlier, right? Like, you know, a a tax collected on home sales that never happen is not actually valuable to the treasury. Correct. Right. So, if we, you know, if we cut the HST and that uh sparks a sale of new homes and we can bring in uh, you know, there are potentially tens of thousands of units that are waiting to be built that at the moment developers aren't sure they can find buyers for. So, everybody is kind of downing tools and as you said, like you know, home starts are down 90%. Um the about the only bright spot in Ontario's housing market right now is that we are seeing a big uh uptick in uh purpose-built rental construction and that's for the first time in decades

and rents have fallen as well.

And rents have fallen. Yes. Um, but I I think quite aside from the issue of the financial cost of a a tax break like this, uh, you know, the the the desire to get more homes built is going to be what may, uh, win the day. And uh a a lot will frankly ride on uh whether both provincial and federal uh finance officials can be uh brought around to the simple fact that like we're we're not collecting these taxes anyway, so we might as well make the rebate official.

We're not done talking about numbers. We want to talk about two numbers, 33 and 60. And we'll do that in issue three.

Two controversial bills are making their way through the legislative process at Queens Park. And you won't be surprised to hear there is some disagreement between the government and the opposition on the advisability of passing those bills. Their numbers are bill 33 and bill 60. JMM, let's go through these one at a time and we'll figure out what the fu for is all about. Let's start with bill 33.

Right. This is the supporting children and students act and it touches a bunch of pieces of education and child care policy. Uh the one that has raised the most alarms has been the increased powers that the law gives the minister of education. That is of course Paul Kandra. Uh he will have the power to appoint investigators over school boards in much the same way that the government uh already has with five school boards uh earlier this year. Currently, or at least uh before the passage of Bill 33 this week, uh the law required that the government investigate a uh a board specifically for financial matters. Bill 33 would let the government start an investigation for quote matters of public interest.

Oh, that does raise the question, what is exactly a matter of public interest?

Basically, anything the government wants. There is some specific uh issues named in the legislation, things like student well-being, uh board management and governance, that kind of thing. But the law also allows the government to name whatever it wants as a public interest. So the power for the province to take over the operations of a school board is uh in principle very very broad indeed.

Why don't they just call it the better call Paul act?

I mean some of the critics have indeed.

All right the other one bill 60

right and this is the government's latest housing bill and we talked about it in some detail when it was uh introduced by Minister Rob Flack a few weeks ago. So, I'm not going to go over uh every element of it again, but in broad strokes, it makes a number of changes uh specifically to the landlord tenant board that place limits on some of the procedural rights that tenants have when they are fighting evictions. So, that would have the likely effect of making it easier for landlords to evict tenants. Uh opposition parties have emphasized this is likely to hit lower income tenants hardest. uh people who already frankly have a difficult time navigating uh the LTB's processes and enforcing their rights. Uh the city of Toronto's housing division is also warning that uh further exacerbating the housing instability for lowincome renters could cause a surge in demand for the city's uh shelter and housing services. Those services in the city uh they are already of course struggling with the city's uh existing housing crisis. I guess I should add that you know the uh functions of the landlord tenant board uh are arguably not working well for anybody tenants or uh landlords. The uh provincial ombbudsman had uh done a report on the LTB uh after the surge in demand from the the COVID backlog and really uh found a uh just a litany of of horror stories. Uh things seem to have improved somewhat with the appointment of more board members. Uh but uh yeah, I I I think it's fair to say that the LTB is still not working great for anybody.

Now, often times when opposition members don't like a law that the government has passed, they say, "Not only do we not like the law, but you have given us inadequate time to make our case to try to get you to change your mind in the legislature. Inadequate debate time." I heard Mar Style say that the other day.

Is that accurate?

Yeah. So I I I think both bill 33 and bill 60 were time allocated and they were sent through the house without any kind of committee hearing. So no opportunity for um members of the public to uh make any kind of uh response to MPPPS. Um bill 33 uh passed this week has actually I checked uh right before we started recording it has already received royal ascent. Uh bill 60 was expected to pass this week. It will actually uh they've deferred the vote. It will actually probably pass uh early next week. And the government is not done. Government House Leader Steve Clark has also moved a motion to time allocate three more bills. Uh those are bills 27, 46, and 68. Bill 27 is actually a natural resources bill uh which we haven't talked about I think previously on this podcast. Bill 46 is u the red tape reduction bill that we have discussed previously and bill 68 is the legislation accompanying the fall economic statement. So uh of those three bills only bill 46 is going to get uh any really committee time uh any hearing uh and of course the committee hearing is itself being time allocated.

Now just we should do a little polyai 101 here. When we say a bill is being time allocated what does that mean and what is the significance of it?

Right. So with uh the parliamentary tradition right I I guess you know in the purest sense of it debate could continue forever until members agree to come to a decision and the government's ability to time allocate things uh they they they create a rule in the standing order allowing them to introduce a motion saying with a majority of the house of support and of course the government has a majority of members um they are going to limit the amount of time that any uh issue can be debated. and then they are going to call it for a vote. And this is a way of basically saying like no, we are not going to let debate on this matter uh continue forever. In this case, they're really not allowing for very much debate at all. A few hours of debate. Um and uh and then it's going to proceed to uh very tightly scheduled votes. And you know the the defense of this in principle is that the government is the government and the government gets to uh you know manage the legislative schedule of the house and time allocation is part of that uh privilege. So that is that is what time allocation is. A

and for those of us of a certain generation this can be a big deal because a government fell on the issue of time allocation once.

We're going back to the 1950s now.

Okay. I'm listening.

I actually didn't cover this one either, but uh the pipeline debate which took place in Parliament on whether to build the TransCanada pipeline, which the Louisis San Lauron government thought was of such urgency that they they put closure in. They time allocated, in other words, didn't give the opposition what it felt was enough time to debate this bill. and they just quote unquote rammed it through the house and they lost the next election as a result of it because John Deabbaker, the conservative leader, made the case that democracy was not being respected and they were jamming this thing through and as a result the pipeline debate brought down the Louisis San Lauron government. So sometimes these things don't matter at all maybe in this case other times it matters a lot. Yeah. And I think in in the current context you know I I am no longer scandalized by the use of time allocation. uh you know as I say governments use them to manage the legislative calendar. Um but I I would remind our audience that you know context matters and that one reason that uh the government is moving the uh a number of these big omnibus bills that do lots of different things and they are time allocating uh so many of them is that the government shortened the fall sitting of the legislature. Right? They were supposed to come back in September. They did not come back until October. MPPPS literally uh did not have very much time to debate and consider bills that they otherwise would have had if the House had come back according to its uh regular schedule, which has left the government in this position of needing to uh horsehip its priorities through the House like this. Gotcha. And with that, we're off to your column, my column.

Time now for our regular feature. We call it your column, my column, in which JMM and I reminisce about the columns we wrote for the TVO website this past week. Which one do you want to focus on?

The most recent one I wrote for the website is actually about uh the city of Toronto and parking. Uh but it's uh we're also talking about a city of Toronto issue in uh our mailbag. So I'm going to skip that and I'm instead going to talk about uh housing policy once again. Um

what a shock.

Yeah, I know. Uh earlier this week a uh a group of housing advocates uh presented an idea that they are pitching to the provincial government as a way of uh helping fund affordable housing uh in the province. uh they are calling it a a revolving housing fund or a affordable housing revolving fund. It's notable because it wouldn't require a massive ongoing expenditure from the government. Right? This would not have to become billions of dollars uh every year in perpetuity. Rather, what they are asking for is a a relatively uh modest sum, still a lot of money for you and I. They're talking about like a hundred billion dollars. Um, and the idea is that that one-time investment would get loaned out to projects who are sort of in that early valley of death stage, if I can put it, where they've done some of the early work to say like, is this a good place to build a a new uh development with affordable housing in it? And uh they they've just sort of started their application process to the city, but they don't have the next bit of money. They have to get through the next steps, including things like getting permission from the city to build. And so this loan would be made available to affordable housing developers who would then uh repay it after the the building is uh uh constructed and starting to be occupied and collecting rents. And then when that loan is repaid uh it would go back into the fund and then be reloed out uh to the next cohort of projects. And so it's it's an interesting idea. Uh I think for a for this specific government uh you know there's a lot of things going for it as a proposal.

You know, we talked about the um parsimony of the treasurer. Uh you know, it it would not require uh a huge amount of money and it would not require uh a permanent commitment of large sums. So although let's be honest, uh a lot more money would also be useful. Uh so you know they are pitching it uh right now. you know, they they they've made this project public and they they are urging the government to consider it as we head into the budget season, the budget consultation season, right? Ontario's budget will come out uh next spring sometime. And uh they would sure love it if this idea uh could shake some money loose and and get committed to the Build Ontario fund, which is uh really the the the agency, if I could put it that way, uh that would uh disperse these kinds of sums. Well, their timing is good because I think the finance ministry just announced today actually on this Friday that uh they are now beginning the process of taking deputations from the public about what they'd like to see in the next budget. So, okay, here's an idea on housing.

Yes, we've also I I think you did an agenda show once about how much value the public consultation process actually has. But maybe the government will listen.

We we will we choose not to be cynical about this process optimism at the at the beginning of budget. We we can once the budget comes out, we can we can uh come to certain conclusions about how useful the whole process was of getting deputations from the public. But for the moment, hope springs eternal on day one.

Indeed.

I wrote a column about what Bob Ray, the 21st premier of Ontario, used to call the divine right of premers. And of course, he's playing off this expression, the divine right of kings, who basically could do whatever they want whenever they wanted. The one power that the premier of Ontario frankly uh you know most for first ministers in this country the the divine right that they enjoyed was the right to call an election whenever they wanted to. And when Daltton McGinty became the premier in 2003 one of the earliest bills that his government passed was something that addressed this issue because he and his government thought it's really not fair to all parties concerned that the premier knows when the election's going to be held but the opposition parties really don't. And you know, there's always speculation or rumors, but the fact is only one person knew. And McGinty's government passed a law saying, "We're going to rectify this by having what they called fixed election dates, which stated in law that the next election in the province of Ontario, and you know, bill passed, I think, in 2004, which meant the next election we're going to have is going to be on the first Thursday of October, 2007. and then the next one first Thursday in October 2011 and then the next one two you get the idea first Thursday in October every four years. It gave predictability. It put everybody on a level playing field

mostly.

Obviously this only works when it's a majority parliament. When it was a minority parliament uh you know all bets are off. If the opposition parties wanted to combine and show a lack of confidence in the government they could pull down the government whenever they wanted to. They didn't have to wait to four years. There was also in the law though another so-called out clause which was if the premier in his or her judgment thought that the circumstances in the province of Ontario were so urgent there was an emergency happening that therefore we need to have an early election or alternatively we need to have a later election not you know more than four years down the road that was allowed under the bill. Now, we know that Doug Ford used that little out clause in the bill uh earlier this year when he called an election in February, only 2 and 1/2 years into the term that he won back in 2022. And of course, his explanation was the election of Donald Trump means that we're going to be in a trade war. It means that tariffs are coming and I need a fresh mandate to take on Donald Trump to deal with that. And therefore, we're not waiting the four years. We're going to go after two and a half. the public apparently enough of the public the biggest chunk of the public 43% or whatever he got on election day agreed and uh Doug Ford won his third consecutive majority so while the law

I will tell you this while the law was well-intentioned

you couldn't really say at the end of the day that it did level the playing field because of course if you didn't want to follow the spirit of the law which the current government did not want to do you didn't have to and Doug Ford has now finally come to the conclusion that why don't we just get rid of the damn thing altogether. He never really liked the idea to begin with and so that's it. The fixed election date law is going the way of the dodo bird and we're back to the divine right of premers.

Can I do a little bit of remedial civics here? Do it. Uh the reason why the law had that loophole, it had to have that loophole because uh constitutionally of course the power to call the election is not the premier, it is the left tenant governors. And so uh

on the advice of the premier

on the advice of the premier of course as as all of the left governor's powers uh must be uh exercised but the um so so long as the powers is executed by the left tenant governor you you can't modify the powers of the crown without a constitutional amendment. the McGinty government did not want to go so far as to try for a constitutional amendment and actually I can't remember which one of the amending formula that they would need to to use and it would become a can of worms obviously. Um but so if you were just going to do regular legislation which is what the fixedterm election law was you had to include that loophole to preserve the powers of the crown.

Good stuff. Anyway, those two columns are on the TVO website tvO.org. Click on my picture, click on his picture, you'll go find them and you can find out more about them. Now, if you've got a burning question or insightful comment, please send it along to on politics at tvo.org. We'd like to pluck one comment out of the mailbag each week. And JMM, what do we got this week?

We have a question here from Sebastian Dyer from Toronto, who has a question on the city's new corner store bylaw. He writes, "Hi, Stephen. JMM, I've just read JMM's article on Toronto's new proposed corner store bylaw. Aside, I can almost always tell when an article is written by JM from the title. I do have a bit of a brand. Um, and I found myself curious about how recently council has been dividing the implementation of new bylaws according to the old pre-amalcomation boundaries of the city. I assume this is a strategy to get certain bylaws to pass, but I'm wondering how much this strategy has been used in the past since amalgamation. Seeing this raises some bigger questions to me, too. Is the city council no longer fit to purpose for the administration of many bylaws in the entire city of Toronto? And would we be better served distributing those powers to burrows, mayors, councils as seen in Montreal?

What about the provincial government? Will Doug Ford's conservatives catch on to this slow deamalgamation and put a stop to the divided application of bylaws? I'm very interested to hear your thoughts. Sincerely, Sebastian from Toronto.

Well, what a cool question. Now, before we get into the sort of nuts and bolts of what he's asked about,

yeah,

we need a little explanation about the new bylaw. So, fire away.

Right. So, uh in most of the city, uh corner stores are currently illegal in neighborhoods, which is uh uh the definition in the official plan of you know, most areas of the city where, you know, people uh have you know, particularly like you know, single detached homes. Um, most of the ones you would see, cuz of course, you know, if you walk around, yes, corner stores do still exist. Um, most of them would have been uh opened before the city adopted its most restrictive rules uh or they've been allowed uh exemptions otherwise. The city has proposed to adopt a new bylaw that would legalize existing corner stores and expand permissions into parts of the city where they traditionally haven't been allowed. Uh seeing this in part as a way to, for example, help people reduce the amount of driving they have to do. you don't have to drive to the grocery store to get a a bag of milk if you just go to the corner store instead. Uh, and it could also just make the neighborhood a little bit more lively, a little bit more congenial. Uh, one of I I I do have to do a brief uh bit of McGrath lore, if I could put it that way. Uh, one of the exemplars of this uh, advocacy was a store across the street from Duen Public School downtown uh, which has been subject to a I don't know if you want to call it a harassment campaign or whatever, but like it it was getting uh, criticized by uh, the city's uh, municipal licensing and standards because they I think it was like literally they started serving Kurig coffee. No, and that breached the bylaw.

Say it ain't so.

Yeah, exactly. Coffee. Um, and so, you know, that became uh uh one of the the lightning rod issues uh in this campaign. And I I mentioned this because uh I went to do some public school and I that corner store under a different ownership in a previous iteration. I spent a bunch of money at that store on like candy and arcade games when I was a kid.

Wasted your childhood at that store, did you?

Uh yes, clearly. Uh just where I started going down this wrong path that led me here.

That led you to leading the planning act at 2:00 in the morning. Yes.

All right. That background having been put in place onto Sebastian's question.

Right. So, the way that Mayor Olivia Chow and her planning chair Gourd Perks secured passage of this new bylaw was uh by largely but not entirely leaving the city's inner suburbs uh out of it. The old pre-amalcmation city of Toronto is going to make up most of the area where new neighborhood retail is allowed and then some smaller pockets of retail will be allowed in the suburbs. And uh this matches what we saw earlier this year with sixplex permissions where again the the old city corps uh will allow sixlexes and the inner suburbs mostly will not. And so Sebastian is asking is this a kind of a soft deamalgamation of the city? And you know I think that is one way to look at it. Um I think it's important to emphasize that uh even in the suburbs the intent is that we see some change. Uh uh Gord Perks actually spoke uh very uh uh passionately about this in the council debate saying that like we are not still six cities. We are one city and uh we are uh one city of many hundred neighborhoods and and we want to respect neighborhood difference but we are still one city. Um and you know a more optimistic case here might be that this is just a little bit of a I don't the right phrase for it but a gateway drug for suburban neighborhoods. is definitely not the right phrase to use.

Well, you know, we're going to we're going to let them try out a little bit of neighborhood change for free and hope that they get hooked.

Well, you know, uh one of the fascinating developments that I've seen in the 30 years since uh Mike Harris's government created the mega city almost 30 years.

Uh this uh you know, we used to be six different cities in Toronto uh old city of Toronto, Scarbor, North York, East York,

New York, and Atobbico, right? used to be six semi-independently run cities, but of course there was also Metro Toronto Council where broader decisions could be taken that affected the entire um 416 as we now call it.

Yes.

So I'm kind of intrigued by these little attempts which we have seen numerous times over the years. This is one related to corner stores where there do seem to be efforts to kind of plant a flag for the old municipality, you know, and and look at I see Doug Ford do it all the time. Doug Ford brings a north end of Atobbico sensibility to a lot of the issues that he, you know, wants to see dealt with in Toronto. And um, you know, as a result, I guess we should ask the question where you whether you think those sensibilities might be brought to bear here and he might intervene. Well, I did raise exactly that question in my column since I've spoken to a bunch of municipal officials, uh, not just in Toronto, but around the GTA this year, uh, who have said to me, you know, some version of like, we'd like to be able to do our jobs without having to worry about what is making Doug Ford angry on his way to work every morning. Um, you know, the premier and you know, we can talk about bike lanes, we can talk about encampments. Uh, you know, the the premier uh has gotten a reputation among his I would say his critics uh at the municipal level for like getting angry about something he sees outside of his car window and coming to Queens Park angry about it and deciding that there's going to be a new law, right?

Um that that's an unfair characterization I will grant. Uh but that is what I'm hearing from municipal officials. Um, and you know, the premier has also like you you said, you know, bringing a a North Atobbico attitude to things. I would say like he's been pretty clear about letting the suburbs remain suburban in character, right? Um, and so like he ruled out the idea of um forplexes being uh legislatively allowed provincewide because he he said that, you know, neighborhoods should be allowed to stay in their current sort of character. right now. Of course, I have no evidence to suggest that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing is going to intervene to stop this specific thing that we're talking about, the the the corner stores bylaw. Um, and and they have not stepped in to uh stop the city's sixplex uh permissions. But of course, that is also a product of negotiations between the city and the federal government. Um but you know the government has pretty clearly decided that there is like there's there's no bar to them intervening in extremely local matters right um whether it's bike lanes whether it's encampments whether it's that like single individual school trustee that they legislated against not too long ago um you know so I I I don't expect it I will be paying attention

I think one of the things that I have been most intrigued by ever since the mega city came in again 30 years ago

is is the attempt by now maybe it's just citizens of a certain generation but I have noticed citizens I don't hear people say I'm from North York they're from Downsview they're from Willowdale I don't necessarily hear people I mean some people say yes I'm from Scarbor but other people say I'm from West Hill you know they get I'm from Malver they get very specific and people love to hang on to their they like to hang on to their neighborhood names because it makes them feel more grounded, like they have some kind of foundation. The 416 is still just a big massive amorphous thing. Yeah.

And I think there's something inside of us, and I think Sebastian's question points to this that reminds us that, you know, yeah, I'm from Atobbico, but really I'm from Rexdale or I'm from Islington or I'm from the Lakeshore, I'm from New Toronto, I'm from Mimiko. you know, people love that neighborhood feel and this speaks to that.

No, absolutely. One of the the the more optimistic takes I could give this whole idea is, you know, I don't know if you've read the book, um, Abundance, the Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, uh, book, uh, made a big noise in US politics. Um, and one of the arguments that they make is that, you know, places that are run by Democrats, you know, uh, where Democrats control the entire state government and many of the biggest cities, exemplar here being like California, right? Um those ought to be advertisements for what good governance looks like. They should be an advertisement campaign for the Democratic party, right? Uh they are not um certainly that that would be the argument from uh Ezra Klein and and Derek Thompson. Uh that you know nobody looks at California and says this is a place that is so wellrun that of course we should elect Democrats elsewhere. And similarly, I I think you know the optimistic take to letting the old city of Toronto make these kinds of experiments is if it goes well and you know I hope anybody within the sound of my voice who works at the city of Toronto is motivated to make it go very very well, right? If it goes well it it then becomes an advertisement for you know urbanism done well because frankly there are a lot of people who who find a lot of these ideas very scary. Like just you can look at what the debates were like at city council. Um, and you know, they they are resistant to change. And you know, if we can uh make it work well in downtown Toronto, uh, in old Toronto, uh, it can be, uh, an advertisement campaign for policy implemented. Well,

there we go. Let's give the email address and get out of here.

Right. Uh, again, if you'd like to ask about any content of the show, uh, please email us at onp politics@tvo.org.

And that is the OnP podcast with this Friday, November 21st, 2025. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcast so that you get notified each time a new episode is available. And you can see the video version of the podcast on the TVOT Today YouTube channel.

Any feedback you have, we're always happy to get it, good, bad, or indifferent. Write us an email at onpolitics at tvo.org and be sure to include your first and last name and where you're located.

This week's episode was produced by Matthew Omera, editing by Colin Kish.

Production support from Jonathan Hollowell and TVO's digital media services team.

Lorie F is the executive producer of digital. John Ferry is vice president programming and content.

As you know, we always like to thank our crew both up here on the fifth floor of 2180 Young Street and down on the main floor where the control room is for making the studio look so good and for keeping us on the air. So, thanks gang.

And with that, I guess we got to do a little heads up here. I'm away next Friday, right? I'm going somewhere. I can't remember where. Oh, yeah. I know. Yeah, I'm going somewhere. But JMM's going to be joined by a special guest host.

Uh so, we look forward to that and I look forward to listening to that.

All right. And in the meantime, until the next time, bye-bye.

Bye-bye everyone.

Hi there. My name is John Michael McGrath and I'm a podcast host and writer here at TVO. I focus on provincial politics explaining to our audience what is happening at Queens Park from education policy and healthcare to transit and housing and yes, even bike lanes. Here at TVO, we believe that democracy requires an educated, engaged citizen. And one way we help build that is by supporting quality journalism. Your donations help make that possible and we're grateful.