Steve Pacen: Welcome everyone to the OnPaly podcast. I'm Steve Pacen

John Michael McGrath: and I'm John Michael McGrath.

Steve Pacen: Today on the pod, well, what a wild nomination meeting in Scarbor Southwest for the Ontario Liberals last weekend. We'll tell you about the guy who won by 19 votes and about the runner-up's allegations of improprieties.

John Michael McGrath: We've seen the Ontario government take over school boards before, but a college? Yes, sir. Kesto College has a lot to answer for as far as the Minister for Higher Education is concerned. The Auditor General has a package of new reports out this week on everything from special education and trucker training to the use of AI in government. We'll get into her findings.

Steve Pacen: And in your column, my column, I'm going to talk a little more about that AI report from the Auditor General.

John Michael McGrath: And because it's just such a good story with so much to say, I am focused on the Scarbor Southwest Liberal nomination meeting and some of the stuff that happened behind the scenes that you did not hear about unless you read my column. It's Friday, May 15th, 2026. So, let's get to it.

Steve Pacen: JMM, a little sugar for you. And can I just pay you kudos before I, you know, before we do the big reveal on what you're wearing?

John Michael McGrath: Yes.

Steve Pacen: I Some days, you know, if you're a professional athlete, some days you got to play hurt, right?

Steve Pacen: And John Michael is playing hurt this week. You are under the weather, but you are here.

John Michael McGrath: Uh, yes. Uh it's it's it's it's been an off and on week, but I'm here and a public servant as ever

Steve Pacen: cuz you just didn't want to let me down, right?

John Michael McGrath: Yes.

Steve Pacen: You didn't want you knew that I'd be disappointed if you weren't here. So, you are here and I am grateful. That is a thing of beauty. Now, what are you wearing today anyway? What is that?

John Michael McGrath: Uh so, this is one of many Godzilla themed T-shirts that I have. This, I think, is the poster for uh Godzilla versus Jigan, which I believe was 1972. uh which has uh no direct relevance to uh topics of today,

Steve Pacen: but you and I are both big fans of the various obscure traditions around Westminster parliaments and I learned about a new one or at least a new one to me uh this week. Uh so King Charles uh opened parliament this week with a speech from the throne and when the king delivers the speech in Westminster uh there's all sorts of fun traditions. Did you know that a MP from the House of Commons gets held hostage?

John Michael McGrath: No. This is a thing.

Steve Pacen: This is a tradition that dates back to Charles I uh who uh had a famously tense relationship with Parliament. And um when Charles would go to parliament to deliver the speech from the throne, for example, uh he asked that an MP from the House of Commons would be held at Buckingham Palace to guarantee that the king would be allowed to leave Parliament safely,

John Michael McGrath: and they still do it.

Steve Pacen: And now, so now, of course, it's all ceremonial and symbolic, but yes, an MP from the House of Commons goes and spends the day at Buckingham Palace. I'm sure he gets a lovely lunch or whatever. Um, and it's it's all there to symbolically guarantee that the king will be allowed to uh safely return uh after having delivered the speech to parliament.

John Michael McGrath: I did not know that.

John Michael McGrath: If you want to watch a movie about battles with the crown, of course, there are many great movies about the histories of the 1600s. Or you could do what I do when I am feeling under the weather some days. I put on a Godzilla movie from the 1960s or '7s and watch that because, of course, Godzilla is king of the monsters. That is a stretch. my friend. Well,

Steve Pacen: it was a long walk, but I got there.

John Michael McGrath: It was a long walk, but you got there. And you know what? I can't be too critical cuz I'm about to do the same kind of stretching here. You ready? All right, I'm ready.

Steve Pacen: Okay. Um, you've heard of former Ontario Premier John Roberts.

John Michael McGrath: Yes, indeed.

Steve Pacen: Big library at University of Toronto named after him. Do you know what his nickname was when he was the premier?

John Michael McGrath: Uh, chairman of the board.

Steve Pacen: Correct.

John Michael McGrath: Yes.

Steve Pacen: Do you know who I'm wearing today?

John Michael McGrath: I I do in fact recognize that face.

Steve Pacen: Okay. Well, this guy had the same nickname. this guy. And I'm I will stand up for those of you who are watching on television. There we go. That's Mr. Sinatra, whose nickname, of course, was the chairman of the board. Why have I got a Sinatra thing on today instead of a premier? Because number one, I love Frank Sinatra. I actually saw him perform three times.

John Michael McGrath: And he died 28 years ago yesterday.

Steve Pacen: Okay.

Steve Pacen: And I remember being on a shoot for TVO in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

John Michael McGrath: Wow.

Steve Pacen: When he died. So, I was I was out in the field doing a shoot and I did not get the news and I called in to pick up my voicemails and I heard on my voicemail Richard Aunian, former theater critic of the Toronto Star, was head of arts here at TVO for a long time and his email, his voicemail to me was, "Oh, Snake, my nickname, Pake the Snake. Oh, Snake, I'm so sorry. I just heard about Mr. Sinatra and you must be just devastated." And that's how I found out. He broke the news to me and I was I just felt, oh my gosh, Frank Sinatra's dead. I mean, he was 82, so you know, it had to happen.

Steve Pacen: And John Michael, I haven't been the same since.

John Michael McGrath: It's Frank's world. We just live in it.

Steve Pacen: I I appreciate you uh also uh working through this difficult time when you are still grieving.

John Michael McGrath: Thank you. Yes, indeed. I kind of am actually. Yeah, I love to play his music still. Now, should we get through some just late breaking Ontario stuff here?

Steve Pacen: Yeah, absolutely. I think uh probably the the most uh noteworthy one for our audience is that uh we finally got the paperwork, the receipts. Um the the government had been uh I don't want to use the word harassed. uh they they had been browbeaten,

John Michael McGrath: browbeaten by the opposition parties to prove that uh the government had in fact sold back the uh infamous now private jet uh that the premier had earlier purchased for uh his uses and the use of cabinet. Uh government had sworn up and down that they had uh sold the plane for as much as they had paid it for it. Uh that there had been no net cost to the taxpayer.

John Michael McGrath: It turns out not quite. Uh with the uh receipts that the government did in fact disclose this week, uh we learned that in the associated fees with the purchase of the plane amounted to about $190,000

Steve Pacen: legal fees, storage fees.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. They had like started like uh maintenance and storage contracts, those kinds of things. Those contracts that had to be cancelled.

John Michael McGrath: And so yes, even having never flown a single day in service, the plane racked up a substantial bill. $190,000. We should, I guess, put this into some perspective. Yes.

Steve Pacen: On a budget of $250 billion is nothing. But of course, it was the $16 glass of orange juice that got a federal cabinet minister eventually dropped from cabinet because sometimes it's the little purchase, not the massive purchase, where people just shake their heads and say, "How did that happen?" And 190 grand might just do the trick this time. Who knows? Now we should touch on the other thing is and and of course the rumors about this had been swirling for the last week but we got the official confirmation yesterday I guess that Honda is in fact cancelling that one point no sorry $15 billion investment they had planned to make an hour north of the capital city in Alist and this of course will come as now confirmed devastating news

John Michael McGrath: to the auto assembly industry in the province of Ontario and next week a week from today we will have Adam Chambers on the program. He is the MP for the area. And um I I I think there are some hard questions that we need to ask now about the advisability of continuing to try to subsidize the existence of an auto manufacturing and assembly industry in the province of Ontario given everything these days. I'm not taking a position on it. I'm just saying let's ask some questions.

Steve Pacen: Yeah. No, it's difficult not to ask those questions given uh both how uh rapidly the global industry is changing and obviously how much turmoil the North American market is in right now. So, uh yeah, I think a really uh important time to ask exactly those questions. Now, let's just before we go to issue one, let's do something pleasant, shall we?

John Michael McGrath: Yes.

Steve Pacen: I had a wonderful conversation this past week with a woman named Mary Warner, probably two weeks ago now. Mary's in her 90s, I believe. She gave what I can only characterize as an extraordinary donation to TVO. An extraordinarily generous donation.

John Michael McGrath: Thank you, Mary.

Steve Pacen: Thank you, Mary, indeed. Um, Mary went to university with former Premier Bill Davis's first wife, Helen.

John Michael McGrath: Okay.

Steve Pacen: Who, you know, if people have followed the story, it's a long time ago now, but who died very tragically of cancer when she was in her early 30s, leaving Mr. Davis with four children under the age of seven. He was very fortunate in as much as uh he had a second wife, Kathy Davis, to whom he was married for almost 60 years and she was magnificent and saved his life and career and was a wonderful mother to uh his four kids. But anyway, I'm getting off the path here. Um Mary New Helen, Mary said she is a regular viewer of Paulie. She described our show, John Michael, as somewhat offthe-wall. And she said, "But you guys keep going." and I said, "Mary, I'll keep going if you keep going." So, there we go.

John Michael McGrath: Very nice. Uh, we also got an email from Kate Goody. I hope I'm pronouncing your surname correctly, Kate. Uh, who did write in to say, uh, this is grand for any Ontarian to keep up with so many issues in Ontario today, tomorrow, and from our past. Your episodes are podcast gold and very relevant research for us commenters who cannot access all the data. Bravo to the heroes of TVO.

Steve Pacen: Which is very nice. It's podcast gold, Jerry. It's Gold, Jerry.

John Michael McGrath: First time I've been called a hero, so I appreciate that.

Steve Pacen: All right, lest we uh start to inhale too much here, let's get off to issue one.

John Michael McGrath: Well, it's not every day that a single nomination race in a single writing is one of the most compelling stories in provincial or even national politics. But we are arguably seeing that very thing happen this week in the writing of Scarbor Southwest in Toronto's East End. Nate Erskin Smith, the MP for the writing of Beaches East York, wanted to be the Liberal candidate in the provincial bi-election to replace NDP MPPP Dolly Beckham. But not so fast. Both the previous Liberal candidate and two others challenged Erskin Smith. And when the votes were all counted, the winner was Assanal Hafi by 19 votes out of more than500 cast. Erskin Smith has since alleged that the voting process was improper and has launched an official appeal. Here is some of what his team is alleging from his chief scrutiner Andreas Katsurus.

Andreas Katsurus: There was an organized effort by Mr. Hafiza's campaign on Saturday to direct, monitor, and pressure people throughout the voting process. We saw many cases of people hanging around in the voting area telling voters what they should do. Multiple people took calls on speaker phone or video so they could get instructions right in the voting booth. There were many cases of people taking pictures of their ballots on their cell phones. In most of the world, this would be considered clear evidence of vote buying.

Steve Pacen: So those are some serious allegations and we we did reach out to Mr. Hif's campaign for comment. Uh they declined to comment citing the arbitration process that is currently moving forward. Uh speaking of that process, the Liberal Party also announced late Thursday uh that the Internal Arbitration Committee would hear Erskin Smith's case next week on Wednesday in Toronto. Now, uh all that aside, uh back to the actual events from Saturday. Uh unfortunately, while they were mere minutes away from my house, I was on the road uh on Saturday for family obligations. Uh, but fortunately our Scar Bro bi-election senior correspondent was on duty and I have him right here. So, Steve, what did you see on Saturday?

Steve Pacen: I'm the senior liberal nomination bi-election Scarbor Southwest correspondent. Yes. So, who's the junior one? I haven't had the pleasure yet.

John Michael McGrath: There's only two of us on camera.

Steve Pacen: All right. Look at JMM. I've been to lots of these things, right, over the years. I've been to lots of nomination meetings. Some of them are no news at all. You know, some of them are big-time news, and this was one of those. It had its issues. I want to start with the moment I got there and the organizers said to all the people who are already, you know, there to vote, please line up over here and the polls are not open for a half an hour, but you can start to line up if you like. And I thought, now that's very strange. Why would you do that given that the four candidates who want these people's votes are about to speak? They're about to give their official speeches. They're going to be their names are going to be placed into nomination and they're going to offer their speeches. Now, to be sure, most of the people who show up at these things already know who they're going to vote for on the first ballot, but of course, it's a rank ballot, which means you can put first, second, third, and fourth choices down on the ballot. And I thought to myself, well, they may know who they want on the first ballot, but what if their candidate gets dropped off because they have the least number of votes? Then they need to know who their second and third place vote should go to. But the gymnasium was empty. It was at a high school in Scarra. The gym was empty. Nobody was there to listen to the speeches. They were all starting to line up. So to me, an organizational mistake by allowing the lineup and people didn't hear the speeches. And more than that, disrespectful to the candidates. These four candidates have worked their asses off for months. Sorry for the profanity, but it's true. They've worked their butts off and the fact that the gymnasium was 95% empty and nobody heard their speeches was a real disservice to them. Okay, that's number one. Number two, as the lineup was getting longer and longer and a lot of people showed up to vote. 1500 people, I believe, showed up to vote,

Steve Pacen: you could see there were some people in line holding sample ballots.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah.

Steve Pacen: And I must confess, I had not seen that before. And if you looked at the sample ballot, it would have the names of the four candidates and numbers beside as in instructing you who to vote for on the first and the second. And okay,

John Michael McGrath: that's a little different. Y

Steve Pacen: but presumably

Steve Pacen: that was a campaign strategy undertaken by one of the campaigns in order to help people decide who to vote for.

John Michael McGrath: Yes,

Steve Pacen: it's a little passing strange, but okay. Probably nothing illegal about it, but it's a little passing strange.

Steve Pacen: After the thing was over, um John Fraser, the interim leader of the Liberals, said, "Process seemed pretty kosher to me. I think it's fine. If anybody's got any problems, let them prove it.

John Michael McGrath: Right.

Steve Pacen: We then had the semibizar situation of Nate Erskin Smith losing by 19, which is pretty close, right? And you know, if you're if you lose by 19 out of 1500 votes in a general election, you're probably entitled to a recount. Yeah.

John Michael McGrath: But this is a nomination meeting and the rules seemed very

Steve Pacen: what what's the word we want to use?

Steve Pacen: Happen stance. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there are Uh what's the old show? Whose line is it anyway? The rules are made up and the points don't matter.

John Michael McGrath: I I don't want to be that rough on it, but but because of course there are very specific rules about how these things should happen. Yeah.

Steve Pacen: But Nate Erskin Smith kind of made a beline for the exit after consoling his delegates

Steve Pacen: and um eventually the reporters got up to him did a scrum in which he said there were things that happened in the counting room that his scrutiners had told him they had never seen before. and they've done a lot of scrutinering. So he thought about it for a couple days and then decided he's going to launch an official, you know, protest. I guess a an official appeal to the count. Now what happens at this stage I guess is

John Michael McGrath: what anybody's guess.

John Michael McGrath: So what we do know is that I mean this is not something that he gets to appeal to court, right? This is appealed to the Liberal Party itself and they will judge basically whether they think there is sufficient evidence to um overturn the results of that nomination meeting and from everything I've read in the subsequent days uh that almost never happens. There has been like I think one successful appeal in decades. Well, and beyond that, one of the things he was alleging in the parking lot, in the rain, outside after the whole thing was over, was that the people who ran the nomination meeting are all kind of veteran behind-the-scenes liberals who don't like him. And his suggestion was they put their thumb on the scale for the other guy.

Steve Pacen: Now, again, don't know this. It's an allegation. Has to be tested, has to be investigated. But uh but based on what I saw just myself on that day

Steve Pacen: you know it seems to me that there are some things there are certainly some stories that are worth investigating. So, one of the uh points that uh the his his chief scrutiner mentioned in particular that I I do want to emphasize is is bizarre is uh the and he produced a photo, you know, uh at least somewhat substantiating this allegation that people were taking photos and even videos of themselves marking their ballots and putting them in the ballot box. And there's a reason why that precise thing is illegal in provincial and federal elections because that's what you do if you're buying votes. Um,

John Michael McGrath: you got to be able to prove to whoever

John Michael McGrath: you sold your vote to that and like we like people forget like the history of the ancients here, but like the reason we implemented the secret ballot, you know, more than a century ago was to get rid of vote buying, right? Um so so that is one thing that I I think you know really does deserve uh special scrutiny. Uh we are going to talk about this more in the your column my column segment. Um but there are a handful of other issues that I I I want to sort of quickly mention here. Um uh Mark Carney the prime minister uh waited into this race uh gave a very sort of late uh endorsement of the contrary.

Steve Pacen: Well he says it wasn't an endorsement.

John Michael McGrath: He says it was not an endorsement but it was a photo op. The two of them stood there photo op where he said I hope you have a successful future in Scar Bro and they like

Steve Pacen: the prime minister can say what he likes. It was an endorsement. Everybody saw it was an endorsement. Um but it's it's really bad for the prime minister and like most successful liberal currently in Canada to make an endorsement like this and then for the endorsement to not work right yet. Never mind not working. I mean, he's got, if you think about the currency he's got right now in this country, to get involved in a provincial, not federal, in a provincial nominating meeting where he's putting his thumb on the scale for one of the candidates who ends up losing.

John Michael McGrath: Not a good look.

Steve Pacen: No, it's it's bad. Um, this whole uh, if I can uh, engage in some cultural appropriation, this whole Mishagos has uh, uh, raised this issue of whether we should more tightly regulate party nominations. This was obviously a big deal federally for several years running. Uh, it has now been raised proincially. Um, I I guess I will just sort of throw in that there's no real uh, dispute about whether we can do this. uh you know this would be a matter of provincial jurisdiction.

Steve Pacen: It's the kind of thing you might at least in theory see provincial parties get together and say okay like the wild west years were fun but that time is over and now's time to like buckle down and and impose some serious regulations. Um we are not there yet. I I I don't see a ton of movement from you would need to see the the provincial government, the Ford government uh uh come out and say like it's time for us to do this. The reality is that political parties are kind of private organizations and they can run their nomination meetings however they want to. I was talking to former Liberal MP Martha Hall Finley for this other little thing I do called the Pagan podcast and she said I said Martha how would I describe you know how would you characterize what goes on at these nomination meetings and her answer was rife with corruption.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. Uh and then you know obviously this brings us back to uh the question of the broader Ontario Liberal Party leadership race, right? Uh Erskin Smith's candidacy in Scarbo Southwest was supposed to be the stepping stone to his leadership uh bid uh to to lead the the Ontario Liberal Party. I mean it's I I I don't see a path forward for him right now.

Steve Pacen: Well, not not so fast on that, I would say, because I I did talk to him. I had a private moment with him before the results were announced. Yeah.

Steve Pacen: And I say, "Do you have to win this nomination in order to go forward as a candidate for the Liberal leadership?" Yeah. And he said, "Not necessarily." And this is before he knew any of the numbers. He said, "If I get, you know, if my clock gets clean, then yeah, but what if it's close? What if I lose a real close one?" He says, "Doesn't not necessarily a fatal blow." Well, I'd say 19 votes, particularly when there were 34 unaccounted votes, right? that the the lists have got to match up. The number of ballots you count

John Michael McGrath: has to be the same as the number of people who register to vote.

Steve Pacen: Yeah.

Steve Pacen: And apparently there were 34 unaccounted for votes in a race that was decided by 19.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah.

Steve Pacen: You got anything else on this or should we move on?

John Michael McGrath: No, let's move on.

Steve Pacen: Okay. Off to issue two.

Steve Pacen: Provincial administration isn't just for school boards anymore. Konis Stoga College in Kiter has had its entire board of directors sacked by the provincial government and a provincial director appointed by the post-secondary minister Nolan Quinn. The government alleges substantial irregularities in Konosoga's finances. JMM, what's going on here? So

John Michael McGrath: I I feel like every time we talk about postsecary education, it all comes back to uh everybody dealing with the financial shock of changes to immigration policy, right? Um and Konosoga College was kind of like patient zero

John Michael McGrath: in uh Ontario. Um of all of Ontario's colleges, Konosoga attracted the highest number of foreign students. uh that reached uh 32,500 uh foreign students uh by 2023-24 before federal immigration policy changed and uh those numbers have of course fallen precipitously. uh the long-erving president of Konisoga, John Tibbitz, is uh widely seen as uh the person really behind Konosoga's growth strategy uh and also the person whose compensation the government singled out in uh their their news release announcing uh these changes at the board. Uh they took specific aim at uh Tibbitz's both his compensation package and the severance agreement uh that the university uh signed with Tibbitz which uh the government alleges exceeded provincial guidelines by quite some margin. So, the board has been replaced by Linda Franklin, who will act as the provincial administrator and oversee the university's interim president, Norma McDonald Euing. Uh Franklin was previously the CEO of Colleges Ontario and is currently a member of the board for Niagara College. She has a great deal of credibility in this sector. She's been involved in the sector for decades and decades. So, a good choice I would suggest by the government and getting somebody in there who understands the plumbing and can probably get to the bottom of things. Just making the comparison when we looked at what school boards were taken over by the province of Ontario, by the Minister of Education, um you know, some debate about why that one and not that one or how did these guys get picked or anyway, some controversy there.

Steve Pacen: There's only one college so far that's been sort of selected for being taken over by the province.

John Michael McGrath: Sample size of one.

Steve Pacen: Sample size of one, right? And do we have a sense about why this one? Because they're not the only post-secondary institution with lots of international students. Obviously,

John Michael McGrath: I think it's fair to say there's there's sort of two sides to this issue. You know, on the one hand, um it does genuinely seem to be the case that people within the post-secary education sector. I mean, you laughed a little bit when I I referred to this earlier, but people really did see Konos Stoga College as kind of a bad actor in uh in the college space. And and once again, that is not speculation on my part. um one of these weird little you know subplots to all of this. Uh former Sue College president who was also a former MPP David Orizetti uh singled out Tibbitz and Konosoga College in public remarks in February of 2024 saying they were so bad actors. Tibbitz responded by calling Orizetti quote a and uh making allegations in turn about Sue College and its uh student recruitment practices. uh Orzetti and Sue College then uh responded by launching a defamation action against Tibbitz. I could not find uh any uh confirmation uh before we started recording about what the state of that lawsuit is. Though I will say Orizetti uh has since resigned from uh Sue College and of course uh Tibbitz has also resigned as as president of Konosoga.

Steve Pacen: Tibbitz Tibbitz has been he's been a lightning rod in this sector for a long time. I mean or he and Orzeri had he and Orzetti had the most public flame war against one another. But uh if you talk to people behind the scenes, there were lots of comments about Mr. Tibbitz and about what was going on at Konos Stoa. So there has been no shortage of criticism from what's going on at Konisoga. Fair to say, right? Over the last many years.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. And and beyond the the the drama um the the the CW drama of it all, uh the numbers really do bear out that that Konosoga massively expanded its student body with international recruitment and that growth was not as it turned out sustainable. Right. Um Konosoga like other colleges and universities around Ontario right now is dealing with serious financial difficulties. uh 2,700 positions were cut in 2024 and last year Konosoga announced 80 programs uh would be cut from their offerings. Um but you know to to your point earlier a lot of colleges and universities are going through uh financial distress and if uh if Konosoga was a particularly uh egregious case and I'm not saying that that they were but you know except that for argument sake at the moment uh you know they're certainly not the only people in the sector who were profiting from international students. Um, so it will be something to watch, right? Will other colleges get this same uh kind of treatment and and I will certainly be keeping an eye out to see if uh any further colleges get this kind of announcement.

Steve Pacen: Lots of layoffs there. What do the teaching unions or employee unions have to say about all this?

John Michael McGrath: Uh right. So the waterlue record this week quoted uh Leopold Kauf who represents Konisoga faculty and librarians uh who suggested that the province actually look at term limits for college presidents because of course one of the issues here is that Tibbitz had been president of Konosoga for decades and I believe still has a building at Konosoga College named after him and that was sort of one of one of the points of criticism here was whether it was unseammly for uh the college to name that building after him while he was still president. Um but Leopold Kauf said or he added rather uh quote whether it was a lack of oversight or a lack of interest there's no escaping the fact that they in this case he's referring to the provincial government they allowed this to happen and you know that mirrored criticism that we saw from the opposition parties uh last week as well and so I I do think it is is worth uh saying that as much as the board may have had a a duty to uh provide oversight for things like these severance packages that they may legit imately have fallen down on based on what was disclosed in these audits. Um but some of this information should have been automatically flowing to the ministry and the minister and cabinet as well. And so it is fair to ask whether uh the government uh allowed this stuff to slide for longer than it should have and is now playing catch-up.

Steve Pacen: Just by way of one little example here, people may be asking themselves, you know, what could they have done that was so screwy? I I think there was one example where there may have been an expenditure, for example, of $25,000 that somehow got listed as $126 million in the college's budget and nobody caught it. Like it seemed to just go through and go through and go through. And with that, let's go off to issue three.

Steve Pacen: The Auditor General has a fairly exalted place in the institution that is Queens Park. She is appointed to a 10-year term to give her the kind of job security needed to be able to be critical of the government of the day. She answers to the whole legislature, not just the government. And she is nonpartisan, which seems to give her an extra credibility. So, when Shelley Spence talks, people listen. What was she talking about this week? Uh, so the auditor general released four reports this week. And I'm going to start off by um apologizing in a sense saying we do not have time to get into each of these reports into uh depth that they deserve, but I strongly suspect that some of these will come up again in the future because that's the way auditor general reports tend to go. Um so the four reports were about commercial truck driver licensing, special education services, uh the family responsibility office, and this is the part of the government that enforces court orders for spousal and child support. uh and the use of AI services in the provincial government. So as is usual with these kinds of reports, the auditor general found lots of things to criticize in uh these parts of the government. Uh I do want to talk about uh the family responsibility office for a second because it has been the subject of prior audits and also an investigation by the ombudsman of Ontario who is of course a different uh officer of the legislature has a a different mandate but these accountability officers will frequently cover some of the same territory. Um and it's been interesting to watch this department uh respond to scrutiny over the years. The auditor had a number of recommendations to improve its operations and uh the FRO has accepted all but one on a for a technical reason. Um but I do think it's a reminder for our audience, a useful one, just how many areas of people's lives, including ones that you probably don't think about very often, the provincial government uh touches. Right? I could take 10 people off the street today and I guarantee you not one of them, well maybe one could name the family responsibility office. uh but it for the people whose lives it it actually uh touches it matters a great deal right we're talking about you know collecting uh child support and spousal support right and and aside from the fact that it's it's a very um important job it it is necessarily also unfortunately you know it's it's a very it can be a very upsetting experience obviously so this report has some things to say I I just think the main thing I will say right now is as I say it's just a reminder of all the different areas of our lives that the province touched is and the auditor had uh some to say about that and and also of course many other topics.

John Michael McGrath: Well, including special education. Let's go there. What did she have to say about that?

Steve Pacen: Right. So, I will just give our usual uh uh disclosure whenever we discuss education policy that TVO is of course an agency of the Ontario government and reports specifically to the Minister of Education, but we write our own material here. So um so about this audit uh Ontario law requires that school boards provide special education supports to children that need them. Uh the auditor looked at both the Ministry of Education as well as three specific school boards and conducted surveys of teachers to determine how well provincial law and policy are being followed across the province. Uh the short answer Spence found is that there's a huge amount of inconsistency uh from school to school and from schoolboard to school board. uh teachers described a process that is hostile and opaque to many parents and too full of bureaucratic jargon uh just to get their kids the the assistance and the services uh that they are uh entitled to. And in many areas uh the province is uh not really collecting any kind of standardized data for the kind of applesto apples comparisons that you want to be able to make in these kinds of situations. uh families face long and inconsistent wait times for supports, staffing decisions by boards lead to inconsistent access. And you know, of course, these things have real effects in the classroom. Uh and those effects are not just limited to uh students who need these supports, right? Um kids who do not get the support that they need can often be uh disruptive. And uh that in turn leads to one of the auditor's other findings that students with special needs are being quote informally excluded uh from schools in ways that are not being tracked by the government. Of course, the law does allow principles to uh exclude students if there's a fear of you know people's safety or whatever. Uh but what she found is that in in many cases students are uh getting excluded from schools without uh the the written uh policies being followed. Uh the government did establish a draft uh policy in 2025 for exclusions, but that work was paused for the early election, you might recall. I remember that. Uh and uh the work had not resumed by the time the auditor issued her report.

John Michael McGrath: One more area, commercial trucking.

Steve Pacen: Yeah, this was uh an interesting one, you know, so to pull back for a second, right? Obviously, if you want to drive in Ontario on the king's highways, uh you need to get a driver's license. And if you want to drive a large commercial truck, that is a a very specific type of license that you get. The the standard G license will not do. So to get that commercial uh truck driver's license, you need uh special training that is overseen uh by the province but is mostly delivered by private colleges. Some interesting distinction there. Um the auditor found kind of a mess in these career uh private colleges uh with some really basic forms of training being sometimes omitted and with uh data being falsified which is particularly alarming. Uh some colleges did not train drivers on how to safely make a left turn for example. Uh that that seems kind of basic to me. Uh I think other drivers were uh not trained how to reverse safely which again like seems kind of basic kind of important. One uh detail here that she mentioned in the audit, there is a separate track of training institutions who are regulated not by the uh post-secondary education ministry uh that we were also referring to in our last uh item uh but is in fact regulated by the ministry of transportation and those institutions regulated by MTO uh did not show all of these same uh uh flaws and errors and omissions uh that she found in these uh private career colleges. So I I I'm not not even sure exactly what the the difference there is except that I would say uh clearly MTO seems to be taking the job a bit more seriously.

John Michael McGrath: Okay. Should we do one more here? Artificial intelligence.

Steve Pacen: Yes. And so uh this is an interesting one because obviously a lot of people have uh very strong feelings about uh the rise of of large language models and AI in general. Um and uh you know for or against whatever your feelings are it is being adopted in a lot of uh white collar workplaces and guess what the the government is kind of the biggest white collar workplace there is right um and yet you know we want to be careful about this stuff because the government also collects tons of sensitive information uh about people's lives and the auditor wanted to know if the government had appropriate uh security policies and safeguards in place to ensure that uh people's confidential data doesn't get leaked into public AI models.

Steve Pacen: Unfortunately, what she found was that uh while formally the government does have rules about, for example, what AI models uh members of the Ontario public service are allowed to use, in practice, ops workers are mostly using the same popular ones that people know about, right? chat GPT claude and these are ones that do not have the kind of secure environment that uh the auditor suggests is necessary. Uh they are supposed to be using Microsoft copilot for the record uh because that that has a a a guaranteed security environment I guess uh but only 6% of uh recorded AI use on the ops computers uh is going through co-pilot. The other 94% are going through other models. So that's a problem and the auditor recommends that the government simply block other unsecured AI models from ops computers.

John Michael McGrath: But I gather this goes beyond the Ontario public service because I remember a couple of years ago for example uh doctors are allowed to use AI because as we know their handwriting is completely illeible and if you can get a nice print out of whatever it is that they are telling patients etc. um that might be helpful. Is that happening here too? Well, doctors are not just allowed. the government is is encouraging them to use AIC scribe systems that uh the the government is procuring on behalf of like hospitals and other healthcare providers and uh so the auditor looked at what kind of uh tests are being used in the procurement process uh to ensure that you know so so like the stuff we know that can happen with these large language models right um so-called hallucinations where the the the model simply kind of invents something almost out of whole cloth and makes a recommendation that that is not based in actual evidence. Um that has happened with some of these models. Uh other models uh made transcription errors. Sorry, let me just back up a second. What we're talking about here are scribe models uh that are supposed to help transcribe the doctor's notes and it's it's uh you know sometimes they they would transcribe even the the interview with a patient. And I've certainly heard doctors say that, you know, these tools can be uh life-changing because they really do cut down on the amount of uh work that doctors have to do. But the auditor general's question was, you know, how safe and secure all these things are. So uh you know, we already talked about hallucinations. Uh some made uh simple uh transcription errors and uh others uh omitted uh information entirely. uh and not every model did all three of those things, but not a single one of the models that was approved by the government for use in hospitals uh was totally free of errors. And

Steve Pacen: maybe we don't need perfection. You know, uh the the point of these scribes is not to replace the the doctor's judgment. It is still up to the doctor to uh uh confirm and and if necessary correct the the results that come out of the AIC scribe uh program. But I'm just going to reiterate that this is personal health information, right? And and the consequence of getting somebody's prescription wrong, for example, could be uh quite serious indeed. We really do want to set a very high bar. Um so yeah the the auditor's findings I would not call them a total like showstopper on the topic of uh AI uh in healthcare. Uh but these findings certainly are worth taking seriously.

John Michael McGrath: You got any more on AI you want to talk about?

Steve Pacen: Uh I do but I'm going to save it for the uh your column my column segment

John Michael McGrath: which I believe is coming up next.

Steve Pacen: Time now for our regular feature, your column, my column, in which JMM and I have a little chat about the stuff we wrote for tvO.org, the TVO website over the past week. Okay. You've already hinted that you want to continue on about AI. What have you got?

John Michael McGrath: Right. And so I I did write about this uh earlier in the week and specifically this issue of of the use of AI in government. And I would urge people to just think as citizens about what we do and do not want uh the government to do with AI. You know, I'm I'm long past the point of thinking that um these systems are just, you know, fancy autocomplete as some people like to refer to them. There does seem to be a real uh power to these AI models that could genuinely be useful in uh government, right? um collecting, synthesizing, uh uh analyzing information is actually like a big part of just what we ask governments to do. And in so far as uh AI can help do that more quickly and efficiently and um sometimes in ways that human minds just are not capable of, I think, you know, there's there's some interesting uh potential there. But we should also be very wary about the risks, right? And on the one hand, you could imagine um you know, if we fed all of the information that the government already has about us into a system that could analyze it and and you know, slice up the data and and you know, in theory, you could imagine, for example, you know, a a government AI agent being able to contact you and say, "Hey, there's this government benefit you didn't even know you were eligible for, but here we've already signed you up for it." So on the one hand that would be like a positive vision for what AI could do uh in the future.

Steve Pacen: On the other hand that could just as easily be like a surveillance nightmare that I want no part of. Right? And so uh yeah I I'm I don't think I've got like a truly firm sharp answer on what I think AI should and should not be used for uh in public policy yet. uh but I I I would urge people to uh if you are not already thinking about this stuff uh think about it seriously and uh you know uh apply the the critical lens that we would ask any citizen to do on almost any topic.

John Michael McGrath: There we go. I want to return to the Scarbor Southwest by election because while we did talk about it a lot earlier in the show, the fact of the matter is there's more to say and and it's an unusual nomination meeting because most nomination meetings of course when they're over you focus on who won.

Steve Pacen: The winner is the story. Well, that's not the case this time. Uh not that much ink has been spilled about the guy, Arsenal Hafi, who won this thing. So, I'll just very briefly say the guy's a he's he's quite an immigration success story, right? He came here from Bangladesh. He's I guess going to be well he's let's hold off. He wanted to become the first ever Bangladeshi member of parliament because he initially wanted the Scarbor Southwest federal liberal nomination. But when Mark Carney and team pulled a bit of a fast one and managed to get the Ontario deputy NDP leader to sort of cross parties and go to the Liberals and become their candidate and she won the bi-election. Dolly Begum did with 70% of the vote or something

John Michael McGrath: very popular in that area obviously. Uh she became the first Bengali member of parliament. So he's trying now to become the second member of that community for the provincial parliament. He's got 30 Domino's pizza parlors that he's uh managed to purchase over the course of his business career. But he was not the story. The story is Nate Erskin Smith who's just one of the more intriguing politicians on the political scene in the country these days. And as you pointed out earlier, the idea was win the nomination in Scarbor Southwest, win the bi-election, you're therefore in the Ontario legislature, a great place from which to run for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, which is now vacant. Well, that plan is obviously shot now because

Steve Pacen: not only is he not going to be the next Liberal MP from Scarver Southwest, he's also resigning his seat in the House of Commons this summer. Yes. So he will be, I guess, out of politics for the first time in 11 years since he became a member of parliament. He still has options. He could still run for the Liberal leadership in November because after all, Bonnie Crombie won it without a seat. Steven Deluca won it without a seat. That is not unprecedented. So that is an option for him.

John Michael McGrath: He is a bit of a paradox, I have to say,

Steve Pacen: in as much as the guy's obviously got game. I mean, he is a tremendous communicator. He's a bright guy. He's got ideas about what should happen uh with regard to housing, with regard to social services, serving the community. He's got a lot of ideas. He has a very loyal following and and to watch him jmm I got to tell you after the nom after the nomination meeting was over and he lost that razor thin by a razor thin margin of defeat.

Steve Pacen: Yeah. Um, some of his supporters were in tears and he went around person to person to person to person after it was over, smiling, hugging them, telling them to hang in there and everything's going to be fine. You know, I'm sure his own heart was breaking at the time and yet he somehow managed to find the strength to make everybody else on his team feel okay, which is a it's a talent.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah.

Steve Pacen: Now, Mr. Erskin Smith gets himself in trouble from time to time, too. He dropped by the media holding cell

Steve Pacen: cell room.

Steve Pacen: Sometimes you feel like you're a prisoner when you're they corral you all in there. But he dropped by just before the votes were the final tally was announced just to shoot the breeze. You know, he's very comfortable in his own skin around people.

John Michael McGrath: And Laura Stone from the Globe and Mail very cleverly said, "Are you going to do a scrum regardless of how this thing turns out?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, of course."

Steve Pacen: Which was news to me because his PR person had already told me he's only scrumming if he wins. if he loses, he's not. So, she got a commitment from him on the record to scrum, talk to reporters one way or the other. We all stood a discreet distance away from him as he was consoling his supporters. It felt like the right thing to do. Let's give him that time, 15, 20, 25 minutes to deal with his own team. And then all of a sudden, boom,

John Michael McGrath: tried to bolt.

Steve Pacen: He bolted for the exit. Yeah. A whole failank of people sort of crowded around him and out he went. And the weird thing about it was it's pouring rain outside. So the reporters, what do we do? We got to get the I mean we we want to get the story. So we chase after him. And there we are outdoors in a parking lot finally sort of surrounding him. He's not going to want to outrun all of us. And it's pouring rain and we're doing this scrum at which time he announces that he had seen all sort not he but his team had seen all sorts of irregularities. And of course that became the story and he has now officially appealed the decision. Nursken Smith is turning 42 years old next month. He's a young guy. He's got if if he wants it, I suspect a longer career political career ahead of him still.

Steve Pacen: Um but he's got some decisions to make right now. One of which might be, and I'll tease this here because I'm going to write about this next week for we'll talk about this again in a week's time.

John Michael McGrath: Brad Bradford is running for mayor of Toronto.

Steve Pacen: Yep. which means there's an open seat on Toronto City Council.

John Michael McGrath: Yep.

Steve Pacen: And it happens to be the area of the city of Toronto that he represents. Yes. Erskin Smith in Parliament.

Steve Pacen: So there are people right now who are urging him to consider leaving all this Ontario politics stuff behind. Try to get yourself elected at city hall. Um and who knows what happens four years from now. Well, I mean has a chance to make a contribution at city hall. And who knows what happens four years from now when um whoever the next mayor is. Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves here. But suffice it to say, he has a lot of options to consider right now, and I'm sure he's doing just that.

John Michael McGrath: I'm sure we will keep an eye out for that.

Steve Pacen: Right. Okay, let's go to the mailbag. If you've got a burning question or insightful comment, we always love hearing from you. Our email address here is on politics at tvO.org. JMM, hit us up. What do you got?

John Michael McGrath: Right. So this week we have a letter from Tim Moffett in Lindsay who writes, "Hi Steve and JMM. I was just reading an article in the Cora Lakes weekly paper about a local counselor and deputy mayor Tracy Richardson who chose not to seek re-election because of online abuse, social media trolling, and personal threats. I know she's not the first woman to be harassed for having the gall to pursue a public life, and she sadly won't be the last. It seems that in our modern era of partisanship and polarized algorithms, it becomes more and more likely that if you decide you want to be a politician, you have to accept the risk of a crazy person attacking you or your family. But why does it need to be this way? That's Tim Moffett from Lindsay.

Steve Pacen: Well, I can tell you, Tim, um, and I'm not trying to be a smart alec making this comment, but if you want to talk about online abuse, social media trolling, and personal threats, I get them all the time. And I am, as they say, a white male of a certain age. So, I know it's 10 times worse for women. It just is. I mean, we've heard from so many female politicians over the years.

Steve Pacen: Uh, and we have also heard from numerous female politicians who just said, "I've had enough of this and I'm out of here."

John Michael McGrath: Y,

Steve Pacen: so yeah, this is a thing. This is a terrible, terrible reality of modern-day politics in a digital age.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah, I would say there's a there's a few different uh parts of this topic that I I want to touch on briefly here. Uh the most prominent is, you know, as we're talking about here, a real growing atmosphere of uh toxicity and and and a feeling of genuine threat that is uh facing local representatives. And and I I I want to be careful how I say this cuz I I don't want this to sound like I'm saying, you know, uh people in rural communities are country bumpkins who don't have serious politics because that's not what I mean at all. We are seeing this uh increasing in uh areas of the province where the local politics have genuinely been less polarized. If I can put it say lower stakes. Um you know the the the election might be might be important. It might there might be certainly important local matters um to to address, but uh it it doesn't take on necessarily the sort of um the the the total citywide convulsive nature that sometimes elections here in Toronto do, if I can put it that way. And and so this is a genuine change that I think we are seeing, right? This this real nastiness in parts of the province where uh civic politics used to be uh just not quite so toxic. Um, and uh, you know, at least based on the reporting, like in this case from uh, Cora Lakes, I I I genuinely don't know how else to put it except to say that some people are kind of losing their minds out there.

Steve Pacen: Well, here's the reality. If you're the mayor of a very small community in this province, you are seeing them at the grocery store. You are seeing them at the gas station. You are seeing them, you know, at a community event. It you you cannot not see your representatives. And as a result, I have heard from rural politicians that, you know, you you can't really hide behind staff. You can't hide be in city hall. You're out there in the community living your life with everybody else. Yeah.

Steve Pacen: And therefore trying to get away from the people who are going to be threatening to you is really difficult.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. Uh and the other thing I I do want to add before we uh wrap up is you know something we've mentioned on the podcast before that it is not just um members of the public of the broader public that uh politicians uh have to worry about. Uh increasingly we are also seeing uh disruptions on municipal councils coming from uh other members of those councils. Um I'm not going to rehash all of the various stories but we've talked about them on the podcast before. Um, and in part to deal with some of the, let's say, misbehavior of certain members of elected councils, the government introduced Bill Nine, uh, the Municipal Accountability Act, uh, more than a year ago in May 2025. Uh, they held consultations over the summer last year. uh were told in no uncertain terms by uh multiple different groups of stakeholders that they felt the proposed law was too weak and it was unlikely to actually uh lead to changes in uh behavior and the government proceeded to accept zero consequential amendments at committee um and they have not as of this recording actually called bill 9 for third reading. Uh the premier was asked about this this week and he uh said that he and the minister of municipal affairs uh Rob Flack will see if they can get it across the finish line before uh the legislature rises for the summer. But I I just find this a very frustrating case because, you know, quite aside from the fact that Bill 9 is is a weak piece of legislation that was very disappointing for lots of people in the municipal politics space, it is at least something and the government has just totally dragged its heels on actually just passing the legislation, right? It has been out of committee since last October, I believe. Uh it would have taken them very little effort just objectively.

John Michael McGrath: There's lots of things I I think I need to be careful about. I know how the legislature works. I know the mechanics of this. They could have called it for a third reading vote long before now. They have not done so. It's just uh such a clear case where they just have not made this a priority. And I I thought I would take this opportunity to just shine a spotlight on that.

Steve Pacen: Yeah. Th this is a bill that is supposed to deal with the sadly too frequent occurrence of say one city counselor or town counselor verbally harassing or bullying or committing workplace um harassment against others. And of course it tends to be male on female

Steve Pacen: and this was supposed to provide for some penalties to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen. And um from what you're saying to me, this sounds like it's not going to do a whole heck of a lot of much about that.

John Michael McGrath: Well, it's what it may not even be in effect until after the October elections. And and you know, I think one of the things that stakeholders were hoping was if the law had been in place before October, that might have changed the decisions for who was going to run in October. And now that's not going to be the case. So yeah, the whole thing is uh as you say, quite disappointing. Why don't you give the email address and let's get out of here.

Steve Pacen: Absolutely. Uh once again, if you'd like to ask about content on the show, you can please email us at onp politics@tvo.org.

John Michael McGrath: And that is the OnP podcast for this Friday, May 15th, 2026.

Steve Pacen: You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts so you get notified each time a new episode is available. And you can see the video version of the podcast on the TVO Today YouTube channel.

John Michael McGrath: Any feedback you have, we're always happy to hear it, good, bad, or indifferent. Send us an email at onpolitics@tvo.org.

John Michael McGrath: Please include your first and last name and where you're from.

Steve Pacen: This week's episode was produced by Tiff Lamb. Editing by Colin Kish.

John Michael McGrath: Production support from Jonathan Hollowell and TVO's digital media services team.

Steve Pacen: Lori F is the producer of digital. Stacy Dunce is acting vice president programming and content.

John Michael McGrath: Special thanks as always to our wonderful studio crew. Guys, I hope you enjoy your Victoria Day weekend. You have earned it. And in the meantime, everybody, we say until next Friday. Bye-bye.

Steve Pacen: Byebye.