安大略省政坛动态：OSAP改革、市政选举与枪支暴力公共卫生视角

Steve Paikin: Welcome everyone to the OnPoli podcast. I'm Steve Paikin.

John Michael McGrath: I'm John Michael McGrath.

Steve Paikin: Today on the pod, the government is making big changes to the province's student assistance program after suspicious findings at Ontario's private colleges.

John Michael McGrath: We'll take another look at municipal elections, this time in Mississauga, Milton, and Kawartha Lakes.

Steve Paikin: Will government house leader Steve Clark be reprimanded over his role in the greenbelt scandal? A Liberal MPP wants to force the debate. And in your column, my column, I'm going to talk about one of the stranger long-running subplots in Toronto's election this year.

John Michael McGrath: And I'm going to stay in the capital city for a look at one of the best races for council between Nate and Nat. Plus, stay with us after the show for a special interview on gun violence. It's Friday, October 9th, 2026. So, let's get to it. JMM sir,

Steve Paikin: our traditional sugar as we start every episode.

John Michael McGrath: And I looked at your shirt today and again for those listening on podcast, we should just describe it. It says Amity Island welcomes you and that shirt looks like a little

Steve Paikin: fin from a shark. Yes, indeed.

John Michael McGrath: Dorsal fin.

Steve Paikin: Those of us of a certain age well remember I think it was 1975. Dum-dum, dum-dum.

John Michael McGrath: So, yes, of course, this is a reference to the movie Jaws, and anybody who's seen the movie remembers it well. But you know, I think it's important to remember that the shark is not really the villain of the film. The villain of the film is the mayor who insists on keeping the beaches open despite a rash of shark attacks.

Steve Paikin: So, it always comes back to politics with you.

John Michael McGrath: It always comes back to politics and we are going to be discussing municipal politics today even more than usual. And so you know, let's count our lucky stars that while there are mayors of varying qualities across Ontario, none are quite so bad as the mayor of Amity Island.

Steve Paikin: You know, I forget his name in the movie, but Murray Hamilton was the actor who played him. And he was absolutely perfect in the role. He was a complete slimeball with no ethics. Only cared about keeping the beaches open so that Amity Island could enjoy, of course, a very economically buoyant summer. Yes. And you're right, the shark just does what sharks do.

John Michael McGrath: No, it's just a force of nature like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

Steve Paikin: Yeah, it's the damn mayor who couldn't get his act together. Okay, that's a good point. Well, okay. What premier am I wearing today? I am wearing Oliver Mowat. Oliver Mowat was the premier a long time ago. We're going back to the 19th century. But Oliver Mowat is the longest serving premier in Ontario history. He served, if you can imagine, almost 24 years as the premier of Ontario. And we're going to go down the list of some of the top longest serving premiers in Ontario, and you will see the method behind my madness. Oliver Mowat's number one. Number two, tick the box. There's Bill Davis. Almost 14 years as premier from 1971 to 1985. Number three, Leslie Frost back in the 1950s. This was the guy that Doug Ford matched in terms of three straight majority governments. Leslie Frost was the last guy to win three straight majority governments, 51, 55, and 59. And he served 12 plus years as premier. Number four, the man they called the chairman of the board. That's John Robarts. He was premier from 1961 to 1971 and he served nine plus years. Number five on the list is Dalton McGuinty. Yes, Dalton McGuinty. And what's interesting about his story, he served only two days fewer than Robarts. And I remember asking him after he left office, you know, did you think about asking Kathleen Wynne if you could hang around as premier for just three more days so you could have gone higher up the list? And he said, "I actually knew about that, but the Wynne people wanted the transition to take place when they wanted it to take place." And he said, "I thought it was my responsibility to accede to their wishes." So, no, he's number five on the list instead of number four. Even though if he wanted to be, you know, if he wanted to push it, he probably could have been higher up the list. So, McGuinty at number five. Look who's at number six now. Doug Ford is now, as of Sunday, going to be the sixth longest serving premier in Ontario history. He is the 26th premier and he's already number six on the list. Eight years, 104 days as of Sunday, and he will be passing on Sunday, number seven on the list, and that's Mitch Hepburn. Mitch Hepburn at 8 years and 103 days was the premier. I think he won his first majority in 34. He won his second majority in 37. He is the youngest premier we have ever chosen in the province of Ontario. 37 years old when he became premier. So how about Doug Ford going, you know, hanging around, hanging around, and now as of Sunday going to be the sixth longest serving premier of all time.

John Michael McGrath: Well, I think I said on election night in 2025, you had to grant that with a third straight majority, he was going to be one of the most consequential premiers in Ontario history just by dint of the sheer term of service. And if he serves until the end of this current legislature, and we don't know when that will be, but if you assume it will be four or five years, he's going to move a few more ranks up that list.

Steve Paikin: He will pass McGuinty, he will pass Robarts. He'd be number four, I guess. Yeah, indeed. And if he wants to serve until he's—let me just think for a second—if he wants to serve until he's 77 years old, he can pass Oliver Mowat. But oh no, I'm not suggesting it. I'm just saying that's what the math suggests.

John Michael McGrath: That would be arithmetic. Yes.

Steve Paikin: All right. Enough of that list. Let's get on to what we need to talk about. Off to issue one. You know that Ontario's post-secondary education system is made up of publicly funded colleges and universities. But the province also has hundreds of privately run career colleges that train and educate tens of thousands of students annually. Some of those colleges, however, have raised red flags when it comes to student assistance program funding. And this week, the government has started multiple investigations. JMM, what's going on here?

John Michael McGrath: Right. So last week the Canadian Press reported thanks to a Freedom of Information request—thank you journalists, thank you Freedom of Information laws—the CP reported that volumes of money that were being spent on OSAP grants for students at these career colleges were unusual. I think it's important to set here the context, right? The government funds universities and colleges directly. These career colleges are funded by their student fees, but those fees however are eligible for OSAP loans and grants. So tax dollars are implicated here. What the Canadian Press found was very large increase in OSAP costs for seven specific career colleges which collectively received $385 million in OSAP grants. That is not a huge sum in the context of a $200 billion budget, but it is equal to the OSAP grant funding that went to all publicly funded colleges. So, this is all playing out in a legal hearing at the moment as well where government officials allege a few different kinds of—I'm going to editorialize you say shady conduct—that all basically amount to these colleges being, again the allegation is, that they are diploma mills functionally, that they are creating fake classes enrolling fake students to collect very real money. These allegations we need to emphasize have not been proven in court. Nevertheless, on top of the existing legal proceedings, the government has done its own internal investigations and referred this matter both to the Ontario Provincial Police and they have asked the auditor general to step in as well and investigate. The auditor general in the course of her investigation might also uncover material that she can also refer to the OPP if she finds that there's grounds for a criminal investigation. On top of that, and maybe more immediately, the government is also pausing all OSAP payments to all career colleges, which is a pretty precipitous step to

Host: ...take a month into the new academic year.

Analyst: Well, absolutely. I mean, if you are, where are we now? October. So, these students have been in school for a month. They obviously have their loans and their classes and their schools all chosen and they're going and all of a sudden if you pump the brakes as the government appears to be doing, you have the potential of kind of disrupting the educational lives of thousands of students here. But the gist of this is there's a billion dollars in total going to these private career colleges and as a result, you mean the taxpayer does have an interest to see how that money is spent?

Host: Yes, absolutely. How big and how serious a problem do we know this to be at this stage of the game?

Analyst: So, as I mentioned earlier, there are hundreds of these colleges around Ontario and the investigation, at least as the CP's reporting elaborated, you know really does focus on seven of the most problematic ones, but the government has raised some other issues. It's important to say that some of the people warning earliest about problems in the sector were in fact the career colleges themselves. Their association, Career Colleges Ontario, warned as far back as 2023 that there were some bad actors within the system and they were warning the government that something had to be done. They were not listened to in a timely manner it seems.

As I mentioned, the province has said that they have other grounds for concern. Things like nominally separate colleges that all somehow share the same ownership and the same address, questions about how genuine these places are as actual operating colleges. They also in some cases seem to be collocated with immigration recruitment firms. So lots of questions about what is exactly going on there.

Host: You can connect dots here which we should be careful not to do, but you can see why investigators are interested.

Analyst: Yes. This is one of those cases where nobody has proven fire, but there sure seems to be some smoke around, if I could put it that way. [snorts]

Host: So this is very genuinely a very big disruptive announcement for these colleges, for these students. Career Colleges Ontario has asked the government to sort of reconsider this very large and precipitous step because, as far as we know right now, the vast majority of students and the vast majority of career colleges have not done anything wrong. Again, math is important here. So there's a billion dollars of tax money in total through the OSAP program going to these private career colleges, and seven of the hundreds of career colleges get 345 million of that billion.

Analyst: Yes.

Host: Just seven.

Analyst: Yes.

Host: So again, fire I don't know, smoke...

Analyst: seems to be. Yes.

Host: Yeah. So okay, the effects aren't limited just to career colleges here, right? It goes beyond that.

Analyst: Right. So our audience will recall earlier this year the government made some major changes to OSAP and how OSAP supports were partitioned out. They said that the reason was unsustainable cost growth in the OSAP system. And so they shifted the burden on students from a system where most supports were being distributed as grants to one where it was increasingly reliant on loans. Loans obviously having to be repaid, and so students bore more of the financial burden.

And again, the government cited increasing costs of the OSAP system. But what again the CP's reporting has found is that most of the growth in OSAP spending was coming specifically from these career colleges. By their count, 95% of the increased spending in OSAP grants between 2023 and 2024 went to these problematic colleges. Ontario Liberal MPP and critic Tyler Watt says that students across the province were made to bear increased costs for their own education because of a handful of bad actors, saying in a release, quote, "the government took a hatchet to a problem that needed a scalpel."

Host: H governments sometimes do that. Sometimes it's easier to paint everybody with a broad brush and then figure it out afterwards. But yeah, I take his point. Now, on the subject of job training, which we have been talking about here, we do have a bit of an unusual update on the whole skills development fund fufura. Let's call it that. Okay. And again, maybe a little background's required here because we are going to take people back to the skills development fund which seemed to go to friends of Tories in some cases. Do we want to put it that way?

Analyst: Yeah. So the issue was this skills development fund was supposed to be, you know basically broadly speaking, job training money, and it seemed to very frequently go to firms or other organizations who were close to the progressive conservative party or who had made donations to the progressive conservative party. And one of the companies that came up in these investigations was Keel Digital Solutions, which was, broadly speaking, an online learning company. And they had received money through the skills development fund, and the government named Keel as a company having engaged in some misconduct. They had their funding through the ministry of colleges and universities frozen, leading this week to the company being ordered into receivership.

Keel CEO was Rob Godfrey, a son of prominent conservative and businessman Paul Godfrey, who was the CEO and then chairman of Postmedia, who of course is one of the largest newspaper chains...

Host: ...and former president of the Blue Jays and former chairman of Metropolitan Toronto had a long career in politics and he goes way back, Paul Godfrey.

Analyst: Um, so, that's how we get to Paul Godfrey, who alleges in court documents as part of Keel's receivership that he was compelled by the premier's office to use his connections to Postmedia to publish a letter across that chain's newspapers as part of Ford's pre-election messaging in 2025. And I of course want to credit the folks at the Trillium who broke this story. The threat, so to speak, was that if he did not get that letter published in Postmedia's papers, that his son's company would be denied funding.

Now, to be very clear, the premier's office flatly denies this claim, calling it categorically untrue and disconnected from reality. And it's important to note that by 2025, Godfrey was no longer formally connected to Postmedia. He was no longer CEO, was no longer the executive chairman, and the company Postmedia—again, reporting from the Trillium here—the company denies any knowledge of what Godfrey described.

Host: This is a pretty extraordinary story because Paul Godfrey is one of the sort of longest in good standing conservatives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And the notion that he would make this allegation about the progressive conservative government, to which you would think he would be somewhat aligned, is pretty extraordinary. Having said that, his son's reputation has also been affected here throughout all this. So, we hasten to add these are all allegations. Nothing's been proven in court. Right.

Analyst: Correct. It is sworn testimony in court and at least theoretically carries the possibility of perjury as all sworn testimony does, but it has not been proven in any sense. And you know, it might never be because sometimes that happens. And while we're talking about his connection to Postmedia, I think one of the things worth saying is, you know, one of the responses Postmedia said to the Trillium was—I'm going to summarize here, but basically said—like it would not require a threat for us to publish the letter from the premier of Ontario. If the premier of Ontario or any major prominent politician wants to run something in our opinion pages, like they're welcome to.

Host: You just have to ask. [laughter]

Analyst: Yeah, pretty much. That's right. So you know, there are at the very least there are questions to ask about this allegation, but it is an extraordinary allegation to be made in this context. And it is certainly the kind of thing that I would expect the opposition...

Steve Paikin: ...parties to be bringing up in question period when the legislature resumes sitting uh just a few weeks from now after the municipal elections.

John Michael McGrath: And speaking of municipal elections, nice segue, buddy. Off to issue two. Time once again for our regular feature called Municipal Election Watch. We stayed up all night thinking of that title, didn't we? [laughter] Yeah. Anyway, we countdown to the local elections that are taking place in this province in 444 municipalities on the 26th of October. This week, we're going to start off with the city just to the west of the capital, and that is Mississauga, where they have one of the more vicious mayor's races going on right now. Holy smokes. So, I saw some of the tape from one of the debates, I guess it was a week and a half ago or something like that. And wow.

Steve Paikin: Yeah. So, [laughter] our audience probably recalls that this is something of a rematch, perhaps a grudge match between...

John Michael McGrath: ...perhaps a cage match...

Steve Paikin: ...between former mayor Bonnie Crombie, who was of course also former Ontario Liberal leader, and Carolyn Parrish. Crombie was the mayor. She left to become Liberal leader. Parrish then won that office in the special election that followed Crombie's departure. And now Crombie is trying to get her old job back. But that's not all, because this race also includes two other candidates from the prior election, Alvin Tedjo and Dipika Damerla. So these four candidates held a debate last week, and it's I think safe to say things got a bit heated.

John Michael McGrath: Oh no, they got more than a bit heated. [laughter]

Steve Paikin: Yeah. Um, Parrish referred to Crombie as the blonde bombshell and alleged that city staff were terrified of her return to the mayor's office. Um, that was just one of the spicier clips that got pulled from that debate. In the aftermath, I think all four candidates, when they had a moment to cool down, acknowledged to varying degrees that this was not, how to put this, it was not the height of Socratic debate. [laughter]

Um, and we got some polling about exactly this issue thanks to Liaison Strategies. They asked how voters feel about the race so far. It's not great. 31% of respondents told the pollster the campaign so far has mostly been personal attacks, while only 17% described it as mostly fair debate. Another 30% say it has been a mix of both. Although the race has tightened, I've seen other polling which says Crombie and Parrish are within a few points of each other. And then Alvin Tedjo, who's a member of council, has sort of moved himself up into the race. And I think all three of the top candidates now are all within about 10 points of each other. So, it's closer.

John Michael McGrath: It's definitely gotten much closer as you say. Tedjo, who I think in some of the earlier polling had really struggled or seemed to be struggling, has definitely come up to the point where I think you would say he's much more competitive now. Um, but definitely a neck-and-neck race between Crombie and Parrish as well.

Now, we do like to talk about policy from time to time on this show, every once in a while. And we're going to do that right now because I think it's fair to say Bonnie Crombie has advanced one of the more intriguing policy options as it relates to transit planning in Mississauga. You want to take that?

Steve Paikin: Right. So, Crombie has promised to extend TTC's Line 2 subway. This is what we used to call the Bloor-Danforth line west from Kipling Station into Mississauga into Square One. Again, polling from Liaison finds that 65% of voters support the idea. But when asked to choose between a TTC subway extension or more frequent GO train service on the Milton line, which runs through Mississauga—for people who don't have the GO train map memorized—support between those two ideas is roughly evenly split.

And I like that Liaison asked this question: they asked how confident respondents were that the subway extension might actually get built. And by a three-to-one margin, they are pretty skeptical.

John Michael McGrath: Well, it's interesting that we know the antipathy between Bonnie Crombie and Doug Ford, and yet this is a play right out of the Ford playbook, which is to say: subways, subways, subways. Now, she can't do this on her own obviously; this is a multi-billion dollar project if it ever happens. So she would need agreement from both the City of Toronto, presumably the Province of Ontario, and maybe even the feds to kick in some money as well.

Steve Paikin: Yeah. So when, for example, the City of Toronto extended the Spadina subway line into York Region up to Vaughan, that was a tripartite agreement. You know, the feds might or might not show up for something like this, but at a minimum I would say you probably need the City of Toronto to agree because it's going to be the TTC that ends up having to run this. And then you also need the province because that's where the money is going to come from realistically. And that does pose some problems.

Now, we're going to go from policy back into politics for a moment here and say: extending the Line 2 subway into Mississauga sort of mechanically and inevitably is going to make the commute for Etobicoke subway riders a little bit more difficult. Maybe not a lot, maybe a little, but you're going to add passengers. Do you know any politicians from Etobicoke who might have a view on this?

John Michael McGrath: I do. In fact, we've mentioned him earlier. He happens to hold the seat for Etobicoke North and also the premier of Ontario.

Steve Paikin: Oh, [laughter] there we go. Okay.

John Michael McGrath: And so just on its own, that's something to consider. But then you've got the point that Doug Ford is not neutral on the topic of Bonnie Crombie. [laughter] He has said in no uncertain terms that he wants to see her defeated in this mayor election, and has promised to send an army to ensure that Carolyn Parrish is reelected. So is Doug Ford really going to open up the provincial wallet to make this thing happen just so that he can help out Bonnie Crombie? I am skeptical. [laughter]

Steve Paikin: Call you skeptical. All right. Well, let's move on anyway here, because last week we put the call out to people to please send us your views on what you think the great races in the municipal election campaigns are, and a bunch of you have done that. So we went through for our municipal election watch some of the emails we got from people, and why don't we take a look at some of those right now. What's up first?

John Michael McGrath: Right. So, we have an email from someone who we are choosing not to identify up in Kawartha Lakes. It reads, "Hey, #onpoli. Our current mayor Doug Elmsley watches #onpoli religiously every Friday. I'm sure he and others would be quite interested to hear JMM's take on our municipal election in Kawartha Lakes. Mayor Elmsley is stepping down as mayor after serving on council since 2006. We definitely thank him for 20 years of service to the community. And if [laughter] Steve Paikin and JMM said that on camera, nothing would make him happy."

I think we can do that. Mayor Elmsley, thank you for your service. [laughter]

Um, a couple of notes on Kawartha Lakes's interest for your research: "Two current counselors are running for council, plus three other candidates. But one mayoral candidate's name would get your viewers' attention: Doug Ford. And I know it's always surprising to the Toronto/GTA. But another interesting municipal election fact is that of the 414 municipalities running elections, over 270 are using internet voting, many with no paper ballots at all."

Steve Paikin: Isn't that interesting? Okay, do we have a shot of this? Do we have a shot of Doug Ford's name on the ballot? Here it comes. And there he is, Doug Ford. Not the Doug Ford. Well, I guess it depends who you are, but it's not [laughter] it's not the Premier Doug Ford.

John Michael McGrath: Thinks he's the Doug Ford.

Steve Paikin: Yes, you're right about that. Yes, but another Doug Ford is running for office. And actually, there's a little—who knows how much confusion this will actually be. But if you look at the ballot for mayor of Toronto as well, and I think...

John Michael McGrath: I mean, we know of the two top candidates running, Chow and Bradford, but there's something like 50 plus people who are actually running for mayor. And there's two named Chow.

Steve Paikin: Yes. There's also a Braden Chow, which has led to the incumbent mayor of the country's largest city having to inform her supporters specifically like—I think she's on line nine on the ballot.

John Michael McGrath: Well, she'd be—Braden Chow comes ahead of Olivia Chow, right?

Steve Paikin: Yes. And so she's asking people to make sure they tick the right box.

John Michael McGrath: So yeah, don't just go down the list and say, "Oh, Chow, take the first Chow." No, if you want Olivia Chow, keep going down the list. Well, and if you know, just maybe to spell out the problem here. But if it ends up being like a really close race, some of us are going to have PTSD from Florida year 2000 election counting horror stories, right?

Steve Paikin: You don't have to go to Florida. Okay, here's my—sorry, my old fogy moment here, but let's go back to 1981 in the province of Ontario. In the riding of Parry Sound, Ernie Eves, who would be a future finance minister and premier, Ernie Eves was running for the first time in 1981 on the Bill Davis team. And there was another candidate whose last name was Davis running against Ernie Eves. And Mr. Eves tells me that he heard from numerous people in that election who said, "Oh, isn't this nice? We can vote for Mr. Eves and Mr. Davis on the same ballot." And they checked both names, which is as a result, that's a spoiled ballot. Do you know how many votes Ernie Eves won by in that election?

John Michael McGrath: Famously a tiny fraction, right? Six.

Steve Paikin: He won by six. 10 on election day and then they did a recount and it knocked it down to six. So these kinds of scurrying little things—oh, two Chows on the ballot; Doug Ford's name on the ballot. How many people will either vote for or not vote for Doug Ford in that other municipal election because they're either wanting to or not wanting to vote for the premier? Who knows? Anyway, be careful when you look at your ballots. That's the main point.

Steve Paikin: Moving on.

John Michael McGrath: Well, no, before we move on, I do want to say something about electronic voting. And I think this might be one of those topics that I have sort of changed my mind on. You know, when municipalities first started rolling out electronic voting, I was really skeptical and I was really worried that it was going to go badly. And I think anybody who knows anything about internet security generally would be right to be at least a little bit cautious about internet voting. And it doesn't seem to have been a problem. This is now certainly not our first election cycle where municipalities have gone digital, and Kawartha Lakes is just one of these—as the email says—many municipalities that have adopted electronic voting. And I'm not sure if I'm ready to recommend it at the provincial or federal level. But as I say, it's something that I was very, very worried about when it first started getting rolled out, and it just doesn't seem to have materialized into as much of a problem as I was worried about.

Steve Paikin: Good. Okay, next one.

Steve Paikin: Right. So, this is about Milton. Febrienne writes, "I would like to highlight an interesting mayoral race happening in Milton, Ontario. Milton has the longest serving mayor in Ontario, maybe Canada. 89-year-old Gord Krantz, who has been mayor since 1980, elected 14 times as mayor. Mayor Krantz, you were elected for mayor the first time before I was born. [laughter] There are now 10 people who are running for mayor. Gord recently showed up with Zainab Azim in a video calling for clean campaigning while sipping on milkshakes. Is this going to be the year that Gord Krantz ends his mayoral reign? Febrienne S. Budman." Febrienne, I can't answer that question because I cannot predict the future. But suffice to say, I met Zainab Azim recently at an event that we both happen to be at. I think it was in Burlington. She is a 20-some young Muslim woman who wears a hijab. And I got to tell you something, she is very sharp. She's very smart. I'm not saying that a 20-year-old—more than 20, maybe 21 or 22, but not a lot more than 20—I'm not saying that she's capable of knocking off the 46-year long [laughter] reign of the mayor of Milton. You never know, but I thought she was a totally dynamic politician and somebody who, if she wants it, could have a big future in politics. And do we have the video of the milkshake—the peace summit over the milkshake? Let's take a look at that if we can.

Zainab Azim: I'm Zainab Azim.

Gord Krantz: And I'm Gord Krantz.

Zainab Azim: And we're both running for mayor of Milton.

Gord Krantz: And we're running against one another.

Zainab Azim: And while I like strawberry milkshakes,

Gord Krantz: I love chocolate.

Zainab Azim: And while I think you should vote for me, [music]

Gord Krantz: and I think you should vote for me.

Zainab Azim: As Miltonians, we always [music] work

Gord Krantz: together. We can disagree without degrading one another.

Zainab Azim: And let's show people that there's a better way to do politics. I'm Zainab Azim.

Gord Krantz: and I'm Gord Krantz, and we approve this message. [laughter]

Steve Paikin: Okay, a couple of things here. Number one, she's very lucky that the 46-year incumbent agreed to do a spot with her and give her this kind of prominence, which she otherwise probably wouldn't get. So, lucky for her, and frankly, kudos to him for being prepared to sort of share the spotlight a bit in the interest of creating a bigger message, which is, isn't this good? You don't have to do it like they do it in Mississauga. There can be a little Kumbaya at election time and it's not a bad thing.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. And so I mean a few things. One, you know we've discussed on the podcast before just how nasty municipal politics are getting in some parts of the province, and we've talked about before about mayors and counselors genuinely worried about their physical safety in some cases because there's really some toxic stuff going on out there. So this is tonic. This is a really delightful alternative to that. And also, I mean a very visual example of changing demographics in lots of GTA municipalities, but in this case Milton, where Gordon Krantz—probably I don't think it's unfair to say—represents the median Milton voter of 40 years ago, and Azim, part of the demographic changes that are happening all over the GTA. And lovely to have both of them in that one message talking about the need to work constructively together.

Steve Paikin: Amen. Okay, we got more.

John Michael McGrath: Yes, we've got another one from David Harrison who writes to us about school board trustees. We've had a few people make, broadly speaking, this kind of a query. "My kids are long out of public school. Still, up till now, I've researched the trustee candidates and cast my ballot, thinking that I still have a responsibility to try and uphold and encourage an excellent public school system. But this year, should I bother given that the trustees that are elected next month won't have anything to do, at least for the foreseeable future?" David.

Steve Paikin: Now, David Harrison is a guy who emails, I think, quite a bit, which we appreciate. He is a loyal and faithful viewer and listener, one of our regular correspondents.

John Michael McGrath: Absolutely. And we hear from him all the time, which is great. He keeps us on our toes when we make mistakes. And he's got a really interesting question here because this points to the fact that there are several school boards around the province of Ontario that the provincial government has sort of put into receivership, if I can put it that way. They have been in effect defenestrated and their powers assumed by a provincial trustee who has been put in there. And well, I can give you an example. Jill Promoli is, I guess, friend of the show. Somebody who has been a Peel school board trustee for a long time. She is running for reelection and she has sort of in conversation with me—

Speaker A: allowed. Some days I'm not sure what I'm running for right now. You know, I'm running for a job that doesn't really exist right now because the Peel board's in trusteeship right now. And even if I win, what authority, what powers, what, you know, resources do I have to do a job? Not really any. So, it's a bit confusing right now to be sure.

Speaker B: Yeah. And in Toronto, we know that the outgoing cohort of trustees who of course some of them are running for reelection. But you know, there was an incident earlier this year where they were basically told that they couldn't even hold public meetings. You know there's a very real question about you know what their role will be given that these boards are under supervision and even if the province decides to restore them to actual functioning school boards without the provincial supervision. Of course the government also changed legislation recently in order to restrict the spending and some of the other authorities of school board trustees. So quite aside from the supervision issue, there have been some very substantial changes in their roles.

Speaker A: Mhm. So I guess the direct answer, David, to your question is yes, you should still vote for a trustee on the possibility that if your trustee is in trusteeship or receivership or bankruptcy or whatever you want to call it right now, if the province changes its mind about that and the trustees then resume their positions of authority, you've got the person in there that you want. That's how I would answer that. Yeah, I think we are asked for our opinions so rarely [laughter] in democracies that when we are given the chance to cast a ballot, I would say yes you should still you know research your candidates, cast your ballots. And you know the current supervision of these school boards I don't think is going to last for another four years for no other reason than at a certain point people connect the dots, and they start blaming the province for everything that's going wrong in their kids' schools.

Speaker B: There you go.

Speaker A: And I don't think that the Minister of Education wants that to persist very long. So yes, admittedly things are a bit weird right now, but I would say, you know, vote for the person who you want to be making these decisions when the supervision ends,

Speaker B: right? Have you, I mean, it was just this week that the signs are allowed to go up now. And in this neighborhood, we're in Toronto St. Paul's riding. Yes. This TV station. Have you noticed signs for a particular candidate running for school board in this area?

Speaker A: I admit I have not actually been walking like the neighborhood streets.

Speaker B: Okay. I have I walk the streets. I don't have a bicycle, so I walk the streets. Tasha Kheiriddin is running for school board in this area. Now, people may recognize her name. She's a longtime journalist and columnist for Postmedia once upon a time. And I guess she just decided she's got enough complaints with the public school system that she's decided to throw her name in there. And okay, there's Tasha. Her name's on the ballot.

Speaker A: Yeah. I had somebody ask me, you know, why would you do this instead of, you know, if you're a conservative and it's a conservative government in Queen's Park right now, you know, why would you be a trustee instead of I don't know, trying to get a job in Paul Calandra's office. And but I do think that there is I mean they are two different jobs first of all and it is one expression I think admittedly I haven't spoken to Tasha Kheiriddin about her reasons for running but one thing that I think is going on more broadly among conservatives is a real sense of things let's from the conservative perspective again saying things have gone wrong in Ontario schools. And quite aside from whatever is happening at Queen's Park, there are conservatives running for these jobs because they really think that, you know, school boards need a course correction. And so certainly I know that Miss Kheiriddin is not the only conservative running in these races. And you know there are people who just genuinely disagree with what they see as the direction of not just the Toronto school board but you know several school boards around the GTA.

Speaker B: Right. Do we want to do Dan MacLean's point here?

Speaker A: Uh right. So this related to the other question Dan MacLean who is an outgoing trustee in Toronto he writes in wondering what happens to the trustees who actually are elected in the boards under supervision. Will they actually be able to assume any duties? And you know, I'll just refer to what we mentioned earlier that, you know, at the moment, these trustees really don't have any duties. They are not even allowed to sort of hold public meetings with their constituents. I assume, as you said earlier, that the supervision will end and that when it does, they will be allowed to resume all of the normal duties of a school board trustee. But I guess the other possibility is that the government could introduce new changes with new legislation before that supervision ends. But that's obviously very speculative on my part.

Speaker B: Right. And with that, let's get off to issue three. Back in August 2023, Ontario's integrity commissioner found that MPP Steve Clark, who represents Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes for the PCs, had violated the Members' Integrity Act when he breached conflict of interest and insider information rules related to the development of protected land in the greenbelt. The commissioner recommended that he be reprimanded for these actions. Simple question, has he been?

Speaker A: Uh, no, he has not been reprimanded. The integrity commissioner's report came out in 2023 and under the law the house the legislative assembly is supposed to debate that report within 30 days and can choose to impose the penalty recommended by the commissioner or not. And in this case it's not that they chose not to impose the punishment. They just never held the debate at all.

Speaker B: And why not?

Speaker A: Well because the government controls the timing and the schedule of the legislature and it decides what matters will be debated and when and they opted never to schedule that debate. Clark resigned as a minister after the integrity commissioner report was released and the then government house leader now education minister Paul Calandra said that Clark's resignation was punishment enough functionally.

Speaker B: Are they not obliged to hold this debate? [laughter] You would think that the clear letter of the law would say, you know, you have to do the thing.

Speaker A: It turns out not so much. I guess I would draw the analogy to the fixed-term election law that the government also ignored in 2025. You know, we can spell out certain obligations for the government in law, but enforcing those rules is another matter entirely. And [snorts] without going too deep into the weeds here, you know, if MPPs choose not to debate a matter in the House, and I guess we have to be clear here that because the Progressive Conservatives are the majority when they make a decision to do or not do something that's basically the legislature speaking, right? There's really nothing to force them to do something they don't want to do. But when Doug Ford ignored the fixed election date law and called the election after whatever it was two years, he at least said, "Oh, and incidentally, this fixed election date law, we're getting rid of this as well." But he hasn't said that about this. So this debate really is supposed to happen.

Speaker B: Yes. So

Speaker B: what are the chances of it actually happening? [laughter]

Speaker A: Well, so that brings us to this week's news, which is that, earlier this week, Ontario Liberal MPP, Dr. Adil Shamji. He did put out a call to hold Clark accountable here. Hold Clark accountable to Clark, oddly enough, because the current government house leader who is responsible for scheduling this debate would be Steve Clark. And Shamji is basically asking him to schedule

John Michael McGrath: ...the debate on his own reprimand. I don't love Shangji's chances of getting what he wants here. But he does say that there are other measures that he is looking at in terms of trying to force this debate. But he is starting by asking Clark to allow the debate here.

Steve Paikin: Now a reprimand is a fairly broad word. What does reprimand in this case mean?

John Michael McGrath: It literally just means the reprimand, the expression of displeasure by MPPs, by a majority of the legislature if they in fact voted to impose that penalty.

Um, [laughter] getting back to what we were just saying about like shouldn't they follow the law? Like I do kind of think that the government should kind of hold the perfunctory debate just because I think we should expect MPPs to follow the laws that they pass.

Steve Paikin: That's a good signal that we're a law-abiding society.

John Michael McGrath: Right? But the way the law is written, MPPs are restricted to either impose this reprimand on Clark or not. In theory, the law does allow the integrity commissioner to recommend more severe penalties up to and including declaring his seat vacant, i.e. expelling him from the legislature and holding a new election. But none of those consequences are really up for debate at the moment. There's no danger here of Clark suffering career-ending consequences really.

So again, you know, just like we know what's going to happen here. Hold the debate. The Tories can all vote to, you know, acquit Steve Clark, so to speak. That would be the majority of the legislature. You would have fulfilled all of the obligations of the law, and you could all move on with your lives.

Steve Paikin: Seems pretty clear.

John Michael McGrath: Yes.

Steve Paikin: Well, speaking of moving on, we're going to move on with our lives. We're going to talk about our columns right after this.

Time now for our regular feature. It's called Your Column, My Column, in which JMM and I have a little chitchat here about the columns that we wrote for the TVO website over this past week. We chat about them here. We encourage you to go to tvo.org and learn more about them there. What do you want to tell us about this week?

John Michael McGrath: So, one of the stranger aspects of the mayoral campaign in Toronto this year has been the very public search by some conservatives in this city to find a conservative candidate who is not named Bradford [laughter] to challenge Bradford and Olivia Chow.

And they eventually found a candidate, Chris Alexander, who dropped out of the race earlier this week on the first day of early voting. And it's just been such a weird sort of ride [laughter] to watch this all unfold because it was pretty clear from early on that Bradford more or less had consolidated the conservative opposition to Olivia Chow in this city. Maybe not quite as much as he has in the most recent weeks. But you know, Chris Alexander never entered the race with a spectacular groundswell of support and he left with only a few percent in some polls.

Steve Paikin: And he got in very late to begin with.

John Michael McGrath: And he got in very late to begin with. And I find this all very strange.

And the reason, you know, this is all sort of it is admittedly inside baseball here and there's discussions about which conservatives were backing which candidate. And is this because of genuine disagreements or is this because some people find Bradford to be unlikable, is [laughter] one of the words that gets used. The Toronto Star had a lengthy profile about Brad Bradford and this issue kept coming up that some people just do not like him.

Again, it's all inside baseball and I concede that. And I'm not urging people to vote for or against Brad Bradford. What concerns me is that it's kind of like political malpractice. It's political operatives, political advisers really just acting totally sort of disconnected from the observable reality of what was happening in this city.

And someday a conservative will win the mayor's office again. Conservatives have won most of the elections in the post-amalgamation city's history. And I would like to think that when that next conservative mayor is staffing up their mayor's office that they will find staffers and operatives and people who actually know how to like recognize reality and not be deluded.

Steve Paikin: It's a good point. And you know what? I've been thinking a lot about what exactly Chris Alexander's path to victory looked like.

And I guess it despite coming in very late and despite not apparently having very much money and very many resources to run his campaign, I guess his play was: there's unhappiness with Brad Bradford's attempt to take down Olivia Chow, and therefore I'm going to offer a different conservative voice from Bradford's when I get into the race; it's going to be so obvious that I'm a superior candidate to Bradford and all of his support will bleed off to me, and ultimately you'll have Bradford dropping out of the race and it will be a Chow-Alexander choice. I think that was the play.

But that's really a one-in-a-million shot, and as we saw the other 999,999 times that we would run this race, Alexander gets in with single-digit support, maybe got up to 10% at one point, and then dropped down to 4% when the most recent poll came out, and dropped out. And as I say, 99 times out of 100, that's what was going to happen.

And I will add just this is one of my hobby horses, and I'm not going to go on too long about this, but Toronto has a problem particularly with mayor's races where people who do not have an extensive record in municipal politics think that they can jump in and make a [clears throat] name for themselves.

This has happened basically in every cycle since I have started watching Toronto politics and it never goes well. The people who tend to win, with one exception, the people who tend to win are people who already hold municipal office...

John Michael McGrath: And are extremely well-known by the people.

Steve Paikin: Right? And so the one exception of a person who did not already hold a council seat is John Tory. And John Tory, of course, an extremely well-known quantity in Toronto politics.

So yeah, as I say, this whole thing's been very confusing to me.

Did you read Matt Elliot's column in the Toronto Star about all this? Matt's column was excoriating. Now, let's start by saying you and I generally speaking have respect for people who have the guts to put their names on a ballot. We're not going to do it, but you know, we need people to do it.

John Michael McGrath: And and I will just very parenthetically add, you know, I think Chris Alexander made some useful contributions to this campaign.

Steve Paikin: I agree. I agree.

Um, Matt Elliot's column was absolutely excoriating, saying for the fourth biggest city in North America, which Toronto is right now by population, the options on offer for the mayor's job he found to be pathetic. I won't comment on that. I'll merely put that out there for people's edification.

But if you want to go on the Star website and read that column because you may agree with Matt's point, he certainly made the case extremely effectively and very, what's the word I'm looking for? With a lot of sandpaper, let's [laughter] put it that way. Yeah, let's do that.

John Michael McGrath: All right. Now, what about you, Steve?

Steve Paikin: Well, I'm sticking with Toronto City Hall on my column this week because I think there's one of the best races, not for mayor, but for city council that's happening east of Yonge Street in this city.

John Michael McGrath: It's happening in my ward.

Steve Paikin: It is happening in your ward. That's right.

You know, we do like to highlight some of the great races that are going on in this province. We did so earlier in this program. About 20 minutes from this studio is Ward 19, Beaches-East York. And the winner is going to be somebody named Nathaniel or Natalie.

John Michael McGrath: Yes.

Steve Paikin: Nate or Nat, if you want to be more colloquial about the thing. Two very high-profile candidates.

Let's bring up the picture first of Natalie Johnson, whom you will, I suspect, recognize. This is a shot I took of her just the other day. We had a cup of tea on the, what was it? Buds Coffee Shop. Was that...

Steve Paikin: ...the name of the place? I'm trying to remember now. Oh gosh, where's my memory going? It's on...

John Michael McGrath: I know most of the coffee shops around my neighbor.

Steve Paikin: You help me with this. This is a Queen and Woodbine on the north side of Queen just uh just near Woodbine and we sat down on the bench there and had a chitchat for half an hour about her race. Now, if you recognize Natalie, it's of course because she's on television for 19 years as a CTV city hall reporter for most of those 19 years. Uh and 5 months ago she jumped into the race because she decided, you know, she got to a point in her career where she thought, "I don't just want to bring attention to the problems I see in the city. I would actually like to try to solve them." You know, she brought attention to them as a journalist, and now she wanted to put her name on a ballot and try to solve them. She's lived in the area, loves the area, and so on and so forth.

Given that this was Brad Bradford's former seat, there's no incumbent there, right? It was a wide open race and she was the best known person, has knocked on tens of thousands of doors and thought, "I'm going to win this thing." Politics is nothing if not unpredictable.

Remember Nate Erskine-Smith? Okay. Nate used to be the member of parliament federally for Beaches-East York. Then he left that job in order to run for the Scarborough Southwest Liberal nomination because he wanted to come to the provincial level in hopes of winning a seat in a by-election and then eventually becoming leader of the Ontario Liberals. That did not work out because he lost that potential uh Liberal nomination.

As soon as that happened, people started to say to him, "Look, Nate, you're whatever 41 years old. Your political career should not be over. There's an open vacancy at city hall in the riding in which you live. Run there, run for a city hall seat." Then Olivia Chow got into the mix and said, "You know what? It'd be good to have you running and good to have you on council." She sees a like-minded person potentially going there.

He eventually agrees and he has to make what I can only presume was an extremely kind of difficult, awkward call to Natalie Johnson saying, "Remember when you and I met for coffee several months ago and I sort of encouraged you to get in and told you here are some of the things you got to think about and worry about? Well, I'm getting into the race now, too." And you know, Nate, for all of the issues around him, and there are issues around him, has excellent name recognition. And his entry into the race has now of course completely changed the dynamic. You're not going to get a prediction out of me on who's going to win on the 26th of October, but it will be somebody I—I will go this far: [laughter] It will be somebody who starts spelling their first name "N". And that's as far as I'm going.

John Michael McGrath: Be followed by a vowel. [laughter]

Steve Paikin: But that's as far as I'm going. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. Um there has been one poll of uh the Beaches-East York race uh but I am so uh skeptical of uh polls like ward level polls and or even riding level polls you know provincially and federally uh that I'm not even going to repeat the uh the numbers here on the podcast. Um but I will be uh I will be watching this race. I will be voting [laughter] in that race. Um and uh yeah, no, it has been a little bit of a drama over the summer.

John Michael McGrath: Natalie Johnson turns 40 the week before election day. You can imagine what she wants for a 40th birthday present this year. Nate Erskine-Smith uh has been told by lots of his friends, "What are you banging your head against the wall making no money uh, you know, in politics for?" He's got lots of buddies who are on Bay Street making a lot more money than he is. But for whatever reason, he has a kind of a genetic predisposition to try to make a contribution to this world in politics and so he's giving it another go and uh you know as they say, may the better option win.

Steve Paikin: And we will see. Now, we should also remind viewers that TVO Today Live, which is the monthly town hall show that I host here on TVO, it is co-hosting with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, a Toronto mayoral debate. It's going to take place next Thursday, October 15th. It will be carried live on TVO at 7 p.m. Eastern time. It will be livestreamed on all our digital platforms. And of course, there may be 50 plus candidates in the race, but I'm sorry to the other [laughter] 48 plus. Uh, you're not invited. This is going to be—chair big enough? No, it's Chow versus Bradford. Alexander's out right now. So, it's a two-horse race and we will have those two horses in the stable uh for our debate next Thursday, October 15th. And we hope you'll join us.

And with that, that is the OnP podcast for this Friday, October 2nd, 2026. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts so that 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 get it, good, bad, or indifferent. Write us an email at onpolitics@tvo.org. And please include your first and last name and where you're located. And once again, before we go to our credits, please make sure to stick around after the show because we've got a special interview on the topic of gun violence related to an interview that—excuse me, related to a documentary that TVO is playing right now, which is truly spectacular and thoughtful and moving and poignant. Our guest will be Dr. David Kouf who is devoting his life to reducing gun violence right now.

Steve Paikin: This week's episode was produced by Matthew O'Mara, editing by Colin Kish. Production support from Jonathan Hallowell and TVO's digital media services team.

John Michael McGrath: Laurie F is the executive producer of digital. Vanessa Case is vice president media.

Steve Paikin: You know that we always love to give props to our wonderful studio crew for making the video part of the podcast happen. So, thank you. Thank you. Control room. Thank you. And until next Friday, bye-bye.

John Michael McGrath: Bye-bye.

Host: Nikai Walks is a new documentary from TVO that features the journey of 16-year-old Nikai Foster, who was the victim of a random shooting while playing basketball in the Jane and Finch community in northwest Toronto. The film traces the fallout of his injury and looks at these systemic issues that make this type of violence all too common.

Speaking to us now on this issue, Dr. David Kouf. He is a professor emeritus at McMaster University, past chief and chair of the department of radiology and a member of the Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns. He joins us in Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Kouf, great to have you with us.

Dr. David Kouf: Merci, it's a pleasure to be with you and I thank you very much for the invitation and I'll be really happy to share some thoughts with you.

Host: Excellent. Uh, thank you so much for joining us. Before we get started, could you give us a little background on why you got involved with this group?

Dr. David Kouf: Well, you know, we moved to North America and I've seen this horrendous mass shootings in the States. And the only action plan which was coming out of that—and I saw that again and again and again—is thoughts and prayers. And you know, being pretty practical, not that I don't believe, but I don't think that thoughts and prayer is really very effective and certainly better ways to prevent these kinds of horrific incidents to happen.

So that's—then there was the shooting on the Danforth and then CDPG came out after that. And when I saw this group of doctors were kind of already exposed to through surgery and being surgeons or psychiatrists and already exposed to this kind of things getting together and trying to do something, I thought, well, maybe I should join and see how I can help with that. And I'm very happy I did. And I believe we need more visibility and people to understand more the problem that we're facing with that.

Host: Let me follow up on that Dr. Kouf as not just a doctor but as a radiologist in particular what does gun violence...

Dr. Koff: ...look like for you? So for me, I had a vested interest in forensic radiology, and for a number of years coroner services were based in Hamilton. Working at Hamilton General Hospital, we used to have a lot of gun violence victims and a lot of shootings. I must say—and I'm sorry if I go into these kinds of things—we x-rayed our deceased patients in the body bag, and I could see the impact and effect of people taking their own lives with big shotguns. All you see on the X-ray is just the mandible and nothing left otherwise. It's horrible. It's a very stressful experience, and I don't want people to do that—it's a one-way thing.

So I've seen so many of those, not even talking about the people wounded by high-velocity weaponries and heavy military-grade guns where the bones are shattered. You think, "Oh, they're just wounded," but when you see how the limbs look like, you think no way, this cannot happen. So that's how I've been exposed. We don't have the coroner service anymore, but I've seen a lot of those.

Host: And a quick follow-up: I know you are a professional, but how have you not suffered from PTSD, or how do you keep your sanity in the face of seeing so much misery?

Dr. Koff: Probably by taking action. And that's one of the reasons why I joined the CPDG. Because if you think, "There is nothing I can do, and there is no way we can act on that," then yes, you get PTSD, you get hopelessly depressed, you think that it's just misery. But if you think there's something which can be done to reduce the amount of violence and shootings, then I think that gives you a purpose, and it gives you a reason to fight and to stay up.

Host: We normally think of gun control as a federal matter in terms of federal criminal law. But of course people live in cities and they live in provinces, and I'm wondering if you could explain to our audience what you see as the provincial role in gun control.

Dr. Koff: Right. So there are two aspects, and as you say, people live in remote areas. Most of this gun violence is suicide; I think 69% of deaths by guns is suicide, mostly in the north where people are isolated. It's mostly men, older—I would say more than 50—and they take their lives. They suffer from mental issues, isolation, the feeling that there's no hope. And if they happen to have a shotgun or a rifle at home, they take their life.

So the provincial role is: we need to have a strong health policy to provide mental health at the provincial level, support those people who have no hope, and step in before, to save lives. That's also where the provinces can play a role in terms of education and prevention. That's really what we could do best, and I'm sure we can help people with that.

Host: You know, it's interesting when media cover these stories, and in fact when you gave an earlier answer, the first example you gave was the Danforth in Toronto. We do tend to focus on the urban areas where these things can take place, and yet I think if you look at the statistics, it's actually in more rural and northern parts of Ontario that on a per capita basis more of this takes place. How do we make a dent in this kind of phenomenon where guns in rural and northern areas are much more a part of the fabric of everyday life than they are in big cities?

Dr. Koff: Right. The idea and the role of CPDG is not to take away guns from people. We're not here to prevent hunters and farmers from having guns. They need to have guns on the property; they need to be able to defend their cattle against predators and things. That's a common misunderstanding that people have been using a lot to try to discredit the CPDG: "You're taking your freedom away, we have the right, we're law-abiding citizens." And this "law-abiding citizen" line, we've heard it so much that at some point it's just ridiculous. These are law-abiding citizens who are taking their own lives because they don't see any way out.

So we won't take these guns away, but we want these people to make sure that they are stored in an appropriate way. They are locked in a cabinet, and the ammunition is not in the same location. If you put more steps to limit access to the gun, it can already slow down the process. But mainly, we have to fight against isolation. You have to provide support, we have to detect mental issues, and be sure that we can treat that before it ends up in suicide or in violence.

You know, the example I have—because gun violence is a public health issue; from my standpoint it's nothing other than that, and it has to be addressed the same way: one of my neighbors, for instance, had an episode of absence driving, went to see the doctor, and his driver's license was taken away for the time of the investigation. He couldn't drive as long as he was not cleared and had undergone all the examinations, MRI, and everything. The same thing should apply to guns. You cannot let someone with mental issues just manipulate heavy weaponry and be a risk for himself or for the community. So we have to make sure that we have ways to identify mental issues and treat them, and not let people with mental issues have access to guns. That's probably one of the first things we can do: prevention and mental support.

Host: There was a private member's bill in 2022 that was introduced by then MPP Mitzie Hunter that would have amended the Safe and Healthy Communities Act to make gun violence a public health issue. It didn't make it into law, but your group supported the bill. Can you explain what that bill would have done and why you supported it?

Dr. Koff: So I think the role—I believe you mentioned here Bill 9—the idea was that the bill would have provided support for people who have been exposed to gun violence, in terms of mental health and really having support for that. It didn't go through because—I'm not a politician and I'm not too much involved in this kind of thing, but I understand there was some kind of confusion over whether it was not already included in another bill, in Bill 60, and people at the end of the day said, "Well, we don't need this one." But I strongly believe that we need to include that, and we need to have this kind of mental care covered by OHIP and made available to people. So someone needs to look into what happened with this bill, and we should resubmit and make sure that people have access to the support they need.

Host: Dr. Koff, let me ask you one last question, which is to say: there are two different avenues, I guess, that society can go down in order to make this situation better. In one of your previous answers, you suggested people themselves can do a lot in terms of better gun safety, better understanding, and better education. And then of course, as you just described, there are also legislative solutions to this as well. Where do you think the accent should lie: more education or tougher laws?

Dr. Koff: Well, for me, I think more education is probably the way to go. It reminds me—we've seen that years and years ago. I was still young at the time, but when safety belts were made mandatory in cars, people had been screaming, "You're taking away our freedom! We should be allowed not to wear the seat belt." Fine, but if you look at the number of lives which have been saved just...

Dr. David: ...by wearing the seatbelt and decreasing the amount of injuries and the cost for the society of not wearing a seatbelt, you think, well, there's common sense. And now the first thing you do when you sit in your car is to fasten your seatbelt. It's not even—you don't even think about it.

We've seen the same thing with smoking tobacco. It's not only lung cancer, but it's also this horrible lung disease which kill—you know, COPD and emphysema and things like that, and people will die from that. Slowly people got to understand—even if the tobacco lobby was extremely powerful—they started to understand that smoking can be dangerous and they have to take the measures to reduce the risk of dying from cancer, and they did it. Look now what the situation is.

Dr. David: So of course legislation have been very helpful by preventing and forbidding people to smoke in public areas, in offices and restaurants and all that. And we should pair both, but I believe that with education we can already achieve a lot by getting people to understand that they have to be careful.

The other thing is, why do people need to have military-grade weapons? There is no justification. Do I drive a tank on the 401? No. And I wouldn't be allowed to do that. So, you know, military weapons are for soldiers and for military. So that should be definitely removed from the streets and from homes.

So I believe that probably having both: a strong education starting in school and at the youngest level to explain young students the risk and dangers of having access to guns, as well as having strong regulations and laws. We need both at the end of the day. But for us as doctors, we can help with education and prevention. Prevention is key.

Host: Perfect. Dr. David, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. David: Merci.

Host: Well, we're talking to Dr. Kauf of course because of this documentary that we're playing on TVO right now. And you can watch Nikai Walks—that's the name of the documentary—and it's available on the TVO Docs YouTube channel. And we will put a link in the description of the video so you can check that out as well. Thanks so much for joining us.