播客新季开幕：加拿大与美国贸易紧张局势、省选举结果及政治观察

Steve Paikin: Welcome everyone to a new season of the #onpoli podcast. I'm Steve Paikin.

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

Steve Paikin: Today on the pod, trade tensions between Canada and the United States reached a whole new level over the summer. We'll get you an update of how that will affect us here in Ontario.

John Michael McGrath: Speaking of the summer, we'll go over some of the highlights and lowlights,

Steve Paikin: which includes the results of three provincial by-elections earlier this month and what the results say about the Ontario Liberals. And in your column, my column, I'm asking if Canada's pivot towards Europe could crack up the relationship between Premier Ford and Prime Minister Carney. And I'm shining a light a long way away from politics, towards something that's different and will fill your soul. Obviously not politics, right? It's Friday, September 18th, 2026. So, let's get to it.

Steve Paikin: JMM, first sugar of Season 9.

John Michael McGrath: I know.

Steve Paikin: Can you believe we've been—this is our ninth season.

John Michael McGrath: Uh, no. I cannot believe it. I find the passage of time offensive. It makes me feel old and I don't like it.

Steve Paikin: Oh, excuse me. Way to get to my stage of the game. You will not change your mind about it. First of all, I guess we should start by noting the obvious. I woke up with something this morning. The Leafs season hasn't even started yet and already I've lost my voice. But the downside is it's really very scratchy and hurts quite a bit. Yes.

Steve Paikin: The upside is I can do a marvelous impression of Brian Mulroney.

Steve Paikin: "We will pass the Meech Lake Accord with honor and enthusiasm."

John Michael McGrath: I like that you found the specific political angle to your temporary disability here.

Steve Paikin: Exactly. Right. Now, if memory serves, that shirt says, "Join the resistance."

John Michael McGrath: Yes.

Steve Paikin: Does this have something to do with Starship Troopers? No.

Steve Paikin: Cuz I seem to remember that was a line in that movie, but I could be wrong.

John Michael McGrath: Uh, no. This is a reference to Star Wars. This is a Canadian stylized symbol of the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars. I've worn this shirt on the show before, and I don't love to do repeats, but you might think that I am wearing this because of the current trade tensions between the United States and Canada.

Steve Paikin: That's exactly what I thought.

John Michael McGrath: The talk of the 51st state—and you would be wrong because the reason I'm wearing this shirt is because I was at the legislature yesterday. I was helping our colleagues with the podcast with Nam Kiwanuka, helping them with a project. And as I was leaving the legislature, they were setting up for an event. And whenever I see that kind of work, I like to sort of ask the people, hey, like what's going on? What are we doing? And they were setting up speakers, and it was for a TIFF event, a Toronto International Film Festival event that was being hosted I believe by the Speaker Donna Skelly. And as they were testing the speakers—I don't know whether this was going to be part of the event or whether it was just somebody having fun with the soundcheck—they started playing the Star Wars theme from John Williams. And for just a moment, two of the great loves of my life, Star Wars and Ontario politics, were combined in one place. And I just felt so very happy, and I thought I had to honor that.

Steve Paikin: You are a deeply disturbed individual.

John Michael McGrath: Indeed. Yes. And we're just getting started.

Steve Paikin: And we're just getting started. That's right. Well, I am here. Shall I stand up a little bit? There is one of the coolest dudes that's ever been associated with Ontario politics. And his name is Lincoln Alexander. And I don't mind saying I really loved Link. Link was a massively historic figure in Canada and in the province of Ontario. And I'm wearing his shirt today because 41 years ago this week, Link was appointed the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, ostensibly by Queen Elizabeth II, but of course on the advice of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, whom I can imitate very well now. Link had—and I call him Link because everybody called him Link. Nobody called him your honor. Well, I guess his staff did, but everybody else called him Link. And of course, there's a highway in Hamilton named after him, which is nicknamed the Link because it does link up various ends of the city.

Steve Paikin: He truly had a unique career in politics. In 1968, during the height of Trudeaumania, when Liberals all over the country were winning, this Progressive Conservative Black man won a seat in the city of Hamilton. First Black MP ever. In 1979, Joe Clark wins the election for the Conservatives and Link goes into cabinet as Minister of Labour. He's the first Black cabinet minister in Canadian history.

Steve Paikin: There is a moment, I still laugh when I think about this. There is a moment when Lincoln Alexander says something on the floor of the House of Commons to Pierre Trudeau who was the then Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister looks back at him and mouths f*** off.

Steve Paikin: But he didn't say f***, he used the word... and then after question period was—I mean of course it created a big firestorm, big furor. After question period was over, you know, they said, "What did you say to Lincoln Alexander?" "Gentlemen," as they all almost all were back then of the press, "Gentlemen of the press, what is the nature of your thoughts when you say something like fuddle duddle?" That's what he... so "fuddle duddle" became the line, that the "fuddle duddle" incident involved Lincoln Alexander.

Steve Paikin: There we go. So Trudeau won his majority government back, Alexander went back to opposition. Then in 1985, 41 years ago, he became the first Black Lieutenant Governor in Ontario history. And I may talk about him again. You talk about repeat T-shirts, I may go back to a repeat T-shirt in January because just as one of the great heroic figures in America, Martin Luther King Jr., has his own day in the middle of January in the States, we in Canada have Lincoln Alexander Day in Canada on the 21st of January, a day when we appropriately recognize his contributions to public life in the country.

Steve Paikin: I mentioned the Linc. We should also say for those who know about post-secondary institutions in this province, the law school at Toronto Metropolitan University is named after him as well. And if you're old enough to remember a TV show back in the day which was called L.A. Law...

John Michael McGrath: Uh yeah.

Steve Paikin: That's the nickname of this law school, LA Law. Lincoln Alexander Law.

Steve Paikin: So there we go. That's why I got Link on today. And he loved jazz and he was such a cool guy. And I remember when we started The Agenda, this is 20 years ago. They said, "We want to put some pictures up on the wall of, you know, significant people. Who do you want on the wall?" And I said, "Got to be two guys up on the wall. Take a guess."

John Michael McGrath: Bill Davis.

Steve Paikin: Bill Davis was one. Lincoln Alexander was two.

John Michael McGrath: Haven't even gotten to the meat of the episode, and we've checked our Bill Davis and our Hamilton boxes.

Steve Paikin: There we go. There we go. All right. Anything else or should we get at it?

John Michael McGrath: Uh, let's get to issue one.

Steve Paikin: Let's do that. Issue one coming right up. Well, what a summer it's been for relations between the United States and Ontario, and in particular between Donald Trump and Doug Ford. Once ideologically sympatico populists, Ford is now of the view that the president can kiss the substantial real estate that comprises the premier's backside, or words to that effect. That led to another Trump troll renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America," which of course none of us is going to do. Yes.

John Michael McGrath: Strange summer, right?

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. So, I'm going to just start off by stating the obvious. This is all very, very dumb. It happens to be the case that the President of the United States has control over the servers that feed data to Google and Apple for their maps applications. So, when he tells the—I think it's the Department of the Interior to change the name in a particular data set, they can do that and then Google and Apple reproduce that name. And so that's why we have this idiocy of inside the United States, Google and Apple Maps reflecting Lake America, and then in Canada it says Lake Ontario. And almost as offensive, I would say, outside of either the US or Canada, Google and Apple are treating this like this...

Speaker A: is a legitimate dispute and displaying both names, which I think is insane. Um, so, okay, so Donald Trump did a thing, but let's understand that there was still a choice involved by Google and and Apple. Uh, the company MapQuest, which I had kind of forgotten exists, but they still do. And, uh, they have opted not to reflect the president's, um, delusions in their, uh, geographical naming schemes. Uh and for their wisdom, uh they have been one of the most downloaded, uh navigation apps, uh in both the Google and Apple app stores, uh for, uh several weeks.

Speaker B: Here, here.

Speaker A: Uh there is also the fact we should say that it's like, uh Canada did not, uh invent the name Ontario. And it's also not like, uh something that America gave to that geographical feature. It was Lake Ontario long before European settlers, uh arrived here. That the name Ontario is an indigenous name. Uh so...

Speaker B: It means shining lake.

Speaker A: Yes. And you know, so there's a whole, uh additional layer of disrespect to indigenous heritage, uh when it comes to changing that name. Uh of course, uh Premier Ford, you mentioned his, um, uh colorful response to some of, uh the president's, uh moves. Premier Ford during the, uh by-election, I think we can, uh mention, uh in Hamilton East—Stony Creek, uh Premier Ford unveiled a a billboard that says, uh Lake Ontario now and forever. Um...

Speaker B: Now and always.

Speaker A: Sorry, now and always. Yes, the billboard we are told cost $25,000. You know what, as expenditures of public money go, I'm not too fussed about that one. Uh, finally, I mentioned, uh being cranky about Google, which, uh owns YouTube, and many of our, uh viewers may be watching this on YouTube, and we've gotten mail in the past about, uh people, uh irritated about, uh some of the ads that they get on YouTube, that kind of thing. Uh and so I will just take this as another opportunity to remind people that, uh you can of course, uh avoid YouTube entirely and, uh download the TVO Today app on, uh Google, Apple, and also it's available for Roku and various smart TVs as well. So, uh, there are alternatives to those companies.

Speaker B: I want to ask the person taking your picture right now, Tina, where do the Blue Jays play?

Tina: Sky[Dome].

Speaker B: Thank you. Okay. You can rename whatever you want, whenever you want, but the reality is people are still going to call it what it's supposed to be called.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And I've always called it the SkyDome and always will. Tina just called it the SkyDome. You wouldn't know cuz you never go to games, but—Oh, no. You've actually been to a game, haven't you?

Speaker A: I I actually did not go this year cuz I have not like loved the Blue Jays this year. Um but...

Speaker B: But that's my point, right? The president can do whatever he wants.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: We're still going to call it Lake Ontario.

Speaker A: Uh yes. And for the record, even like American officials, you know, there's been a number of like uh I think it was the mayor of Oswego, New York, which is a lakeside community in New York State, is like, "No, of course, don't be stupid." So, um so yes, he's not even getting a ton of play, uh on this, uh move cuz it's—well, yeah, it's dumb, right?

Speaker A: Okay. So, speaking of moves, Canada, of course, struck back after Trump did whatever Trump does. And on September 8th, uh Canada's counter tariffs, 27.6 billion worth of American goods, they went into effect. Prime Minister Mark Carney called off the negotiations famously over the summer, saying America's word was written in pencil, not pen. Uh former Conservative Prime Minister, interestingly enough, Stephen Harper agreed, saying walking away was the right thing to do. He gave a speech at that investment summit in Toronto, uh earlier this week in which he was quite complimentary to the position of the current government of Canada.

Um okay, all of that having been said, a two-word question. Now what? So we're in this, uh obviously this this very bad situation economically where, uh we have, uh both American tariffs imposed on Canada and Canada having imposed counter tariffs, uh on the United States, and like nobody is happy with this situation and, uh of course Canadians did not choose this situation. Um so now what? Well, uh as far as policy with the Americans goes, uh we seem to be waiting until after the midterms. Uh there was some reporting that, uh in fact that was what the Carney government was trying to do prior to the, uh American, uh the new round of American tariffs. They were trying to sort of draw things out and and negotiate when the president was seen to have a weaker hand after the midterms.

Speaker B: You know what that's called, right?

Speaker A: Uh I believe there's a hockey term for...

Speaker B: Sure is. What's it called?

Speaker A: It's called ragging the puck.

Speaker B: There you go. Very good. You can be taught.

Speaker A: I can be taught. He can learn. Um, at the moment we all of the polling suggests that this will be a very bad midterm election for, uh the president's party. Uh, midterm elections tend to be bad for, uh presidential parties. Uh, this is looking like it will be much worse than normal. Uh, the, uh house was likely to flip, uh to the Democratic party. Uh, it is now looking like the Senate may also, uh flip to the control of the Democratic party.

Speaker B: Long way to go, J., a long way to go and... But yes.

Speaker A: Um this was supposed to be a relatively secure year for Republicans just based on which seats in the Senate were up for election this year. Uh Texas seems to be in play. The state of Texas has not elected a Democrat since—I don't know, they were railing against Abraham Lincoln or something. So the the election looks like it will be very, very bad for Republicans. Obviously still some time to go yet, but, um even assume that, uh the Republican party is substantially weakened after the midterm elections in November. That, uh new Congress will not be seated until January.

So it's really an open question as to whether, uh there is some kind of, um immediate movement that happens on negotiations, whether, uh whether frankly it affects negotiations with Trump at all. I have argued at TVO that, uh Canada should at least try to just negotiate directly with the new Congress when it is seated because tariffs are not actually a presidential power, uh like in the constitution.

Speaker B: Guess what? There's a lot of things that aren't necessarily within the purview of a president, but this president thinks they are and does something anyway.

Speaker A: Well, yes. And but he's using powers that were delegated by Congress in legislation, and Congress can take those powers back. And I think that Canada's position should be that like they should get him to do that or get the Congress to do that. That's an argument I've made elsewhere.

Um, and and you know, we we have some, uh uh some political support here because, uh increasingly, uh Trump's trade policies and specifically his policies in regard to Canada, uh are incredibly unpopular and they seem to specifically be harming Republican candidates in particular states. I note, uh Michigan and and Maine where, uh the the Democrats seem to be doing well, uh railing against these trade policies.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, this is one of the ironies of Trump's positions is that they are harmful to red states, which he needs in order to keep his majorities in the two houses of Congress, and yet he goes forward anyway. And I hasten to add, I know the polls are very buoyant for the Democrats right now. But I'm going to be a bit of a—oh, I don't know...

Speaker A: Buzzkill.

Speaker B: Yeah. A little bit, which is to say, you know, don't count your Democrats in Congress before they hatch. Uh Texas always looks good for the Democrats until it doesn't.

Speaker A: And then it's always it ends in tears. It breaks many hearts of the Democratic party over the years. And, um you know, you only got to win by one vote. Yes. So we shall see.

Now, one of the more intriguing developments that's taken place, and in fact, that also happened just this week, is that the European Union has invited Canada to become—well, we're not Europeans. We're not in Europe, but we apparently are eligible for what's called an associate membership in the European Union, which—well, I mean, number one, it's an intriguing new idea, so let's find out what it means. But number two, uh I have no doubt but that this was meant to signal to the president of the United...

Host: ...States, you're not the only game in town, Buster.

JMM: Uh yes, and uh because of course uh presidential communications now happen in the form of Truth Social posts. Uh he reacted to this news by saying it would be a hostile act to admit Canada as a an associate member. Uh but to your earlier point, uh we have no idea what this phrase means. Um there's no there's no content to it yet. uh at least from the European side of things.

Um I'm going to say more about this whole uh matter when we get to uh your column, my column, but uh you know, we already have a free trade agreement with the EU uh that was started under Stephen Harper. It was continued and concluded uh under Justin Trudeau. Uh that agreement has not been ratified by all EU member states. Just to give people a sense of how slowly things uh turn in Europe, uh we are two whole prime ministers later and it's still not quite there.

Host: Can I jump in here to say your use of the word churn is excellent because there are after all 250 different kinds of cheeses that they regulate over there so nothing happens quickly.

JMM: Uh yes indeed and also like dairy uh being a specific trade irritant between our two trading blocks.

Um one reason for this is uh the both prime minister and Europe being able to say to the United States like hey you're not the only game in town. we can find other ways to uh trade with each other. Uh we don't have to uh be subject to the whims of your tariff policies.

And and I would say that you know Trump is obviously the most I think um acute case of this, but like Europeans had lots of um anger or lots of frustration with uh Joe Biden and the uh Inflation Reduction Act and the way that subsidized uh American green energy and uh electric vehicle um production. They thought that was like massively distorting and from their perspective, yes it was. But so like the Europeans are building on a much lengthier history here of of irritations with the US.

On the Canadian side of things, we're also seeing, you know, it's it's now being borne out in data that you know um American tariffs and Canadian counter tariffs are having the predictable effect of you know reducing the volume of Canadian exports to the United States. Uh it seems to have not dealt a um a real fatal blow to our economy yet. Uh we had uh a brief discussion there earlier this year about whether we were going to go into recession and now it looks like we did not even in fact have a technical recession because of the revision of the data that happened.

Uh so you know the Canadian economy, I don't think anybody would like is nobody's popping champagne corks yet, but the Canadian economy has been resilient and uh the trade flows are being reshaped and if the prime minister and the European Union get their way they will be reshaped further still. Two words: stay tuned.

Host: Yes, lots more to come and with that we're going to move on to issue two.

Well, we've got a summer full of highlights and lowlights to review. So, JMM, where do you want to start?

JMM: Uh, let's start with uh the expense scandal that uh gripped the government before they rose.

Um, back in July, Willowdale MPP Stan Cho resigned from Ford's cabinet. Uh, he had been the Minister of Tourism, uh, Culture and Gaming. Uh, it was revealed that he had billed Ontario taxpayers $16,000 for hotel stays in Toronto.

Uh there is a policy at the legislature that MPPs, even MPPs who uh live in the GTA, can uh bill the legislature for uh extraordinary uh hotel stays. Uh the example that was given in the legislature's documents: like if there's a massive snowstorm and it is dangerous for MPPs to travel home, they are allowed to stay at a hotel and bill uh the public.

This was not what was going on with these Progressive Conservative MPPs. Uh Cho, you know, lives a subway ride away from Queen's Park.

Uh and Cho is not the only Progressive Conservative MPP who was caught up in this. Uh a trio of Peel region MPPs uh who were also in the spotlight here between 2023 and 2026: uh Hardeep Grewal charged taxpayers almost $27,000, Nina Tangri $18,000, and Charmaine Williams $16,000.

Host: Premier said he was going to insist that they all pay it back. Did they in fact all pay it back?

JMM: Uh so far we know that I think three have paid it back. Sorry I should say the government has said that uh Cho, um Williams, and Grewal I believe uh have uh repaid those expenses. I couldn't find anything confirming whether Tangri had also uh repaid those expenses.

Um but uh one of uh our colleagues in the press gallery has noted that the government hasn't like published invoices or anything confirming that. You know, that's not always the way the legislature works, but um uh yes, so far we believe three of the four MPPs have repaid those expenses.

Host: Now, one of the things we've learned over the years is that politically you can get into a lot more of a hot mess when you charge the taxpayers $15 for a glass of orange juice while you're traveling, as one MP did 20 or so years ago, uh, than you can if you're in charge of a hundred million program that goes south.

JMM: Uh, it's pretty understandable that $16 glass or $15 glass of orange juice does not compute for a lot of people.

So, the question remains, what's the fallout over all of this? So um you know obviously we had Cho's resignation. Um the government is looking to uh change the rule that allowed for these uses.

Uh we should say that um if you live—I forget what the the distance is, I think it's 50 km—uh or if you represent a riding that is more than 50 km outside of away from the legislature, um you are allowed to uh bill hotel expenses. Just reflecting that it's asking more for people who have to travel further. Like obviously if you represent a Sudbury riding you're not going to go home uh every night uh that the legislature is staying.

And so uh the yeah the government is looking to to tweak this rule so that it will not be uh used like this uh in the future.

But you know something I wrote about earlier this month is, you know, the rule is fundamentally actually not bad. It was the MPP is abusing the rule, and and I think we should like be clear about that, right. So far it is only Progressive Conservative MPPs who have been identified as having uh billed the taxpayer in these very, very large sums.

Host: The other parties didn't do it.

JMM: No. Um and like the NDP have Toronto MPPs who who could have conceivably also abused this rule. Uh they did not. The Liberals also have uh MPPs who and and did not.

Um and and at the root of this is uh the government's use of nighttime sittings, right? Um, we have talked before about the uh extremely compressed sitting calendar that the government now uses to uh get and they try to get as much legislating done in as little time as possible uh while and and so they are sitting this year uh the shortest sitting calendar uh that you and I were able to go back in the data uh the outside of election years this is the shortest sitting calendar in I think we've said 50 years.

Um And the nighttime sittings are a part of that uh strategy by the government. Uh they the legislature has always been allowed to sit uh during uh evening sittings. Used to be uh much more common. When the Liberals went in 2003, they stopped using nighttime sittings as much as a sort of pro-family measure.

Host: Yeah. Family-friendly measure.

JMM: Yeah. And then uh the Tories have really very recently, relatively speaking, have brought them back uh as part of this package of like let's just get as much legislating done in as short a time as possible.

But if you're going to use these nighttime sittings, then you make the mistake of telling your MPPs, well, hey, don't don't complain about having to do House duty in the evenings because you can just stay in a hotel downtown if you need to, which is what these MPPs were instructed to do by the party leadership.

Um, and so like the the government has made this whole mess for itself and it would all be unnecessary if they just weren't as focused on compressing the legislative calendar as much as they...

Speaker B: ...have, but that would mean having more days of question period and getting annoyed by the opposition parties. So they don't want to do that either.

Speaker A: So it was okay until it wasn't.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely right. And you know, it was okay until they got found out.

Speaker A: Yeah, precisely. Now, as we make an attempt here to bring people up to date on things that transpired over the summer, let's put the issue of the airport down on Toronto's waterfront on our radar for a moment here. This is the Billy Bishop Airport, of course, which Premier Doug Ford had indicated he wanted to expand and bring a lot more jets in, a lot more people traffic, a lot more passengers. I think we learned that the place got sold off to an American bank or hedge fund or something like that. And then the federal government stepped in and did a consultation and said maybe not, maybe not going to happen. Where are we at now on this?

Speaker B: So I do want to claim a little bit of prescience on this one because you will recall on this podcast at the beginning, earlier this year, I did ask the question like why would the government choose to start talking about this in a year when there are two elections in waterfront, lakeside Toronto ridings?

Speaker B: In a city where the future of the waterfront is always an incredibly tense issue. I feel vindicated because it turns out that when you're having elections in Scarborough Southwest and Beaches-East York, somebody in Mark Carney's office had the wisdom to think, "Huh, maybe we don't want to pick this incredibly visible public fight about the future of the waterfront and the island airport." So the government engaged in that consultation. They got 87,000 responses, the vast majority of which were negative, opposed to the expansion of the plan. Before the Beaches-East York by-election was concluded, Mark Carney announced that they would not be moving forward with any expansion of the island airport.

It did get a little bit muddled, I will say, because Carney was asked, you know, is this dead forever? And his response was, "Well, forever is a long time." And I am reading this perhaps overly charitably as you know, Mark Carney is still relatively new at politics and he was answering a question like he's the cleverest boy in the room. Having sometimes been the cleverest boy in the room, I'm sympathetic to sometimes you give a smart-aleck answer and you really shouldn't.

So yeah, I think this is probably dead for now, but again we will keep an eye on it. As far as the premier is concerned, he has not given up. He has even said this week that he still wants to sit down and have a discussion with the Prime Minister and figure out a way to get to a yes. I mean if one is truly cynical, you can say, well those waterfront by-elections are over now and the Liberals in those seats, perhaps Carney now feels secure to change his mind. I don't think that's the most likely outcome. But Premier Ford has not given up.

Speaker A: No. And you know, if you're part of his team you would say why would we give up? The waterfront, the responsibility for the waterfront is some federal, some provincial, some municipal, and then a fourth agency that is involved as well. So, as long as there are lots of different cooks in the kitchen, this is going to continue to be a controversy that's not going away.

Speaker B: No, I mean, and also in the broader sense, the future of the island airport has been a controversy for my entire life. Certainly, it's been an acute one for all of my adult life. And it's been a Toronto municipal political controversy at least since 2003. Of course, then victorious mayoral candidate David Miller ran hard against any potential jets at the island airport and won that election. So yeah, I mean this is one of those things that so long as that airport exists, its prospects are going to be a controversy.

Speaker A: And it's existed for more than a hundred years. So this story ain't going anywhere, I suspect. Well, as long as we're talking about perpetual controversies that never go away, let's talk about your favorite here, right?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Bike lanes in, out, up, down, courts involved, premiers involved. Where are we now on this?

Speaker B: Literally a multi-year saga about a handful of bike lanes in the city of Toronto. When we last discussed this, the government had made its argument before the court of appeals, but we had not yet gotten the decision from the court of appeals. Over the summer we did in fact get that decision. A three-judge panel issued a unanimous decision that in fact the government does have the power to remove the bike lanes in the city of Toronto.

People may remember that a lower court had found that there was a charter violation of the security of the person right, the section 7 rights of cyclists because of the manner in which this law was passed and the fact that the government was ignoring all of its own expert advice.

So the government has now issued the tendering document to find some engineering firm that is going to work with them to remove these bike lanes. I understand the process does not say that the bike lanes will be removed in their entirety or they might be; the government is giving itself a lot of options. We will see what goes forward.

Interestingly, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers has issued guidance to its members about what are their obligations as they participate in this whole process. I don't know what the effects of that will be, but there's so much machinery still working on this.

The city has said and Mayor Olivia Chow has said that they presented a compromise solution that would have preserved the bike lanes but also restored some lanes of traffic to the roadway. Mayor Chow has said that they basically got radio silence from the Ministry of Transportation, that there was no engagement with that idea.

The government obviously seems dead set on this issue. They want to remove these bike lanes. Even at this late date, I'm still not ruling out the possibility of some kind of compromise just because it's not clear to me just how passionate the PC party generally is about this. And of course Doug Ford leads the PC caucus, but he's not a dictator, and world events matter too, right? Like check out events in the Middle East right now; we may be heading into a pretty bad fuel crisis yet again. And that to me seems like a bad time to encourage more people to drive. So, who knows what will actually happen when this all gets processed.

Speaker A: You know, I've never asked you about this, so I'm going to do it right now. We are here at the corner of Yonge and Eglinton in the middle of the capital city.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And if you go 100 meters west of here on Eglinton Avenue West, you will see bike lanes that have been there for many, many, many years. And I happen to live in this neighborhood as well, so I'm kind of aware of what goes on on Eglinton just west of this studio. In all the years that I have traversed Eglinton Avenue West, I don't believe I've ever seen a single bike in any of those bike lanes. Now, you cycle more than I do, so maybe you have.

Speaker B: I use those bike lanes.

Speaker A: You've used them. Okay. Well, I've never seen you use them. All of which is to say I've been fascinated by this story because there is so much storm and drang, as we say, about the downtown bike lanes and none about the bike lanes up here which almost never get used and which so many of the businesses on Eglinton want out because of course they take parking spots away from their customers.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And yet crickets, nothing ever about that.

Speaker B: Yes. And the bike lanes on Eglinton were part of a widespread road design with the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown, right?

Speaker A: Based on the theory that well, with this major new rapid transit system going in underneath Eglinton, we can afford to take away some of the road space dedicated exclusively to cars. That makes sense. A certain amount of logic there. Then you would ask, well, why can we also not do that to Bloor and Yonge Streets, which have had a subway underneath them for longer than I have been alive? That's right. That's right.

Speaker B: Again, you know, we've talked about this at length on this podcast. I will just say I am still not ruling out the possibility of a compromise, but we will see what we will see.

Speaker A: Gotcha. There is an old expression in politics, particularly as it relates to municipal politics, and that is that municipal election races really don't begin in earnest until after Labor Day. Well, we are after Labor Day. And we got, I think, one of the biggest surprises certainly in recent memory this very week when the premier of Ontario had a press conference and did what?

Speaker B: So, yeah. We've got this municipal election coming October 26th of this year. Please check your voter registration and check with your city council folks. We of course will be covering this extensively, but yes, the surprising moment this week on Wednesday happened at—this was not even a municipally themed event. This was an announcement of a major pharmaceutical investment that happens to be in Toronto, happens to be in North York. But Doug Ford was there as was Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, and Ford was asked a question and the answer was surprising, and let's just take a look at what he said.

Speaker A: Good.

Doug Ford: The mayor and I have a phenomenal relationship. Phenomenal. And we've given the city of Toronto more money than they've ever seen in their lives. Over $9 billion. We're going to continue supporting the mayor. She's doing an incredible job. So read between the lines.

Speaker B: Read between the lines. Yeah. I guess I appreciate to a certain extent the premier not abusing his office by like explicitly wading into municipal races. Because of course if he does it in Toronto, people are going to ask like where else is he going to do it? But yeah, I think this might be the most unexpected endorsement or quasi-endorsement we've seen in a while. You know, of course, Doug Ford did work hard to try and see Olivia Chow defeated in the special election not that long ago.

Speaker A: He said three years ago that the election of Olivia Chow would be the most unimaginable worst disaster, apocalyptic disaster in the history of the city.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so now we have, I mean as odd as Doug Ford's endorsement might be, now we have the at least equally odd spectre of Olivia Chow, or her campaign I should say, putting out a press release touting the endorsement of Doug Ford, which I think to New Democrats in Toronto is a bit of like, there's strange bedfellows in politics and then there's whatever this is.

Speaker A: Well I'm going to tell you something here and this is my theory. I don't think the fact that they are political bedfellows is all that strange. And I tell you where they...

Speaker B: I think where they come together is over loss.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: I think Olivia Chow lost her husband Jack Layton.

Speaker A: And Doug Ford lost his brother Rob. And I think the two of them when they first met, and this was after the election that she won, despite all of what he had to say ahead of time, they had a private meeting after that election, the by-election where she won for mayor. And they kind of bonded in that meeting over mutual tragedies in their lives. And for whatever reason, she has given him a much less rough ride on a whole lot of issues that her base cares a lot about. And he similarly, given that he's a populist conservative and she's a social democrat NDPer, he has not gone after her in a way that you'd think he would given their political differences. So I think that's where they bond.

Speaker B: No, I think that's wise. I think that's perceptive. I think also in the mayor's office, Olivia Chow has had a pretty firm line about not performatively fighting some battles that she was not going to win. And the obvious example of this is Ontario Place. The premier absolutely dead set on this issue, not unlike bike lanes, is moving forward with it, is not really giving the municipality any space to breathe, any room to challenge it. And as you know, Olivia Chow landed that new deal for the city of Toronto that included billions of dollars in new funding and taking the Gardiner Expressway off of the city's financial books, which is, I mean the looming disaster that was the Gardiner Expressway in the city's long-term budget was truly a threat. So that's a really substantial improvement, and you know I said at the time Chow opted not to fight a battle that she could not win and she got really substantive concessions out of the province for it. So as she accurately pointed out, it's called Ontario Place, not Toronto Place. She had no leverage there to do anything.

Speaker A: Should we just before we go on to issue three for our friends in southwestern Ontario, just point out that the best decision the Stephen Harper government ever made, namely to name that new bridge that connects Detroit and Windsor...

Speaker B: Yes. After one of the greatest hockey players of all time, Gordie Howe, who of course made his chops in Detroit for the Detroit Red Wings and yet is a Canadian and therefore that bridge...

Speaker A: finally got opened.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And it's doing gangbusters now.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember now. I saw the numbers earlier this week. But you know doing very brisk traffic which of course was the intent when it was dreamed up: a Canadian-owned alternative to the two privately owned international links that have existed for decades. And it's always been a concern of the Canadian government that a private US family-owned corporation owns the bridge and tunnel...

Speaker A: who happened to give a lot of money to Donald Trump...

Speaker B: to maintain their monopoly. That was the whole reason for the existence of the bridge. And the opening, I should say, seemed to be obstructed by—was it Lutnick intervened or was it—yeah, and one of the president's cabinet secretaries intervened, the Carney government struck some kind of side deal to, I guess some of the toll revenue will now go to an economic development fund in Michigan. The deal is what the deal is, but the bridge at least is finally open and it is doing what it was intended to do. We now have a third link and it is operating apparently quite well.

Speaker A: We have a third link and we move on to a third issue. On to issue three. We touched on this earlier, but let's go a little deeper here. Three provincial by-elections took place earlier this month and the results are, well frankly, a little disappointing for the Ontario Liberals. The NDP retained Scarborough Southwest which was vacated by Doly Begum who flipped to the federal Liberals. York-Simcoe and Hamilton East—Stoney Creek were both won by the Progressive Conservatives. So those are holds for the Tories. They held the seats before. JMM, the Liberals had high hopes going into that day. Dashed.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think in particular we obviously spent a great deal of time talking about Scarborough Southwest, and you know there was a whole issue there about the nomination of Nat Smith or the nomination fight that Nat Smith was in and did not win. And so yeah, I think that was probably the Liberals' best hope for those three ridings. And instead the New Democrats will continue to represent Scarborough Southwest. Voter turnout not great, that's rarely great for by-elections. You and I know that. But it was about 25% averaged over the three ridings. The Liberal candidate did do a bit better than usual in York-Simcoe, but that's kind of it.

Speaker A: ...not a riding the Liberals I think are planning on winning anytime soon. I think it's been a Progressive Conservative riding since it was created, you know, since the Earth cooled. So, yeah, I don't think the Liberals are pinning any hopes there, and also not a particularly strong showing in Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

Speaker B: I'm going to go a little further on the Scarborough Southwest by-election and to say there was a great deal of controversy about Nathaniel Erskine-Smith leaving the federal scene, moving to the provincial scene, saying, "I'm going to plant my flag in Scarborough Southwest, win that by-election, and then parlay that into a run for the leadership of the provincial Liberal Party from which he obviously hoped to be premier someday." And you know, Nate's a—he's a polarizing guy. Let's just call it that. There's some people who absolutely love him, think he's a great leader, smart on housing, and a whole bunch of other urban issues. There's a bunch of people who think he's an egomaniac, and they don't like him.

Speaker A: Those people won the day in Scarborough Southwest. He didn't carry the nomination. Hassan Leaf did. And I think we just have to say it outright: they picked the wrong horse.

Speaker B: Uh, I mean, won the—

Speaker A: ...tested them, found them wanting.

Speaker B: There you—I mean, he won the nomination, but he did not do well on election day. Lost by 10 points, which is not close.

Speaker A: And, you know, I think it's a reasonable assertion to say that if Erskine-Smith were the candidate in that case, it would have been a closer race, and who knows, he might even have been able to prevail. So, I think it's worth putting that on the record.

Speaker B: I think you're right. I think, you know, the point I always made about Scarborough Southwest is that as much as it was not Erskine-Smith's riding, it is a riding right next door to Beaches—East York. And he was very well known in the community. Because a lot—you know, the major community events tend to sort of cross the municipal or the riding boundary quite a bit. You know, you will go to an Easter Day parade that crosses both Beaches—East York and Scarborough Southwest. So people absolutely knew Erskine-Smith in the community. I think he would have been a substantially stronger candidate. Whether he wins or not is a—you know, we'll never know.

And you know, of course, now Erskine-Smith is running municipally to be city councillor of Beaches—East York. I don't think it's going too far to say that the guy who was MP for a decade is probably going to be a very strong candidate municipally. But it will be an interesting contest. He's facing off against the CTV journalist Natalie Johnson—the "Nate-Natalie contest" I've been calling it.

Speaker A: And so we'll see. But like, you know, for the Ontario Liberals, now not only do you not have Scarborough Southwest in the Liberal caucus, you also don't have the genuine energy and the army of supporters that Nathaniel Erskine-Smith would have brought into that race and into the party. Some of those people are of course still good Liberals, and even if Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is not in the party, they will still take part in the leadership race that is ongoing. But I think it's a real loss for the party.

Speaker B: Mhm. We should also bring to people's attention something that is highly unusual that just took place. I'm not commenting on whether it's good or bad. I'll just simply say it's highly unusual. Usually when former premiers are out of politics, they kind of stay out of the endorsement business. That has not happened in the upcoming Ontario Liberal leadership fight, which will culminate on November 21st with the selection of a new leader. Kathleen Wynne, former Liberal leader, former premier, has gone on record as endorsing Lee Fairclough, who is the MPP for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. That doesn't usually happen, but it has here.

Speaker A: No, it doesn't usually happen. I will say this is not a galloping shock to me because we knew that people around Wynne were supporting Lee Fairclough, and I'm particularly thinking of Deb Matthews, who is very close with Wynne. She was her deputy premier. I have periodically joked that I always think of Deb as kind of like the Hand of the King, like the deputy. But regardless...

Speaker B: Is that a Game of Thrones reference?

Speaker A: Sorry, that is a Game of Thrones reference. We've got all the genre fiction here. You might recall back in the 2022 Liberal contest, Wynne got into a bit of hot water within the party, I would say, because she didn't endorse Kate Graham, but she made some phone calls and made some introductions on Kate Graham's behalf, introduced her to other people within the party. And there were some people who got quite—they were irritated by that because they were basically saying like, "Look, you are a former premier, former party leader. When you make a phone call on somebody's behalf, it's not just you making a phone call. It is read as an endorsement."

Speaker B: That was one thing. Obviously, now Kathleen Wynne has made a different decision that like, yeah, she can endorse who she wants. She's a free citizen in a free country. She can do what she wants.

You know, let's talk about some of the other assets that Lee Fairclough has aside from this endorsement—and it is just one endorsement that she has racked up among others. She is an MPP in the legislature; Stephanie Bowman as well is. But one of the selling pitches that they have to Liberal members is that if they are made leader of the party, the very next day they could walk into Queen's Park and they can start peppering the premier...

Speaker A: ...which the previous two leaders could not do.

Speaker B: Exactly. And that's been a problem for the party. There's a whole debate about, "Oh, does a leader really need to have a seat in the legislature?" And I've said this before on the podcast: I just think like you keep picking somebody who doesn't have a seat in the legislature, and then things keep going badly for you. And I can't draw you a straight line explaining why, but I think at a certain point you just got to draw the conclusion.

Speaker A: And yeah, so we will see to what extent Wynne's endorsement matters. One thing I will also say is, again, a perennial debate within the Liberal Party about how far to the left or the right or the center should the party be. And there's always a question of whether Wynne led the party too far to the left. I will say that whatever you think about that question, there are still a great number of people within the Liberal Party who think that Wynne was right and that the party should be a more progressive party, should not be a "blue Liberal" party, if you want to put it that way. And so whatever the discussion about the propriety of this, I think her voice still carries a lot of weight.

Speaker B: Okay. Anything else as it relates to this Ontario Liberal leadership fight?

Speaker A: I will say that I spoke with Navdeep Bains, the former MP who is also running for this leadership race. I spoke with him earlier this week. We should have a piece online on the TVO website drawing from that interview that I did with him. Which means that between you and I, we have now covered all of the candidates in this Liberal leadership race, and people can go to the TVO website to find them there. And of course, we will be covering this leadership race until the day of the announcement on November 21st about who the new leader will be.

I'm sorry to do this to you, darling, but my 93-year-old father is watching, and he will insist that I correct your: it's "between you and me," not "between you and I."

Speaker B: Did I get that one wrong? Oh, okay. This is like I—

Speaker A: ...just doing it for my dad.

Speaker B: No, no, that's fine. I understand. We must respect our fathers.

Speaker A: There—

Steve Paikin: ...we go. And with that, let's get off to Your Column, My Column.

Steve Paikin: Time now for our regular feature, Your Column, My Column, in which JMM and I, we had a little chitchat here at the table about the stuff we wrote for tvo.org over the past week. Start us off if you would.

John Michael McGrath: Right. So, we're going to talk a little bit more about Europe and the pivot to Europe that Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to be trying to engineer. So, as I want to do, I'm going to do some remedial civics here.

You know, the prime minister can make whatever agreement he wants with European governments, but there's making the agreement and then there's implementing the agreement when you bring it back home. I think that there is going to be some collision between the federal government and provincial governments on this agreement, whatever shape it eventually takes, because some of the details we're talking about here are known, have been reported, have been announced.

This is a—whatever shape this eventually is, this is an economic agreement, right? The prime minister wants a broader economic partnership with Europe. But Steve, I'm going to ask you, who does most of the economic regulation in Canada?

Steve Paikin: That would be the provincial governments.

John Michael McGrath: Right? It's not mostly federal. So the prime minister cannot by treaty change up the division of powers in our constitution.

Now there are areas where the prime minister can exercise federal jurisdiction. So like aviation as a matter of federal jurisdiction, and the prime minister has talked about bringing in private investment into Canada's airports, and so that's something he can do that is totally within his remit. He can change law in the House of Commons with his majority. Other areas like banking, broadcasting, some internet regulation—again, federal matters that Prime Minister Mark Carney, representing the government of Canada, he can make an agreement with Europe.

But some of the areas that we're apparently discussing with this potential agreement with the EU are things like critical mineral supplies, increased energy access for European customers, data centers that—we're talking about sovereign computers, sovereign data centers, that is to say data centers not controlled by the American government or by American corporations.

John Michael McGrath: Those are all areas of provincial jurisdiction. Even like data centers—you know, I just said internet regulation is a federal matter, but where you build a data center—a data center is a physical thing that exists in the world, and where you build it is a matter of provincial land use control, right? So these fights are happening in city councils. Hamilton and Mississauga, like just over the summer, have had these big political disputes.

The prime minister is going to need to bring provinces on side in order to really put any kind of teeth to any kind of agreement that touches on these matters. And the problem here is that the prime minister and the premiers seem to disagree, or at least the premier of Ontario disagrees in some kind of substantive ways here, right? Like what has Premier Ford been talking about since Trump was elected? "Fortress North America." First he was calling it "Fortress CanAm" or "AmCan," but he's broadened that—he's remembered that Mexico exists, and so yeah, "Fortress North America," right?

And that might be Ford's personal inclination, but it also reflects the fact that our manufacturing sector and particularly our auto sector is intimately tied up with the American one. And it's all well and good to say—and I have argued this at TVO—that we can have a prosperous future trading with Asia, trading with Europe, but what does that do for an auto sector if we are locked out of the US market? I don't know that there is a long-term future for the Canadian auto sector if we can't get back to tariff-free access for auto assembly.

That's a big question. And at some point, this is really just a fundamental disagreement about worldview and strategy between the prime minister and the premier. So far they've had a very productive working relationship, but this feels like the kind of thing that could really break that up.

Steve Paikin: Well, the devil is always in the details on these things. You know, the day one announcement caught a lot of attention because it was intriguing, it was new, distinctive, unprecedented even, and then when you dig a little deeper, it gets a little more curious.

John Michael McGrath: I will also say, people can find it online, either they can read the text or they can find the video online. Carney's speech to the European Parliament that was delivered on Thursday morning, very early Canadian time. It was a very, very good speech, really talking about the connections between Canada and Europe going back to World War I. Either take a few minutes to read the text which is on the prime minister's website, or if you prefer, find the video. But a very good speech.

Steve Paikin: Good. I got a couple of questions for you now.

John Michael McGrath: Okay.

Steve Paikin: Do you like to read books?

John Michael McGrath: I do. Not as often as I used to, but I do.

Steve Paikin: Do you like to read books written by Canadian authors?

John Michael McGrath: Sure.

Steve Paikin: Okay. Do you like to hike outdoors?

John Michael McGrath: Uh, yes.

Steve Paikin: Have I got something for you.

This is what I wanted to write about this week because I figured there's enough death and destruction going on between us and the Americans and whatever whatever. So, let me go off the beaten path here for a second and talk to you about something called Project Bookmark Canada.

Okay. I just found out about this thing, oh, I don't know, about a year ago, and I've been looking for an opportunity there to write about it and finally it came. The idea is pretty simple. Put a plaque describing a famous Canadian book in various locations around the country where that location has relevance to something that takes place in the story in the book.

And Sheldon, you want to bring this one up here? Marilyn Simonds has got a book called The Convict Lover. And there is a plaque in Kingston, Ontario, which you can see at a public park. And it's got of course, you know, excerpt from the book and a description of the story. And the story in the book centers on secret correspondence between an inmate at Kingston Penn with a teenage girl, and this exchange happened more than 100 years ago.

So the plaque is in Kingston and I think actually, you know, strange how I bumped into this thing. Peter Shurman and I, who was a former MPP from Thornhill—yes—we drove to Kingston for an event and on our way back we happened upon this. And go ahead, show the next picture, Sheldon, because there's Peter Shurman looking at the plaque. And this was—I'm trying to think of when this was. I don't even think this was this summer, I think it might have been last summer. And I finally had a chance to write about this here.

So, if you are out for a walk, you may see these plaques. You may see why they are there and get an idea about a Canadian book you should read. Next week, I want to put this on everybody's to-do list. If you are in southwestern Ontario, in Thamesville in particular, which is in the city of Chatham-Kent, they are unveiling—there are 31 plaques all over the country right now. They are unveiling plaque number 32 and it's about Robertson Davies, who is originally from Thamesville, and the book is Fifth Business that they're going to highlight. Fifth Business, of course, one of the great novels of all time written by Canadian author.

So if you want to get the whole list of project bookmarks wherever they are across Canada—and I think we've got eight or nine or 10 or something in the province of Ontario, and they're in, you know, Mississauga, there's a bunch in Toronto, there's one at the Bloor Viaduct you could actually cycle past—

John Michael McGrath: I'm looking at the list right now as we're talking and they—number one on their list is in In the Skin of a...

John Michael McGrath: ...[In the Skin of a] Lion by Michael [Ondaatje], that was the first one they ever built. And yes, so the book talks about the experience of immigrants who helped build some of the great big projects of early Toronto. One of which of course is the Bloor Street Viaduct, and so yes, the very first plaque that they put up was dedicated to that on the viaduct.

Steve Paikin: Yeah. And there's others all across the province. So the idea here is to read your way across the country.

John Michael McGrath: Love it.

Steve Paikin: Which I think is a nice little change from all of the politics we normally discuss here. Now, if you've got a burning question or insightful comment, please send it to us at onpolitics@tvo.org. JMM, we have a bit of a funny one this week.

John Michael McGrath: Yes, we got physical mail from listener Alex Syslac in Richmond Hill. And before we get to the letter itself, I do want to say that the postmark here is from the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill. Friends of the Pod, I think we're allowed to say.

Steve Paikin: I think you've got a t-shirt of theirs, actually, cuz I was up there once. They gave me a t-shirt to give to you. Yes. And it's also stamped with the old MuchMusic building, which I really like. So now the actual content of the letter:

"Dear Mr. Paikin and Mr. McGrath, greetings from Richmond Hill. I'm a very new listener to the #onpoli podcast and in my slow progress through the back catalog of episodes..."

John Michael McGrath: I love people who would go through a back catalog of a news pod. I don't feel like you need to listen to all the COVID ones again.

Steve Paikin: "Now, Mr. Paikin, I must also confess that I owe you an apology. I have many distinct memories from my childhood of watching TVOKids. Being too young to understand the concept of a TV schedule, I would turn on the TV set hoping to enjoy my favorite cartoons only to have an episode of The Agenda with Steve Paikin playing."

John Michael McGrath: Oh, my apologies.

Steve Paikin: "To my childhood self, Steve Paikin quickly became almost on par with the boogeyman. Please accept my humblest of apologies for my childhood indiscretions. Mr. McGrath, fortunately for you, I have no strong unpleasant childhood memories associated with yourself. I guess only weak unpleasant memories. I would love to hear a segment discussing administrative monetary penalties levied by municipalities."

John Michael McGrath: This is how nerdy our listeners are and we are here for it.

Steve Paikin: "The topic is of particular interest to me as I've had the distinct privilege of being on the receiving end of seven of these penalties in my adult life in the form of parking tickets. I was able to have all of my parking tickets canceled at the hearing review stage, no doubt annoying countless municipal employees along the way. This leads into the lesson I have learned from navigating this labyrinthian system myself. Was it to pay closer attention to parking signs? Of course not. It's that government and democratic societies work best when citizens understand the systems of government that they interact with most often. Something which your podcast is doing an excellent job of educating Ontarians already. Sincerely, Alex Sislac."

John Michael McGrath: Alex, I think the first thing we need to establish here is that when I have parking tickets to fight, I want this guy on my side. He got seven thrown out. Alex, well done. Well done. Anyway, okay. Okay, nerd. Go on. What do you got to say on this?

Steve Paikin: Okay. Well, you know, as I've already said, I love our nerdy, nerdy readers, and I'm going to just very briefly explain AMPs, administrative monetary penalties. These are fines levied by municipalities, but they cannot be appealed to courts the way you might have had to previously do with a speeding ticket or a parking ticket. Instead, they get handled by municipal reviewers or tribunals. The advantage for them from this perspective is that they can be collected more quickly, they don't need to involve lawyers. So, it's less expensive for everybody involved. And you know, if they are appealed, then the whole process is cheaper. The con is precisely because they can be collected more quickly, some people find them irksome. The most notable administrative monetary penalties in recent Ontario collective memory were those speed camera tickets that were being issued up until spring of last year. Those were AMPs and of course the province prohibited the use of speed cameras for that purpose because, as I say, some people found them irksome.

John Michael McGrath: Well, Alex, apologies for ruining your childhood, but John Michael got you the answer you were looking for. So let's call it even. Okay. Shall we do that?

Steve Paikin: Yes, and let me remind people of course if they want to send us emails or physical mail, the emails at least they can send to onpolitics@tvo.org.

John Michael McGrath: Terrific. And that is the #onpoli podcast for this Friday, September 18th, 2026. The first episode of this, our ninth season. And may I parenthetically say happy 93rd birthday to Scotty Bowman, the greatest coach in the history of the National Hockey League—well, the history of hockey anywhere. Scotty's 93. I just talked to him the other day. 93 and in fine form. So, God bless you, Scotty.

Steve Paikin: Sorry, speaking of 90-plus-year-old people, did you catch Jean Chrétien's speech on 9/11?

John Michael McGrath: Oh, for sure. Aside from everything else, just the fact that at 92 he is sharp as a tack. I was impressed.

Steve Paikin: Somebody, a friend of mine actually talked to me about Jean Chrétien the other day. Said he'd bumped into him in an elevator and he said, "I want to thank you for everything you've done." And Chrétien said, "I'm not done yet." And he's not. Anyway, let's keep going.

John Michael McGrath: Right. 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 YouTube channel. Any feedback you have, we're always happy to hear it—good, bad, or indifferent. Write us an email at onpolitics@tvo.org. Please include your first and last name and where you're from.

Now, before we get into our credits, a quick plug for the other show I do here at TVO. It's called TVO Today Live, and it kicks off season 4 in Sudbury on October the 2nd. We'll be at Science North talking about how volunteerism makes for a stronger democracy. There's more information and free tickets. Go to the website tvo.org/tvotodaylive. That's tvo.org/tvotodaylive. And we hope to see you up in Sudbury.

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

Steve Paikin: Production support from Jonathan Hall and TVO's digital media services team.

John Michael McGrath: Laurie Few is the executive producer of digital. Vanessa Case is vice president, media. Thanks as always to the crew here for making the video part of the podcast look so great. Tina, Dave, everybody in the control room. Welcome back everybody. And until next Friday, bye-bye.

Steve Paikin: Bye-bye.