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

John Michael McGrath: I'm John Michael McGrath. Today on the pod, the province took over planning for Toronto's subways, saying the capital city was taking too long to build essential infrastructure. Now, Metrolinx documents show the province's subway plans are years behind schedule. The city of Stratford has launched a legal challenge of the provincial government's so-called strong mayor powers. We'll look at their case. And with Honda announcing that it's bailing on a $15 billion investment for Alliston, we'll talk to one of the local MP's about the advisability of continuing public support for the auto sector. And in your column my column, I've got something to say about Canada's national electricity policy and why it doesn't exist. And I'll check in on the continuing aftermath of the Scarborough Southwest Liberal nomination meeting, the results of which are under appeal by one of the losing candidates. It's Friday, May 22nd, 2026, so let's get to it. JMM, a little sugar for this beautiful Friday morning.

John Michael McGrath: Yes, indeed. Actually Friday evening, isn't it?

Steve Paikin: Yes. By the time it gets to the TV, it'll be the evening. [laughter] By the time it gets to the TV. What are you wearing today?

John Michael McGrath: Uh so this is a new t-shirt. This is a high school physics joke. Uh if you uh remember your high school physics, uh velocity or sorry, distance over time is velocity, so that means that distance raptor over time raptor is velociraptor. That is a terrible dad joke.

Steve Paikin: nothing to do with Ontario politics, but I liked it, so I'm wearing it. Okay.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter] Well, thankfully one of us here actually wears stuff that is relevant to the topics that we generally discuss here.

Steve Paikin: [laughter] Yeah, exactly right. I am wearing here, I'm going to stand up and show everybody here. That's Sir William Howard Hearst, who was the premier more than 100 years ago. So you're asking, why are you wearing Hearst today? Okay. 26 premiers of Ontario from Confederation to today, Doug Ford's number 26, only one from Sault Ste. Marie. That's this guy. He took over from James Whitney, the only premier to die in office incidentally, in 1914, as I say more than 100 years ago. Then in 1919, he lost to the one and only United Farmers of Ontario. Every single premier of Ontario who won an election actually got a second term with the exception of a few. And William Hearst is one of the few who didn't get a second term. I'm talking about all this now because tonight Friday night, I'm going to be in Sault Ste. Marie. I guess as you're watching this in on television Friday night, I'm actually in Sault Ste. Marie right now. I'm the master of ceremonies at a book launch given by the mayor of the Sault, Matthew Shoemaker, who has contributed to Show the Book, a new biography on Sir William Hearst. It's called No Regrets, The Rise and Fall of Sir William Hearst. It's by Brian Douglas Tennyson, and the mayor has written the forward for the book. So, props to Mayor Shoemaker for using his good offices to promote You know, there's very few books that are written about Ontario premiers. So, here we have another one. I am about a quarter of the way through it. I will have it read by the time I go to the book launch tomorrow.

Steve Paikin: Tonight, I'm getting all confused about the timeline here. And okay, here we go. What do we call the civic holiday in August in Toronto?

John Michael McGrath: Uh here [clears throat] it's called Sir John Simcoe Day.

Steve Paikin: Correct. And in Burlington, what do they call it?

John Michael McGrath: I I am Let's see. Uh Joseph Brant Day?

Steve Paikin: Correct. And guess what they call it in the Sault?

John Michael McGrath: I'm going to guess based on context clues, it's William Hearst Day.

Steve Paikin: There you go, right? Yeah. So, this is good. And hopefully we're going to have Mayor Shoemaker on the program in the days ahead to talk about this book, which I'm really enjoying. All right, can I borrow your copy when you're done?

John Michael McGrath: You absolutely can [laughter] after my father who's already got dibs on it.

Steve Paikin: Oh, okay. Well, that's fine. Anything else? No, I'm good. Let's move on. Off to issue one.

Steve Paikin: Not long after winning the 2018 election, Doug Ford announced a major change in the subway building business. Going forward, Toronto subways would no longer be planned and built by the city and its transit agency, but instead Metrolinx, a provincial agency, would be in charge of all of that. Queen's Park said Toronto was taking too long to get the job done, and so it was taking over. How's that going?

John Michael McGrath: [laughter] Turns out not so well. Uh this is based on reporting from the Toronto Star. Shout out to the Star's reporter Andy Takagi who uh used Freedom of Information requests to the uh City of Toronto. So these are not provincial uh disclosures. This uh is unaffected by the recent changes to provincial uh Freedom of Information Law. Uh but I I I want to specify that just to say that information has a way of getting out even when the province tries to control it. Um and so because the City of Toronto actually has to talk to the province about things like transit planning. Um uh it creates a paper trail. That paper trail is for now still accessible to Freedom of Information Law. So thank you uh to the Toronto Star. The news itself though uh the We already knew the Scarborough subway was uh going to be delayed. Uh this is a a eastward extension of the existing line to the Bloor-Danforth line in Toronto that is supposed to go further into Scarborough than it already does. Um the We We knew that there were delays including uh a tunnel boring machine that had been stuck uh underground near the 401 for most of a year uh due to soil issues. I am not a geotechnical engineer. I'm not going to say much more than that.

Steve Paikin: You just play one on TV. Yeah. [laughter]

John Michael McGrath: Um uh but uh according to the TTC's uh documents again uh gotten by the uh Star, uh it is now unlikely to open before 2033. Um I will uh We've We've talked about this before on the podcast uh at some length, but uh the people of Scarborough currently enjoy less rapid transit than they had only a few years ago because it has taken so long to build uh first to agree on and then to build the uh subway extension that uh the Scarborough rapid transit the prior line that was I guess built in the '70s. Yeah, it was the Bill Davis government that put that one in and they just shut that down what a year or two ago?

Steve Paikin: I yeah, 2 years ago I think and uh so yeah, people in Scarborough now have less rapid transit than they did until very recently.

John Michael McGrath: And you know, this whole saga is has been going on I want to say since the dawn of time, but certainly since I started working as a reporter uh in 2010 uh during the mayoral campaign there. Of course, the then uh uh the successful candidate for mayor Rob Ford railed against the uh light rail transit plan said that Scarborough deserved a subway. Uh and and then we proceeded to spend most of a decade arguing about that. Um I will say that the pro-subway voices uh won the argument at every step of the way and still could not get a subway built in a timely fashion and now we are looking at something like the 2030s and um this whole saga just makes me very sad and tired.

Steve Paikin: And if they'd gone for the LRT, it would have been built by now and Scarborough would not be suffering from this public transit desert which they are right now. Yes,

John Michael McGrath: and uh yeah, I I don't know what else to add to it except to say uh that we've made some poor choices.

Steve Paikin: Well, let's add this. Scarborough is not the only part of the greater Toronto area which is about to suffer some delays as it relates to public transit.

John Michael McGrath: Right, so the uh line that has gotten less attention in our political debates, but is still another important extension. We are talking about the Young North Line extension. The Young section of Line 1 is the subway that runs underneath us here at TVO. Um and uh there has been a proposal on the book for many years to extend Line 1 north into York Region. York Region has in fact made a bunch of changes to their uh planning rules to to make it more congenial for a subway construction. And you know, they they've been quite insistent like hey, like get on it. Let's build this. And so the Ford government inherited some planning work that had already been done, but really I think you could fairly say they they have accelerated the construction. The problem of course is that Line 1 does already exist and it is already very very congested and you cannot uh extend service north into York Region and just dump a few thousand or 10,000 or tens of thousands of new passengers onto the Young Line without creating chaos further south as it hits the already extremely busy parts south of Eglinton. So the province has always said uh they're not going to begin service on the Young North extension until the Ontario Line is open. The Ontario Line has also faced construction delays because of course it has.

Steve Paikin: [laughter]

John Michael McGrath: And so now uh folks who live in York Region who have been waiting uh you know, in the broadest sense they've been waiting for decades for this uh Young North extension to open uh they are waiting at least a little bit longer again uh per the Star's reporting we're now talking sometime in the 2030s. It is actually difficult to build subways. They're like there are some things are actually just hard and uh I'm sure that we could do it better and do it cheaper, but it was never going to be easy which is part of the reason why people argued for light rail as an alternative in the first place because it's just intrinsically uh an easier thing to do. Now turns out you can also do light rail badly and Toronto unfortunately has some recent experience with that as well. Um but yeah, this whole

Steve Paikin: I'm I'm I'm going to change the subject because you're just getting in a fouler and fouler mood the more we talk about [laughter] this.

Steve Paikin: and I'm sad. And with that, let's get off to issue two. Shortly before the 2022 municipal elections, Premier Doug Ford announced that the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa would be given so-called strong mayor powers, giving those heads of the council the power to reshape municipal bureaucracies and veto some council decisions. In the years since, those powers have been expanded to many, many more mayors. Now, one city says those laws are unconstitutional. I happen to be here with a nerdy municipal stuff expert and charter case expert as well. So, this story must have you in heaven. It combines all the things you love. Uh just throw some ice cream on top. It's Christmas in May for McGrath.

John Michael McGrath: Um so yes, this item comes to us from Stratford, Ontario, where the province uh extended strong mayor powers to uh the mayor of Stratford in 2025. Stratford's council subsequently voted to ask the city solicitor, their top lawyer, uh whether the law could be challenged constitutionally. This week, the city announced that they had launched that challenge. They are asking an Ontario court to declare that the two laws that govern the province's strong mayor powers be declared unconstitutional and of no force or effect.

Steve Paikin: And what's the argument they're advancing?

John Michael McGrath: So, when we've spoken about this on the podcast before, I have previously referred to these uh strong mayor powers as minority rule because functionally, that is what it allows. The mayor can move policies forward and implement them even if a majority of council opposes him so long as he has 1/3 of the council uh on his or her side. Uh this is the core objection that Stratford raises, that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees basic democratic rights to all of us, including, most importantly, the right to vote in section 3 of the Charter. And that vote has to have some kind of effective meaning, uh you know, when [clears throat] we cast our ballots for elected representatives, uh those elected representatives have to have meaningful power in the bodies that we elect, or it's all just kind of a show, right? Um Um, so, uh Stratford's argument is that implementing this form of minority rule, of course, what the province is calls strong mayor powers, uh Stratford says that that breaches a a basic charter right.

Steve Paikin: Now, we know you're not a geological engineering expert, you just play one on TV. [laughter] And we also know you're not really a lawyer, but you will probably be prepared to play one on TV for the next little while to explain whether you think this is a decent charter case.

John Michael McGrath: So, uh you can guess from uh my the tone of my my voice that I am pretty critical of these uh strong mayor powers. I have been since they were announced. Um, I think when they were first announced you and I did a bit where I just said it was all frankly kind of bizarre. Um, but I will say that uh while I am sympathetic to Stratford's argument, honesty compels me here to say that I don't love their chances. Um, and the reason is a different uh earlier case where the Ford government intervened in municipalities. Uh our audience must remember when uh the very early Ford government cut Toronto City Council in half. Uh that was challenged in court. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Supreme Court said that the charter guarantee of democratic rights in section three does not apply to municipalities, and that this is not an error or gap in the constitution. This was a deliberate choice by the people who wrote the charter.

Steve Paikin: So, does this suggest that Stratford's case is fairly clear-cut?

John Michael McGrath: Maybe. [laughter] Again, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to uh be too definitive here. Uh but I don't think that the the Toronto uh precedent is good news for Stratford. But, they do have a related argument that and I don't know if this is going to survive judicial scrutiny, but it is interesting, so I I I want to share it here. Um remember that the nominal justification for these strong mayor powers is uh from the province's perspective, they want municipalities to better be able to execute on uh provincial priorities uh like uh housing and transit construction. Uh, plenty of reason to argue that it has not accomplished either of those goals, but that is the the province's justification. Stratford's argument, and I I I find this interesting. Stratford's argument is that this means that functionally municipalities are being like conscripted into delivering provincial policy, uh, implementing provincial policy through municipalities in a way that it would never be permitted to do if they tried to do it through the legislature, right? Whatever else happens at Queen's Park, Doug Ford cannot implement minority rule in the legislature. A very interesting argument to me at least, a a a novel argument. Again, not sure it's going to survive judicial review, but I wanted to share it with the audience. Could this, I mean, we're what, 5 months away from the municipal elections later this year? Could this have an impact on any of that?

John Michael McGrath: Uh, no. Uh, the hearing is not actually even scheduled until November, uh, and any decision from the court would obviously not, uh, happen until, uh, weeks or months after that. Uh, so, whatever mayors and councils are elected in October, they will be elected with these strong mayor powers uh, still in place. Uh, the one thing I will be keeping an eye on in at least in over the next few months is, uh, which cities, if any, uh, attempt to join this lawsuit. Anything else on this? Uh, no. I'm good.

Steve Paikin: Last week the province of Ontario got confirmation from Honda that the auto manufacturer was canceling its $15 billion investment for a new EV rollout in Alliston, Ontario, about an hour north of Toronto. The news came as a terrible blow to both the federal and provincial governments, both of which have spent billions of dollars subsidizing the presence of a robust auto manufacturing sector in Ontario. Does this development raise questions about the wisdom of continuing to subsidize this sector in our province? Well, joining us for that conversation, Adam Chambers. He is the conservative member of parliament for Simcoe North and we welcome him here to Yonge and Eglinton in midtown Toronto. Nice to see you, Adam.

Adam Chambers: It's great to be here with you and studio. Pleasure. Yeah, man. So, maybe just to start off, can you give us what your initial reaction was when you heard that news about the canceled Honda investment? Well, very concerning. You know, obviously there's been some questions about, you know, what was going to happen with that investment given the changes in the marketplace. But you firstly you feel for for the workers because of course, you know, they wake up and they're a little bit unsure about the prospects for the industry certainly with the tariffs coming from the United States and then again with large investments that have been planned and then to hear a little bit you know, a few weeks ago even before the official announcement there was an indication that it might have been being paused certainly indefinitely. So you think about the workers and then those individuals who supply the parts to that to that factory. I mean it's one of if not the largest footprints for auto manufacturing certainly in Canada but even in North America by any standard. 4200 people work there on a regular basis but probably both 30,000 jobs depend on on that plant if you include all the feeders and certainly in our community where I'm from in Simcoe North, that's a lot of it's a lot of jobs, it's a lot of families and so that's what you immediately think about when you hear and then you say well how did we you know, the next question is is you know, how did we get here and could we have thought about this differently?

John Michael McGrath: We're going to get to that question eventually. I I do wonder because this is certainly not the only auto manufacturer who has decided to change their plans and either pause or cancel investments in the province and I wonder whether you think whether you think this should make us question the value of continuing to offer public subsidies to the auto sector to stay here.

Adam Chambers: You mean in general like any any kind of subsidies? Well, I think you have to consider a few things. Uh across the world but in particular in the United States the subsidy game has been a very large part of industrial policy. Uh there have been a number of folks in Canada that used to resist the temptation for subsidies on a few bases. You know, even the current federal government used to say you know, we don't need to subsidize auto because we have advantages in Canada. We had a corporate tax advantage for some time. Our employee base was very well educated and and well skilled And the healthcare costs I just going to say I was just going to say health care costs, absolutely. And a favorable exchange rate on a dollar. Like that provided Canada in a manufacturing sector as some kind of advantage. Uh unfortunately, I think once you get into starting to play the subsidy game, it becomes very difficult to kind of get off that track because you're often just being played against what the next best offer is from a different jurisdiction.

Adam Chambers: Uh whether it's smart to to consider going forward, um we should think about again the employees and like what what would some of these employees do? Like what are their alternatives inside manufacturing or outside manufacturing? But just auto, you know, 20 years ago there was about 3 million cars produced, 10 years ago 2.2 million cars produced, and today it's about 1.2 million, call it about 50% of what it used to be even since 2015. So the industry has been adjusting substantially over the last 20 years already. we reevaluate the whole subsidies business? Well, I'm not sure we should reevaluate uh how governments decide to support. I think we should re- I do think we should reevaluate. Should governments be choosing various kinds of technology and betting on a technology that they're maybe not sure will have market adoption or at the time that they have market adoption going forward. Example, electric vehicles. You know, you could go back in in history to look at different choices governments have made. But you know, what if governments had chosen to support uh Blu-ray versus 4K or Betamax versus VCR as opposed to saying, "Look, like we should create an environment where, you know, we want companies to invest in technology. We might not choose what technology that is. We want companies to keep jobs here, no question. We want them encourage them to hire people. We want to encourage them to keep their manufacturing footprint, upgrade their upgrade their machinery plant and equipment. But maybe not get so far into picking or trying to nudge the public uh into into choices on consumer consumer behavior.

John Michael McGrath: I mean it is it is hard to disentangle those two things because if you you think about like the largest big Canadian subsidies that we're talking about right now, we're not just about subsidizing EV production, but it was in the context of the American Inflation Reduction Act, right? And it was there was a real panic among Canadian policy makers that with the very very large subsidies that the Americans were offering that we would just see wholesale abandonment of auto production in Canada. And so the Trudeau government the then Trudeau government's uh uh policy was in part justified uh not just as an EV subsidy, but as a protecting auto jobs here as well. We had to match those subsidies or the jobs were just going to get sucked south. And I'm wondering what do you think Do you Do you see that as plausible or do you think that was maybe a gloss on social engineering?

Adam Chambers: [laughter] Well, you know what? It's a great point and a very good question. Uh but back to one of the earlier comments I made, when the Inflation Reduction Act first came out, it was the Trudeau government that said, "We don't need to match the subsidies because of the advantages that the Canadian manufacturing sector had." And then all of a sudden, you know, the the temptation was just so great uh to to go down the subsidy line, but it was not just subsidy to keep jobs. It was a subsidy to almost choose where the market and the manufacturing should go, which was, "Hey, we're going to go all in on electric vehicles." And then at least Honda's case, and I have to say about Honda, you know, for you know, this is not a a decision that Honda would make lightly, there's no question. But Honda is probably one of the most generous and long-term employers that the country has seen. They have never issued a layoff notice in their entire existence in Canada since about 1985 or 19, you know, in that timeframe. years, yep. 40 years. You know, they have never once, you know, issued a laid-off layoff notice, which I think is a sign of their commitment to Canada long-term. But what happened in their circumstance was when the federal government and provincial governments put a subsidy in the window for electric vehicles, they chose to move that encouraged them to move existing traditional manufacturing from one of their engine lines down to the United States to make room for the electric vehicle production.

Adam Chambers: So, did we make a mistake by doubling, even tripling down on the whole EV sector? Look, I I think I think so, and it might just be an issue of timing. Like, I don't think anyone's suggesting that no one will ever drive EVs at all. I think what we're saying is it may have been too fast, too soon, but the choices that governments made, multiple levels of government, to to try to nudge the industry in that direction actually ended up making it more, putting it more at risk because we moved traditional manufacturing away in favor of electric vehicle production, but now the market's not there. And, you know, companies need to make different decisions. And frank- And frankly, I just quickly on the on the electric vehicles, the government went went all in on just electric vehicles, like 100% battery versus maybe allowing the plug-in hybrids to really take forward. I think in a country like Canada, the plug-in hybrid model seems to be actually quite attractive. You know, if your your vehicle can go 50 km without a charge, I mean, most people's daily driving habits would be covered by by plug-ins, but even that technology was not favored by the federal regulations.

Steve Paikin: Full disclosure. I drive a Chevy Volt. Oh, perfect. Yeah. It plugs in. You get I get about 80 km a day of battery power and then it automatically goes to gas. Right. And I mean 5% of my driving is more than 80 km a day, right? It's always less than that. So, I'm driving by gas stations a lot. And I I must confess I'm a little surprised that this was not a technology that was more favored. They don't even make them anymore.

Adam Chambers: Well, well, it's it's interesting you bring that up because we had suggested at the time or there was people talking about these battery subsidies and saying my my point was at the time you could probably deliver 80 maybe 90% of the government's emissions reduction targets by going 100% plug-in hybrid and really allowing that market to grow just because of people's daily driving habits. And you know what? Maybe a fully electric vehicle might make sense for somebody's second vehicle. Like if they have a family or you know, I think there's different models of of wearing lifestyles where the fully electric vehicle might work, but certainly the plug-in hybrids have a have a great value proposition to to consumers. I I am also a big fan of that idea in general. I will say just for the record that there are people who dispute whether plug-in hybrids can actually deliver the the emission reductions that are promised. There's been some work in Europe to suggest that they Doesn't in my case. Yeah, but it Yeah, I guess it [laughter] depends on how often you you Exactly. So, like one of the issues is basically like people don't charge them up as often and they rely more on the gasoline usage than than they necessarily need to, but I don't want to get too far down that road. I think one of the obvious points of context in all of this is the relationship with the United States. We already mentioned the the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, of course, Donald Trump has returned to the White House and I'm wondering what do you think the now slightly more acrimonious relationship with the United States means to this current moment and maybe the future of the auto sector. Well, I mean it's not it has taken a negative turn. There's no question about it when the president imposes tariffs, you know, largely unjustified tariffs in in any circumstance on the automotive sector. That's a direct attack and I mean even the president has said, you know, we don't need to buy Canadian vehicles, you know, we're going to make them all ourselves. Canadian auto jobs are all stolen from the United States, right?

Adam Chambers: his his objective appears to be to take as many auto jobs from wherever he can get them including Mexico and bring them into the United States. So I think that is short-sighted on a couple fronts. The first would be, you know, Canadians purchase a heck of a lot of American-made vehicles. Just take the Ford F-150 as an example, you know, the you know, best-selling one of the best-selling vehicles for quite some number of years in Canada. That is completely imported. You know, it's assembled in the United States and brought into Canada. You know, we bring a lot of vehicles in from the United States tariff-free. I think the president, you know, I'm sure we could probably make a deal. Our suggestion has been to consider what the old auto pact days looked like whereas if we buy a certain number of vehicles from you tariff-free, we get to send Canada would get to send a number of vehicles down to United States tariff-free. So I think that's I think that's a a challenge, but I would also say, you know, back to government policy in an effort to continue subsidizing or keeping up with the electric vehicle objectives of the government and this is Prime Minister Carney's direct choice just recently was bringing back electric vehicle rebates. $2.3 billion of money to buy electric vehicles. By the way, fully electric is subsidized more than plug-in hybrid. So, again, you have a bit of a a preference there. And they're the it's front-end loaded. So, the the rebates are actually higher right now than they are in a few years. Well, we don't actually produce in Canada very many electric vehicles. Where are those electric vehicles being produced? Some of them are being produced in the US, some of them from around the world, but many of them being produced in the US. That's That's a pollution abatement measure. Well, let's think about this. To encourage people to buy cars that don't spew Oh. you know, as much pollution into the air. Absolutely. But the current context with our discussion with the Americans are we're using Canadian taxpayer dollars to give to consumers to purchase vehicles not assembled in Canada. And worse, assembled in the United States with whom the president is attacking our auto sector. So, you just think about should we be giving Canadians taxpayer dollars to purchase vehicles from the country with which they're trying to steal all of our auto jobs? Not sure. One of the ideas we've had is said, "Well, let's take take the GST off of all Canadian assembled vehicles." And you can reward someone for buying the vehicle from the honda plant, from the toyota plant. Why don't we consider that as an alternative? If we have a, you know, Can we do that or would that break any WTO rules or NAFTA rules or whatever? Well, I I would say that uh I think the president seems to ignore some of those rules. I think at least we should consider what we should consider how far we're willing to push that. But if we have a limited number of financial resources in Ottawa, instead of paying Canadians to buy American assembled vehicles, let's pay them to buy Canadian assembled vehicles.

John Michael McGrath: I'll just do one other point on on your your position of of the the US made EVs. I mean, the geography here is even uh, less favorable to Canada uh, because the American-made EVs are either uh, Teslas or it's like uh, Hyundai and Kia and the plants that make those are all located not around Michigan where at least in theory Canadian auto parts could be fed into the assembly, but these are all southern US plants closer to Mexico. Uh, so uh, right now Canadian purchases of EVs are going to benefit uh, a totally different sort of food chain Right. Yeah.

Adam Chambers: what? I'm really glad you brought that up uh, for two reasons. The supply chain as you point out is completely different for electric vehicles as it is for for what we call the internal combustion ones. The second is like you mentioned Tesla. Under the under the old uh, electric vehicle mandate that the federal government had it was rewarding it was basically rewarding Tesla because your manufacturers had to purchase credits, electric vehicle credits from manufacturers who had a an overabundance of credits. So, if you didn't produce enough electric vehicles, you then had to buy credits from another manufacturer. Well, there was only one manufacturer that was able to sell credits into the market. Tesla. So, the Canadian government policy was actually supporting or enriching quote unquote an American domiciled which again you just just question you know government policy is you know a bit of an absurd result I think. If Canadians knew that the policy was favoring Tesla, would they be as you know that confident in the policy or that supportive of the policy? There are some ironies here, aren't there? Yeah, I think so. I want to bring you uh, get you rather to comment on something we've heard increasingly I think in the last couple of weeks, which is to say Australia used to have a fairly robust auto manufacturing sector and then they just decided, you know what? We've had it with trying to subsidize, I think their word was stronger, maybe bribe, auto companies to stay in Australia and we're just going to end the subsidies and let's let the market take over. And the market did take over. All the auto manufacturers left and they don't make cars in Australia anymore. But the people found new jobs and the economy did not go into recession. In fact, I I think it barely skipped a beat. And I wonder what you think would happen in this province if we took the same approach. No more subsidies for the auto sector. If they can if, you know, Let them sink or swim. Exactly. Based on free enterprise.

Adam Chambers: Well, I I actually think the sector would would not completely disappear. I do think because of our proximity to the United States, assuming that we could all repair or reinvigorate the relationship with the United States, I think that is a benefit to the Canadian auto sector and frankly the Canadian manufacturing sector at all in as a whole to have the proximity to the largest you know, consumer market in the world. So I actually think the sector is viable. Provided we get access to the US market. Exactly. And I I have been starting to say now no access. If there is no access to the American market for vehicles, I think the industry would would have a very serious problem. So that I think is primarily the first thing we have to fix. And I frankly think that I have actually quite a lot of faith in Canadian workers to be competitive of especially in the automotive manufacturing sector. If you go to a place like Honda, like there are things they can do in that plant in Canada that and at efficiency levels that they cannot get elsewhere. I actually think the sector would be quite sustainable without as much subsidies or without the need to have as as many subsidies. But I do think the benefit that we have is being close to the United States even though it doesn't emotionally it doesn't seem like a benefit these days given the president's rhetoric, but I do think over time that's that's an opportunity to maintain a manufacturing sector here. interesting answer you've given Adam because you've got tens of thousands of people in and around your constituency who are working in this industry right now. If we stop the subsidies, do you think they'd all be out of luck? Well, I would say this. I think before we get to the subsidy question, we have [clears throat] to confirm and reestablish access to the United States market. That in my view is the most important pressing concern for those workers in in the sector right now. And once we do that, I then I think we could have a conversation about subsidies yes or no or which ones should be available and are they subsidies that should be available to any company or any manufacturing sector period. You know, for example, the ability to write off property, plant, and equipment right away, you know, what they call accelerated capital cost depreciation, those kinds of things that would be available to every company, not just you know, the automotive sector. So, I think you know, you could have a very interesting and in-depth discussion about subsidies yes or no and then which ones actually might make sense.

Steve Paikin: Uh we are of course a provincial politics podcast, but we've got you here, so we're going to ask you a federal politics question. I mean, if the Conservative Party were uh the majority in the Commons, had formed government uh instead of the the Liberal Party, what would you be doing differently? ... All right time now for our regular feature your column my column in which JMM and I reminisce about the columns we wrote for the TVO website tvo.org this past week we talk about them here we tease you with a little bit of goodies and hope you'll go to the website and check it out. What do you got for us this week?

John Michael McGrath: So I periodically get cranky about national news coverage in this country because Periodically? [laughter] Um certain issues get covered as if the provinces don't matter or people ignore the provinces. And of course I'm talking my book here because I am employed to cover provincial politics and policy. But last week Prime Minister Mark Carney and federal government released this white paper announcing a national electricity strategy. And truly like on its own merits the document itself is mostly inoffensive. It's it's a bunch of good ideas about electricity policy and yet um we mentioned last week I was not feeling my best and that may have contributed to this but as I read this document more and more I just got more and more cranky because national electricity policy is irrelevant. It is the provinces that will be making all of the important decisions about what electrical power we generate, what transmission lines we build, how local electrical utilities are regulated. It just was driving me nuts that that in all of this discussion about a federal electricity policy I was screaming like none of this matters. [laughter] Well they did put a little money into it. Yes and and I will say specifically in the area of nuclear power there is a very strong federal role. Nuclear technology is federally regulated in Canada. And so in the case of Ontario where like more than half of our electricity comes from nuclear power there is some federal role there. Um but that is because the province of Ontario has made the choice provincially to rely so heavily on nuclear power. If we did not rely on nuclear power the federal role would be much reduced, right? In general I would say the role of the federal government is and we talked a little bit about this about EVs, right? The the federal government can subsidize types of electricity demand, right? We can give people uh for electric vehicles. We can uh give people uh grants or uh low-interest loans to buy things like like heat pumps for their homes. Um and I think that's the really the appropriate and proper role for the federal government. The problem that I get to uh in my column is that uh it does set up uh an analogous problem to what we just saw happen with immigration where the federal government welcomed in a bunch of new immigration while the provinces did not, for the most part, deliver a bunch of new housing. We saw rent spiral, immigration politics turned toxic, and now we have the federal government backpedaling furiously on immigration numbers. Similarly, you could imagine a scenario in which the federal government subsidizes a bunch new a bunch of new electricity demand, and the provinces do not uh make a whole bunch of electricity supply available, and you could see either spiraling prices or blackouts or whatever. Um and uh then I give a bit of a cheeky political suggestion to the federal government, uh but if you want to see that, I will say uh you should go read the column on tvo.org.

Steve Paikin: There we go. Good plug. Good plug. Thank you. I am still fascinated by the fallout from the Liberal nomination meeting in Scarborough Southwest that happened a couple of weekends ago. Um what happened here this past week? Wednesday, so a couple of nights ago, Wednesday night at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Toronto, um well, they heard the appeal. Nathan Erskine-Smith, Nate Erskine-Smith, who came second by 19 votes to Asad Hafiz, he filed a formal complaint and asked a Liberal tribunal to look into uh the irregularities that he claimed took place. Um just by by mentioning a few of them here, he said there were a number of people who voted at this Liberal nomination meeting who didn't bring forward proper ID, and yet they were allowed to vote anyway. He said there were people who were caught taking pictures of their ballots, which of course is a big no-no. It suggests that perhaps you've been paid to vote a certain way. As we sit here taping this right now, we have not heard the verdict of the appeal tribunal on this case. We may never find out what the reasons are for the decision that the tribunal will make because it's actually a part of the Liberal Party's constitution that everybody has to respect the kind of omerta surrounding all of this. Um they will of course announce at some point what their decision is. They have vast powers here actually MM. They can say your complaints are irrelevant and we're going to take the meeting as it happened or they can say, you know, you've you've made a pretty good point here and we're going to order a new meeting. A new nomination meeting or, you know, a bunch of options in between. But all sides involved are supposed to keep quiet about what was actually discussed behind closed doors. So we we're going to continue to keep an eye on this thing because um you know, nomination meetings from all parties tend to stink. Yes. They tend to really not be great exercises in democracy. There's lots of corner cutting and lots of irregularities. I'm not saying necessarily in this case but they do happen and it's an opportunity for if they wanted to, it's an opportunity for parties to clean this up a lot. Yeah, I do think that you know, one of the things we are going to have to discuss at some point when we talk about democratic reforms in Ontario, I think we we tend to go straight to like well, we need proportional representation or we we want to talk about like some big showy reform to the legislature itself and there are frankly so many other small D democratic reforms that we could look at and you know, party nominations being just one of them. But I I do think this is one of those cases where nobody wants to be the first to jump and it probably need in much the same way that we saw the parties um not quite discreetly but you know, they all agreed to not bash each other over the pension issue like the the return of MPP pensions. I think we'll need some kind of multilateral peace settlement amongst the parties to to really address this. And you never know, could happen. Could happen.

Steve Paikin: Okay, should we check the mailbag? Yes, indeed. We do want to remind people that if they've got a burning question or insightful comment that they want to lay on us, we have a special address for that. onpolitics@tvo.org. JMM, what's in this week's mailbag? We have a letter from Hamilton. Hi Stephen and JMM, I'm a new fan of the podcast and I appreciate your hard work. My name is Zach and I'm from Toronto and I attend McMaster University. Shout out Hamilton. Recently, the Toronto District School Board announced major cuts to several areas including the elimination of the model schools program and the closure of five out of seven outdoor education centers following two closures last year. I'm working as an intern this spring at one of the outdoor education centers slated to close and I've seen the incredible positive impact these trips have on students. My question for you is, is the province underfunding education to the point where boards have no choice but to cut programs like this or is the TDSB making bad spending decisions? Thanks, Zach.

Steve Paikin: Zach, this is a great question and and boy is it a complicated answer. Because if you look at the last Ontario budget, the Ministry of Education for the province of Ontario is getting 40 billion dollars to spend. There has never been a higher number in the history of the province of Ontario than that 40 billion number. It sounds like an Well, it is. It's an enormous amount of money. That's like three Hondas worth of money. [laughter] That's three Honda plants. That's right. However, I mean as your letter suggests, once once you start sending that money out into the hinterland and it gets diffused, maybe it doesn't quite go as far as we wish it would.

John Michael McGrath: Right. And you know, I was digging through some of the TDSB's budget docs to try and get a sense of like how much money are we actually talking about here. And it's it's a few million dollars. It is not an enormous sum even by the standards of like a Toronto budget, right? Like the city of Toronto for is is not the school board. I want to be clear about that. But the city of Toronto has you know I think it's $10 billion operating annual budget. It's it's 20. Yeah, it's very very large. You know, objectively this should not be a hard sum of money to find if it were provincial priority for example or even if the city of Toronto wanted to find that money. But we keep the city and the school board's functions separate. And I mean that's a a whole interesting discussion cuz of course some jurisdictions don't do that, right? Like the the mayor of New York City is also in charge of the school system there. But you know, additionally it is really difficult to overstate just how much of a bind school boards are in in Ontario particularly with the city of Toronto you've got a bunch of different issues. It has very large legacy costs because the city the Toronto District School Board was largely built to you know, educate the baby boom generation that massive demographic surge. And like sorry, that there's no baby boom on the horizon right now. And so the TDSB has more schools than it needs for its student body. But additionally there is a provincial moratorium and it is not allowed to close surplus school sites at the moment. Additionally, additionally this was not a decision by the school board itself. Right? The TDSB is currently under provincial supervision. So even if this decision was made by staff I can't imagine the school board trustees all agree and love with this decision. But it ultimately they are not the ones making that call. And you know the final point I would make is that you know, school boards across Ontario get uh the the majority of their funding from the province, right? Uh there's still a small amount that they get like a a symbolic amount that they get from the local tax base. Um but uh you know, overwhelmingly the the money comes from the province and that comes with strings. And the province says to school boards like, "You are going to get this much money, but you cannot spend it on things outside of the core student need, right?" The biggest grant is called the grant for student needs. Um and so I I actually I I don't know for certain whether these outdoor education centers uh are allowed to be funded by the the the the main provincial grants. I kind of suspect not. But uh [clears throat] school boards have so many competing pressures, not a ton of uh financial leeway. Uh I mean, Zach did also ask, "Is the TDSB not being well managed?" And without making a judgment about this specific case, I will just say like there is an extremely long history of certainly the perspective being from Queen's Park, whether you want to talk liberal or conservative premiers, uh there is a long history of premiers saying like, "Oh my god, the TDSB cannot keep its books straight." [laughter] I'm paraphrasing, obviously. But you know, that and that includes premiers who were very vocally pro-education spending like Kathleen Wynne. Uh under her uh uh tenure, she had a special report drawn up into the operations of the TDSB that was extremely critical about the the management at the TDSB. So I I I don't want to say that this specifically is the result of um the board's financial choices, but there is also a history here that we can be aware of. There's also a political philosophy that may come to play here. And that philosophy is the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And Zach, I guess the last thing we say about this is if you want to make a stink about this and you want to keep these centers open, then make a stink about it.

Steve Paikin: And I will just add that uh as somebody who did go through the TDSB system, I I don't think I went to Well, certainly I did go to the Island school and that's one of the the outdoor education centers that is slated for closure. I also went to a different one at Boyne River. You know, those I have very very fond memories of those places. It would make me personally very sad if the next generation did not have access to those places. I I won't make a comment about the the the financial wisdom of them, but I certainly hope that we can find some way to keep the money around. Zack, there you go. McGrath's ready to join your campaign right now. He'll be the honorary chair of your effort. [laughter] on the barricades. Very good. Want to give the email address, JMM, and let's get out of here. ... And to the rest of you, until next Friday, bye-bye. Bye-bye.