It’s a better sample than the poll-as-public-relations story today. I like to imagine it was just his immediate family used as a sample size - and the result was still split. 😏
I want to see the internal private polling he had done before he came to this personal conclusion.
Instead we get him and his friend Steve using the media to erect a mythology of an incredibly mediocre man.
“Oh I don’t want to put my family through an election”…. subtly shifting blame to opponents…You already put them through hell my dude, without any outside help.
And it completely ignores the fact that all criticisms from progressive organizations have been about his record. It it is a far cry from his feigned humility when he left office.
Just as he decided to spin his own narrative then, downplaying expert submissions, coalitions, and dissenting voices, he is doing so now. He gets to create a high road that the only reason he isn’t running is because opponents would ‘drag his personal life’, which is so noble of him.
“The inclusion of nonprofit organizations in the lobbyist registry process was considered fully by staff when the registry was set in place, and Council made the proper decision to exempt nonprofit organizations from these requirements.” www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis...
Refocusing that his ‘intention’ was about unions was politically convenient and ignored the many nonprofits that submitted opposition to the motion. And ignored that the nonprofit question had already been discussed years prior and he had reintroduced the notion. www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis...
His theatrics in city council stopped short of calling us hysterical and engaged in some pretty blatant gaslighting. Repeatedly claiming ‘no one had a problem with it before’ when concerns were raised as early as 2014 by nonprofit coalitions: canadacommons.ca/artifacts/32...
Another vital piece of context, this was weeks after Black Lives Matter Toronto had been created a tent-city protest outside of the Toronto Police HQ. Tory refused to meet with them despite looming pressure to do so. This bylaw would have created a ‘process’ that shielded him from future situations.
When the item was debated Mr. Tory accused councillors of being behind the ‘outrage’, and that people were ‘whipped into a frenzy’ and we just didn’t understand, and he pretended no one had a problem with it before (not true) and attempted to repaint the ‘intent’ was aimed at unions (sure jan).
We called as many organizations as we could to urge them to put out a statement and get in touch with their local councillors.
We wrote emails to our own councillors, asking them not to let it pass.
And we struck a nerve.
We wrote a rapid response op-ed about how many barriers people already face at city hall, that grassroots groups and nonprofits should not carry the same burden as lobbyists like Uber and Google.
We organized on our free time, eating cold leftover pizza.
As part of the grassroots organization Women in Toronto Politics, another member and I joined the chorus of nonprofits already advocating against this change. It was a night or two before the motion would be argued, and Claire and I set up shop at her work’s abandoned office for the evening.
It was May of 2016 and city council was set to vote on a motion from Tory that would change lobbying bylaws at city council that would disproportionately impact grassroots and nonprofits. nowtoronto.com/news/mayor-t...
People like John and Steve think this is totally normal and fine and assume everyone has access like this. Let me take you on a pedantic annoying journey back to 2016, where John implied there was a partisan effort against a bill of his rather than accept that people were… to his quote “Outraged”.
Ward 19 Beaches East York 2023 Mayoral results showing Bradford getting 4.66% of the vote in that riding.
A racoon diving into a dumpster.
There’s a story going around about how Brad Bradford “could lead a tight two way race” against Olivia Chow.
Which is the funniest take I could have seen today.
A reminder, that he couldn’t even break 10k votes in the last election, and in his OWN ward he couldn’t get 5% of the vote.
#TOpoli
Another day another brand new set of horrible reasons to demand our Canadian Pension Funs divest from Palantir.
The only downside to Tory not running again is that I may or may not have bought his old web domain and related domains months ago and was prepared to be mischievous.
It’s so fucking gross that the first thought from these deranged losers is how dystopic scenes of war and bloodshed are a “massive opportunity” for Canada’s oil oligarchs to make a quick buck.
A small dog with a worried look on its face, sitting upright on a colourful cushion
I was at a conference in Ottawa days after his Davos speech, and a lot of capital L liberals were in attendance, and every time someone asked me what I thought of the speech I’d try to diplomatically say something like “well let’s see if his actions match the energy”.
Most people don’t realize I have a sibling because I estranged myself from them 17 years ago (for traumatic reasons I’m not dumping here) and have not regretted it for a moment.
For overyton window that closes a door opens
Canada 🤝 Australia
Investing public money in Palantir
ricochet.media/labour/billi...
There is no meaningful way to consent to any of this monitoring. And the way it is being implemented (primarily through privatized service) gives the government an arm's distance from accountability for when things inevitably go wrong.
Scenario Five: You have a medical crisis
You experience a seizure in public and bystanders call 911. Body‑worn cameras record you at your most vulnerable, and the footage becomes evidence or staff training content hosted in a private company’s cloud.
That false hit can be enough to escalate a police stop, a raid, or a border flag, and you may never even learn that the root cause was a faulty private algorithm you never agreed to be tested on.
No one is held accountable because the technology can be blamed.
Scenario Four: You're misidentified by an algorithm
A camera network paired with AI is marketed to your municipality as a way to catch “suspicious vehicles” or “repeat offenders.”
A glitch, a low‑quality image, or a biased training dataset leads to your face or your car being flagged as a “match.”
If you are undocumented, racialized, trans, or otherwise targeted, simply being present in that footage can put you on the radar of police and integrated databases, even though you were just trying to help.
Any future scenario leaves room for you to be labelled "known to police".
Scenario Three: You call 911 for someone else
You call 911 because you witness a crisis — a fire breaking out, a fight in the street. Officers show up with body‑worn cameras supplied by Axon; everything you say and do is recorded and automatically uploaded to a corporate cloud.
That data can be shared with police in other jurisdictions, private investigators, or even debt collectors when these systems are run by vendors who retain and sell access to the data stream.
