# All Aboard the Lego Train

An episode of [Rose City Politics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247337855), 26 Nov 2023, 1 h 02 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/57812583/all_aboard_the_lego_train.mp3

Don, Jon, Frazier and Doug look at the vacant building tax, Mayor Dilkens recent use of strong mayor powers, and temporary foreign workers at the new Stellantis / LG battery plant. Rose City Politics is brought to you with the kind support of LiUNIA Local 625: Building Better Communities. Support the show at Patreon.com/RoseCityPolitics. Read our stuff in Biz X Magazine or online at BizXMagazine.com or RoseCityPolitics.ca.

## Transcript

[0:24] Hey, everyone, welcome to Rose City Politics. It is November twenty sixth
[0:27] A regular panel includes Doug Sartory, Don Merryfield, Junior Fraser Fathers, and
[0:32] myself John Lydkey had to patroon dot com slash Rose City Politics. We're in
[0:35] biz cks magazine, online everywhere and banned somewhere. Try to find out which
[0:39] place that is. And we are able to broadcast live on tape thanks to
[0:42] the kind support of Luna six two five building Better Communities. We'll dive right
[0:47] into it again there is it's Lego Land spoilers everybody, We're banned from Lego
[0:51] Land. Yeah, that's fair. We were gonna just dive straight into it.
[0:54] But kay Don, do you want to talk about what happened at Lego
[0:56] Land. Well, let's just say there was a terrible Lego train accident that
[0:59] I can't go around there anymore and school yards. Don went into the Lego
[1:06] and pretended he was the train to run into all of the displays like it
[1:10] was some kind of a trolley problem thing, but just the kids didn't get
[1:14] the reference motion motion to rename the trolley problem the street car problem. Second
[1:26] second, So yeah, we got a lot that we're going to talk about
[1:29] here. Fraser is gonna do a quick little update about the fall fiscal statement
[1:34] and the economic statement. Excuse me and Windsor Essex. I would apply to
[1:37] maybe a few other high level points or not. We'll find out. Fraser
[1:38] has been preparing for this one. Somebody did their homework. Well, you
[1:47] know, I'm like everyone else around the table. I actually read government documents.
[1:49] So that's a good starting point. So yeah, the fall fiscal update.
[1:53] You can find a Twitter fair that I did. I guess on X
[1:56] or whatever the platform is now called. And uh, first, there's this
[2:00] physical update is very lean, right, Whereas past updates in previous years were
[2:05] almost like budgets, this one is like, instead a three hundred pages,
[2:07] it's only one hundred and fifty pages, and the majority of those pages are
[2:12] actually the required financial updates of like how much did we spend in the first
[2:15] half of the year, how much debt do we have? All that sort
[2:17] of stuff. Debt is up, that's bad. But you know, the
[2:22] update actually only had two mentions, none of which were really explicit for Windsor
[2:25] Essex. One was the ongoing funding for the Gordy Hell Bridge is in the
[2:29] update, so they're going to keep building the bridge, which is good.
[2:31] And then they mentioned the next Star battery plant as part of their Evy supply
[2:37] chain investments, which they talked about as a section of the update. Now
[2:39] there's a few other interesting things sprinkled throughout the updates, some enhancements, some
[2:44] housing funding. There's now a mortgage bill of rights that's coming forward that give
[2:47] sort of consumers some protection around mortgage you know, things like that, which
[2:53] options they always said, but they just encapsulated quite quite possibly. Yes,
[2:57] I'm not an expert in that space. And there was some interesting stuff in
[3:01] there as well, about like, for example, employee co ops, where
[3:06] if a small business owner were to sell their business to their employees and create
[3:09] a co op that business owner, now the first ten million dollars will be
[3:13] capital gains free. I think the biggest one that potentially impacts wins or Essex
[3:16] out of everything in the budget was actually the changes to short term rentals and
[3:22] that in municipalities where they're banned, you'll no longer be able to actually claim
[3:27] any of those costs on your income tax for running a short term rental.
[3:30] So pretty much what they're linking is your address to your tax records, and
[3:36] then when you're claiming that second unit or second thing on your if you're in
[3:38] a town that's banned short term rentals, CRA won't allow you to submit any
[3:43] of those claims as part of your tax taxes. So that's probably the one
[3:47] big thing that interests me, and that'll probably be impactful in the short term.
[3:52] A lot of other stuff. This was kind of a quiet update that
[3:55] was boring. Did they do it like when I used to have write says,
[4:00] you just wrote really big and there's more space between the words. Yeah,
[4:02] there was a lot more graphics marginstr that's how I used to do it.
[4:08] But I had nothing to say. If you really want to go for
[4:11] it, you increase the size of all of your punctuation marks. That's four
[4:15] points. You gotta be careful, though, man, not to fly too
[4:17] close to the sun. I had the utter humiliation of having a university professor
[4:21] be like, dude, this is the three page paper that you fucking did
[4:26] this, and you did this, and you did this. It's not five
[4:28] pages. Like to actually sit in the man's office and have that happen to
[4:31] me that that's a core memory, especially in university yeah, well you were
[4:36] an adult. You'll let it fly in grade seven. But yeah, hey
[4:42] man, I was busy. He's in the big two B pencil. Well,
[4:46] Fraser, thank you so much for that update there. The one big
[4:48] story that's been sort of ongoing this week was the stillantus in the temporary for
[4:55] an worker story, and it all started out on the sixteenth of November when
[4:58] Windsor Police of all organizations tweeted out after a meeting with the ambassador from the
[5:03] Republic of Korea that the new battery plant by LG Energy and LG Energy Solutions
[5:10] in Stalantis will be bringing sixteen hundred South Koreans to work and live in our
[5:16] community in twenty twenty four end quote. Suffice to say. Drama very quickly
[5:23] ensued, with opposition parties and unions attacking the FEDS and the province. Pierre
[5:28] Poliev called for an inquiry into the contract for the plant. Industry critics for
[5:32] the Conservatives also asked for an emergency meeting. Windsor West MP Brian Massey contacted
[5:41] the Employment Minister federally to raise concerns about it. Canada's Building Trades Union expressed
[5:46] grave concerns, as did Ironworkers Local seven hundred and Essex and Building Trades Council,
[5:51] both of those unions saying hey, we can do this, which subsequently
[5:55] we went to find out no, no, you can't do this and might
[5:59] not be simply not only because they don't have the technical know how, but
[6:03] they also don't have the contractual ability to and we'll dive more into that.
[6:09] It all sort of erupted on the social media scene where we saw windsor TCUMSI,
[6:14] MP, Eric Hu's Mehrchik and Brian Massey and former Ward three councilor Reno
[6:17] Borlin not really going at it but having a very public conversation about all of
[6:24] this. And we even saw MP who's Marrichick really start using some colorful language.
[6:29] In response to a Brian Massey tweet, he said, Pierre Conservatives don't
[6:32] don't give two shiit shifts don't know. I read it quickly. That is
[6:36] some interesting wordplay. Don't give two ships. I think he should have just
[6:41] said shits if you're going to go and look, man, Eric's just trying
[6:45] to expand his personality a little bit. So I'm I'm reserving judgment on the
[6:50] new Eric Khan's style it's jarring, like if you you know, especially there's
[6:56] no well, right, there's a there's a jarring change, but I don't
[7:00] know that it's I don't know that I'm ready to say it's not effective.
[7:04] It's weird coming from Eric right now. Yeah, and you know, we
[7:10] could have a broader conversation about how with the Liberal Party in the slumps right
[7:15] now in the polls, we're seeing a lot of Liberal MPs starting to change
[7:19] their vocabulary, get a lot more on the offensive. But again that's a
[7:23] conversation for the other day. Well, when Eric's dropping is GE's, then
[7:26] you'll know that it's death confive. So let's dive into some of the facts
[7:31] here. Nexstar has said that they need up to sixteen hundred workers who will
[7:35] arrive at different times to complete the various phases of installing the equipment needed for
[7:41] the plant. Their network of external suppliers is going to use up to nine
[7:45] hundred highly skilled temporary foreign workers to assist in assembling and installing the equipment.
[7:48] Seven hundred Ontario workers will be trained for work on future projects. Specifically,
[7:54] an additional sixteen hundred Ontario workers will be employed to construct the facility when it's
[7:59] fully off operational. Ninety to ninety five percent of the twenty five hundred member
[8:03] workforce will be domestic workers. There's eight hundred workers currently employed at the battery
[8:09] research facility and more to come. All of these workers that are temporarily allowed
[8:13] to a worker are allowed to enter under the International Mobility Program. There's no
[8:18] labor impact assessment required. Companies supplying the machinery to Nextstar require the use of
[8:26] their employees contractually to even install it. So that comes back to the point
[8:28] that I had brought up. There are no Canadian corporations that manufacture the equipment
[8:33] that we need for the battery plant. Specialty workers build, install and test
[8:39] the machinery, but the plant's physical construction will be done by Canadians. Next
[8:43] Star says four or five suppliers are building plants and winsor currently, with a
[8:46] fifth expected to announce finalizing annount soon, and local ECDEV officials have said that
[8:52] they are finalizing negotiations on more than nine billion dollars worth of additional projects.
[8:58] So that's the shortest version of what this incredibly complex and moving story is.
[9:07] There's really no big surprise here, I think, especially for people in Windsor
[9:11] Essex one, because we've heard about this story as it's been evolving, and
[9:16] there was I don't think any surprise to really anyone locally that foreign workers would
[9:20] be employed. The number might have been surprising, but beyond that, for
[9:24] anyone who has, you know, any knowledge of the agricultural industry in Windsor
[9:28] Essex, so auto industry, auto industry, you know, the stuff that
[9:33] we do here, this is pretty standard and so I can speak to cannabis
[9:37] and agriculture. When I had a project that I was putting together, we
[9:41] were going to be doing greenhouses, and greenhouses are built by the Dutch,
[9:46] which reminds me of the Great Austin Powers joke. It's only two types of
[9:50] people that I can't stand, those intolerant of other cultures and the Dutch.
[9:56] But yeah, so for the greenhouse there, we were gonna have to bring
[10:00] in Dutch greenhouse workers to build the Dutch greenhouse because that's how it all works.
[10:07] Frasier as you said, like, this is a standard for auto as
[10:09] well, which is what makes it so interesting. When you saw our local
[10:15] politicians specifically, you know, I'm not going to go blaming the local unions
[10:18] for making noise because they're always the job right exactly. But you know some
[10:22] of our local politicians that were using this as an attack or just asking questions,
[10:28] you think Brian Massey's Brian Massey is the interesting one for me, like,
[10:33] like, he knows he's been around for a long time and he doesn't
[10:37] gain anything by attacking the Liberals. I mean, the only reason the Liberals
[10:39] are still in power is because their parties propped him up for the last few
[10:43] years. So it seems an odd that he would join in on the I
[10:46] get the Conservatives, they are going to do it, and look, I'm
[10:48] a conservative, I understand this is politics, but yeah, it seems odd
[10:52] to me that Brian jumped in on that. Does seem like a misstep,
[10:54] doesn't it, because you know, the the What what got me thinking like
[11:00] this is a weird one, and you're right, it is a little weird
[11:05] was seeing the distance between Dave Cassidy and Brian Massey on this issue. That's
[11:11] surprising to me that those are some pretty close allies and and I think that's
[11:16] a pretty good indicator that Massi's on the wrong side of it. But I
[11:20] also think, like, don't you guys think that this, this, this
[11:26] rhetorical play was completely primed by how much everybody with anything to do with this
[11:35] plant completely oversold it from day one. You know, did anybody talk about
[11:39] the you know, the the influx of foreign workers and companies. You know,
[11:45] it's not just workers, it's also companies that would be necessary. Like
[11:50] what I'm saying is that I feel like there was a rush to bid as
[11:54] high as possible when this thing happened. You know, it's it's going to
[11:58] be great for the economy. Well, okay, the next guy's got to
[12:01] say it's the best thing that's ever happened. And the next guy's got to
[12:05] say, this is the single greatest investment that any Canadian has ever made in
[12:09] any municipality, whatever, whatever, whatever. I just think that that created
[12:13] a set of expectations that reality is going to have a hard time meeting.
[12:18] Yeah, so I think building off of that, right, like even going
[12:22] back to the announcement and looking at battery plants in the US and what workers
[12:26] are paid and things like that, Like my hobby horse has been why wasn't
[12:30] there a community benefit agreement attached to this thing? Why wasn't there you know,
[12:35] some transparency on the contract. I get you can't like, you know,
[12:37] get into the nitty gritty details of like this is the exact machine and
[12:41] model and here's the part numbers you would all need so anyone can copy it.
[12:45] But like, certainly there could have been a conversation about you know,
[12:48] things like temporary foreign workers absolutely would be coming in for this project. But
[12:52] you could get ahead of it by having, you know, a document that
[12:56] says, you know, at the beginning, we're going to hire and like
[12:58] that, then you also have next star on paper saying we are going to
[13:03] hire X number of locals. Like the caveat to any hiring number for any
[13:07] project is if they can't find someone local to do it, they will bring
[13:11] someone in to do it. And so that's where you know, again,
[13:16] like it's great given the size of the investment. I think that was a
[13:22] hedge that was missed back when those announcements were made. It's like you could
[13:26] have had a conversation about those things and framed it around positive benefits for the
[13:30] community and just had a separate document that sort of explains that, and you
[13:35] wouldn't have had this sort of conversation happening now. Kudos to the team from
[13:41] the municipality and iwe who got this thing over the finish line. But but
[13:48] and it's it's always easy to Monday morning quarterback somebody who actually did the work.
[13:54] But do you think it's possible that there was a there was a let's
[14:00] say that the negotiating team on the on the Team Windsor side was more highly
[14:03] motivated than the team still Land this LG side, and maybe that's why some
[14:07] of these things didn't get fleshed out. Well, I think I don't even
[14:11] think it was a local thing. I think the I think it was the
[14:13] Team Canada negotiating team. Like the Feds wanted the battery plants, the August
[14:18] wanted the battery plan. They were the ones putting in all the money.
[14:22] Really, you know, from a share perspective, I think like the locals
[14:26] probably could have asked, hey, could we get some of this stuff in
[14:28] writing, and they could just say, no, we're cutting it, We're
[14:30] cutting the check. You know, they were probably running it was probably being
[14:33] coordinated out of here. But like you know, those sort of deals get
[14:37] negotiated at cabinet level. Sure enough. So then but then the same thing,
[14:41] right was Ontario and Canada far more motivated than you know. And I've
[14:46] said this on my blog, right, like you look at where the battery
[14:48] plants are going, and like the supply chain that's emerging, Canada's done quite
[14:52] well. But I think the challenge that Canada would have is you probably had
[14:56] to overpay at the front end in order to get your foot in the door
[15:01] when you didn't have as we've heard, any of this infrastructure of business in
[15:05] Canada, you know, And the next big fight is probably gonna be about
[15:09] mining in Northern Ontario and the ring of Fire and getting that piece of the
[15:11] supply chain up and running, because if a lot of these investments have been
[15:16] premised on the minerals are coming out of Northern Ontario getting processed in Quebec,
[15:22] coming to Windsor to get or Saint Thomas for the battery development and then ship
[15:28] to the US for final assembly. For the most part, yes, Stilantis
[15:31] here will build some too, but like and probably up in Brampton in places
[15:35] like that, But that's gonna be the next conversation is like what are those
[15:39] you know? And again like who knows how to run a lithium mine in
[15:41] Canada? M Right, I think a lot of the big companies that are
[15:46] bidding on that are like Australian and Chile and the stuff like that. Those
[15:50] aren't Canadian companies. So if you think the Dutch bad, the Australia,
[15:54] can we just do a quick aside. Did you see what Canada Land did
[15:56] with mining? Oh? Yeah? The Minister of Ontario, Ontario's Minister of
[16:03] Northern Indian and Northern Affairs. The Ontario government recently allowed for digital staking claims
[16:11] for minds instead of actually having to go up and actually like put a post
[16:15] on the ground and steake a claim. Bring it up, Doug. The
[16:18] So Canada Canada Land digitally steake the claim for a future mine across the street
[16:26] from the constituency office of the MPP. That's pretty solid. That's that's a
[16:30] solid one. Yeah, that's a great dig. I love it. Oh
[16:33] good, dig It's a good idea. They can't say no exactly, they're
[16:37] gonna make it that easy. Anybody could pop up a steak and a pin
[16:41] in the map somewhere. It's it's interesting, Like, I don't from what
[16:45] you know what Frasier said there. I think when the FEDS were making this
[16:48] announcement, they didn't want anything to taint this. This was like their big
[16:52] raw, raw raw announcement. So if they come out and say we're gonna
[16:55] spend eight trillion dollars whatever the number was, and we'll invest this all these
[16:57] jobs in ac com. Oh, by the way, there's gonna be fifteen
[17:00] hundred copy orders, they don't want to say that out loud. That's one
[17:03] of those things. I think it's let's make the announcement. We can deal
[17:06] with that later because we know it's going to come, but we can message
[17:08] on that later. So and the reality is, like people have mentioned here,
[17:14] there's we don't have any companies that can do this type of work because
[17:17] we have even if we would have got a chip manufacturing company or these mining
[17:21] companies, if we don't have the expertise to do it, they have to
[17:23] bring in their own people. You're not going to spend five years training somebody
[17:27] to do a job that you can bring your people over and get it knock
[17:30] it out in six months ago. Right. So then I think like just
[17:33] the question, the question that I think is fair to ask here is what
[17:38] about the promise of a significant increase in the amount of highly skilled technical work
[17:48] that would be happening in Windsor, and and I think that that, like
[17:52] I think that the reaction of labor unions, automotive observers and different people.
[17:59] I think the reaction to say, come on, guys, this is a
[18:02] standard, standard thing. That was a good addition to the conversation. But
[18:07] I don't think the conversation is over because I think the next question is okay.
[18:12] But when we were discussing these plants and what it would do to Windsor
[18:18] and what the impact on Windsor would be, a lot was made of how
[18:22] this is a pivot to being a more high tech city. This is a
[18:26] facility that is going to employ a significant number of engineers, and there is
[18:32] going to be research and all that good stuff. Right. I'm not saying
[18:37] it's not happening on the basis of some foreign workers being brought in. What
[18:41] I'm asking, though, is how real is it? How real is that
[18:47] picture that was painted, and how much are the jobs that come to Windsor
[18:52] really going to look like that? Like I was at the announcement when this
[18:56] happened, I have not been in a room of local officials who have been
[19:00] that jubilant in my reporting life, or let alone. Professional feel like John's
[19:04] just rubbed it in our face that we don't actually get invited to these things.
[19:07] And that's one of those places whe were banned from. I think that's
[19:11] a good ticket, dude. I applied as Rose City polity. You were
[19:18] there, technically, John, John pursued the uh, the interesting strategy of
[19:22] actually doing work, and they said, yes, I'm not a fan of
[19:26] that. No, it's a hole to do. Everyone was so happy and
[19:30] like there was so much backslapping and handshakes and opposition, like everyone who would
[19:36] not be together was you know, together and raw rah rah. And I
[19:40] don't think anyone wanted to spoil it at all with any meaningful conversations. I
[19:42] remember at the time as well, we didn't know what the price was because
[19:45] they were saying that it was they were bidding on other plants that we have
[19:49] one of what fourteen investments I think was the total number that they said was
[19:53] going to be rolled out, and then its entirety and we still know there's
[19:56] more to be coming. So they held that card. They didn't want to,
[20:00] you know, they couldn't give us the number. They're certainly not going
[20:03] to go selly a story without a data point by putting in a piece of
[20:07] shit data point. So we were left without knowing either of that, and
[20:15] then everything got really screwed up with Biden and the Inflation Reduction Act and the
[20:19] tax credits, and there was the risk of derailing the whole plant. So
[20:23] again, we're not going to go buck and bringing it up six months later
[20:27] when this is going on, and there was still the very real risk of
[20:33] losing the plant or the new battery plant, which could lose the retooling of
[20:40] WAP. And then you talk with someone like Flavio Volpe, you lose a
[20:44] court anchor like that of the auto industry, you could very well see them
[20:48] decide, you know what, we're not going to upgrade WAP at all,
[20:51] and we'll just shudder it when it gets to the end of its life cycle
[20:55] and up the four to one quarter. I mean, that's why all this
[20:56] money was spent as quickly as it was was to stave off off the very
[21:00] real or perceived threat of losing the entire Canadian auto industry. So I just
[21:06] I think in the situation of the fear the Russian and a lack of good
[21:11] news stories outside of these stories themselves, as a whole. No one's willing
[21:17] to come out and give the shit details, And now here we are and
[21:21] they've started to leak. I really want to figure out, though, why
[21:25] the hell Windsor Police tweeted this. Why were they the ones that said sixteen
[21:33] hundred workers are coming from the Republic of Korea? Why? I mean,
[21:40] you could argue that for the police to be the ones putting this out there
[21:45] is actually a pretty reprehensible thing for them to do. It could create animosity
[21:51] among local Korean residents and other residents who go, oh, they're going to
[21:55] come and take our jobs, perceived racial issues, But it's the politics of
[22:02] it. Why did they think it was necessary to jump in the middle of
[22:06] this story. When does Windsor Police get involved in any local story without a
[22:11] reporter asking the question? This was them, This was the comms shop for
[22:15] the police, but you know, like just to play Devil's advocate. Maybe
[22:21] it's the comm shop doing one of those those sort of filler posts, you
[22:26] know, like in election campaigns, Look how many signs we've got like that
[22:30] we don't have anything to post today post And maybe it was one of those
[22:33] that got away from them. Well, they had met, didn't they meet
[22:37] with the Korean yeah, ambassador. So it's like it was probably that the
[22:41] second half of post is the picture of like the chief shaking hands with So
[22:45] the first post was the picture the handshake we met with the ambassador. The
[22:51] second was just text that said sixteen hundred South Koreans are going to be coming
[22:56] here to work on the battery plant, and we're excited to welcome them.
[23:00] Yeah. On the other hand, if you're not nuts, it's not like
[23:03] a horrible thing to say. You think the police are just saying this because
[23:07] they thought everybody'll be happy. Well, I think it was again from their
[23:11] perspective, it's like, Okay, they had a great meeting. The ambassador
[23:15] said, hey, a bunch of my you know, people are coming to
[23:18] your community, and keep them safe, and police said, yes, sir,
[23:22] we will, and like and this is you know, the continuation of
[23:25] that conversation in that post. Like I think they probably I would assume Windsor
[23:29] Police doesn't often wade into foreign direct investment politics and so so like they probably
[23:34] weren't having that lens on the post. And really the story went from there,
[23:41] but it's when it got picked up by Global news outside of Windsor that
[23:45] it really became a story, right, Like no one locally cared about the
[23:48] windsor police tweet, you know, and there was no local action for us.
[23:52] It wasn't like a windsor story. Then broader it got picked up nationally.
[23:56] I think we were the only ones just raising eyebrows. And the thread
[23:59] that we have that's really interesting, Fraser, I wonder about that. I,
[24:06] you know, the the issue that we see here, it helps you
[24:14] understand why I guess institutions are so afraid to share any information and communicate anything
[24:22] because you never know what tiny bit of info is going to cause a political
[24:29] firestorm, and you know your bosses to get mad at you because they're getting
[24:33] phone calls from people who are more important than them, and blah blah blah
[24:37] blah blah. I don't know, maybe we just have an immature attitude towards
[24:41] like information and information sharing, because Canada Share does do things differently than other
[24:47] jurisdictions do in terms of like communicating basic information like this. Well, I
[24:52] mean, heck, we just had Niagara Falls and we said video footage and
[24:56] we had everything from the US just dump it on us and if that was
[25:00] here, well, fifty years for access to information to come out statement.
[25:06] A few heads cracked. All that well, I think if you look at
[25:10] the the evolution of this whole situation, like John was saying the announcement,
[25:12] everybody's we're all happy, happy, happy. Then you get that out uitter
[25:17] General report, and then you get this, and I think politically the opposition
[25:21] is this is just this is like you know, shooting fish in a barrel.
[25:22] It's easy, right, you can't blame that. Editor General comes out
[25:26] says, well, the payback isn't what they say, it's going to be
[25:29] eight trillionaeires. And then this comes out. I mean, this is easy
[25:32] to bash the liberals over the head with, and you know it might be
[25:34] rightly deserved. Mounting criticism is the job. Sometimes it's crappysitions, but this
[25:41] is the public conversation. Yeah, like it's not fun to be in the
[25:44] middle of it, I'm sure, but this is like we need this back
[25:47] and forth. No, for sure, that's part of the deal, right,
[25:48] it's a yeah, it's going to be interesting, I think just to
[25:52] see how many of those workers stay on after the plants up and running.
[25:56] I mean, that's gonna if it turns out that. You know, Yeah,
[25:59] thousand of them stay and they're running the plant. Yeah, well,
[26:02] then there might be some questions asked. But even with the Gordy how the
[26:07] terribly named Gordy Howe Bridge, I mean, most of the companies working,
[26:10] I'm going to stay on that for the rest of my island. A lot
[26:14] of the companies that got that contract were foreign companies. They're just congomerates.
[26:18] And you know, they brought some Canadian companies in just to bring under that
[26:19] umbrella, but they are foreign. Really. There's certain things we're good at,
[26:22] and there's certain things other countries are good at. Just the way it
[26:26] works be and the doltabout it. But I understand the politics. It's an
[26:29] easy punch in the face, right, Yeah, I think that's I think
[26:33] we pretty much nailed this one. Yep, definitely. They do say it'll
[26:37] be ninety to ninety five percent domestic workers when it is fully operational. Well,
[26:41] they also what they say when during the campaign they said they're going to
[26:45] run modest ten billion dollar definite sound at workout Joneson fair enough, another shot
[26:48] at the Liberals. Sure you're always loaded though, so we expect it.
[26:53] Okay, Well, City Council is considering a vacant home tax program. Voting
[27:00] on this coming up right now. There's what seven thousand people on our affordable
[27:03] housing wait list in the region. This program would have to be subject to
[27:07] approval from our finance ministry in the province and it would result in a three
[27:11] percent levy added to properties that are unoccupied for more than one hundred and eighty
[27:15] three days in any taxation year. Ward II councilor Fabio Costante has pushed for
[27:22] this for years. Back in twenty seventeen, the Ontario Liberals gave Toronto the
[27:26] ability to impose attacks like this to encourage property owners to sell their units or
[27:33] rent them out. Costante asked a Council question about this in nineteen. Council
[27:37] voted in twenty one unanimously for a staff to draft a policy. Here we
[27:41] are now, the vot's coming up, and Windsor was actually one of twelve
[27:45] municipalities that were asked to participate in a working group provincially about a program like
[27:51] this. And administration has developed this policy and if Council votes on it,
[27:56] it'll be ready to go once the province approves. If that happen right now,
[28:00] only Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa have similar powers. There's some exemptions.
[28:06] I'm not going to go through the whole list, but principal residences, units
[28:10] that are under construction, renovation, redevelopment. It's a pretty long list of
[28:14] exemptions, and we can talk down probably give some insight about what this actually
[28:18] means when it's in place, and how many people it might apply to or
[28:21] what buildings. It would be a complaint based enforcement model and the city would
[28:26] be mailing property owners a declaration form to fill out within thirty days and if
[28:32] you don't respond, it means that the property is vacant subject to the tax.
[28:36] You can dispute this if you want, but if the city determines that
[28:40] you falsely declared your status to avoid the tax, there's a twenty five hundred
[28:45] dollars fine plus the tax itself. And this will require the city to hire
[28:48] a property tax clerk and a property assessor. Total cost to the city one
[28:52] hundred and forty five thousand annually. But they say it will be revenue positive,
[28:56] so there'll be more money than Yeah, like Adventure vailor like Adventure Bay
[29:00] exactly. Yeah, So the did you want to say, aything? That
[29:06] was pretty good. So yeah, I mean, if you dig into the
[29:08] story, there is an extensive list of exemptions. It could be I'm in
[29:11] the process of getting a permit for renovations. Blah blah blah. I mean,
[29:17] look my take on this, and I'm gonna attack the federal lumbers again
[29:21] because apparently that's what I'm doing today. Look, we have a housing problem
[29:25] in this country, and there are two main drivers of this housing problem,
[29:29] and I don't give a shit about all the other arguments that there are two
[29:30] main drivers. It's our immigration policy. We're bringing in almost half a million
[29:34] immigrancy a year, and we're building two hundred thousand dollar houses, roughly two
[29:38] hundred three three hundred thousand houses. You know, math is simple in my
[29:44] brain. If you're bringing in half a million people and you're only building enough
[29:47] houses for three hundred thousand of them, you're always going to run into this
[29:51] situation. And this even goes back to our the last story we're discussing,
[29:53] we're gonna be bringing in fifteen hundred ish foreign nationals from some where are they
[29:59] going to stay? Like? Where are they going to move? I wonder
[30:00] if those Duke Boar caves are still octopostale, but even if they stay permanently
[30:07] and again to kind of go back to this, this all kind of plays
[30:11] into the federal liberals immigration strategy. As they saw our population was declining,
[30:15] we needed workers, so bringing in for you know, bringing in immigrants who
[30:19] are skilled and can work in our economy as part of the process. So,
[30:23] I mean, that's what So I think that's a bit of why they
[30:26] didn't really care, because that's the kind of immigration we want, right But
[30:30] as far as this so, the thing that bothers me is between the immigration
[30:33] policy, the reality we can only build so many out residential units in a
[30:40] year across the country, and then you throw in the whole fiasco of all
[30:44] the post secondary institutions bringing in hundreds of thousands of students and not having any
[30:48] place to put them. Those are giant policy things. Know well, certainly
[30:55] this federal government does not want to address because that is their brand or pro
[30:59] immigrant or pro you know, we all know what, you know, the
[31:02] things that they're supporting. So they can't say that they've caused this problem.
[31:06] So they're gonna look at all these little bullshit things like these vacant property taxes
[31:11] airbnb stuff. We're gonna change the mortgage rules, which they didn't. They
[31:15] just announced everything your bank would do for you anyway, Maybe do some amortization,
[31:19] throw some money at developers to make it cheaper. But the reality is
[31:23] it's a numbers game. If you're gonna keep bringing in half a million people
[31:26] and you physically can't build more than two or three hundred thousand units a year,
[31:32] this is just gonna get worse. And I don't care about all the
[31:34] other This is all just political posturing and bullshit my opinion, because it's not
[31:38] gonna make any difference to the big problem. Okay, there you go,
[31:42] Thank you, Donald. I'm curious about how effective a complaint based vacant building
[31:52] tax will be. Yeah, I think that's again that's been a challenge with
[31:57] the City of Windsor, and a lot of it's you know, bulk and
[32:00] pick up. You gotta be proactive and someone has to call it. And
[32:04] then there's you know, and dumping issues and all those things like where you
[32:07] could potentially be proactive, you know you're reactive, and so like, how
[32:15] do you know how do you know that that house next door is sometimes vacant?
[32:17] Right unless like you're gonna call on like the neighboring house next door,
[32:22] do you well, again, it'll start out, why so it's gonna start
[32:27] out with a letter to everyone, right who rents? But then again,
[32:30] how do they know have to go to everyone everyone in the city. And
[32:35] I don't think they'll do that. Yeah, Like that would be the way,
[32:37] and then you'd have a ton of false positives in everybody be mad.
[32:40] But Frazer, I just want to, uh, just go back to what
[32:45] you were just talking about there. The the enforcement of a policy like this
[32:58] though, would be like pretty tough, right, Like I'm trying to figure
[33:02] out who would be motivated to inform on someone's vacant building in order to not
[33:10] in order to fix anything, not in order to get it occupied in this
[33:14] bike, but you just in order to make that person pay a little more?
[33:16] Who's going to do that? You know what? Like I don't know,
[33:21] Like I think that's one of the things here. And again, like
[33:22] the exact deployment of the policy isn't there yet, so and I know that
[33:27] they say in the report, like there's going to be a big awareness campaign
[33:30] run by the city as well as this policy gets so like I'm sure,
[33:34] you know, there'll be lots of you know, social media and regular media
[33:37] and all these things like oh you have to register by such and such a
[33:40] day if you're building is vacant or whatever. I think, to be honest,
[33:45] like what this is after you know, and I you know, wholeheartedly
[33:47] support councilor of Castante on this is it's this is a punishment on the or
[33:52] the Ambassador Bridge company. Really it's like those buildings in West Windsor are not
[33:57] habitable, but they're still standing and they're and there wouldn't they fall under the
[34:02] there was an exclusion in there for something along because I thought the same thing,
[34:06] like, well, potentially if the city's not letting them tear those buildings
[34:09] down, that falls under an exclusion because you're fighting with the city over permitted
[34:14] again, Like that's some like there that would be like but like that's really
[34:17] what this is driven by. Like if you think about you know, the
[34:20] city and you know, I know that's Johnson, Like there's seven thousand people
[34:22] on the affordable housing waitlists or whatever in the region, which isn't just the
[34:25] city. But I think like we have to be thinking about like how many
[34:30] vacant houses you know, we have a one percent mental market vacancy right now.
[34:35] How many vacant houses are there actually in windsor that aren't those Ambassador Bridge
[34:38] company or the handful of other buildings that like caught fire six months ago and
[34:43] like you know, is now just sort of sitting there half you know,
[34:45] occupied or whatever. And so like, I think that's the thing that I
[34:50] don't really understand is like I think this is a great tool. I think
[34:52] it should be in place. I think, you know, it's going to
[34:55] generate positive revenue and therefore, like reinvest that in what is the three percent
[35:00] is a three percent of the assess value of three percent of your tax as
[35:01] well as on top of the levee, on top of the thirty percent of
[35:06] your assessed value of your property. Yeah yeah, that hurts. So like
[35:10] it should generate revenue and so like okay, and hopefully that revenue is properly
[35:15] invested into other similar sort of you know, whatever whatever programs the city wants
[35:21] to put it into, fancy or street car music. Sure, yeah,
[35:23] but I think like beyond those Ambassador Bridge Company owned homes, right like,
[35:29] I don't know how many other long term vacant established you know, livable buildings
[35:35] there are in windsor that are currently like in that wouldn't fall into those that
[35:38] wouldn't fall into an exemption or wouldn't like, Oh it's been for sale for
[35:42] six months and that's why it's VACA. Now this is really the fuck the
[35:45] Ambassador Bridge Company Act. But you can't call it that pretty much, I
[35:49] think. So, Yeah, well, this is a policy for a different
[35:54] time. Costante ran on this in eighteen. He asked the question in nineteen
[36:00] Yeah, and then the world fell apart and everything changed, completely changed,
[36:07] and now here we are in twenty twenty three, and it's just it's a
[36:12] tool that doesn't make sense for a variety of reasons. Now it looks like
[36:15] overwhelmingly now well, a lot of these programs they've been saying were put in
[36:21] to solve a problem that was two years ago. Because the housing market has
[36:22] changed dramatically and that discovery, that's exactly my point. And we have so
[36:27] many more people that are here, and we have because work from home changed
[36:30] things, and just the whole the student housing situation changed. Everything has become
[36:36] far more apparent. So what there needs to be is a policy that's designed
[36:39] for the problem that we're in and I think, like this is what Mike
[36:42] Moffatt was saying in regards to the changes that we saw announced federally for housing
[36:46] policy, is there's nothing wrong with them at all. But you know,
[36:51] this won't do anything. This is not going to go and create the amount
[36:55] of housing that we need. We are not going to see new units created.
[37:00] Buy this. Will it get a couple more people under a roof?
[37:02] Of course they say that it's going to be so they're only positive, But
[37:08] we're not going to say this doesn't solve the problem. It does not address
[37:12] the underlying situation. It's still going to continue to get worse. Well,
[37:15] yeah, and locally, Like I can understand in Toronto because there's a lot
[37:19] of properties in high rise cound of developments who are bought historically investment properties or
[37:23] you know, I'm just gonna hang out here on the weekends and you know,
[37:25] have an affair on my wife kind of thing. But like, think
[37:29] about this in Windsor specific. How many people who live in Windsor have like
[37:34] a vacation home also in Windsor That doesn't make any sense. You're gonna have
[37:37] something on the water. Maybe out in Kingsville, or somewhere else. So
[37:42] going back to all your like, there can't be I couldn't imagine there's more
[37:45] than like a hundred properties that would fall under this. And how about the
[37:50] people are snowbirds and spend six seven months a year down south. There's an
[37:52] exclusion for them, right, I would assume the media it's that primary residency
[37:58] exclusion. So so so everybody's primary residence is excluded. So this is only
[38:01] going to effect out of town investors about investment properties, and they're just letting
[38:07] them sit there and rot, which is like six And because anyone who buys
[38:12] an investment property is generally is gonna want to throw people in there because you're
[38:15] losing money every month, and people who own second properties who would use them
[38:20] as a vacation, Like, I don't know what else there would be,
[38:23] and if we're gonna do that, but something this is me causing trouble again.
[38:29] How many buildings downtown where we had all these great investments were gonna happen.
[38:32] I'm thinking about the old million dollar saloon, which was supposed to be
[38:35] a medical building that's been sitting vacant for years. I don't do anything about
[38:37] that. Yeah, it's funny you say that, I was just sitting here
[38:42] thinking about the all the vacant storefronts and counselor Agustino kind of, you know,
[38:46] floating ideas to penalize or encourage folks to make a difference. And I
[38:53] think, I think there is a difference, like a palpable difference between between
[39:00] these two issues, and like the residential and the commercial, and it's interesting,
[39:05] Like the commercial one, it seems to me is far more pressing.
[39:09] I don't have the knowledge of the real estate market that you do. I
[39:13] don't know if it's really one hundred or if there's ten thousand vacant properties,
[39:15] but it doesn't seem likely to me. Yeah, it's interesting. So ultimately
[39:23] this is really about, as Fraser said, you know, at least we
[39:27] kind of think this is really about a very particular, a very particular neighborhood
[39:32] in a very particular situation. And I'm actually not trying to indicate that I
[39:37] don't think that it's reasonable to pass a by law if all it's going to
[39:39] do is penalize the ABC for those buildings, Like I don't want to leave
[39:45] the impression that I don't think that's worth Like city Council spending time on it.
[39:50] Absolutely is, but it's a lot more limited in scope than what I
[39:52] think we where we were at the start of this conversation. Yeah, and
[39:55] if you go after the Printon Bridge Company, look, they're just going to
[40:00] tie this up in the courts for years. So we're spending one hundred and
[40:02] fifty grand, which is now going to be cost neutral, and then we're
[40:06] gonna end up having to sue the Ambassador Bridge Company, which is gonna cost
[40:08] millions and millions of dollars in legal fees because all they're going to say is,
[40:13] look, we want Pyramits to tear these houses down. You can't penalize
[40:15] us for not letting us do what we want to do because they're not liverable.
[40:19] They're not livable structures. What if we let Dawn redo what he did
[40:23] at Lego Land with his truck? Yeah, well bridge that train thing,
[40:29] Yeah, that was horrible. I like you bringing back the Lego Land.
[40:32] That's good. That's a little reward for people who are listening. If you've
[40:36] listened from beginning to now, they threw a little little joke in Therefore,
[40:39] come here for the political insight and the baby steps forward. Stay for the
[40:43] money, stay for the stay for the comedy that shows up forty five minutes
[40:46] after the original. That's what people like, right, Okay, Well,
[40:51] I think we can shift out of this one into our next topic here,
[40:53] and we're going to dive into some strong mare powers and issues with them.
[40:58] Word one. Councilor Fred Francis says that when Mary Dilkins used his strong mayor
[41:02] powers, it's at a dangerous precedent and diluted the role of council in the
[41:06] decision making process. Now, of course, on the fifteenth, the city
[41:09] announced a strategic realignment and the dismissal of our top engineer and lawyer, that's
[41:15] Chris Nepsy and Shelby Askin Hager. Mayre Dilkins used the strong mayor powers to
[41:21] make this move. Francis says he's disappointed because the Mayor expressed when these powers
[41:25] were conferred that not much was going to change in the way that he consults
[41:29] and collaborates with council. Francis says, though with one person making decisions,
[41:34] that this is unprecedented in modern history here in the city, and that he
[41:37] expects council to work together to formulate consensus but that can't happen if the opportunity
[41:42] is denied at the outset. He also expressed concern over the cost of the
[41:45] reorganization and how he is able to answer constituent questions, or rather how he
[41:51] can't answer those questions. He says informal discussions were held, but he didn't
[41:54] even have a formal face to face with the mayor. He says, there's
[41:58] eleven members of city council that are alive, did not just one. And
[42:01] then the issue sort of got public as well. I believe it was on
[42:06] Am eight hundred, and that's not just a dig for my employer. But
[42:10] we heard Mary Dilkins saying and expressing umbrage with the way that Francis clarified it,
[42:20] saying that Francis said that he would be attending the Remembrance Day ceremony and
[42:24] Mary Dilkins said, we can discuss it there, and then Mary Dilkins said,
[42:30] and then then and then Mary Dilicans said, he didn't even bother coming
[42:35] with the revistaxiety. I love, I love that he got that Fred didn't
[42:39] come to the Remembrance Day. You can take the boy out of the hall
[42:45] monitor uniform, but cannot take the call monitor out of the boy. I
[42:50] just I love the idea as well that we're being fed this story that the
[42:53] appropriate place to be discussing the usage of strong mare powers and the dismissal of
[42:59] two of our top employer. He's at the City of Windsor is, of
[43:00] course, in the five minute period before taps starts playing on the fugal.
[43:06] Well, they had time. The mayor didn't read a poem this year,
[43:07] so this is true. They also replaced the cannon with rifles. Yeah.
[43:14] Interesting, Well apparently so I went there when I was down there one year
[43:16] and foolishly mistaken we stood by the cannon, which is a hard part,
[43:22] completely unaware that they'd be setting this thing off and gorgeous. Really accurate too,
[43:29] I trust me. I had to throw out my pants at day.
[43:31] And but you know, I did hear the military guys talking that the only
[43:35] way they could actually shoot that off is some business, and Windsor had actually
[43:39] given a donation because apparently the chargers are thousands of dollars each. Oh wow,
[43:44] so they didn't have the money to Actually I think that the Legion runs
[43:46] or whoever it was, didn't have the money to do it unless they got
[43:50] you know, that donation, So they probably went to rifles because you know,
[43:52] everybody's got a rifle. See, this is the problem with not having
[43:54] a big global foreign war is that we don't have surplus charges anymore that we
[44:00] can just use. We have to rely on the good will of our pa.
[44:04] We gave way a hard nineteen sixties military technology to Ukraine to fight.
[44:09] You know, I listened to that interview referring to on AMA eight hundred and
[44:13] your other cooler station, and what I you know, just the overall tone
[44:17] of the mayor in his response to this, it really came down to I
[44:22] got strong mayor's powers. I can do it. I'm gonna take these powers
[44:27] and I'm using however, I feel right because they said I could, and
[44:30] that's really all it was. And if you don't like it, you know,
[44:32] I'll meet you to Remembered Stay Parade and we'll fight it out. It
[44:37] goes to show this is another one of every one of these is going to
[44:39] be a perfect example of how strong mayor powers we've talked about are just incredibly
[44:43] weak mayor powers because every decision you make, you're open to a huge criticism.
[44:50] If you choose to act, you're acting unilaterally. And if you don't
[44:53] choose to act, why didn't you act unilaterally? I mean, this is
[44:58] like damned if you do. Damned if you and a smart political operator like
[45:02] Francis will deploy this attack no matter what side of the issue he's on,
[45:08] because you will are always going to be able to advocate for a constituency that
[45:13] is the underdog, and if you're able to weave it in a way that
[45:16] you're not necessarily taking the opposite position of what the mayor did, but you're
[45:22] just advocating for the democratic process. And the mayor went out of his way
[45:25] to attack that these downtrodden people who just didn't want a building blocking their view
[45:30] or causing shade or whatever. I mean, this is just still saying they
[45:36] didn't get on the Lego train. That's the title. They didn't get on
[45:40] the Lego train. So but is it? So? I just want to
[45:44] say one thing real quick, and then I'm not going to say anything else
[45:45] about this. This whole strong mayor's thing, going back to my previous comments,
[45:50] was literally put in place to help with the housing situation, and look
[45:53] where it's ended up. So after you as someone who's a cad for strong
[46:00] mayor powers on this show. So listen. I think there's because I listened
[46:06] to the interview on AM eight hundred as well, and you know what the
[46:09] mayor said was this was a long time coming, right, So, like
[46:13] they started having conversations back in the summer or something like that as a council
[46:16] about reorganization. He met with every other counselor so, or at least he
[46:20] met with every council, he said, or tried to. They had an
[46:23] in camera meeting about the change in structure where individuals would have been spoken about,
[46:30] and then he has to under the law now actually sign the document that
[46:36] changes things, and it has to be posted on the website. So like
[46:39] the question really is one of if this was happening under the old system,
[46:46] you would have had an in camera meeting and then a new story that people
[46:51] were fired, and then no one around council could actually talk really about the
[46:54] in camera meeting, and you would have a new org structure and the mayor
[46:59] would come out say we decided as a council to make a change in the
[47:01] order structure. Really, the only change that's happened here is they had meetings
[47:07] individually, there was still an in camera meeting, and now the mayor is
[47:10] actually, you know, done the thing, and now you can actually have
[47:14] a debate about it in public because if counselors were in or out, and
[47:19] we haven't heard from really any other counselor on this, which I find interesting,
[47:22] you know that, so it would have been what I could take away
[47:25] from that is, oh, it would have been a ten to one voting
[47:28] camera or it would have been something like that nine to one or whatever the
[47:34] vote would have been. So like the rest of council was informed. It
[47:37] sounds like it wasn't out of the blue. It sounds like this change was
[47:39] long running. Yes, I'm sure there may have been other questions that could
[47:44] have been asked, or you know, the mayor could have maybe done more
[47:46] outreach to counselor Francis or not. I don't know. I don't know exactly
[47:51] how much was done. But like, I actually don't think that this was
[47:54] like some massive overreach. You know, we got criticized often on the show
[47:59] for on dil Well, just generally for talking on Dilkins, and you know,
[48:04] the mayor. It's really really refreshing that Fraser is doing the one thing
[48:07] that we brought them on the show to do. Defends He's really good at
[48:14] that. I know. It's actually I get a great conspiracy theory. But
[48:15] you talk first, and I'll wrap. I thought you were done talking.
[48:21] Those are always empty promises, Fraser. I think your perspective on the strong
[48:25] mayor powers is interesting and I have found it persuasive. Uh, I think
[48:34] that is not the issue that interests me on this story. The uh,
[48:38] the firing is interesting in itself. How the powers were deployed to do it.
[48:45] I kind of agree with you, this would have happened one way or
[48:49] the other. But I've I've been thinking about this Dilkins Francis thing. It's
[48:53] really fascinating. You know, don't run my conspiracy theory. That's what it
[48:58] is. So I don't have an any certain knowledge right of of what's been
[49:01] said by who, and and so I'm not in a position to say that
[49:06] any specific person is telling the truth or not telling the truth. But I
[49:10] still see this pattern where mayor mayor sorry, counselor Francis. Yeah yeah,
[49:20] yeah, Well we'll see you guys. Counselor Francis, uh Is is doing
[49:28] something that we saw Counselor Bortland do in the previous term, which and the
[49:34] term prior to that, which is call the mayor on his bullshit. So
[49:38] Mayor Dilkins is, however, he has achieved it, and that's a whole
[49:44] conversation. He works in an environment where he experiences limited challenges. He has
[49:52] not challenged a lot, and and I think that that's a personal preference of
[49:57] Mayor Dilkins. And I think that he has construc did a situation and meeted
[50:00] out rewards and punishments to to uh facilitate an environment where he is not often
[50:08] challenged. And I think most counselors got the memo. Whatever they think about
[50:14] this move, I think that most counselors around the table are going to look
[50:21] at any situation where maybe there's a little bit of bullshit spread around, and
[50:27] they're going to ask themselves, am I going to gain more than I lose
[50:30] by touching this this live wire? Right? Counselor Francis doesn't have to operate
[50:37] under those exact same conditions. He's in a position where it would a real,
[50:46] a real conflict, a real public political conflict between these two people would
[50:52] potentially be apocalyptic for one or both of them. So it's a much more
[50:55] delicate situation and I'm fascinated to see how this one evolves. Yeah, I
[51:04] would agree with that, I think, you know, and the mayor said
[51:07] almost with so many words on Am eight hundred, you know, someone's running
[51:09] for mayor for my job and then and stuff like that, and so okay,
[51:14] so there's an ambition out there. I think that's pretty clear, and
[51:16] like, I think the question then becomes, you know, how does that
[51:20] ambition get managed over the next few years. Right, the next tipping point
[51:22] is going to be the budget, because there used to be a budget committee
[51:25] that was chaired by Counselor Francis, and now the mayor just drops his budget
[51:30] whenever by February first, I believe the data is and it's a statutory thing
[51:35] he must by then, and then council gets a couple weeks to read it
[51:37] and then offer amendments and then it gets finalized before March thirty first. So
[51:42] that's going to be the next sort of blip in the road, I think,
[51:45] is like that budget will drop and you know, depending on how that
[51:49] budget is deployed, and you know, the mayor is done to my understanding.
[51:52] He's gone to every ward meeting thus far, so he's like going through
[51:57] the motions of going to each ward and he talks at some of those meetings,
[52:00] and then the counselor talks and he here's what people are saying and things
[52:02] like that. And you know, you'll see when that budget drops of what
[52:07] is in and what isn't in that budget, and you know how much of
[52:08] a tax reincrease versus not if a tax increase is there, And that'll be
[52:13] sort of the next because that'll be a brand new process where any council with
[52:17] ambition could leverage that process, you know, and offer amendments on certain things
[52:23] to achieve, you know, whatever news story or political lands they want to
[52:27] make. So this is sort of the new dynamic around strong mayor powers that
[52:31] Again, like what you see is you have to have an oppositional member of
[52:35] council willing and able to sort of take those things on. And I find
[52:38] it interesting that it's Counselor Francis and not someone else. Mm hmmm, well
[52:43] that falls into my conspiracy theory. So this is all set up. Oh
[52:46] my god, he's pulling string out and stinging it to the wall and so
[52:52] everyone look over here, I got a map. Okay, let's pull out
[52:54] our forty chess boarding. That's right. So Mayor Dokins wants Fred to be
[53:00] the next mayor. He's concerned that he won't do it because he's too close
[53:04] to the mayor. So they're gonna have all these pretend fights in public,
[53:07] and we're gonna say, hey, you can push back on me and this
[53:08] make me look like the bad guy and looks like you hate me, and
[53:12] then people vote for You'll get to the mayor and the empire of the Francis
[53:15] Dilkins Empire will carry on. Either that or Doug's gonna be eating confectionery food
[53:22] instead of that lovely chicken at roseland because he's gonna stick it to him and
[53:25] not give him any more investments in his word. You know, I think,
[53:29] I think, like, obviously we don't know. It's a conspiracy theory,
[53:31] but it is an interesting one because what whenever we talk about this Dilkins
[53:37] Francis rivalry, whatever it is, it feels fake to me. I look
[53:43] at the landscape and I think the if these guys come into serious conflict,
[53:45] that's mutually assured destruction, right, at at the political like at the electoral
[53:50] level, it just doesn't work to have, in my opinion, doesn't work
[53:55] to have Drew Dilkins and Fred Francis on the same on on the ballot for
[54:00] mayor at the same time. That's that is creating conditions that uh, you
[54:06] know, and Fraser, you've talked about this for years, like it's creating
[54:08] the conditions that have been impossible to find in Windsor, which is the conditions
[54:13] for a progressive win of the mayor's chair. Now, why are like,
[54:16] you know, you think what you want about Drew Dilkins and Fred Francis.
[54:20] Neither of them are politically stupid and this is like an obvious dynamic. So
[54:23] I think that lends them some credence to your conspiracy theory. Done. Yeah,
[54:29] yeah, sharpen up that tempoil. But there you go. Well,
[54:31] if anyone knows the actual inside scoop, yeah, tell us hit us up
[54:37] in the DMS. We'll let everyone know right here on the show. And
[54:40] if you're going to Lego Land, we want those tickets. We need the
[54:45] special pases because don can't get him have to wear a mask or something,
[54:51] and they make those and sell them there that's fine. Where is Lego land
[54:54] Land of Canada? Or is that is that with the Dutch? The Dutch
[54:59] that John's much hated Dutch? Over here, I'm just picturing a Lego head
[55:04] right now and laughing at how similar it is to Doc's head because they bald
[55:07] initially. Have you put my glasses on? It's even better there, I've
[55:14] seen that one. So is it only now that we're obviously wrapping up the
[55:17] show I can stay super shit? So yeah, yeah, because the whole
[55:22] show. I'm very serious. Whenever I hear strong mayor powers, and then
[55:27] I think of Drew Tolkins and the way he talks about it, especially in
[55:30] that interview on AMA, and I just pictured those old nineteen twenties Communist Russia
[55:37] posters they always had out We're the big giant man with the square blockhead pounding
[55:40] his fist. We will fight for the blah blah blah. And then I
[55:45] just pictured Drew's face on that two words strong. So if anyone's curious,
[55:51] that is how my brain works all day long. I might fire up Dolly
[55:53] after this, because that's an image I'm not going to get out of my
[55:58] head. Maybe actually, that's not a bad way for us to do things
[56:00] for show teasers. Yeah, that's a great idea. So something happened to
[56:05] me earlier, a couple of days ago, and it really left me shook,
[56:07] to be perfectly honest, So I want to do this in the fort
[56:09] you guys. Yeah, I'm gonna do that one right here. Now.
[56:14] I'm not gonna tell that joke. We're not gonna run any context to it.
[56:16] We're just gonna leave that right there. No, you know, I
[56:20] I think, listen, this is an issue that you know, I've been
[56:23] flipping about quite frankly, and I think it is a lot more serious and
[56:28] deserves a bit more respect than maybe we've conferred here on this show. A
[56:32] couple of days ago, I was out driving and uh, I was really
[56:37] really concerned. Almost ended up and interaction, altercation. I don't know what
[56:44] you would call it. Aggressive panhandling. Someone came up to the window.
[56:49] Oh my god, they were asking for money and they were weaving in between
[56:52] cars. Any scary situation is this These guys with the yeah yeah, yeah,
[56:58] I've seen them, and they have that whole bag of weapon with them
[57:00] they carry around, Yeah, and they are trying to ply money out of
[57:02] us and force their wares on a no. Of course, we're talking with
[57:06] the good fellows right now, and this is one that with the topic if
[57:10] I wanted to bring it up, because this weekend was the epitome of the
[57:15] hypocrisy of the entire debate of the aggressive panhandling conversation that we had. So
[57:22] if we licensed the regular panhandlers, or that's solve the problem. Because the
[57:25] good fellows do have to get a license to do this. That's a good
[57:28] I used to do it for you. It's a brilliant idea. Let's go
[57:30] to the panhandlers. See do you think the objection the objection to to wildcat
[57:37] street panhandling is that they're not properly licensed. On let's just be real here.
[57:40] But obviously that's the problem simper, because then you could just get you
[57:45] know, we could just get some institution to start, you know, helping.
[57:49] We could get a bank license, like the thing with the housing thing
[57:52] with the vacant housing tax. We could hire ten more police officers. It'll
[57:54] be cash negative. If you want to donate, we're launching a new fund
[57:59] here at Rose City Politics to license Windsor's panhandlers. Support go so send us
[58:06] your money, we'll set up the app and now we won't do so it
[58:07] sounds like a lot of work. I don't want to make the joke about
[58:09] it. Yeah, so like all kidding aside the Goodfella's thing, like,
[58:16] uh, it does expose I think the like the unseeriousness of the argument about
[58:27] panhandling and public panhandling and handling and traffic and all that stuff. But my
[58:32] advice to people who are interested in public support on this issue is that shitting
[58:39] on the Goodfellas, it's not a winner. Man. People like the Goodfellas.
[58:45] People feel great about putting their tuney in the bag and getting their newspaper.
[58:50] You know, I think we should all stop donating cash to the Goodfellas
[58:53] and just give them a couple of bucks online because because like, honestly,
[58:57] I hate that whole dance. Every year, do I have the pay,
[59:00] Don't I have the paper? So this year I'm just gonna tough it out.
[59:02] I donate it online and it's going to be thousand yards stare every time
[59:06] I come up to an intersection. Let les just see how long I can
[59:08] last before I crack, And I just give the guy a cantune again.
[59:12] But I will say, if you want to extend this even further, I
[59:15] was at I went to ROHNA the other day and there was that Santa Claus
[59:17] guy outside with the red bucket asking for money. Santa Claus. Yeah,
[59:22] I had to fight him. It was horrible. Listen. It's the kind
[59:28] of an issue that's really fun for us to just shit on on the show.
[59:31] But there are people in public who are using this as an attempting to
[59:36] use it as a wedge issue in a very real format. Pretty dumb some
[59:39] of them at Yeah, some of them are format. Even if we agree
[59:44] with your point, it's this is not the way to make it. Yeah,
[59:46] and some of them are former elected officials as well. And I think
[59:49] when you see that being made, it looks really bad, right, like
[59:52] weird ship posting guys. Just keep that in mind. Over Yeah, like
[59:55] this is all sarcasms. I don't understand anyways. So yeah, that's that.
[1:00:01] Yeah, I'm sure you ever fight a Santa Claus and the parking lot
[1:00:05] for I try. I try to avoid altercations holiday mascots. That's not what
[1:00:09] the Easter Bunny fucking told me. But that's right. Patricks and I the
[1:00:15] red hair. He took it personally and took out a leper on. I
[1:00:20] don't want to see Fraser on Hall of Chip. You can life trick or
[1:00:25] treat Bam. Give me your money, okay, folks. Roasty Politics November
[1:00:30] twenty six, twenty twenty three. The regular panel included Doug Star, Tory,
[1:00:34] Don Meryfield, Junior, Fraser, Fathers and myself John Lydkey had to
[1:00:37] Patron dot com slash Roast City Politics or in biz Cks magazine. We got
[1:00:40] a new article to be coming out next year. We got to start writing
[1:00:45] that. That's the only reason I'm saying it right now is so all of
[1:00:46] you listening. Can you just remind relatability buddies right well, this flop sweat
[1:00:52] has nothing to do with that. And I started counting days. One is
[1:00:55] December first, it's coming up, Roasty Paul. Sorry, Dad, I
[1:01:00] hope you're not listening. We're on it, man, we are. Doesn't
[1:01:02] don't worry and work on these for months and months ahead of time. Rose
[1:01:07] in Politics is able to broadcast live on tape. Thanks for the kind support
[1:01:09] of Luna six two five Building Better Communities to goes the Lego train h

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