Recent stuff
Saturday October 31st - Big write-up of "Progress Toronto" and the Brad Bradford water issue in the Toronto Star today. It’s archived at https://archive.is/lzbpT
There was no news to report over the last couple of days, although I did insert a link (below) to a Zoom thing that Acorn apparently had going on Thursday. Note that they (Acorn) had advertised multiple Zoom sessions and the individual... events probably do not talk to each other.
Here's something that was a bit of a surprise: an actual lithium-ion product safety recall! See torontorentersforum.com/app.php/20261030-lithium-ion-product-recall
John Tory was on CP24 on Thursday, talking about shadowy, party-like politics at the municipal level... I saved a bit of video by pointing my cell phone at the TV screen. Tory went in the direction of mayor Chow possibly being beholden to "Progress Toronto", and the hostess/interviewer spoke as if American PAC-like entities here are a big mystery. I could be wrong, but everyone seemed to take pains to not mention Kelly Aizicowitz and the "ABC Group".
Tuesday October 27th - Not a great day for tenants post-election, what with a mayor who mumbles stuff about engaging with "tenant action committees" but doesn't share any details. On the plus side, "post-election", aftermath sorts things are starting... there is even one on Tuesday evening but I think you had to swear fealty to "OpenAI" executive Greg Brockman before the organizers would tell you the meeting location. I am not making this up!
Returning Ward 16 "councillor" Jon Burnside's orifice may have the link to that one... Burnside is like a number of city councillors (and legacy media, and TOTU[1], and at least one provincially-funded legal clinic) whose agents will do almost anything to stifle discussions about A.I.
Sorry to sound so partisan. This site is still under construction - I will move my comments to a sub-section at some point. If you want your own sub-page, or pages, send e-mail or ask the FMTA as they have been saying that they are open to helping tenants put up pages... of course they don't have much to offer on **their own** site, but anyway. The FMTA's charter states that they are supposed to help tenants, and maintaining an ongoing forum is one of the things at the top of their list of things to do.
Tuesday October 20th - Apparently John Tory and Kathleen Wynne canvassed in Don Mills for incumbent councillor Jon Burnside??? Very strange! (YOUTUBE LINK)
It would have been nice if there had been some city-wide, ward level campaign event listings. I did ask Google's "Gemini" A.I. model for its take on things.
I first noticed the ABC Group's shadowy ad campaign on October 17th while I was on the web site of the New York Times - how ironic is that? Anyway I posted a bit about it in real time while I was at McDonald's, and I'm working up an article. In the meantime I asked Google's "Gemini" A.I. module to comment ‒ you can read the A.I.'s initial take here.
And be sure to see the recent TVO article about shadow politics that Gemini dredged up.
In my neck of the woods ‒ again I live next to the old Ontario Science Centre site ‒ Wednesday October 14th's tenants thing at the TNO complex on Overlea Blvd. was very good in some ways... "good" in that the main speakers touched on useful topics - like the coming build-up in Thorncliffe Park, and what it's like to take a run at city council these days - but at the same time it was badly designed, with almost zero continuity and no facilities for any extended, peer-to-peer discussion.
Of particular interest to folks east of Yonge Street was that the Thorncliffe event did not touch - at all - on a purported "all-candidates" event ahead of the Oct. 26th municipal election where only two of four candidates showed up. Same sponsors pretty much. The same "zero-questions-from-the-floor-about-the-process" format. And it would seem that the same person, who also happens to be an FMTA director (Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations) presided over both events. And once again members of the public - this time me personally! - were shut down. No questions about the sponsors - all "FTIAN" members! - were allowed. Very, very strange.
FTIAN ("Flemingdon Thorncliffe Inter Agency Network") salaried employees collectively take home millions of dollars annually and their operations budgets are even bigger - this is money which is supposed to enable them to design information products *that actually help people*, especially folks in rental housing. Here's the flyer from Wednesday's event (the flyer vanished from my own rental building, courtesy of management... isn't tenant organizing supposed to be unhindered?) and I'll try to work up a sub-page about the whole thing.
Tuesday October 13 - CBC radio's “The Current” program had an item about lithium-ion power cells- almost half an hour. Toronto
Fire chief Jim Jessop spoke,
along with an Alberta woman who'd had her house torched.
On Monday the CBC posted a Canadian Press item about the homeless encampments in Hamilton.
October 7th - As mentioned, I experienced something weird in my neck of the woods: at an all-candidates "forum" that was set up in part by a community legal clinic, the incumbent city councillor was a no-show. In fact TWO candidates out of four did not attend, for a purported discussion about development and public safety in one of the most intense, construction-saturated areas of the city! Which sort of raises questions about exactly what sort of show we are running here.
Under the hugely restrictive format, spontaneous questions from the floor were disallowed, although one woman rushed the stage to break protocol and state her issues. Which were good issues, but why couldn't other audience members speak too? Finally a sitting FMTA director was one of the organizers and she got to speak at length, at the front of the room. I am not making this up! She said zilch about the renters forum (which at one point may have been a major FMTA project or the FMTA is or was up to in that... or any, actually activity category. The connection of course being that, according to their charter, the city-funded FMTA is supposed to maintain an ongoing forum for tenants. Where were the links, at the FTIAN event, to that information?
You'd think that, given the unfolding disaster ‒ the meeting was going downhill in real time! ‒ these people would be on their cell phones, casting about for some ways to... strengthen their event. Nope! The whole thing was dead in the water - no signs, no follow-up notes, no nothing.
- Admin
Sunday October 4th - (Correction) There was no news to report over the weekend that followed the debate at the Trinity-St. Paul's Centre - the one where Mayor Chow mentioned starting contacts or discussions with a "TAC". In the housing file, "TAC" usually means Tenant Action Committee or something very similar. Anyway e-mail to the mayor's office and to candidate Chris Alexander did not produce detailed replies. The mayor's office said they could not comment on a campaign promise which is a bizarre position given that Chow had referred to something that had happened earlier this year.
And I mentioned that something called "FTIAN" was having a candidates meeting in Ward 16. Again this was on Wednesday October 7th, and only two candidates showed, and the organizers just went through the motions - like nothing had happened. Which was actually a sharp observation but still - no links? No tenant web pages? No media? No FOLLOWING UP???
The Board of Trade summarized their Sept. 22nd debate ― moderated by the Toronto Star's Nicole MacIntyre ― on an unusual one-off web page: https://trbot-talkingpoints.archivoh.com/archive/274-your-talking-points-torontos-mayoral-debate
Did you know? It cost *$28.35* to get in to the Board of Trade/Toronto Star debate. I am not making this up! So much for democratically "engaging" the citizenry. Screenshot from ahead of the debate:
A couple of weeks back, ACORN said they were doing something downtown ― see
acorncanada.org/civicrm/event/info/&id=6728/
― so I went to the Wellesley Community Centre but no-one was there! No signs, and no explanation from the staff. The only real news on hand was a poster about the TFS
open house on Eastern Avenue.
Acorn says they are having a Zoom session this evening (Thursday October 29th)
The first debate between some of the top three mayoral candidates at the Daily Bread Food Bank is available on Youtube: link to the long version; there are short outtakes too... this one from the main debate clip shows the introduction, where Neil Hetherington sets a fairly low bar around the setup.
Sunday September 13th - the "search" box here was changed to a commercial service called FreeFind. Due to a technical misunderstanding the previous search had been bouncing on short search strings like "tenant", "union" and "convention". That was not good!
Personally, I always prefer alphabetical, “A” to “Z” indexing done by humans but that's my choice. Your results may vary but still, for any future re-boots of the "T.R.F. dot com" site that will always be my recommendation.
- Admin
So as with the "East York" group and their kin the "Toronto Centre" group (that meets, or has met, at the 519 Community Centre and supposedly is engaged in all this mapping?)... despite all of the promises, the broader "Toronto tenant union" group appears to be moribund.
If it's any indication last month's (Sunday Sept. 7th) annual meeting of the High Park group mentioned FMTA as a "large provincial body" alongside the nascent Toronto group. Huh??! The HPTA had more people in the room than there were at the FMTA's June 13 session!!! For which no records appear to exist... but anyway.
As was the case at the FMTA wingding, the people on the HPTA podium went on and on about their web page troubles... well, duh!
Isn't a call, by the chair, for "Any other business?" mandatory at these things, prior to adjournment? And completely skipping the previous year's minutes ‒ that's a non-starter right there!
(I attended both meetings - that's to say the September 7, 2026 edition, and the one that was held at the end of June, 2025)
Anyway neither of the two main web pages (FMTA, and their HPTA group) mentions any recent meetings.