I have been thinking a lot about Saturday. This is how I described the situation to my technical helper just now:
A group that's been active in the northwest wants to expand but they have announced that they are... creating a new, Toronto-wide group?
Huh??
As a tenant in the area of the Ontario Science Centre, all I have ever wanted was a fair discussion of the feasibility of having a larger group in my area, and maybe a revival of the "eastyorktenantsgroup.com" web pages. The east york group still has Jetpack going (don't you just love the jargon?) but that is about it. The setup reminds me of Nevil Shute's novel On The Beach where the American submarine goes to the deserted city of Seattle where an unattended telegraph keypad is generating random Morse code.
This project ^ ^ ^ (ergo my support for a fair, ongoing discussion via some sort of community portal) began with a meeting with then-TPS deputy chief Jeff McGuire almost twenty years ago, where the cops wanted to announce new surveillance via an un-advertised "public meeting". I took issue with that one, big time! And lots of luck with looking up current TPS and Ontario government policies around surveillance and the use of A.I. tools.
On their "web page" ― and the info is most definitely not on their main web page, in fact some of the pages go around in circles ― the northwest group is calling for a *convention* to establish this... new, slightly illusory group. Ergo the new group doesn't exist yet, but the northwest people want to control it from the get-go (or something)
So they are demanding that interested people JOIN THE NORTHWEST GROUP with either cash (for what?) or a pledge of time (ditto - for what exactly?) And they actually ask for a cell phone number.
They will take a cheque via snail mail but if you use their processor ― which is run by Gary ("OpenAI") Brockman's family, these people are American billionaires in California ― then they want your unit number too!
** And there is no visible privacy policy! **
I've been after them about their lack of an up front privacy policy for years, but this request for a cell phone number is really new. In an election year? And one of the convention founders is separately running for city council???
C'mon.
May 8, 2026 update - the “https://www.totu.ca” web site (which was registered to Climate Justice) is down again.
...