The 905er Podcast

Doug Ford in a public interview shot back at criticism of his Bill 23 from Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, by saying she should 'quit her whining'.  Earlier this month he shot back at Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk's analysis of his government's handling of casino money laundering by telling her to stay in her lane.  Why would he use such sharp language to these public figures?  Our theory is that...

This month the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board reinstituted a masking policy. A decision which to no surprise drew the attention of both sides of this contentious debate. After a few pauses in the meeting, and a few removals of people by the police, the board was able to become the first board in Ontario to put in place an official masking policy. Why did the board decide to wade into thi...

This podcast started as a bit of a passion project at the start of COVID-19.  We wanted to be able to talk about the issues and news of the region in a way that legacy media just wasn't able to.  A podcast seemed to be the best option to do that. Two years later, this is still a passion project for us but it's grown so much beyond just that for us.  We have been wanting to grow and expand to reach...

The latest law to upset Ontarians by the Doug Ford government is the More Homes Built Faster Act.  Or Bill 23 as it's more affectionately referred to.   This act is going to carve up 7,400 acres of the Greenbelt for developers to use free from oversight from conservation authorities and in violation of Premier Ford's word to Ontarians to leave the greenbelt alone.  A major critic of the act is the...

It turns out that the city of Hamilton continues to have problems with sewage.  This time it appears that for 26 years raw sewage has been emptying out into Hamilton Harbour.  The good news in this situation is that it also appears that Hamilton City Council is not covering it up and working to act proactively on the issue.  A sign of things to come? We shall see. A few weeks ago we talked with no...

A question we constantly come back to on this podcast is what do we want our communities to be like. One of the ways to accomplish this is to ensure that our streets are pedestrian focused and safe for all who are on them.  This year a grassroots organization mobilized to bring this issue to the forefront of Halton politicians. Safe Streets Halton is a community organization focused on the elimina...

There is a disturbing trend emerging in Ontario politics from the Doug Ford government. As Doug Ford pursues his vision of paving over the greenbelt to help out his developer friends, resistance is popping up in unexpected places.  Most recently the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has made public their concerns regarding Bill 23.  Namely that they project a cost of approximately $1 Billio...

Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act is the latest controversy from the Doug Ford Ontario PC Government.  It is an abrupt violation of a promise Premier Ford made to voters last election to NOT touch the Greenbelt under any circumstances.  Well apparently his word doesn't count for very much. The More Homes Built Faster Act would open up 7,300 acres of Greenbelt land to development.  Letting s...

There is a lot to get to on this episode of the 905 Round-Up! We start off with a brief summary of the Halton District School Board's inability to come up with a dress code for it's teachers in light of the enormous controversy it found itself in last month. Then we dive into the ongoing issue of the collapse of our health care system in Ontario.  As hospital after hospital reports their emergency...

In 2012, the supreme court handed down a landmark ruling which struck down many of the laws surrounding prostitution and sex work in Canada, citing that the laws violated sex workers charter rights as they imposed a greater risk of harm on sex workers.  The court gave at that time the Stephen Harper government time to re write the laws. The result was the Protection of Communities and Exploited Pe...

WOW!!! What a week! Doug Ford blinked before the entire province this week by capitulating to CUPE and revoking Bill 28.  Meaning the imposed contract on CUPE workers is nullified as well as the use of the Notwithstanding Clause to trample worker's rights.  All of this happened as a result of the mobilization and solidarity of the labour movement in Ontario.  The likes of which haven't really been...

I’m writing this introduction at 1am, about 6 hours before this episode goes live. I’m doing so despite the fact I could have written and recorded this introduction more conveniently at almost any time in the last five days. Instead, I left it to the very last minute, and literally the most inconvenient and unpleasant time to write and record. The reason why I’d do such a counterintuitive and coun...

In Ontario there is only one thing anyone is talking about right now. As negotiations with CUPE hit an impasse, Doug Ford and Stephen Lecce are forcing a contract on CUPE members and invoking the Notwithstanding Clause in the process.  The Clause essentially ignores the fact unions have a Charter right to negotiate in good faith with their employers.  The precedent that this move would set is a da...

We welcome back multi-award-winning journalist Lorraine Sommerfeld to the podcast. For readers in the Hamilton and Halton area, Lorraine may be most loved for her long-running Motherlode column in the Hamilton Spectator, but she is best known across Canada as an auto journalist who has worked for all of Canada’s three big national newspapers over he past two decades, and now writes for the Nationa...

We recap a three and a half hour live stream of coverage of the municipal election results in the 905 region.   What did we learn from Monday night's results? Also what should we expect from council tables in the region.  All eyes are on Hamilton as the only city to actually embrace change in the region and elect new faces to their council.  What are the challenges to be faced going forward?  The...

Did you miss the fun of the live results show on Monday? You did? Well do we have a treat for you. Over three hours of talk and analysis as the election results came in from across the province. We know you'll want to listen to every minute. And, you know what, the results were a lot of fun in some cities. There was genuine excitement in three cities at least where the mayoral race was extremely c...

This week, for your listening pleasure, we look at the contents of two previously confidential code of conduct reports against two controversial Halton Catholic School Board trustees and ask what it says about them and the trustee system; Mayor Bonnie Crombie's call for 'MEXIT' for Mississauga (more like 'MEH-XIT', amiright?); and the latest poll from Hamilton and whether it confirms our by-the-se...

Racism has entered the Hamilton municipal race. Last week in Ward 14, candidate Kojo Damptey's bus shelter ad was vandalized by a poster saying "White Lives Matter" along with a link to a social media platform advocating white supremacist literature.  The Hamilton Police Services have stated that they are treating this as a hate crime investigation.  When something like this happens it draws our a...

For this episode of the Round-Up we examine a disappointing trend in Halton of candidates for public office not showing up for debates. In the race for Halton Catholic School Board Trustees, a major debate was cancelled due to numerous candidates declining the invitation to attend.  The Regional Chair position isn't fairing any better.  These elections matter due to the power and influence they ca...

As we’ve mentioned before, we can’t cover every race, but we can highlight some of the races we think are most interesting. This week we're focusing on the Halton Regional Chair race. For the first time since the position became elected in 2000, there are three candidates in the race with clearly established credentials and contrasting platforms. Or, we assume they're contrasting, because two cand...

It seems that in the 905, it belongs to the coyotes and we just live here. Coyotes continue to dominate the discussion around dinner tables in Burlington where 4 coyotes have been put down. Response from City of Burlington has been its people's fault for feeding or leaving food sources open for wild animals. This information isn't new to officials though. A conservation group Coyote Watch Canada p...

Regular guest Alan Kan joins us again to chat about the latest news from the municipal election trail. And leading the pack for 'oh, good grief, really?' moments in this election are the good cities of Brampton and Hamilton. We look at the latest stories from those two cities, asking whether Patrick Brown's main challenger is much of an alternative, and whether what some assumed was a 'slam dunk'...

It's rare that we get to focus on federal politics when talking about the 905 region.  However, we found our chance to with a story by Davide Mastracci over at Readpassage.com.  His hard work discovered that close to 40% of all MP's were either landlords or invested in the housing market in some way.  This list included recently crowned Conservative party Leader, Pierre Poilievre.  Who got that cr...

Last week, a picture shared to social media of a trans woman teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School erupted into an international controversy. The showed the teacher in question wearing overly large prosthetic breasts covered with a tight sweater, with the outline of the prosthesis nipples visible. Needless to say this attracted a lot of attention to the school and the school board.  While the...

It was brought to our attention that Burlington Councillor Paul Sharman's campaign was collecting donations from developers, which was helping to fuel his fourth time being elected to Burlington City Council. It brought people claiming that he was corrupt to come forward. We wanted to take a look at this and so we did. The thing is nothing Councillor Sharman has done is corrupt or in the wrong. It...