That Last City Council Meeting

I honestly haven’t quite recovered from that last City Council meeting. It was a fucking week long. Bullet points because there’s just too much for full sentences.

• Late on Sunday night, there was a mass shooting on the Danforth. Information was scarce. We didn’t know who the shooter was, how he’d died, who the victims were.

• Tory’s quickly introduced plan to address gun violence would be a top priority. Activists had already been raising the alarm about controversial surveillance technology with little oversight, and the racism of the punitive “tough on crime” approach.

• It wasn’t until Monday evening that they released the gunman’s name, and we braced for the inevitable backlash of hate.

• It was just an barrage of relentless racism, from right-wing media stoking Islamophobia to fully half of Council endorsing a request to bring back carding. Tory’s plan passed.

• Oh also the Mayor was like “this is why I want a strong mayor system”. Meanwhile, the deadline to register to run for mayor kept ticking closer, with no suitably big-name challenger in the race.

• A bunch of councillors who had previously announced they wouldn’t running again gave their goodbye speeches. Also, a councillor who had promised not to run registered to run, restoring balance to the Force, I guess.

• Shit got weird and surprisingly heated as Council debated tax breaks for big developers.

• And then, as we were all unwinding over beers, Doug Ford announced he would cut Council in half. The pub became the ad hoc Situation Room. I can’t express how bonkers a move this was. Like dropping a red hot nickel ball into an ants’ nest when some of the ants were literally having their campaign launch parties that freaking night. May I remind you, THE DEADLINE TO REGISTER TO RUN FOR MAYOR WAS LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY.

• The next morning Tory was like “may I have a non-binding referendum please???” He also put a motion on the agenda about it but didn’t actually push to, like, get to that motion first. So everyone spent the day soberly debating the remaining items, about construction dust and townhouse developments and a car-sharing pilot, while I quietly lost my fucking mind.

• Right before the deadline, former Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat signed up to run for mayor. BOOM.

• Council got around to discussing the Premier’s bombshell at the end of the day—just in time for a shit-ton of protesters to arrive.

• Tory lost his cool. “The mayor said balls. I don’t know what to tell you.” Everyone lost their shit. And that’s how it ended.

Today, Council meets again to discuss how to challenge Ford’s decision. It will be tricky, especially because a minority of Council are actually okay with this, and John Tory, well…he’s not going to take a strong stance on it. It’ll probably be a shitshow.

As for me? I won’t be there, because the special meeting just happens to fall on the same day as an absolutely un-reschedule-able doctor’s appointment across town. I figure I’ll take the long way home, find some new spiders. Anything but politics right now.