Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - The Toronto Star's Edward Keenan: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1557

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

In this 1557th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Toronto Star city columnist Ed Keenan about what's happening in the city of Toronto. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1557 of Toronto Miked! Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. The Advantage'd Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada. Learn how to plan, invest, and live smarter. Season 7 of Yes We Are Open, an award winning podcast from Monaris, RecycleMyElectronics.ca,

committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past, and Redlee Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning to Toronto Mic'd for his quarterly... Oh yeah! Back on schedule, it's Ed Keenan. Hey, hey, hey. How you doing, Ed? Hey, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. How am I sounding there?

You sound amazing. Right before Mike flipped the big switch that turns on the Toronto Mic'd experience, he was testing my levels and he had to turn me down a little bit. And in the Star podcast studio, now the Star moved its offices to The Well at Front and Spadina and it's a beautiful new office. It's starting to feel more like a newsroom, but it's like a different kind of place. It's for the modern age. It's got, you know, every desk could be a standing desk or a sitting desk, and it's all wired up for everything you would need. All the meeting rooms and boardrooms have video

technology in them. It's good in a lot of ways, and they built a podcast studio there, but it's not really like a professional radio studio in terms of the sound proofing and whatnot. It has you know one of the walls is glass which you know a lot of works out on onto the newsroom but but as I've been hosting podcasts there they had to like move me around the room several times and and then they had to make a very special mic because I just have a loud voice I project naturally I can I can like talk to a room in a theater and and when I get on my radio voice when I when I like speaking into a microphone I speak loudly and even if I

try to sort of like tone it down right my voice was bouncing off the walls and basically there's four mics in the room and they would be getting audio of my voice in all the mics and no matter how they try to so so they had to make special provisions for my microphone that's funny because of that and so I don't know who you had on here before me, but it doesn't surprise me. Your name was Katie, Katie Lohr. Right. And she doesn't have the projection, the boisterous vocal qualities of an Edward Kenan.

So as it turns out, like my mic is not even on and you're just hearing me from, from... You know, you know, and I'm a bit of an expert. This is episode 1557. I produce podcasts for many, many people down here that aren't Toronto-miked. And I've heard all the voices now. And like a gentleman I'll shout out, Ralph Ben-Murgy. You ever heard of this guy? Yeah. I was on his CBC show at one point when he... Which one?

Midday or Friday night? You're too young for Friday night. No. Yeah. I'm not famous enough for Friday night. And you're my age. I was like an unemployed 20 something something unemployed Gen X on his show. It was like a whatever midday chat show he had.

It was like the current affairs kind of talk show and Valerie Pringle. And so like having recently been a non graduate, but a person who had attended Ryerson Journalism School, a bunch of my friends were like producers, chase producers at the CBC when I was in my early 20s and unemployed and desperately looking for work and so I would I would get all those calls saying like we need a like deadbeat 24 year old can you come on the show and you're perfect and so I was on Ralph Ben Mergyshow and he sort of chastised me because like how could I expect to be?

Looking for a job when I didn't even I left Ryerson without Graduating which of course then I said to him like I was following the Ralph Ben Murgy Career path right because that's what I read in the profiles is that he had left without graduating And then my interview ended very quickly after that. So well, Ben Murgy, who's a dear friend and a former client before he was poached by the Canadian Jewish News, that's a podcast unto itself. But he he was an aspiring stand-up at Young Jucks when he found his way to, you know, midday and then eventually Friday night. I saw him last week and the reason I brought him up is because I could have back-to-back recordings with let's say these two

people Mark Weisblot and then Ralph Ben-Murky. The ability to project into the microphone between these two gentlemen it's a very wide chasm. They couldn't be more different. So with you and Weisblot and myself I'm in that category too. We're just projecting towards the mic and we don't need any extra help on this back end. But lots of times with Ben Murgy, particularly the way he talks, it's like you kind of have to do all these tricks and to pick them up because he just doesn't project the way you and I, maybe because he's got a voice for TV as they say, he's so wise.

He knows that he doesn't need to project, you're going to pay attention to the content. You got it? Unlike us two bums. Because if he says it softly, everybody out there has to lean in. Power move. Yeah. Power move, you're right.

You have to turn down the surrounding sound. You're not playing a video game at the same time. You tune into the wisdom. You're like at the, it this like the fireside chats. You're at the speaker when not that kind of Rabbi Ralph speaks here. Okay so I want to cover a lot of ground. Yeah. You're gonna get into a lot of stuff. It's warm out today right Ed? It's fairly warm. It's nice yeah. Yeah so we're in October now and I'm still rocking you know the the the sandals huh and I don't wear socks of my sandals despite what I see from the kids today. Are you noticing? Yeah my children Especially my 16 year old is a bit more fashionable than my other children

She totally wears socks with sandals all the time I know she would she will go back to her room to get socks to put on with the sandals before she leaves the house Because she won't necessarily wear socks with her sneakers, right? to get socks to put on with the sandals before she leaves the house because she won't necessarily wear socks with her sneakers right what is that just a rebel against your parents like because my ten-year-old will put socks on with sandals I personally think that's the worst I know but I think it's the whole joy of sandals is you because socks are oppressive I hate wearing socks I delay the putting on of socks until as late in the season as possible I try to get to November if I can

Why would I ever wear socks with sandals? But the kids today do it and I think they do it because it irks people like me. That's it What it whatever was cool? All right when when you were a teenager is exactly what they want. Yeah All right That's my old man at the cloud ran for it but now I want to why am I bringing up the temperature? Cause Ed, maybe you could write a piece on this for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulated newspaper. Today, Ed Keenan is Toronto's 160th,

today's 160th consecutive day with a maximum temperature greater than 14 degrees. That is the longest run in recorded history in the city this is the longest consecutive streak where the temperature never went below 14 degrees so I don't have my calendar in front of me but if this is that 160 did you say 160 today and so that means the streak started when okay well so there's 30 days so that yeah you do three months to be 90 days, almost five months. Yeah.

So almost five months. But, you know, typically you'll get a day or two in September or October. Oh, I guess we just started October. But, you know, that that again in recorded history, we've never had one hundred and sixty days in a row with a max temperature greater than 14 degrees Celsius. Yeah. Yeah. So that's and I don't know when the end is. I hope it doesn't end for a while now. row with a max temperature greater than 14 degrees Celsius. Yeah. So that's uh, and I don't know when the end is.

I hope it doesn't end for a while now, but I'm just saying I'm still in the sandals, shorts and t-shirt and that makes me happy. Yeah. I'm not much of a shorts and sandals guy at the best of times, but interestingly, the, because we're talking about how warm it's been, it was a little bit cooler this morning. Oh, mornings are a little cooler. In the 10 to 15 degree range. So I actually am wearing a jacket. My personal automobile is in the shop, having the transmission replaced, which is more expensive

than you'd like it to be and unexpected. How expensive? Like 3,500 bucks. You know what? I would have taken the over if I were like it because that is a lot of money but yeah yeah the way you built that up you know. I just um like my vehicle was not that expensive when it was brand new. Right. And so anyhow I mean I'm not trying to complain about the cost. It's like it comes up and it's over that 2016 and our strategy we had thought about just Trading it in buying a new one a couple years ago right because we knew this is the time when you start having to put money into it, right and we decided well just

Run this thing into the ground and then there and then you know Our kids will be older and all of that and it's like maybe at that point we'll buy out like a mini or something, or maybe we'll just commute auto and have our bikes. And we live near a subway line right now. So it's like, eh. So, anyhow, because of that, and I should have cycled over here,

but I had another appointment in a different part of Etobicoke. I wasn't gonna shame you. A different part of Etobicoke before this. And so I went to that interview and then, so I've been out since the morning and I'm wearing a jacket, but I was working up a sweat by the time I was leaving my lunch joint and heading over here. You're so right about this time of year and the difference between the morning temps and

then the afternoon temps because I do a very pretty short bike ride with my eight-year-old to get her to before school care and this is at like eight o'clock in the morning and she did tell me this morning she wished she had worn gloves so that was the temps by the lake here at eight o'clock this morning and now I was outside I took a picture with my neighbors Halloween he's they got a Halloween thing and I was taking this jokey selfie and I was thinking I am hot like we go from Where's my gloves to I am hot to like I'm wearing socks and sandals and I'm a little sweaty I refuse

Okay now a couple of housekeeping items before I get to the first big question for you ed keenan and then I have as usual I Bring uh these topics to the table because I'm very interested in your expert opinion on what's happening in the city But you mentioned on this show a couple of appearances ago that you're a big fan of traders the show. Yes. Yes I am. Do you have any interest in traders, Canada? Yeah I mean, I think there's a new season that's just started coming on and we haven't started watching it yet Like my daughter who watches it with me We've been making our way through New

Zealand season two recently and we still have a few episodes left but stuff got busy with school and that so we haven't had that many weeknights free but Traders Canada season two is on the on the agenda for what's coming up. I bring it up because my friend and client Mary Jo Eustace is on this season. Is on this season. Yeah. And I can't like, I can't, I won't spoil anything. I don't understand the show anyway. I haven't tuned in yet, but, uh, so I don't know if I could spoil it. She tell you some spoilers. She swore into secrecy. Yeah. She told me that don't tell me if she wins or not. No, no, no, no. I don't know that if, and if slash when, so I don't know if this even happens. How's that? So if she's eliminated

Then the next day she can come on Toronto mic'd and talk about the experience and everything, right? Right. So when the episode airs so if if this episode airs, so has she given you a date then no That would be the spoiler. No. No. No, I think she respects the rules of these shows Okay, so I just wondered if you were watching I was gonna just point out Mary Jo Eustace is on the show. Well when I do Be I will be excited to see it. You can submit questions. I I Mean, I don't know if when she comes on It's gonna be like

Traders super fan episode like get into the guts of it, but I am I am fascinated I think I mentioned it to you before zoom in and I'm kind of fascinated by the mechanics of that show because it has like some of the drama and intrigue of your survivor or big brother or whatever, but it's really the gimmick actually really changes the whole way that they play. Right. So what I don't understand because I haven't watched or bothered to read the rules is these are some of these people seem to be celebrities. Like like it sounds like Mary Jo Eustace auditioned for this role in some regard.

Yeah. So these are not normies in a game show. I'd have to remember what happened with Traders Canada season one. But it seems like some because I've watched the UK version, the New Zealand version, the American version, the Canadian version, and multiple seasons of each, and so sometimes, in some of these versions, all of the cast are like reality TV show pros like like and and they're introduced that way like this guy was on Fantasy Island or whatever those love Island love Island and this woman one season 26 of survivor and this guy has a seven-time champion from the challenge that MTV show like it's like and they're all like This is their show that they were on before this is why you know them

Which I basically don't know any of them because I've watched so little reality TV other than the traders, right? but then some Are just random people who who are on the show and then there are some like like I think New Zealand there's a couple of different seasons of this from various countries where it's like intentionally half and half. So like half the cast are famous for their corruption and skullduggery they've done on other reality TV shows. And even the normies on the show know them for that. and then the others are complete wild guards like this guy's a retired police officer and this woman is like a home care nurse and I guess that there's always some

discussion of like whether the reality people TV people are gonna gang up on the others or whether they're gonna stab each other in the back. But often, these reality TV people have like personas they're famous for, like, oh, that's the backstabber guy. And everybody else on the show knows it now. So from the very beginning, they often have a target on their back. But so I haven't seen this Canadian new version yet. And so I don't know if it's all celebrities,

Canadian celebrities or not. See, I don't know either. Maybe Leslie Taylor, who's watching this live at live.torontomike.com. I know she watches this show because she was curious if you were watching it because you had talked about your love for traitors. And I made that bad joke about the TV show,

Traitors with a D that was on global. You remember this back in the day. Right, right, yeah. You remember now this conversation. But Leslie says you're her favorite Toronto Mike guest. Oh, well, that's so nice to hear. D that was on global. You remember this back in the day. You remember now this conversation. But Leslie says you're her favorite Toronto mic'd guest. Oh, well that's so nice to hear. That's a long list of wonderful people and you're number one.

There's been quite a lot of like legitimate celebrities. Jim Van Horn. Does that include Jim Van Horn? Oh actually, and Leslie's sister was on this show, Carolyn Taylor. My so fresh Wes has been on this show. Does that include Mishimi? Just let me know if that includes Paul Langlois of the Tragically Hip. I am honored to even be on a list. Paul Langlois or My Show Fresh West? With you, Mike.

Well, let me get to the hard-hitting questions. We'll see if you're still honored here. So you described it off the top. You described this podcast studio where they have to hang you like a bat from the rafters to make sure you don't overwhelm the microphones. By the way, these unicore mic cartons to donate to our soundproofing efforts.

Now the solution was, and I did at the beginning, I had the guy who does the audio for Toronto Blue Jay games, Blue Jay's games on television, he was my consultant, my unpaid consultant when I set this up 12 years ago and he was explaining to me, you know, I didn't know what mics were all about and different. The only mic I know is me, I'm Toronto mic, but he was explaining that these unidirectional mics, yeah you got to be right on these mics, but the fact is we don't need to worry about egg cartons and glass walls and stuff because of the unidirectional nature of these microphones

Well, I learned a lot from Andrew and then trial and error I learned a lot more but this question is about Toronto Star podcast because diamond dog wrote in and said I have a question for Ed Keenan. Yeah, what happened to the this matters? Podcast. All right. So the this matters podcast as it used to be is on hiatus The I'm not fixing this in posted no no no it but it it may not Come back in the same way the star has since then launched like what it calls the star podcast studios and The Star has since then launched, like what it calls the Star podcast studios. And Saba, who was another host of This Matters, has a new podcast that's been launched.

Kevin Donovan, who was not a This Matters host, but who has done several successful investiga- I mean, he not among the most prominent investigative journalists in Canada and he's done his podcast series is based on his investigations of the Sherman murders in particular have been very very popular and so he's done more there is a you know a dating podcast there is a millennial money matters, I think podcast and in development is a revamp of the sort of Ed Kenan podcast

which some of those may go back into the this matters stream and it will be kind of like an overarching brand, you know kind kind of like this matters. And you'll be Google. And so there'd be separate programs under that banner. Although I'm not like, I'm not trying to be cagey about anything. I just legitimately don't know because I'm not in the meetings where this stuff's decided. That's how it's been described to me.

So I am in the meetings where we have been sort of developing and maybe given that there've been a lot of changes at the Star recently because we have a new editor-in-chief who took over in the summer and who has recently sort of like put her senior management team in place and and a bunch of stuff like that happening internally maybe our summer hiatus stretched out through September a bit more than it normally would because there were other things behind the scenes that everybody's kind of attending to, but I'm now in earnest in meetings like with my producer and the managers at the Star sort of like fine-tuning a

new version of a podcast I'll be hosting there. And so there probably will be news on that that's public, like in the next month, I would say. So next appearance, because we're back on schedule. So in three months when you return to this program, we'll have details. Maybe I will have even heard this. But do you have a title for this podcast yet, or is that?

Not that, well, this doesn't matter. Not finalized, and the tentative, the draft titles are not for public discussion. So that's exciting to me. Okay. Yeah, this does a tune that doesn't know that. That's a great title. Actually, this doesn't matter. I think that would be more popular than a podcast.

Nevermind. Yeah. Yeah. It's all about Nirvana. Nevermind. Okay. So a couple of quick notes on FOTM in your business. One is that FOTM, again, for the newcomers, that means friend of Toronto Mike, Ed Keenan himself is a valued FOTM.

But Alan Carter's an FOTM. He was let go because there was a cost cutting wave at global thanks to chorus. Have you heard about chorus is cost cutting? I? Yeah, I mean but but just um, I Mean these especially the cost-cutting ones never Sink in but if there was anybody who like I mean first of all, I like Alan Carter a lot I like his persona. I like his like him as a I like his personality as a person in in like that. I've known him him as a I like his personality as a person in in like that I've known him off-camera but I also think like as a sort of modern-day like both radio and TV guy I I and you know he was doing so much for them like he was anchoring some so many things I used to sometimes be the guest host when he went on vacation

when he went on the road of his show at 640. I was often sometimes like during the civic election and whatnot on panels on his television program and so yeah I was I was kind of shocked to see him go I take it he's now reporter correspondent with City TV. You got it he's the municipal affairs reporter for City News. And I feel like you two would have a lot in common. I mean, you're more of an editorialist, I suppose, but you're in that municipal affairs world. Yeah. And like, so I think we do like, it's not like we have spent a lot of time socializing together, but let's us three get together professionally and have professionally crossed paths quite a bit and uh

and like i think he's great at what he does and and like i say um he's he's not uh an opinion like his business has not been to be uh uh unopinionated loudmouth like me right but i do feel like he brings a little attitude a little little sensibility to not the sort of conventional anchor. Like he's a bit more fun, a bit more lively. And so yeah, so yeah, I'm a big fan. Yeah, I actually like you both. He's replacing you in these quarterly episodes. I just kind of see your reaction to that. Cost-cutting measure here at... Alan will now be joining me in three months. But did you know he was at Chorus for almost 25 years, which is so unheard of in this day and age, but he was almost there 25 years.

And he was, you know, some big names. You mentioned he was there all the... Forget the radio, but he was on global news all the time. But he was in that wave that got such big heavyweights as like Farah Nasser, for example, was caught up in the same wave. So a lot of good chorus people got let go through a no fault of their own, but it's nice to see Alan Carter joining City News Toronto as a municipal affairs reporter. Yeah, absolutely. One more little tidbit here, because I don't you know, Wise Blood doesn't visit every month anymore.

So who else am I going to talk to about this? But Jeff Spindle is a name. Boom 97.3 listeners might be familiar with he was there for 14 years there was a coast to coast show that he was hosting I don't have the name in that show offhand not not coast to coast no on a different radio station the network those coast to coast I to see if there's aliens in your back? Yeah, no exactly. To hear about the aliens and big conspiracies like who's covering it up and all of that. I am familiar with it, but that's we're talking that's something different. Is it Art Bell? Was that the name? Yes, yes. He's no longer

with us. I think he's gone now. But yeah, you know conspiracy theories at some point were fun things like there's aliens amongst us and then they morphed into like ugly things Like oh this shooting was actors and stuff like that Like at some point the conspiracy theories lost their soul and their charm and became very hurtful mean thing You know what I mean, but Jeff Spindel who's not? Yeah, when when when when we were coming up Mike It was aliens and Jay and first of all you would never wear socks with your sandals. Never.

Old people did, that's the thing. The boomers, the boomers did. Maybe older than the boomer, but what's that? The greatest generation? They were famous for it. Like the, it was like your grandpa. Yeah, old guys did it. We sure didn't.

Maybe because the old guys did it. And maybe because we don't, the kids are doing it. Like this is exactly how it works. Well, you wouldn't wear the socks with your sandals and the big conspiracy theories were who shot John F. Kennedy right right and Area and area 51 the aliens right the alien abductions And like X-files stuff and whether those same aliens were the same ones who built the pyramids or not, right? Um, I miss those conspiracy theories Yeah, I miss them. Okay, but Jeff spindle just to wrap this up real quick. He was also a victim of cost-cutting

This is a stingray radio that let Jeff go Jeff was childhood friends with FOTM Hall of Famer Cam Gordon This is the connection and Jeff next week will make his Toronto mic debut, like sort of an exit interview to talk about his career in radio. What happened at boom 97.3. So tune in for Jeff Spindel in his Toronto mic debut next week. That should be good. Yeah. Now we're going to get down to business. All that was just pregame show. Should I start recording? We have cleared our throats now. Yeah. And now your levels are perfect. Your levels are perfect.

But I'm going gonna quote John Lawrence. So now you're onto your actual agenda. My actual agenda, yeah. So John Lawrence, a good FOTM, you friendly with him? Would you have a bit with him? Yeah, I've known John Lawrence for years, I have sometimes played hockey with him. I was more involved than I am now, but in Spacing magazine sort of in its early years, he used to write for me when I was an editor at iWeekly for a while, like we've just known each other a long time. He's great journalist, great. Great journalist, good FOTM, smart guy.

He, I'm gonna quote him. Toronto has surely become the laughing stock of the global transit community. Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown LRT will not open in 2024. This is a quote I pulled from John, but I need your take. Maybe you have an update. I got some sort of like, I think it was Doug Ford who suggested like that might not be true,

but it seems to be the case. What's going on? Why can't we open this damn thing? Oh man. Do I need to clear my schedule? You've got so so much like sponsor merch on the table in front of me that I can't just smash my head on it repeatedly like it's an empty box. I would destroy a perfectly good lasagna here but um oh my god I so I was out on Eglinton Avenue East,

near the Golden Mile yesterday, doing some research for an upcoming column. And while I was out there, those Eglinton LRT trains, because they actually do run in two-car trains, were going by every seven, eight minutes. Um, and you know, I have noticed that when I've been out near Black Creek and Eglinton, there's a baseball diamond buried in behind there.

Uh, and, and sometimes I've been coaching out there and, you know, I'll tell the kids, if you hit one of those trains, you get a free steak. Um, and, uh, they never can hit those trains, but, um, tell the kids, if you hit one of those trains, you get a free steak. Right. And they never can hit those trains. But the point is, is that like, the tracks are there, the trains are running, there's drivers there driving those trains. Like, obviously it's ready to go. Why can't you just give us a date? It's been, oh, so like, what are we on to now 14 years or 15 years they've been

building this thing right and believable and and they kept postponing if anybody's just catching up and I suspect that the listeners of this podcast already know this because they're one of our favorite time to rehash it is like, shortly after they started building it, the initial opening date of like, it's supposed to be open before 2020 or something at that point, and they were like, "'Okay, that's not gonna happen. "'It's gonna be 2021.'"

And then for a while, you know, Rob Ford was messing with it because he was trying to insist that even the Scarborough Park should go underground, like the Victoria Park to Kennedy, which is built above ground now on Big Wide. Eglinton's very wide at that stage. But he was trying to bury that. And a lot of people forget when they talk about in memory

about Rob and Doug Ford and the Subway Subway Subways push that the the subway the Scarborough Subway extension they're building was never a Rob Ford project until ever all of his other projects were killed his subways were going to be the Eglinton LRT at a cost of many billions of dollars extra was going to be buried over to Kennedy. And then the Shepherd subway extension. Those were those were his Scarborough subways. And anyhow, so I think that wrangling and revising kind of delayed it a bit. But then, you know, they got on to building it and building it and building it. And then 2021 became 2022. And then they're like, oh, well, a little later in 2022.

And then that's, that's about the time I moved back from Washington, D.C. just the same. I think it was my first column back on the beat in Toronto was a sort of a waiting for good dough because Phil Verster had just announced like actually it's not going to be this year is not going to be early next year and we don't really know when it's going to be. You know update to come and then for for two years now since then they've been kind of stringing us along saying like, we don't know, we don't know, is it ever gonna open? We don't know. And, and recently there's been the kind of rumblings again, because we can all see

that it's like running full service there, it's running, and that's like training now. These people are in training and testing, right? Right. But they've been in that state for a long time. How much training and testing do we need? Yesterday, my car, I already mentioned, I had to drop it off at Caledonia and Lawrence because I live in the near west end of Toronto, right? Like Blue or West Village. So not far in the depths of Etobicoke near Mississauga, but not downtown. And I had to go to the Golden Mile in Scarborough. And so I dropped my car at Caledonia in Lawrence

at eight o'clock in the morning, because this is how auto body shops do it. Just bring it by, we open at eight. But if you show up at quarter to nine, they're like, bleh, sorry, we're all full. So I dropped it there. and then getting to Scarborough, if the Eglinton Crosstown was open, this would have been like a 30 minute trip,

but instead it was an hour and a half of like going back down to Bloor and across and then up. But those cars were actually making the trips. I could have just like, if I should have pulled a back to the future and like got out a skateboard and just dragged along behind, like if they could just open the door. I don't mind if it's a trainee, if he just like sneaks open the door so I can hop on. You know they built that monorail in Springfield. It was a weekend I think they built that thing, but anyways I digress.

But yeah, so the gist of it all is and and in the meantime the Eglinton crosstown is such a big project and Goes across so many different neighborhoods of the city will be served by it and we have spent so much Money on it. Well, there's a fallout so that it yeah that it Occupy it becomes this lightning rod for our rage and our inability to accomplish anything right even when we're trying even even when we are doing something that appears to be a great thing for the city we can't just get her done and in the meantime the finch LRT is also in the

same ridiculous limbo for years now right And there's a new lawsuit from the people building it against Metrolinx, saying that the TTC is somehow holding it up. And it's just like, but it's not the TTC, right? It's Metrolinx, right? So can I ask some dumb questions? Okay, because if I'm so lost on this, I'm sure many listeners lost on this, but this is Metrolinx, right? on this, but this is Metrolinx, right? Metrolinx is the provincial agency that's building it. So it was created with a P. So this is not the TTC. That's right. The TTC will operate these lines once they open. And so what happens is that like, it used to be that the TTC did a lot of its own building and what is now Metrolinx like basically built and operated Go Transit, right?

And basically Dalton McGinty, when he was the Premier, created this provincial transit building agency, especially for the GTA. And his agreement was basically that he was going to pay 100% of the costs of these like David Miller's Transit City essentially or what became of it. The Eglinton Crosstown, the Finch LRT, at the time the Shepherd LRT as well. And the province was going to build them. Metrolink was going to build them. And then originally it was kind of hazy about maybe Metrolink would also own and operate

them because of the way that they financed the cost to the province still wanting to own the actual tracks and stuff. But now the TTC is gonna take it over and run it is the thing and a lot of these lawsuits and wrangling is sort of that like that handover from Metrolinx to the TTC hasn't happened yet but because the TTC is going to be the agency operating it they are providing feedback to the contractors saying, we need it to run this way, our service standard is X, we like, like this has to conform to TTC standards. So the TTC is trying to get in there and help supervise.

And the contractors are saying like, contractually we're not allowed to take orders from these people. And so I don't understand all the nuances but that's that's where these jurisdictional things are coming up but I think most of us don't actually care about that stuff so much as we care about like just get it done. Oh um amen but okay so if it's a provincial if Metrolinx which you mentioned is provincial okay that's Ontario which is you know by the, by the way, more than Toronto.

I just learned this. This is a mind blow to me, actually. But OK, so that includes things like Sudbury and Timmins and all these wonderful places. Hamilton, Ottawa. My goodness gracious. North Bay, too. I got to write that down. Hold on. Whoa. OK, so is that part of the problem? Like, I'm just looking to see where you look at. Well,

yes, I've been there. So who is this is a question I wish I wrote down who wrote a bit. Who is responsible for the and then again, I didn't even know about this. You could speak to this. Who is responsible for the gauge screw up on the 13.5 billion dollar Metrolinx Eglinton LRT tracks? And when is it getting fixed? Is there a gauge screw up? T-Tracks and when is it getting fixed? Is there a gauge screw-up? I imagine that it is... I don't know the details of that. I know there were some problems with the way the tracks were built initially. I know there were some problems with platforms that had to be rebuilt and among other problems, but essentially what Okay So I don't think it's because it's the province Necessarily, but I do think that when

Metrolinx was created both former premier Dalton McGinty and then Kathleen went after him and then Doug Ford after them are real believers that that Metrolinx is sort of procurement like they're building model of public-private partnerships was going to be the way to go right and they say look at how government screws everything up so what we are going to do is we're going to hire a private company and then they're on the hook the private company is on the hook for cost overruns, right? The private company is on the hook if anything goes

wrong. They're going to use their private sector efficiency mojo to get this done faster and better than big bloated bureaucrat red tapey government could do. And it's going to be that way is cheaper but also you're guaranteed to have it on time and on budget because otherwise they're not going to earn a profit, right? So what actually happens here and so they're talking about like privatizing the profit but privatizing the risk as well. There was a lot of talk around around government circles when

this stuff was being handed out about like the private sector absorbing the risk. So now first of all in financing terms and I don't want to get into the details partly because I don't fully understand all the details because I'm not an expert on finance stuff but like if you ask someone to take on financial risk for you it's like insurance, you have to pay a premium for that. You literally pay more than you otherwise would because somebody else is going to insure you against inflation escalation, construction cost escalation, all these other things.

But we also award these contracts to the lowest bidder and stuff, right? So the way these consortiums, because there's no one company who like takes on a job like this. It's a bunch of engineering and construction firms and stuff that get together and they bid on it. And what they do is they enter like a bid that is so low that even pricing a little bit of risk, like they're not going to earn a profit But what's going to happen is that the government's going to ask for changes and they they put in change orders

Which means they get paid extra right scope creep And all those change orders of like well you had to go above and beyond what this initial contract asked for Right. It's like more toppings on your pizza It's like how come my 99999 for two large pizzas is actually 44 dollars And it's like well that didn't include mushrooms in pepperoni and double cheese, right? and My understanding is that a few things happened The pandemic happened and they kept going with construction through that but that drove up construction costs quite a bit because of all the PPE and the precautions and all

of that. And then, like, the cost of building anything skyrocketed in those years. And this is an existential threat to a lot of condo developers in the city right now and is just because the shortage of labor and shortage of certain materials that may have been originally caused by the pandemic or things related to the pandemic but has just gone up is that like all the cost of building everything is doubled, right? And in the meantime, so they're putting, and in the meantime, the TTC and whatnot have asked for specific materials, specific things, and my understanding, admittedly, you know, second hand,

but I've heard it from more than one person related close to these projects, let's say. The change orders are all being denied. That Metrolinx is taking the approach that they don't mind if it goes over schedule, but they don't want it to go over budget. And so, some of these companies that have been building it may be facing taking a huge financial loss on it and and many of us will say well this was the whole model that you accepted the risk. Right. But in the

meantime also if they're, if this is like a extinction level event for these giant contractors, they're not incentivized to just get her done. They're trying to hold on to get paid, right? Like they want to get their money back out of it. And so all of that has added up to this dragging on and on and on. And so what we hear officially, and may well be in some sense the the straightforward story is that like they're still trying to do this testing to make sure that it conforms to all these safety standards and all of that but I suspect that the length of time it took for us to get to this testing stage which probably we should have been doing in 2018 or something, is because some of this got dragged out both by shortages

of materials and all of that, but also like, if we were willing to pay a lot more money, they could get it done a lot faster. Like that's always the mantra in construction projects is what is it is it like um uh fast well now i'm now i'm messing it up because it's like quick simple and good you can't can't be simple is not the other one so i'm trying to remember it's like but but yeah, you could either have it. Oh, it's it's cheap fast good you can only choose two right right right and so we we've gone with cheap and I hope good right and so we're not getting it fast, right? We sure aren't Ed We're sure not getting it fast

Does Kevin Donovan know that this would be a great mini series at the the Toronto Star podcast with the Eglinton LRT. The Metrolinx, Eglinton LR, what happened? Like I was paying attention to that. What what what the hell happened? But especially this is important because okay, Metrolinx is also building the Finch LRT, right? Which is also to all appearances pretty much done and also not yet ready to open and not even have an opening date. But also they're building the Ontario Line subway line, right, as well as they will be building, you know, they are right now building the Eglinton West LRT extension They're working on phase two of the Eglinton Crosstown when phase one is still not open and open and so there's there's like 50 30 30 billion dollars worth of transit projects that Metrolinx has

underway that when you look at At them as like some future where they're all completed, they're gonna make a huge difference to the city and yet you look at the Eglinton Crosstown and say when are they ever gonna be completed? Is there any hope? Are we gonna have the same? Is the Ontario line gonna be like the electric Boogaloo version of this or what this keep your good eye on this

story mr. Keenan because something smells here I mean we're gonna get to more stories where things smell but I feel like we need to maybe take a more like a lighter break here because because Metrolinx Eglinton LRT cluster F as you're gonna cause gonna be the name of your podcast series, by the way, the cluster. The Duster Cluck. Yes. Uh, my goodness, my brain hurts right now, but I do think a lighter, lighter fare, even though it's important to many people is, uh, your thoughts on the new nickname of the Toronto

PWHL. Do I have the right letter? That's right. Okay. Toronto Scepters. Yeah. How do you feel about the nickname and the logo and all that comes with this? It's growing on me I think. I suspect in a couple years I'm not even gonna think twice about it. Like the Raptors? I didn't love it at first although I do

really like the logo. Like I think it kind of yeah like the Raptors. If the hockey team, the men's hockey team, the men's NHL as it's called, just announced out of the blue today if it had always been called the Toronto Blue Shirts like it originally was or the Toronto Arenas because they didn't actually have a nickname they just those guys in the blue shirts who play in the arena. That's who we're talking about. The Arenas and then the St. Patrick's. Yeah nickname they just those guys in the blue shirts who play in the arena let's that's who are doing is and then the st. Patrick's yeah if they just announced Maple Leafs today I would be so underwhelmed right like like okay yes it's on the Canadian flag but really like it was a regiment bow right it

wasn't the actually it was a regiment called the maple yeah Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. But like, like the Red Stockings. Like, like, like, like the Knickerbockers. No, yeah. So like, I don't, I don't love Scepters, but I don't hate it. I know there was a big backlash among some people who were like, Oh, you want me to tell you a story? Well, let's, okay. So the day, I guess the day they announced it, I had not one, but two students and I won't out them, but two students at TMU who asked day, I guess the day they announced it, I had not one but two students, and I won't out them, but two students at TMU who asked me, I guess they Googled it, I don't know if they Googled it or they searched Twitter, but they found me because I had commented on it all.

And they wanted to interview me for a class assignment on the name and the premise was that this was somehow an homage to colonialism because of Queens you scepter like there was a connection that why are we celebrating colonialism in this manner which I had it actually hadn't occurred to me but sometimes I miss obvious things but yeah I mean and I guess this is the way of students now because I heard a lot of that kind of commentary but if we're talking about why Toronto has a Queen Street in it and a King Street and you know Queen's Key and Queen's Park Prince's gates and and the Prince's gates and the and the Prince Edward

viaduct I like this game um colonialism certainly ties into it but it's because we're talking about the King and Queen of Canada. We can vaguely see our money, right? The King and Queen of Canada, right? So this is not an homage to our past colonial leaders. This is talking about the current head of state of Canada is a King, and he succeeded his mother, who was our Queen for generations. And so if we choose a regal name that recognizes our head of state, you may say we should shrug off the monarchy, but

we're not harkening back in a tribute to the British Empire. We're making reference to our current constitutional order. And so, I mean, I don't want to say that if we had called it like, and thank God they didn't, but if they had called it like the Toronto parliaments or the Toronto senators, it seems to me that would be equally a gesture to colonialism because the Canadian government is a is a Inheritor of the legacy of colonialism like the exact the actual Canadian government Like exists because of the colonization of Canada. What about the Toronto Sankofas did anybody? I I don't know, because it's a privately held company, we're not privy to the discussions that were taking place behind closed doors.

Did you have a preferred nickname? We've spoken in the past about you have season's tickets. Yeah. Wait, are they still playing? Have they moved to the Coca-Cola Coliseum? They have moved to the Coca-Cola Coliseum? They have moved to the Coca-Cola Coliseum. And this season, as I understand it, the training camp is going to be in November. The season will start in December.

It's a somewhat longer season this year than it was last year. I think it's moved to 24 games or something like that. I have season tickets again. I'm very excited. There are some trade-offs I wrote about this. I'm moving from the good thing for those of us who are like day one season ticket holders or whatever. The good thing about the Maple Leaf Gardens facility, the Matamie Center, which is TMU's hockey rink where they played season one, is that it's so small that you feel like you know the other people in the building, right?

It's like you feel like you're at George Bell, except like the level of hockey being played is high. And these are like, you got heroes down there and yet they can kind of they have to after they come up in their sweats and they stand there and stand there and shake hands it's like the visiting players are there talking to their family right right in it but also when you shout skate skate skate the players can hear you you can hear each other and and there was a real community feel to that. And so the

Coliseum is probably like four times the size in terms of the amount of seating, so you lose some of that intimacy. And yet it also means that four times as many people are going to be able to get tickets. And I think that's a massive win. And it's still a good place. The snacks are a bit more expensive at the snack bar, so I'm going gonna have to put myself on a diet and my kids, my family on a diet, snack bar diet. Because this is the thing, I've never been a high roller who could afford season tickets to anything. And so always I have been like somebody's uncle calls and is like, do you want tickets to the Blue Jays game? We've got these tickets that we can't use and I'll take my kids. And I'm like, okay you want tickets to the Blue Jays game? We've got these tickets that we can't use,

and I'll take my kids, and I'm like, okay, now I get to be the big shot, because we go to two things a year, or three things a year, let's go to the snack bar three times, right? First, we're gonna get the licorice, then we're gonna get a bag of peanuts, and then we'll go back for the hot dogs,

and then we're gonna go back and get something else, and I've always just figured like, they soaked me me dry but I only come here twice a year and so we'll make a big event of it and then you realize when you have season tickets like oh I'm here twice a week I can't be blowing a hundred bucks at the snack bar. That's funny. So and especially not at the Coliseum prices which are like more in line with Scotiabank Arena's prices whereas that Mad Mattamy Maple Leaf Gardens is like university student budget friendly.

I was gonna say, you can just go to the Loblaws downstairs and get some food there. Yeah, so, but no, no, it's very exciting, but to answer the very initial question. Acceptors. I had no particular favorite name that occurred to me. I don't know that I'm particularly good I feel like like I have this feeling like we could have done better

Does that I don't even know where that's coming from because I think I think your fan base will have difficulty even spelling this nickname Okay, it's not easy There's an RES at the end I think a lot of people will do ERS Yeah, a lot of places to mess that's an R-E-S at the end. I think a lot of people will do E-R-S. There's a lot of places to mess this up. That's the American way. So a lot of places to mess it up. And I don't know. Like, I just feel like we could have done better,

but I'm not here to poopoo it. I think it suggests a lot of good props for the fans in attendance. The staff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so I root for the home teams here. So let me take a moment here because I have another sports question I want to ask you about. But I first want to let you know, and I think this is why you're back every quarter. I have a frozen lasagna. Yeah, there we go.

Pasta. Yeah, that's why you're here. Right. Woo. I love the pome pasta lasagna. You know who loves them even more than me? Your kids. My children. Yes. They Kids love the lasagna. They really look forward to it. Yeah. I think my eight-year-old only eats like five foods and one of them is palma pasta. So,

lasagna and penne with rosé sauce. So, shout out to Palma Pasta. They're going to host us. Ed, this is important. Take a note. November 30th at noon. That's a Saturday, I believe will be at Palma's kitchen for tmlx 17 and everyone who could hear my voice right now is invited So that is tmlx 17 Great Lakes brew pub, which is Jarvis and Queens key. They got a great restaurant there. They're gonna host 40 of us and I've already selected the force So if you want in I have to bump somebody but I would totally come somebody for you. Okay This is where you and I, uh, speaking of chorus in six 40, we had that big collective.

I think Alan Carter was there. That great, great lakes group hub down on, on Jarvis and Queens. Yeah. Lower Jarvis and Queens key. So we're going to meet there on October 21st at 6 P.M. And that's TMLX 16. But again, that one I'm capped at 40 atten so you're having a FOTM party there yeah and you're and it's gonna be an episode too

no I'm recording so it's very complicated it I know November 30th at Palma's kitchen I'm recording live but yeah October 21st at the GLB Brew Pub at Jarvis and Queens Key I'm not recording recording. So we're just gonna eat and drink, and I'll tell you all the real talk. All the things, guess, because this is what happens, Ed. We record, I stop recording, then we go outside to take a picture, and suddenly I'm hit with the real talk.

Boom, bam, it's like, oh my God, this is the real deal. This person didn't quit, they were fired. This is what happened there, and I'm like, oh my God, it's all coming out now, but it's all this off the record post recording chatter. That's what you get at TMLX 16 at the GLB group on the 21st. Okay. There you go. Quickly. I know that when I was at your 50th birthday party, you had the speaker from Manaris that you used to listen to Yes We Are Open, which is an award winning podcast hosted by

FOTML Grego. Well, I don't know how many kids you have anymore, three I think, is it three? Okay, so they don't all have a Monaris speaker, do they? They do not yet. Well, you get another one now. Cause season seven is like coming soon and we're gonna be talking about season seven

of Yes We Are Open, but that fantastic podcast has a seventh season and that speaker is how you're going to listen to it, Ed Keenan. All right. There you go. Ridley Funeral Home has a measuring tape for you. You got like a bowl at home. Measuring tapes. Shout out to Life's Undertaking, which is a great podcast hosted by Brad Jones at Ridley Funeral Home. Speaking of great podcasts, the Advantage to Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada has amazing investing advice and best practices. It's hosted by Chris Cooksey,

who will be at the GLB Brew Pub on October 21st. Can't wait to see Cooksey there. But this podcast is highly recommended if you're interested at all in your financial investments, RESPs, GICs, you know, RSPs. I feel like I'm Aretha Franklin here. RRSPs. Okay. But tune in to that. Okay. So let's get back to the subject of the matter. I just want one more thing on sports. Rogers is going to own MLSC. Yep. I think that women's hockey team is going to be the biggest franchise

in the city not owned by, unless the WNBA team takes off, which doesn't exist quite yet, but it's coming. But those will be the only teams in the market that are not well, them and the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, which we love on this show. And there are Christie Pits, no ticket required. And that'll be next summer. We'll be talking more about them. But everything's going to be owned by Rogers. All the men's professional sports teams are gonna be 100% well not 100% majority owned by Rogers right? 75% Tannenbaum still owns a piece of it and and he brought the pension fund back in right? Yeah 20 I think. So but but yeah a controlling interest in all of the men's professional sports teams, the traditional big four, right?

And and so I'd say the big five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All owned by Rogers and the buildings they play in also either owned or controlled on long term leases with the city by Rogers. on long-term leases with the city by Rogers. The broadcast networks that bring them to us, they have the rights at least for the NHL contract. Oh yeah, that was tricky because major league baseball is... Half the Raptor games will still be on TSN. And I mean, a bunch of hockey games are still going to be on the TSN too, but that's through a sharing agreement with Rogers who has the contract, right? And I don't know about MLS, yeah.

I don't know about CFL either. Who has the CFL rights right now? Still TSN. Yeah, okay, so, but still, I mean, Edward Rogers is controlling quite a lot. And that may or may not be a bad thing. I mean I think on the one hand I think I it's it's good that we have somebody to complain about. Like you know on a personification of the guy in charge so that you know who to complain about, who to direct your rage at when

they're losing, who you want, you know, to throw the bums out and whatnot. There's like a level of personal accountability and you figure like all that, all the persona of like George Steinbrenner, like Harold Ballard's years in charge of the Toronto Maple Leafs are famously absolute shit show from beginning to end, including he went to jail. People who worked for him should have gone to jail and later were found to be criminal. But even on the ice, just a terrible owner from beginning to end. And yet we we knew who was responsible for that.

Right. Like the years that the Leafs were owned by a pension fund and then by this conglomerate of telecommunications companies where, you know, after big decisions were made or not made, you'd get some behind the scenes reporting of like, well, maybe at the boardroom table, the two representatives of the blue telecom and the one representative of Tenenbaum's faction and then the, you know, the other, like,

you kind of get these whispers about how the sausage got made behind the scenes, but it is not the sense of like, somebody standing up there and saying like, this is my team and we went with this guy as the general manager because he's smart, right? Or like, this is my team and we went with this guy as the general manager because he's smart, right? Or like, whatever. I don't know how that's worked for the Blue Jays recently. But you know, there's that. And also, I mean, yeah, so I don't know, I don't have too much

more to say about it than that. I can't say I'm like a huge fan of Roger's the company, but I think any company in Canada that's big enough to own Toronto sports teams, I'd likely not be that big of a fan of. Okay. Like I don't love what the alternatives were. So I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I don't know either. This is the the opt-in you like toy factory or whatever because you know You don't have to follow pro sports like you don't actually have to go to these games and give a shit about pro sports I didn't even know that I just learned that okay, so

but because because I personally just to tie it back to a team Rogers owned outright before this MLSC deal I Personally tapped out of the Blue Jays I tuned in to see if I might witness the second no hitter in Toronto Blue Jays history, because a pitcher brought it into the ninth and I was tuned in for that. Came close twice.

Twice. I had the official score of both those games in the basement to chat. Roger LeJoy was the official scorer for those two games. So he almost witnessed a couple there of scoring that game. Which by the way, imagine nerve wracking. What a moment if there's two outs in the ninth and a pitcher has a no-no and then there's a close, like there's

a close, is that an error or is that a hit? Yeah, yeah, like somebody drops a fly ball, but they're diving to make the catch and it's like, do you score it an error? Do you score it a hit? I have secondhand like anxiety about that decision that I will never have to make. You know what I mean? I'm like nervous for the possibility of someone having to make that decision. So just to wrap the Blue Jays thing up. And then I want to get to another Rogers enterprise taking place at Downsview. I tapped out because this team, which I didn't have high hopes for,

managed to underwhelm me and under deliver. But what gets me is this this rhetoric from the the Cleveland to, as I now will refer to them as this Shapiro and Atkins, who direct ability. They'll say, they'll say that the buck stops here, but they're not actually willing to say like that. Oh, uh, maybe we'll, we'll change anything. Like I have zero hope for next season. This whole idea that we stick to what core there's one guy like, you know, I heard this quote from a Shapiro yesterday, we're committed to our core. And I was thinking, who do I want them to be committed

to anyone beyond Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on this team? Like, I don't think so. I don't know, maybe a couple of arms. Well, I'm not even- I mean, he's got to come back from injury. But I don't, I'm not trying to throw out Bo because of one bad season, but I'm not as bullish on Bo as I am of course on Vattie, who I think we should

lock up long term. But there's a whack of reasons why I just feel like I don't even feel like doing a 2025 Blue Jay preview show like I've done historically. Like, I just don't care right now or feel like it. And I just want to say shout out to FOTM Scott MacArthur, Scotty Mack, we call him, who was co-hosting a pretty good Blue Jays podcast with FOTM Richard Griffin. It was called exit philosophy and Scotty announced he's leaving the show for a variety of reasons He's busy but one of the reasons is he doesn't want to pay close attention to this team He doesn't even like right now. So me and Scotty Mack

Let us know when Shapiro and Atkins are out and then we'll come back in but I don't know what your thoughts are on our Toronto Blue Jays Man, I you know We talked about this after the end of last season and like my thoughts almost haven't changed because this season was so overwhelming But it was like two years ago The team disappointed in the one game playoff and everything right but the season was so fun, right? This is like a team that was never out of it because they might just put up 12 runs in one inning at any given point right like so much so many young guys so much like with the

jacket and the dancing around and all of that the barrio in the club Oscar and it was just a fun team to watch and then last season um they kind of sucked all the fun of it instead they still you know kind of made it into the one game playoff and it was a disappointing finish but it all the best of three by the way. Oh, best of three. You're right. You're right. But it was like and they just got smoked in too straight and there was like that controversial pitching change. Yeah Yeah but it almost felt like the expected end of an underwhelming season where like somehow They didn't get better

But they got a lot less fun to watch like run and then this year we call it. It was the same absence of fun accompanied by total shit it to the field Except Vlad E had had a great second half. Yes he did. When it didn't matter. But I do feel like in some ways I'm on the opposite fence with the Leafs and and this is weird because so many Leafs fans are saying you know like how did you not get rid of Mitch Marner? And, and, you know, we, we need to get Tavares out of here. And it was like, at a certain point, this core four isn't getting it done. And I feel like we've lost a whole bunch of coin flips, in the playoffs. And so yes, okay, we didn't do enough in those series is to win. But in most of

those series is, is like, we were one shot shot away and I don't think it's actually just guts like I think bad luck has a lot to do with it and I also feel like getting through those things you do learn some things and it's like I'm not ready to give up the best Leafs team the most talented Leafs team sorry I think the greatest would be the 92, 93 glory years of my youth, our- Right. I think Wendell Clark's back here. But the most talented Leafs team, the highest scoring Leafs team, the- Most skilled team. You can call it- This is the most skilled-

The most skilled team of all time. Yeah, the most skilled team of all time. But certainly the most entertaining to watch in decades. I'm not ready to walk away from that quite yet because I don't think they're that far from being way further. But on the other hand, I feel like with the Shatkins group here, that when they say we're going to be accountable, but there's also, there's no salary cap. I mean, there's a luxury tax, but there's like, their hands aren't tied, the Blue Jays, the same way that hockey does tie the hands

of a lot of teams. It's like, there's a lot they could do in the off season, and some of that might involve changing the management or changing something else, but it also is like, they could turn over the roster if they want to. They can go out and swing big on the free agent market, which I know they tried to swing the biggest swing They could last year, but when the most

Potentially the greatest player in the history of the sport didn't choose us They didn't seem to have a plan B. The plan B was like well, I guess we'll play some of the kids from the farm like Like I don't understand why it's either the $500 million superstar or nobody at all. Right? Like, there have to be some good players we could line up and, you know, make some things happen. It was a weak crop of free agents.

I haven't completely checked out like you for next year, written off next year, but it's like, I would like to see some reasons for hope emerge over the off season. Because I have to say, maybe I did check out this season, I was kind of keeping one eye on it, but I was not wrapped up in the Blue Jays at any point in this season. Your colleague at the Toronto Star, Rosie Domano made some noise during the press conference yesterday and in my opinion, and Rosie again, I don't, I never bet her. Yeah. We had email exchange where I invited her on Toronto Mic years ago and she told me

she's strictly a print gal is how she put it and she doesn't do radio. She said I'm not going to do your podcast which is fine. I've been denied by others, it's fine, I'll get over it Rosie. But I did appreciate that somebody was kind of calling out this management on the fact that 2024 was a very bad year. And not only was it a poor year on the field, but it sounds like it might not be the happiest clubhouse and the prospects are as low, if not lower than they were when the Shapiro and Atkins duo took over from Alex Anthopolis back in 2015 and that was one of the knocks one of the few knocks against Alex was

He didn't have a rich farm system because he had kind of gone for broke with yeah He's in there all the way which by way. Thank you one of the most exciting blue J's times I can remember was that hype train of 2015 and then the Joey Bats bat flip. So that's only possible. Bat flips fly forever. That's what they say. I keep having to remind myself, we didn't actually make the World Series that year

because it's like, oh no, but touch them all Joe. That was 93 a few years ago. But I just wanted to wonder what you thought of Rosie's question. And I noticed there was some back talk from Shapiro. Like I expect nothing less from you Rosie. And he goes, oh, you're so charm. There was an exchange that was kind of interesting and almost personal between Shapiro and Domano because she quoted an unnamed player in the clubhouse as saying it was a fucking shitstorm,

I think was the quote. I'm trying to remember something like that. But some people criticized her for, you know, asking the question. But I was personally glad to hear somebody not just toeing the line and letting this go. Like, if you give a shit about sports, you can't at all let them off the hook for 2024. And like, I don't know what those people want, right? I mean, they could disagree with her, but you want, especially like columnists, asking questions and saying things that they

believe, right? And when they believe management has completely fucked things up, you expect them to say that when they're talking to the management right like what if she asked a nice question like you know what would you say is the best thing you did this year and then tore him a new one in print right you'd say what a hypocrite right yeah she's not willing to say it to his face instead she asked a question that indicates right how she already thinks about this and and he has a chance to respond. And maybe that changes her mind or maybe it

gives her something to put in the column when she says, this guy is the reason we stink. But here's his response to that. I think, especially if you're a manager, I understand the players are players, right? And they're well compensated, but yeah, they get thin skin. They got a, their psychology that they carry on to the field. They can get these weird grudges, but really if you're, if you're the boss, you got to have a thicker skin than that, right? You got to be willing to banter a bit, but you also, how, you have to be prepared to answer that question because guess what some loudmouth columnist is saying it to you in a press conference but a million

of your most dedicated most loyal fans on bar stools all across the city are shouting the same things at their TV at you every time your face appears on it and what do you have to say to them? Right? I expect nothing less from you Rosie. Is that what you have to say them? Right. Or like we're working on it. I don't know. Like I don't know what his right response was but I you know what I'd like I Rosie's a colleague of mine. I know her well. We used to sit next to each other although she's very seldom in the office. To her credit she's out working all the time. She files a lot of stuff. She's been doing this a long time, but you are never in the dark about where she stands on you. You never

have to guess what she's thinking. She says what she means. She's honest and she's been covering the Blue Jays since she was a teenager. Right. And so she's seen like general managers come and go and come and go and so you know maybe they should take some notes. They don't have to agree with her but she's not she's not coming out of left field like well you know maybe a seat behind left field. I'm not sure where she sits when she's... Another guy, by the way, who hates socks as much as I do is Paul Beeston. Is that right? Yeah, he won't wear socks.

Paul Beeston. So we have something in common here. All right, before I leave the big red machine, and I'm not talking about Pete Rose, the late great Pete Rose, there's a conversation for a data Pete Rose but the late great Pete Rose Charlie big red machine I'm talking about Rogers okay the other machine it's the phone booth but a quick thought any thoughts on the fact that we're getting Rogers is building a 50,000 seat stadium in Downsview and Oasis is already booked for it and I'm before you respond I'll just put out

that it seems pretty obvious this seems to be what's missing in the bid for an NFL franchise so I would guess that's the longer play is to get an NFL team Rogers owned NFL I know Rogers can't own it maybe it'll be a Ed Rogers own not Ed Pinin owned that's a different team Ed Rogers owned NFL franchise playing out of this new dance could be Tanenbaum he's a you know potentially gonna be in the market for an NFL team after he no longer he doesn't have the speculation is that he's gonna sell his interest in but yeah um so this is like a temporary stadium well we are told or something yeah yeah and it's it's meant to be there for maybe 10 years or 15 years because there's a long-term

plan to build housing on that site. Okay. But like the way these development plans, especially for like a former like airport, the environmental remediation and soil changes and like ground development and all all the stuff and then you got to get the financing together and you pre-sell it like like this is a decades-long redevelopment plan for Downsview Park right for parts of Downsview Park and the that place where they're planning to build this Isn't gonna have anything on it for like 20 or 30 years anyway And so they're building a stadium that can go up. It's not exactly like

Temporary in the way that setting up some card tables and like a basement is this is temporary But it is um, right temporary in the sense that it it's meant to be there for a decade or two and then come down To be replaced by the permanent installation like Like I guess that's alright. I don't know. I'm just trying to think like if a 50,000 seat stadium is what we were missing in terms of like so many smaller venues or mid-size venues it seems to me. It's like well you can get 45 if you get, if you're not playing, I don't know if they still use, I guess they still use the dome for concerts, right? I don't know if new configuration for baseball or whatever, but you can get 45,

45,000 people in there if it's not baseball game, if it's a concert, like you're close. Yeah. So, so I just assumed in my head and I didn't dig into it cause I figured Ed Kenan's coming over. I can ask him, he knows everything everything but I was thinking this must be part of like Some I mean if it's a long game play on an NFL thing although it may be the perfect venue to her to hold like neutral site NFL games like If the Buffalo Bills wanted to come up here for a home game or two. Because now that the dome is baseball only, really, like the way it's all configured,

they can't really put a football game in there. Okay, well it's all in the same- And Oasis is coming back, so, you know, but that presupposes that they're both gonna, like, survive long enough on the tour to actually make it to Toronto next year. What's that insurance policy like? That the Gallagher brothers don't kill each other before they show up at Downsview there. I have seen, I will say, I've seen a number of concerts

at Downsview, because they, after Molson Park and Berry closed, there was a number of edgefests I went to at Downsview. And then it has been used for like, SARS stock obviously, and the Pope was there. Like, it has been set up as a makeshift, but I mean, you could get 600,000 people in there for that kind of concert, but it's just general admission. You could also let them camp out there and stuff, right?

So maybe it should be our festival grounds, like, anyhow. That's not what's been. But it's just yet another Rogers, yet another Rogers enterprise for us to keep our eye on it. Okay, I would like, I'm just deciding where I wanna go next, but I did read today, Francesca, I think, reported to me and had some nice photos to back it up, that they've cut down Ontario place trees.

This was overnight while it was dark, by the way, because, you know, I actually took a kayak cover of night under cover of night exactly and under the cover of darkness and I'm just wondering if you have any updates from the Toronto Star yeah on the Ontario play situation off the press oh my god from my I'm sitting down colleague David Rider published probably love that guy at 1 p.m. today so just before we started recording the details of the contract with there may have finally been publicly released and so you know it is as we kind of knew already a

95 year old D 95 year deal it it's a 70 years with a 20 year renewal possibility built into it. And the province is contractually obliged to provide 1800 parking spaces. They are in fact planning to provide 2500, but they are required. And now there's nothing in the contract with Therme that guarantees those will be underground or that guarantees they'll be right on the Ontario Place site. They just have to be there. So we know already that Doug Ford's been talking about putting it on an exhibition place. He's trying to negotiate with the city because, of course, the cost of building an underground

parking garage there was going to be outrageous. But we now do know that as suspected, there was like a contractual obligation to provide parking for the visitors to the Therm-A Spa. We know, so and this was the big thing that left in the dark this contract anticipates It puts therma on the hook for 700 million dollars in construction costs about 500 million of that is to build their own facility An additional 200 million or so is to provide the 16 acres of public the accessible Parkland around there the new beaches that they've spent a lot of time talking about and all of that. And then it anticipates, I think it says at least or or something on the order of two billion dollars in revenue over the course of

the contract. And so if we look at that as meaning over 95 years, that basically the rent they're going to be paying to the province amounts to two billion dollars over 95 years We're talking something just under 20 million dollars a year. I think and so I you know, I haven't actually looked around to see if That is a good rental price for a for that kind of lakefront property For the for that kind of lakefront property for that size. And then just incidentally, there are provisions that would allow the province to cancel this contract early after 10 years by giving five years notice, but it may require some payment

of penalties or something. Also if the company was to go bankrupt, the province can kind of take it back. And also, David Rider reports that the contract specifically says that Thurmay may not use this space for a casino, a shopping mall, or condominiums. It specifically does allow for the water park or spa, but under no circumstances are they allowed to build anything there that would be a casino, a shopping mall or condominiums.

There goes one of the conspiracy theories floating around. And so I suspect that was written right into the contract specifically because of the public fear that Doug Ford was really trying to get a casino in there and sideways it in some sure But you know if this publicly released contract For 95 years that would be specifically excluded unless somebody overhauls it and rewrites it or amends it or something, right? but but so anyhow the I don't think I think

But so anyhow the the I don't think I think One of the one of the things that has really bothered me about this deal from the beginning I Mean as we've discussed I think at length before like one of the things that has really bothered me and a lot of people Is like I don't think this is a great use of that land and I think me and a lot of people is like, I don't think this is a great use of that land. And I think we're not going to get that kind of land back. Like once you privatize a space like that, you don't, it just becomes, there's no way you can justify buying it back. Right? It's like, we're not, we're not creating, buying up new parkland on the lake.

Right? We're, we're, It's an endangered species. And so I would want to think carefully about what we put there. And I think there are probably better uses that I could imagine. But another thing that has really bothered me about this all the way along has been the secrecy under which the whole negotiation or the decision was made and and I wrote at some point that like if they're not going to show us the details of this contract we can't even evaluate if it's a good deal like you could think this is the wrong use of the land but still also think okay but if you're going to use it

for this at least we got we negotiated a good deal, right? And I haven't done the thinking, this is such new information that I haven't, I haven't done any kind of analysis to in my own mind see like what what would I think is a fair price? Like what what terms would I be looking at? But at least now we have something to look at and know what we've agreed to, right? Know what the Ontario The people of Ontario are on the hook for we're giving them our land for 95 years What do we get in return and the earlier answer was well? Don't worry about that what we get is a cool water park on the lake that we can go to and pay admission to get into

And it's like what? Yeah, okay, but that's not really something we get right like that's what what are they paying us right well looks like something like two billion dollars over 95 years adjusted for inflation right I think it would probably be in constant dollars like I can't imagine what a loaf of bread will cost in 50 years that's's right. Can you imagine if it's 110 dollars for that? If the deal was signed a hundred years ago in World War one and it's like One dollar a year, right? Yeah, right my goodness. Okay, so keep you keep your eyes on that but here's another Ongoing, you know recurring topic on when you job by every quarter and again Ed Keenan if I, if I haven't said it already, I'm going to do a reset like

this is real radio, OK, you write at the Toronto Star and people should subscribe to the Toronto Star. So articles like this David Rider article that dropped at one p.m. So we're talking now at three twenty six p.m. So like two and a half hours ago, FOTM David Rider was dropping this information on the Toronto Star website and Subscribers can soak it all in and at some point there'll be some further analysis I will say to that the star has been running some sweetheart introductory subscription deals right now, I think um

there's a real sense that we want to earn people's readership and we do believe at the start, like those of us who work there, but also like the corporate mission, they believe that we are worth paying for, right? That we have a product that is worth people paying for, but we want to be able to demonstrate to people that it's worth their money and so I think that there have been deals where where for just a few dollars for your introductory rate for six months or something you can get in and of course you can cancel after that if you don't think it's worth your money but but we're hoping people stick around and pay the subscription rate to

because it gives them valuable journalism to read this is my sort of like infomercial part it's important also to support the kind of journalism that they want to see because and and this is where like I don't do a lot of this lecturing about the value of journalism but like you may or may not think that opinionated blowhards like me are worth supporting with your dollars right like but it is doing that work is how I send my kids to school and put food on my table, right? But beyond that, the investigative work that Kevin Donovan does and Rob Cribb does, but also we are the only news outlet in the city

that has four people full-time working at Toronto City Hall, right? Plus me as a, I spend a couple days a week there. And so we have four reporters there in the bureau at Toronto City Hall. We have, I believe it's three reporters at Queens Park reporting on the province every single day, right? There's no other news outlet that has more than one reporter at Toronto City Hall, right? And many news outlets don't have a full-time reporter there anymore, right? The Globe and Mail, which is also a very good newspaper but whose focus is no longer on Toronto City Hall, has a reporter who reports on Queen's Park and City Hall. He comes down to City Hall when there's something they wanna pay attention to,

but he's not sitting through the meetings, he's not working there every day. They have a cities reporter who pops into Toronto City Hall also, you know, part-time. They have a columnist who will come and weigh in, but, you know, the Toronto Sun no longer has a bureau at City Hall at all. They gave up their office space and Jane Stevenson or they have a columnist who will come down

from Queen's Park or Ottawa. He does the jack of all trades columnist and then they also have a reporter who reports on all things Toronto, including like live music and crime, but will also pop in when there's a big meeting going on, right? But this is not to badmote those other news outlets at all, but it's like, you know, CBC has a, radio has a reporter down there, like City News has a reporter there, but it's like, Global News has a radio reporter there every day and and and he does some TV hits and radio hits right? But that's that's like the

star has four times the manpower of any of those news organizations and we're there every day and we're sitting through those meetings and we try to do the same thing with the Toronto Police Department, with the courts, with the... And this is the stuff where these are the stories that come out that tell you about the city you live in. And you're not going to get that from the New York Times, and you're not going to get that from CNN. No, no, because I subscribe to the New York Times, and I read the Athletic, and I read

CNN and all of that. But really, at the end of the day, if you want the coverage of the city you live in, at a certain point, it has to be supported financially. And as we watch these broadcast outlets, who have, like newspapers used to, really depend on advertising to pay their bills, what we see is them shrinking their workforce, right? Bell Media and CTV laid off 1,400-1,500 people earlier in the year. We've just been talking about Chorus and Global shrinking their news force and then

that's like ad revenue for TV news and radio news is way down in the same way that it fell off for newspapers a few years ago and we have become more and more of a subscription model and our print subscribers who are older and older as a whole but they are surprisingly loyal they have stuck with us and our print subscription revenue is higher than it's ever been and our digital subscriptions are going up but really like if you want local news organizations to exist you're gonna have to support them with your dollars and we hope to earn that but

Here and at the infomercial there are good deals right now If you're a first-time subscriber to like try and sign up and see if it's something you want to That you're gonna read every day first of all And that you think is worth your dollars. Right. So there we go. No. Well said. And you know, I support the Toronto Star. That's why I have you on every single quarter. And I meet the great David Ryder periodically just for to have beers of him and his brother-in-law who painted this very studio we're in right now. Shout out to Chris Brown, who's maybe listening to us right now as

he paints a home. He does a great job. Okay. I... Where did I... I was going to... Oh yeah, so another reason why we need a strong, you know, journalistic force with the Toronto Star is we don't know what will happen. We don't have a clue what will happen should and it looks like it's probable, but should Pierre Pauli have become prime minister with a majority, he has pledged he'll defund the CBC. So I have, you know, some mild anxiety about what that will, what will be the repercussions of that. Like what will that look like? What does that mean? Defund the C look like what does that mean defund the CBC what does that mean for the CBC but you know even more reason to support the Toronto Star. Yeah I mean and I also the the controversially Trudeau's government the government of Canada under the current administration had like a deal that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to news

organizations both tv stations and newspapers and other online news outlets and you know a lot of people have said from the beginning that that puts journalists like me in a compromised position right because suddenly when we're criticizing the government that that's who's paying our bills and all of that and that may be true That said in addition to Defunding the CBC Poliev is talking about cutting off all those subsidies to news organizations that are relatively new but saying this is not how the government spends its money and Some people may think that's a good idea some people may think it's a good idea, some people may think it's a bad idea.

Whether it's ideologically right or wrong, it is a massive threat to the news industry that we have to figure out how we deal with. And I don't mean how we deal with it when we're covering politics. I mean how we deal with it on the business end if if that is the reality we live in. There's an existential crisis across the business and we're we're trying to figure out the way forward but you know I'm glad it's not my job to figure it out that way forward. And in later news, I've heard back from Traders Canada viewer, Leslie Taylor, who reports that the Canadian version is, it's mostly normies. Hey, there are some minor celebrities from other reality shows. And I did see in addition to my friend, Mary Jo Eustis, I'm going to screw his name up, Enoch, who was a Toronto Argonaut.

He's now retired, but he won a great cup at the Toronto Argonauts. So there are that kind of thing going on, but mostly normies on Traders Canada as per Leslie Taylor. I think they're at the stage now where like, see I watch all of this stuff, it gets streamed on Crave, right? But often when a show is new and it's coming out one episode at a time. You have to wait for it to build up. I like to wait until there's enough in the can that I can... I don't binge watch the entire season, but we like to watch two or two, like a couple back to back. At least every night. Like I did that with industry.

Like industry is new season. I said no, I need it to pile up so I can go bang, bang, bang. But it's good. I like the ones that are mostly normies because I don't recognize the the the reality show celebrities in the first place, but I also feel like they come in with a lot of like ra ra show busy stuff like they're performing a certain character and I kind of like the normies more so Absolutely now I don't know if you have the energy for this, but there was a request that the Toronto Star, and I'm sure you're going to tell me you're actively doing this because I can't imagine the Toronto Star wouldn't be all over this story, but they want to know if you're investigating the closure and relocation of the Ontario Science Centre at Keenan. Yeah, we have been as an organization looking at that, talking about it. I've written a

couple of columns about it. There are reporters looking at it, talking about it. I've written a couple of columns about it. There are reporters looking at it from different angles. And you and I have talked about it a couple of times on this show. And so I don't know that I have a lot to add at this stage. I mean, my view remains that as big as the repair bill was going to be, that was a better use of dollars than leveling that and building something new there and completely building something new down at Ontario Place. It appears that falls on deaf ears. And so like deaf ears or... Well, shout out to Ridley P. or home, maybe some death ears to my dad is deaf and I certainly Have every respect for deaf people and I don't mean to imply anything through the use of that phrase

We know it's one of those many expressions You can hear it, but I walked into the star newsroom the other day and we have like little boards up Around and one of them was displaying some like hey Let's use some more sensitive language. And they specifically had that expression up there saying, it's unfashionable now. It is what I mean is that like, really, we can shout all we want and we are not being heard. The other day, somebody said, hey, we should get together for a pow wow. And I was thinking, that's one of those things we just say,

because we've been living with this expression forever. We don't stop and think of like, what does that mean? What's the origin or whatever? And that's probably one of the many expressions we should probably move on from. Right, because now we say meeting of the council of elders. No, I'm just gonna write that down. Okay, so here, just because I can't span it,

I just don't have the energy to do it. But there's the Ontario Place thing and the Science Center. These are connected. Are we going to get into the OK, sorry. Well, if there's something you want to get into, except that this we've talked many times about there's an odor to all of this. Yeah. And I feel better knowing that good journalists are asking the right questions and I see this like you know if

you watch The Wire and Lester has like the the board and he's connecting how all these right the little Marlowe people are connected or yeah tying them all together Avon's connected to string and here's these guys there are these characters who keep popping up particularly certain development groups who have pieces of land near so many of these different projects in one. In the highway? I assure you that there are better reporters than me, but that I that I know and work with who are everyday like constantly looking closely at that stuff and talking to a lot of people and digging up documents and if if there's some kind of

smoking gun there that would merit an accusation beyond Pointing out the existence of these coincidences right the order It will be reported like I'm like but um But but I haven't encountered anything like that and I okay I have and you've looked at the But but I haven't encountered anything like that. And I OK, I have. And you've looked at the wedding registry, the guest list. I've said this about Doug Ford a few times, and maybe I'm being too kind to him for some people's taste, or maybe this is a damning thing to say.

But I think, you know, he used to call at Toronto City Hall. He used to say, like when something just looked a little sideways, like a no tender contract for a certain vendor to get a long-term lease on restaurant space at a public park at the beaches. He and his brother called that corruption outright, and they didn't care if there's some quid pro quo. They don't care if there's actually some backroom deal. What they're saying is like, the fact that this looks up this bad is corrupt and most of us don't use

English language that way but Doug Ford used to and and I think the the c-word that applies probably more conventionally to a lot of the things that he announces is not corruption although it may in some sense or in his old fashion sense they might have a bit of that in it. But I think like cronyism, like I think he legitimately thinks stuff that's good for these developers is good, period, right? That open for business means we are for business, right? Like we exist to serve business, right? And so these developers and moneyed corporate interests that he schmoozes with at given parties or whatever or invites into

meetings, remember, you will probably remember, some of your listeners might remember, when Rob Ford was the mayor of Toronto and Doug Ford was like kind of the sidekick brother, Doug went on, had a big press conference to announce like, hey you know this generations-long Portland's redevelopment scheme that this city, the province, the federal government have all been working on together? We are throwing that out and we are gonna have a Ferris wheel and we are gonna have hotels where you can boat right up and you can dock and and he's announcing this kind of like monorails and he said outright I invited some of the biggest developers in the world to come into a meeting and this is the ideas they came

up with this is unimpeachable because you know who gave it to me? Developers did. Developers came up with this plan. That's the kind of plan we need, right? I'm not quoting him directly, but that was honestly the gist of what he said. He was not trying to hide that, oh, we came up with this independently and it's going to be, you know, coincidentally good for developers. It was like, he was saying, I took dictation when the developers who want to build these tourist attractions told me what they'd like to build, and now I'm showing it to you, right? And I think a lot of his mindset and a lot of these decisions of like, oh yeah, these developers are getting rich because they own land beside right where he said he's going

to open up development is like, no doubt when he hears from certain lobbyists, certain development interests like we need to open up development here, he thinks, oh yeah, if that's good for their business, it's probably good for Ontario. And that's why he does it. And I'd like, so I honestly think a lot of those connections are just old fashioned cronyism where, where the people he, he thinks he's serving's serving like but he thinks that's his job right like it's not now maybe there's more to it than that and if there is I assure you it will it will be dug up eventually right but this is this has been happening for long enough in two different levels of government

and stuff where you see these coincidences and it turns out more often than not, it's just like, it's not like an envelope full of dollars. It's more like a thumbs up and like, I'm looking out for, for my friends because I believe that's my job. Wow. Okay. Listen, that's a, that's a theory. That's a theory. You also made the second monorail episode of The Simpsons reference in this conversation. So are you okay for 20 more minutes? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is where I check in on you and your small bladder. Yeah, I'm good.

If you need to do some plugs, I can always pop into the restroom. I'll do a plug. Okay, I'll address the people's. Go do that right now, Mr. Keenan, because we're gonna do rapid fire for this last 20 minutes. There's a few points I want to hit, but I want to let everybody listening know about recycle my electronics dot C a write that down. Recycle my electronics dot C a because if you have old phones, maybe it's an old typewriter. Don't throw the old typewriter. Send it to Tom Hanks. I think he collects those things. But if you have old electronics or cables, we all have cables we'll never use.

Technology has moved on, but we're still attached to these old cables. Don't go nuts with your spring cleaning or fall cleaning and throw all this in the garbage because those chemicals end up in our landfill. Go to recyclemyelectronics.ca, put in your postal code and then you'll find out where you can drop off these cables and devices so that they do not the chemicals don't end up in our landfill. So thank you to recycle my electronics dot see a once again welcome back. Menaris

we already discussed. Yes, we are open season seven is dropping now. Ed Keenan, we're going to go 20 minutes kind of rapid fire on a few few different things here a couple of questions I ask every single episode, but do you have any insight into? Wait, our is on this rapid-fire list the tunnel under the 401. Okay. Okay. Yeah tunnel under I figured we were gonna have to get to that yeah, it's coming, but I was gonna ask you I was a Sad to hear that Michael Ford had to take a leave of absence and there's no further details at this time, but we were just talking about his uncle Doug and his other uncle Rob, shout out to Ridley Funeral

Home has been brought up a few times in this episode, but Michael Ford is an MPP and he's taking a leave. Yeah, and I hope he's alright. I don't know anything further except that he needs some time. I don't have any further details about that but I hope that his health is good. I hope that he turns out well. I wish him nothing but the best. And I think, yeah, I mean, at Toronto City Council he was in the process of sort of carving out his own identity. He obviously was elected to a large part in the process of sort of carving out his own identity. He obviously was elected to a large part on the strength of his family name and the legacy of his uncles. But he was developing his own sort of sense of himself as a political figure and then he sort of got swept up

into his his uncle's you know caucus there but in as much as he needs some time to deal with something I think you know well he's like I'm not a politician who has to extend like best wishes and all of that in the circumstances but it is like he's a human being and I hope he's well and sure and I have never viewed him as a particular villain of a politician in the first place. I think he's often on on the wrong side of things with members of his family from what I can what I consider the right and wrong sides. But but he also seems like a decent guy and so I hope he's okay. What can you share with us your thoughts on

this tunnel that Doug Ford wants to build under the 401? These guys this now Doug Ford has a thing for tunnels right like like when they were at City Hall they just want to put everything underground right it's got to like they were willing to spend inordinate amounts of money to put things underground and you'll remember Doug Ford in particular too when he was there he was talking about the Gardner and people were talking about tolling the Gardner and he was like maybe we should build a second deck on it and And that could be the Express toll deck, but maybe also a tunnel under the Gardner, like

Boston's Big Dig. So he was already talking about that. And like, there's this fascination that they have with putting things underground. And the logistics of it are just so mind-boggling. So I did some... like first of all, I'm trying to figure out where to start here, but let me start with this. I looked at Boston's big dig. So if people don't know, Boston had like a big downtown expressway like the Gardner, and at tremendous expense over the course of 15 or 20 years, they buried it.

They put it all in a tunnel. And that opened up all kinds of redevelopment on the main way. But also, so I looked at the per kilometer cost of that project. Now that started in the 1990s. And so there's been significant, not just inflation, but infrastructure cost inflation like let's remember in the 1990s the TTC built the shepherd subway line and the entire line was considered to be grossly extravagantly expensive because it was one billion dollars right one billion dollars barely gets you a single

station today right so that's that's it's not just regular inflation, it's not even Toronto housing market inflation, it's like steroidal infrastructure inflation has happened since then. But forget that, right? If you take the per kilometer cost of Boston's Big Dig and you take a stretch of the 401 from Brampton to Scarborough and use that cost, convert it to Canadian dollars, and then just apply the cost of living index inflation, not like I said, steroidal infrastructure inflation. We're looking at a ballpark like minimum $150 billion. Then you look at the amount of time it takes to build the

Eglinton Crosstown subway, for example, or look at Boston's Big Dig and the amount of time it took them to do seven miles a road there, and you see like, yeah, what are we talking about? 30 or 40 years. And then look at the Ontario line, look at the Eglinton Crosstown, look what has happened to traffic on the surface while you're working on a tunnel. So if we're doing 30 years of tunneling under the 401, what does that mean for the surface traffic on the 401? Like while we have to have staging grounds and shut down the express lanes or whatever in order to excavate. Okay, so this is never happening, right? But in the meantime, the frigging 407 is right there, right?

It's right there and it would be full if we hadn't sold it to a private tolling company who first of all like charges like outrageous rates like and they're obviously setting the rates at a way to keep make sure there's never any traffic on it. If you travel much in the United States and I have a American easy pass transponder that I still keep paying to top up because I travel enough into the United States that it's worth my while. But you'll see that in most of the Northeast at least and much of the states that I've driven through, there are often posted rates and they change at different times of the

day, or they change depending on the traffic. But you'll be on the freeway and there'll be two lanes in the middle that are separated off like the express lanes of the 401 say and those are toll lanes and there'll be you know there'll be a little sign here that tells you like if you want to drive on this right now it's 75 cents or it's a dollar 75 or like I'll go on the 95 turnpike down to New York City, and the entire trip there, when I get my bill, will have wound up costing me like $6.50 to go like 300 kilometers, right? So like, these are tolls that generate revenue and actually give people the decision to make,

but they're also like, it's not like taking an Uber. It's like, would you pay a dollar to skip a little bit of this traffic would you pay two dollars would you pay whatever right not like every time I get a bill from the 407 because I break down and take it now I don't have a 407 transponder but but it's like $35 or something and I'm like how how was that worth it for I saved ten minutes for 35 bucks what the hell right or 1850 for like one exchange right it's like now I'm paying a premium because they mail me the bill but the point being that like even if

you wanted to operate a toll road you could you could operate in a way that would attract a lot more traffic in the United States you know if you live in Maryland for instance I know from personal experience, the government of Maryland will send everybody who lives there a free transponder and you automatically get an account with them and you can set it so your credit card tops it up with 30 bucks or whatever. You can set it however you want. So you've got a little or whatever. Yeah, like a Prest presto card But there's our those are free for everybody right that makes it that means it's easy for you to use their roads it's not like like

Getting initiated into a club where you have to figure out where to get it and you have to pay for the Installation of it and all of that to begin with it's like they make it easy and so The 407 is right there right they could buy the buy it back and and I know there are provisions a contract maybe it would be very expensive it cannot possibly be more expensive than tunneling under the 401 but if it maybe it would be very expensive but I also know the provincial government has powers they are expropriating land from people who have run businesses for a generation near Papin Danforth so that they can build the Ontario line.

They have the power to seize that land, right? If they want the 407, they can take it, right? And yes, it would cost money, but it can't possibly cost more than what it already costs. Like, if you had the 407 available, it would become another viable route. You could then, if you wanted to, with or without the 407, you could put tolls on the express lanes of the 401. You could set the tolls in a way that they make real good sense for all those trucks and not sense for other people, right? You could do a whole lot of different things, but this is just like an absurd idea. Like who wants and can now, this is all without even getting into the fact.

And there are some people who will never believe this, but people who study highways all over the world and the 401 has gone from four lanes to 18 lanes at some places. It's 16 for most of it, but that often expands out to 18 when the on ramps come on and all that. The widest highway by lanes in all of North America and it's still guess what grinding traffic right right and this happens no matter where you go in the world when you add more highway lanes

a year or two within a certain period of time traffic reaches the same level it was at before it's called induced demand right because people will keep moving, you know, if you build an entirely new highway that made it possible for you to get downtown Toronto from London, Ontario in 35 minutes, a lot enough people would move there that within a year or two, that highway would be full and it would take three hours, right? Yogi Berra would say, nobody goes there anymore, it's too busy.

That's right, that's right. And so this is like, there's a University of Toronto professor who wrote one of the very influential paper and he called this the fundamental law of traffic congestion. And that is any new lane of traffic that you build or any capacity that you open up on a highway will almost immediately be filled so that traffic reaches the same level it was at before. And it's just what happens, right? You get an immediate relief, right?

So if we open up the 407, we would have a year or so where both the 407 and the 401 would be noticeably less congested, or the 401 at least, would be noticeably less congested and would be easy to drive. But as soon as the commute from Hamilton took one hour during rush hour instead of two and a half, people who currently take the GO train from Hamilton would start driving again, right? People would move to the other side of Hamilton and say, now we can commute from Niagara Falls to Toronto because it's only a two-hour drive. And so that highway would fill up again, I'd say within a year, within two years.

And so you're going to spend however much you're going to spend and you're going to benefit from it for maybe one to two years, maybe three. And Ed Keenan, what it incentivizes people to do is get back into their cars when we really should be focused on getting people out of their cars. Yeah. And, and whenever people hear that, they think like, oh, they think me driving my car is evil. And okay, there are climate reasons why you would like people to drive their cars less

or to use less carbon intensive. And there are city building reasons, I think, why you'd like the roads to be less clogged up with personal vehicles, right? But it's also just the fact of life is that you cannot really make traffic in the city move much faster, right? You can clear up bottlenecks and make it move smoother. But since the 1910s, since the invention of the automobile, I wrote a column that cited this like over the years of research where like if you look at like one of the first things about traffic in cities was that the the

in downtown London England in in the 1940s like the standard rate at which traffic would actually move was like eight miles per hour the average rate and then you look at uh... the u uh... u s government in in manhattan say was doing a lot of studies through the nineteen fifties and sixties because they were trying to build expressways and try to change it and the w the the rate traffic moved

the average speed was again like in that eight mile per hour range and in toronto right now the average speed to traffic moves is like eight miles per hour right if you translate it to whatever kilometers or back and forth right it's like cities the roads fill up to move at about this speed right so you can fit more cars on all going at that same speed by making the roads wider or you can you know do other things but really if I want to move faster I need a subway line that takes me directly to where I want to go or I need a bike lane that can

allows me to skip I can I can go faster than eight miles per hour in the bike lane beside the traffic right or I need to be able to live closer to where I work so I can walk and I may or may not, I'm not going to move faster than eight miles per hour unless I'm really putting on my sprint. Done with daily. But what I am going to do is like enjoy my 10 minute commute, you know, to wherever I'm going, right? It's like there have to be more ways for people to get around and we're just not going to be able to move cars much faster than we do right now, right? Like we're just not. It doesn't matter what you do. And because the other part of the fundamental law of traffic congestion and a lot of self, a lot of people we would consider urban progressives would want to sweep this under the rug a little

bit. Certainly somebody like Doug Ford who's spending $30 billion on public transit is going to want to sweep this under the rug. It's like transit actually doesn't help make, it doesn't clear up traffic congestion at all because as soon as more people take transit, some other people will start driving in the place they used to go, right? So it's like if people from Scarborough could suddenly get downtown, or let's say they live in Scarborough and they work in North York, where there's currently no good way to get there by

public transit, right? They're driving right now. If they had a subway line that takes them right to their office, they stop driving. But suddenly somebody who lives in Pickering and works in Mississauga who, well, somebody who works in Mississauga buys a house in Pickering because they can now drive right like if if if you if space opens up on the road no matter what reason it opens up for it will fill up with other cars so but what you can do by building more mass transit is is make more people able to get where they're going Faster than they otherwise would and so the goal of building bike lanes is not to ease congestion The goal of building new subway lines is not to ease congestion

It's to allow more and more people to avoid congestion altogether by Having a better faster more convenient easier less stressful way to get where they're going even though we know more car drivers are gonna pile right into the open space they as as Doug and others know generally speaking people are kind of dumb so they're not gonna to take this into yeah but yeah but I do do wanna read a headline from you, and again, I realize the tunnel question should not have been in the rapid fire section.

I'm not very good at this rapid fire, am I? Well, it's okay, we're almost done here. You've been amazing. I look forward to your visit every quarter, and I promise everybody, I think it'll be early January. We have a recurring meeting. You were only late for it once. That was last time, when you were a month late.

We had to punt it a couple times, yeah, Yeah. But you're back on schedule. Love to see it. You wrote, someone should tell Doug Ford, this isn't 2012 and he isn't mayor of Toronto. Yeah. I mean, that's related to the tunnel thing, but it is really like, um, but also if I may just to piggyback on that quick, cause, uh, I don't have time for another 20 minutes in that tunnel, but the, uh, Doug Ford came out and you know, you know, I'm a cyclist. I'm a lot a lot of bias I bring to this table. I have a quote from FOTM Tony Nappo, who's an actor. I quite like him as a person, but he put something on his Instagram that boiled my potatoes.

But back to this this Doug Ford thinking he's mayor, this whole no bike lanes that take a lane of like vehicular traffic away. So if a lane of vehicular traffic is being sacrificed for a bike lane, that's against some provincial like he wants to make that again. That also boils my potatoes because to me, leave the bike lanes to Toronto. Like I don't understand the interference from the from the premier when it comes to something as municipal as bike lanes to Toronto, like I don't understand the interference from the from the Premier when it comes to something as municipal as bike lanes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I just think like one of the first things he did when he was made Premier was like shrink the size of Toronto City Council. Then he was like rewriting the powers and descriptions of the mayor's office. He kept talking about how the downtown NDP

Pinchos were not gonna like derail his government like there is a real sense where Like like and this is if bike lanes are not an area of municipal jurisdiction Then I don't know what the heck I know right like it's really like it doesn't get more next He'll be telling you like the garbage, the garbage. Yeah. I mean, and they, they, they already have overridden city zoning laws and powers. They've already rewritten the development charges for cities. It's like, it's like, it seems like the job he really wanted was mayor of Toronto.

And of course he did run for that and he lost. He did lose. Uh, but the best revenge is like, if you don't get the job you want, if you can become the boss of the job you wanted, that's maybe even... So I do know how I want to close. But if I lived in one of those other cities in Ontario that you mentioned earlier, like Sudbury? You recently became aware of.

Sudbury. Did you know there's a Sudbury? Give your balls a tug? Hey, I know I watch a show about a hockey team that plays in Sudbury. Hey Shorzy and Again a knock way and North Bay and Thunder Bay and Sioux lookout if I lived in one of those places Where there's like a crisis in those rural hospitals, right? Where there's like they have no family doctors,

where they have no community medicine at all. Like I might be wondering why the Premier is busy being Mayor of Toronto when he could be actually dealing with areas of municipal or provincial jurisdiction that affect my daily life, right? So I don't know, but the people of Toronto didn't, didn't, are not the people who voted for a death sentence. I find it infuriating. Okay, so I'm going to read again, I'm going to call this the ill-advised post of the week. This is FOTM Tony Nappo on his public Instagram page. So not a personal text or anything like that, but I'm just going to read it.

And we're just going to let, we're not even going to comment on it. So I'm just going to read it. And then I'm going to ask you, because you were covering Donald Trump when he was president of the United States of America, and you were based close to Washington, DC to cover American politics. I'm going to ask you just before we say goodbye, because next time you visit, the election will be in the rear view mirror. When I say election, I mean the American election for president. So I'm going to ask you for your thoughts before I play us out, but I just want to read the Tony Nappo Instagram post that boiled my potatoes. If the government lost one vote for removing all bicycle lanes, he put all bicycle lanes, from every person I have ever seen on a bicycle in a bicycle

lane in my entire life, I don't think that would amount to 500 lost votes. Hashtag major fail. Hashtag city planning or pandering. So FOTM Tony Napa, who I believe is in the new Stu Stone movie, and I will be seeing Tony and that movie on the 10th of October. That's next week. And I'll be at the premiere, which I think is the young Dundas theater there. I'm going to, I'm going to give them a shot. Like I'm gonna I'm gonna give him a shot like I'm just gonna punch him in the stomach when I see Tony. I think that is the most ignorant post I've seen in a long time. Shorzium. Yeah. All right. So we don't have to comment any further because I just want you to give me your take on the US election since we won't talk again on the microphones anyways

before the election which I believe is November 5th. Things look somewhat more hopeful since Kamala Harris was nominated for people who think that Donald Trump returning to office would be a disaster. I certainly am among those people. I like I really think it's hard to overstate and I think watching Donald Trump through this campaign is like like he's unraveling right he's he looks more and more loony all the time and and and I So I think Kamala Harris and Tim Walls look like they they are righted the ship It's still there's no slam dunk. It's like a toss up election right now.

It could be close, it could go either way. And I think like, I'll be biting my nails here watching it like everybody else. I don't have a great prediction. And a lot of mail in ballots, like we learned this from last time that there's, some states take some time to count these mail in ballots. Right?

And as we learned, you don't go to bed anymore. Like it's like it's not just not just mail in balance. It's like early vote ballots, too, because in some states, yeah, they count all those as they come in. But they it's like under seal. But on election night, they immediately add those to the tally. Like they get released right away. Right. And and so those are the first votes you see.

But in some states like Pennsylvania, and this is what we had last time, they're not allowed to start counting all those early ballots. Some mailed in, some passed in person, until the polls close, which means that they've got warehouses full of these that have been cast weeks and weeks ahead of time.

They could have been counting them all ahead of time, but there's a law that says they can't start counting them until the polls close. And so they start on election night. But now that more and more people vote early or vote by mail, there's more and more of those votes. And so that's what we saw last time. That's what it takes days and days for all the votes to be counted. And it's not even all that surprising that the people who voted early maybe voted for somebody different than the people who all rushed out and voted on election day. It's just the way history has taught us. You're most of those mail in ballots in early ballots that we're referring to

now typically go to the Democratic party. Like it seems like the Republican party of sort of like somehow they've. Well, Donald Trump in particular... Is that a term? Now, if you look at Florida, like last time when Donald Trump was trying to vilify it in advance and he was like really trying to discourage, like he's saying, oh, it's a big scam. In Florida, traditionally, all these retirees, all these like bread and butter Republicans have always voted early and they often have voted by mail.

Donald Trump himself voted by mail in Florida. That's fantastic. And so the Republican Party there was like, don't, what are you doing? Don't vilify the mail-in vote. That's our vote, right? Foreign service members, like members of the military, who traditionally are Republicans, always vote by mail, right? And so it's like, but in the contentious places like Arizona and Pennsylvania and whatnot, yeah, the people who were afraid to vote in person last time because of the pandemic were mostly Democrats, right? Like, so, you know, but yeah,

things are gonna be crazy in that election. And again, I fear like, unless it's some kind of slam dunk, there could be more and more days and weeks of like, who won? It's like layer and layer of anxiety living in this world in 2024. Have you noticed that? Like it makes me just want to let me just dive into my Great Lakes beer and unplug. All right. Is that a good idea? It's almost time to do that. I think that's the sound. And this is a no answer to this

question. I don't know if you have one or not, but you talked about these warehouses full of mail-in ballots that sit in Pennsylvania waiting for the polls to close on November 5th so that the good people can count them, right? Like what happens if there's a like a natural disaster or a fire? Like, let's say you have all these mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, which is a swing state and something happens and they're gone. Like what happens? I think that was the plot of The Boys. I thought I wrote that right now.

It was a subplot on The Boys, the TV show where there was an attack on the polling station or the ballot counting station. So yeah, there you go. If you're like choker, you just want to watch the world burn. And you like, yeah, it's like, but also like, you know, you can choose which counties you're targeting and say, oh, that's that's the place where all the Democrats live or that's the place where all the Republicans live and in a city of selection, this could make a big difference. Right. Wow. It's listen, keep doing what you're doing. We need you at the Toronto Star and you know,

I'm your, I am your biggest fan. I just want you to know that. I know Leslie Taylor said that you're his, her favourite. You're actually my favourite. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me here every three months, obviously. See you in three months. And that brings us to the end of our 1,557th show. Let me know if the Toronto Star Podcast division needs a bright young consultant to come in and shake things up over there. TMDS will be riding their bike to the well and we'll sort things out for you. Yeah, you can use this as a demo reel. Oh no, I didn't even record this.

You can follow me on social media. Go to torontomike.com. I noticed on Twitter, the Keenan Wire is rarely used anymore because Elon Musk is an asshole. The account is still there. So, but yeah. Do you update anything? There's no social media I'm really using. Yeah, yeah.

Just subscribe to the Star and you can read all of Ed's private thoughts in the Toronto Star. Much love to all who made this can read all of Ed's private thoughts in the Toronto Star. Much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery. Don't forget your beer, Mr. Keenan. Palma Pasta, your lasagna's in the freezer. I'll go get it. RecycleMyElectronics.ca, Raymond James Canada, welcome back, Minaris, and Ridley Funeral

Home. See you all. I got to go to my... Oh, I think it's Leona Boyd if I did that off the top of my head. and Ridley Funeral Home, see you all. I gotta go to my camera. Oh, I think it's Leona Boyd if I did that off the top of my head. I'm working on something special that's related to the 1987 Blue Jays,

but if it's not ready in time, the next episode of Toronto Mike will be Leona Boyd. Woo, Monday at two p.m. See you all, then. They're picking up trash and they're putting down rogues And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can