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John Michael McGrath

@jm-mcgrath.bsky.social
13K followers 911 following 4.2K posts

Ontario politics and policy for TVO. Writer and Podcast co-host, #onpoli jm_mcgrath.01 on signal

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Reposted by John Michael McGrath
Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 1h
Sort of insane fact about how broken US urban planning is—America now spends more building *just the lights for roads and highways* than on all subways & ground mass transit combined Spending on roadway *pavement* is 18x transit spending
a graph of roadway and mass transit lights
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 1h
In other news, this is about as expected
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 2h
Ah yes the sanctity of Toronto's non-partisan municipal elections, where arguably the most important pro-housing voice on council is going to struggle to get re-elected against a replacement-level former Liberal MP
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George Pearkes @peark.es · 2h
Leaving the Trump thing aside entirely...what a portrait
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 3h
New frontiers in elder fraud being opened up.
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The Rundown @therundowntvo.bsky.social · 3h
Are Toronto's bike lanes really empty? Charlie Buckley hit the streets to count cyclists, dug into city data, and compared the numbers with major cycling cities around the world.
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Eric Rauchway @rauchway.bsky.social · 5h
If our times have told us nothing else, it’s that the inability to understand a text is diagnostic of something
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 6h
Kinda perfect non-housing case with all the hallmarks of local NIMBYism, where Napanee wants to build a trail through a local cemetery. www.thewhig.com/news/candidl...
thewhig.com
‘Candidly, offensive ’: Napanee council unanimously backs Riverside Cemetery trail
Town vehemently defends openness of process
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The Rundown @therundowntvo.bsky.social · 7h
🎙️ On #onpoli with @spaikin.bsky.social & @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social: • Stelco layoffs and Trump's tariffs • Municipal election watch: Windsor & Halton Hills • Toronto zoning battles • A facelift for Queen's Park? • Gary Malkowski's deaf legacy in Ontario 🎧 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 8h
the greatest green degrowth ecofeminist president of our lifetimes
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 8h
"My racism makes it impossible for me to be chill about you; this is somehow your problem"
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 8h
Not gonna post a pic of my legs but I am among the be-shorted, don't be weak people
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 8h
I debated whether to share this since it feels like a cheap shot but at least one of my fellow BEY voters put this up on a lamppost, these are people who've had the closest experience with BB:
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Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 8h
not that california was ever really on the table for the gop but trump watched a ton of steve hilton on fox news and thats what pushed him to back him in the primary. now the gop ad makers are feasting on the campaign cash while he will be yet another republican who lost statewide in ca.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 11h
Latest Badenoch: “If [Andy Burnham]’s not calling an election, why’s he talking about things happening in 2030?” - alarming the extent to which so much of our political class cannot process the idea of “planning for events four years in the future”.
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Norm Wilner @normwilner.bsky.social · 17h
RIVER CARTWRIGHT Listen to me, please, listen! There is a bomb in the stadium. I don't know where, I don't know how big it is, but I -do- know you're the only person who can help me find it. ROY KENT Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
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Philip Gourevitch @pgourevitch.bsky.social · 23h
Every Dems’s dream stump speech
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Boo!-per Lund @cooperlund.online · 01/10/2026
He's not joking, this reads like a very dark episode of The Simpsons
en.wikipedia.org
Mary (elephant) - Wikipedia
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(MIS)Treated @mistreatedtvo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Why do autoimmune diseases impact women more? www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCPO...
youtube.com
Why do autoimmune diseases impact women more? | (MIS)Treated
YouTube video by TVO Today
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
INBOX: Ontario Liberals say their membership has grown to 55,000 eligible voters in this leadership race — substantially lower than the 2023 race, which claimed over 80,000.
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
oh my
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Jeremy Diamond ☕️ @dmnd.me · 01/10/2026
Angie Nixon absolutely laying into JD Vance on this website and then dropping as an aside that lower property insurance is very important to her... look, I hope she wins and she should say whatever she needs to, but Lyndon Fucking Johnson couldn't save the insurance market in Florida at this point
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 01/10/2026
Man, imagine you're minding your own business, getting kind of drunk with your friends at a picturesque brewery in Maine, when suddenly John Roberts walks by and you get to start heckling him. Must have felt incredible. That's the dream. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/u...
The chief justice used to preside over a Supreme Court whose members were afforded more privacy and freedom than many other public officials. Once, years ago, Mr. Lipson and the chief justice found themselves up the peninsula from Port Clyde without a car, Mr. Lipson recalled in an interview. So he stuck out his thumb by the side of the road and a pickup truck pulled over. He and the nation’s top jurist hopped in the back and hitchhiked back to town.

Now, Mr. Lipson said, he is cautious about introducing his friend to strangers. This year, on an outing to nearby Monhegan Island, people recognized the chief justice as he walked by a brewery and started to chant: You should be ashamed.
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Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray” @ryanjreilly.com · 01/10/2026
Judge: “What future prosecution could even occur?” DOJ: “That I don’t know." Judge: “Give me an example of one possible thing that could happen... Even theoretically, what could there be?” DOJ lawyer conceded he had no satisfactory answer.
nbcnews.com
Judge bars U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro from charging ex-Olympian in Reflecting Pool case
The judge dismissed the case against David Hearn with prejudice, citing “exceptional circumstances” that included President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on Pirro’s office.
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Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray” @ryanjreilly.com · 01/10/2026
“This was a miscarriage of justice, and what happened to Mr. Hearn is an outrage that should shock every American. This administration chose to pursue an unjust prosecution against Mr. Hearn."
nbcnews.com
Judge bars U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro from charging ex-Olympian in Reflecting Pool case
The judge dismissed the case against David Hearn with prejudice, citing “exceptional circumstances” that included President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on Pirro’s office.
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This post is about last night's Liberal leadership town hall I co-moderated but it includes this photo of me doing the actual reporter thing in the wild www.accordingto.ca/p/ontario-li...
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
AAAAAAHHHHH!!!! AAAH! AAAH! AAAH! AAAH!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
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Mike Finger @mikefinger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Just asked Victor Wembanyama if he’d ever consider promoting a sports betting company. “Absolutely not. I will never do that. Honestly, I think it's very sad to see some players promote it. .. Everybody does whatever they want, but without me.”
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The Beaverton @thebeaverton.com · 01/10/2026
Trump becomes only object on Earth exempt from Canadian urge to apologize
thebeaverton.com
Trump becomes only object on Earth exempt from Canadian urge to apologize
"Canadians will say they’re sorry, in that particular Canadian pronunciation, to literally anything, but they won’t say it to Donald Trump."
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I don't have profound objections to fast-tracking approvals but that we're gonna end up subsidizing construction outright irks me. Now, if we were decommissioning US-bound pipes 1:1 in barrel terms... www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
cbc.ca
West Coast oil pipeline becomes 1st project designated in national interest | CBC News
The federal and Alberta governments have announced that a proposed pipeline carrying one million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the B.C. coast has become the first project designated in the nati...
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Aaron Wherry @aaronwherry.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Unexpectedly durable piece of Justin Trudeau's legacy: publicly financed pipeline construction.
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
New from me at TVO, on a new report from the Toronto Board of Trade arguing for why we need more provincial control over zoning (and what it has to do with prefab housing.) www.tvo.org/article/anal...
tvo.org
ANALYSIS: Should the province rip up Toronto’s zoning rules? | TVO Today
A new report argues that the city is getting in its own way — and wants Queen’s Park to step in.
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Kinsella can now claim to have joined and left the campaigns of both leading mayoral candidates in this race.
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
My take is that the existence of a 1.4 acre parcel of residential land in downtown anywhere in the GTA is a policy failure. www.thestar.com/news/gta/bra...
thestar.com
Brampton refuses to disclose records on Patrick Brown’s home renovations. Decision called a ‘secretive’ violation of freedom of information rules
Brampton officials say releasing information on Brown's building permits would endanger the "life and physical safety" of an unnamed individual.
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Except that in no way does it boggle the mind.
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Even hotter take: the fact that ebikes let teens in the suburbs suddenly have freedom to move around the public realm unsupervised is precisely why many older people are trying to ban them (using safety as a pretext)
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Ben K. @benjaminkabak.com · 30/09/2026
I feel dumb even just having to say this but the reason passports are mailed out in plain regular envelopes is that so that people do not attempt to steal easily recognizable passports in the mail. bsky.app/profile/carn...
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Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 30/09/2026
@paulbarter.bsky.social has noted that as countries develop, cities shift from being oriented around motorcycles to transit. Unfortunately NYC is backsliding: people are shifting to e-micro-mobility because transit options are poor, and with that sometimes comes death www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/n...
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TVO @wearetvo.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
September 30 marks National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day to remember the children who never returned home and to honour Survivors and generations affected by residential schools. Watch Remembering the Children, a national commemorative broadcast on TVO at 7 p.m. Every Child Matters.
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ABC News Australia @news.abc.net.au · 30/09/2026
EV sales double in Australia as one in four new cars now electric
abc.net.au
One EV sold every 100 seconds as Australia catches up to the world
Electric cars have become mainstream in the past decade, making up one in four new car sales.
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Damien Moule @damienmoule.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I keep hearing councillors go on Toronto the Politics the Show to tout the achievements of Toronto Builds rather than express concern that it and its precursors have yet to build a single unit of affordable housing after 7 years and this needs focused council attention. I am confused.
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nanzhounoodles.bsky.social @nanzhounoodles.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
YOU hate Nader for throwing the 2000 election. I hate Nader for ushering in the era of Consumer as a primary political identity, touting the tort system as an alternative to normal democratic deliberation, and making things generally work worse in the USA.
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Star Wars Emperor's 'Gooood' Moment
ALT: Star Wars Emperor's 'Gooood' Moment
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🗽LOLGOP🗽 @lolgop.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"This was elder care masquerading as world-saving policy, stringing together some of Trump’s favorite activities — proximity to power, document signings, and arbitrary renamings — for an entire day."
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Today in "committee of adjustment notices spotted while walking my dog": replacing a bungalow with a 2-storey home, needs six variances from Toronto's zoning by-law (incl height, lot coverage, and FSI.)
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Brian M 🇺🇦 @bravado1.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Thank god the city of Windsor is extremely financially stable to do things like this during an auto trade war
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
LOOOOOOL Dilkens would use strong mayor powers to kill fourplexes if needed windsorstar.com/news/dilkens...
windsorstar.com
Dilkens vows to use strong mayor powers to kill fourplexes if new council supports sweeping density
'For a lot of Windsorites, this was a central issue to them'
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Someone already said it earlier but: basic journalism-school level verification would have saved them (I'm glad they're dumb)
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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
McGrath brand maintenance: this is bad for Tory housing policy, Aitchison seemed to at least mostly get it
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Secretary of Defense Rock @sodrock.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Oh, oh my
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