Open Sources Guelph #422 - April 20, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we meet some characters. Did you know that four dozen people want to be the next mayor of Toronto? Perhaps they're all animated by the potential fate of the Toronto waterfront, which is once again in the news. Some of them would likely find good company with Elon Musk who has no problem finding strange bedfellows, and speaking of strange bedfellows we need to talk about Fox News. What a week to talk smack about the news!

This Thursday, April 20, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Ready Mayor One. The first poll in the Toronto Mayoral By-election came out and it revealed a four-way race between current Toronto councillor Josh Matlow, former councillor Ana Bailão, former police chief Mark Saunders, and Olivia Chow, who just got into the race on Monday. There are nearly 50 candidates in all now including a wannabe auteur, a Toronto Sun columnist, and a genuine white nationalist, so where do things sit nearly two months till Election Day?

A Disquiet Place. After several days of speculation, Premier Doug Ford finally announced that the plan for the new Ontario Place is going to include moving the Ontario Science Centre down to the waterfront where it will join a European spa chain and a new Live Nation concert venue. If it's starting to feel like everyone's making it up as they go along, you're not alone, so is there really a plan when it comes to revitalizing Ontario Place, and why do it in the middle of a mayoral election?

Off Label. Elon Musk's Heart of Darkness-like journey to render Twitter unusable to anyone but far-right gadflies won new favour this week with Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. After Twitter labelled accounts from NPR and the BBC as "government-funded media", Poilievre wrote to Musk on Conservative Party letterhead to ask Musk to do the same thing for the CBC, and guess what happened next? What does Poilievre get out of this weird alliance?

Fox on the Run. It was supposed to be the trial of the century and a test of nearly half-a-century of precedent in media law, but after lunchtime on Tuesday it was clear that Dominion Voting System's defamation lawsuit against Fox News had resulted in a settlement agreement. And while it's true that Dominion is getting more than three-quarters-of-a-billion dollars for Fox News lies, we won't see their famous stars swearing to that on the stand, or on their TV network. Was this the best outcome?

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.