Something stinks at City Hall

It always starts small.

Corruption, that is. Someone takes a pen or a notepad from work. “I’m entitled to it,” they tell themselves.

Next time, it’s something bigger. A stapler. A tool. “I’m entitled to it,” again. Then, later, maybe something even bigger - a laptop, say. “It’s an old model. They won’t miss it,” they say to themselves. And on and on it goes. Before you know it, they’re expensing fancy meals with family members and sole-sourcing contracts to cronies.

Corruption always starts that way. So, too, does its evil twin, entitlements. And Progress Toronto - the far-Left smear squad that does grimy work for Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and a raft of crypto-Trotskyite ward candidates - is certainly entitled to its entitlements, isn’t it?

When people claim they’re “entitled” to something, they mean they have a legal, moral right to it. But just because something is superficially legal doesn't mean it is moral, does it?

Take this newspaper’s big scoop this week, penned by intrepid Sun reporter Justin Holmes. Headline: “Deputy mayor’s pals given huge DEI payday by city hall - City hall has paid consultants with personal ties to Ausma Malik and a key Chow staffer more than half a million dollars since 2022.”

All of this came on the heels of another Holmes scoop, that transit unit ATU Local 113 was allegedly paying workers - which is against the rules - to campaign for Olivia Chow.

I’m biased - see the disclaimer below this opinion column - but let me say: this stinks. And it may account for the dramatic drop in support for the candidates that Progress Toronto is supporting, particularly Chow.

First, what is Progress Toronto? Progress Toronto is Olivia Chow's previously-unregistered third party hit squad. It's led by a founder of the Iranian Canadian Congress (ICC). The ICC has sponsored rallies in support of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror group which subjugates women, gays and dissidents - and kills Jews.

That’s not all. Progress Toronto has campaigned against bubble zones designed to protect Jews from attacks while at prayer. They are indifferent to people losing their lives to toxic drugs, and the effect of the drug epidemic on communities. They want to defund the police, even if that makes communities less safe.

So, a super nice bunch, in other words. And, this week, we learned from Justin Holmes and this newspaper that Progress Toronto luminaries have had their snouts buried in the City Hall trough.

Introducing: Monumental Projects Inc. It’s a mysterious consulting firm that is led by Kofi Hope and Zahra Ebrahim, two founders of Progress Toronto. Hope also co-chaired Olivia Chow’s 2014 campaign advisory group. Ebrahim is a long-time Chow comrade and has appeared on stages with the Toronto Mayor. So, they’re all friends. Obviously.

Those friendships made headlines, this week, when it was learned that Hope and Ebrahim’s Monumental Projects was paid the, well, monumental amount of $254,617.79 in 13 separate payments over the past few years. More than $200,000 of those taxpayer funds were for “public engagement” on naming Toronto streets and places, and writing a plan about another plan (seriously), the Development Review Strategic Plan.

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