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I asked experts how to counter political rage farming and deception. Here’s a citizen’s tool kit.

Summoning ‘resilience,’ Vancouver’s Filipino community grapples with unimaginable grief.

People attend mass at St. Mary the Virgin South Hill Church on Sunday, April 27, 2025, the day after a man hit and killed at least 11 people at a Filipino community festival in Vancouver

In every riding we reported on—from Taiaiako’n–Parkdale–High Park to Toronto–St. Paul’s to Bowmanville–Oshawa North to across Peel—the pattern has been the same. Most Liberal and NDP candidates have been willing to sit and answer questions. Every Conservative candidate has ignored or declined our requests for interviews.

To be clear, this issue isn’t specific to The Local. Toronto–St. Paul’s candidate Don Stewart didn’t just ignore us, he turned down The Toronto Star and National Post. Across ridings, and across media outlets—from the CBC to Global News to sympathetic conservative newspapers like the National Post—candidates from the Conservative Party are simply refusing to talk with the press.

As I’ve grown older, I now know that politics is different for everyone. For some, it’s about taxes. For others, it’s about supporting a political party like some support their favourite sports team: forever loyal no matter what.

There’s a quote attributed to the Greek politician, Pericles: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.”

At the very least, even when people trip up and get things wrong, we’re trying. Bots, social media giants, and bad-faith actors are not trying to have those conversations. They’re not trying to understand different viewpoints. They are trying to incite, divide, and confuse voters. If we can’t talk politics person-to-person, neighbour-to-neighbour, and especially among family, how can we learn from one another or understand each other? How can we feel empathy when we see the other person as the problem?

As election day draws closer, some indications show that Canadians are paying more attention than they have in years. Maybe we’re talking politics more with each other instead of letting the bots and bad actors take control. That would be a start.

In August, Goldberg will make the swim with a clear objective in mind: to be the first openly transgender person to swim across Lake Ontario.

The swim is 52 kilometres and will take between 20 to 26 hours. Goldberg knows it's is no easy task, but he’s motivated.

“It's really important for me to be that person who is visible doing this — and for my swim to be a piece of visibility and advocacy so that trans people can look at athletics in general ... and go, ‘Oh, this is for us too,’” Goldberg told TorontoToday.

Goldberg's swim comes at a time where the involvement of transgender people in sports is under attack by some conservative politicians, both in the United States and on home soil.

In April, Goldberg created a GoFundMe page to support his swim and mission for trans visibility. He aims to raise $12,500 to pay for safety boats and an experienced navigation crew, a medical safety team, nutrition and health supplies, weather monitoring services and training support.

Alongside his athletic effort, the page says Goldberg's open water swim will display the "resilience required to navigate the world as a transgender person."

He's hopeful that his swim will "show transgender youth that there are no boundaries to what they can achieve."

All money raised beyond the fundraising goal will go to LGBT YouthLine, a peer support organization for LGBTQ+ youth across Ontario.

Goldberg is a former peer volunteer with the group. He said working with the organization was a big part of his life and gender transition.

Across political institutions, public spending on infrastructure is often shaped not just by economic need but by political strategy. Governments in power have historically rewarded loyal districts and secured electoral support rather than prioritizing the areas with the greatest real need for investment.

Otherwise referred to as “distributive politics,” there has been limited study on it in Canada, due partly to the difficulty of accessing comprehensive data. Since infrastructure programs are administered by multiple government agencies at different levels, data is often fragmented, inconsistently recorded, or not centralized, making large-scale analysis more challenging.

The issue of political discretion in allocating infrastructure projects and benefiting government-held core districts disproportionately ignores the broader public interest. After all, allocating resources based on electoral factors over genuine need can be viewed as a form of political bribery: votes are effectively exchanged for funding.

Social-welfare legislation often comes in the form of private members’ bills, which are typically assigned lower priority. Many are repeatedly introduced across multiple parliamentary sessions but are never adopted. So, while the death of social legislation is not uncommon, the combined effect of prorogation and the federal election was particularly damaging in this case.

Although prorogation and Prime Minister Carney’s call for a spring election undermined the tackling of these worrisome and widespread public-health issues, the death of social-support legislation in Parliament is endemic.

A fundamental review and restructuring of Canada’s legislative process is warranted.

Australia and the U.K. offer some examples of possible structural reforms. With respect to the former, the Federation Chamber, technically a Parliamentary Committee, has provided a secondary venue for the debate and adoption of simple and uncontroversial legislation since 1994.

The Conservative Quebec [sic?] platform, unveiled recently by Leader Pierre Poilievre, says: “A Conservative government would put an end to the imposition of woke ideology . . . in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”

Using similar arguments – especially with regard to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies – the Trump administration has systematically cut federal funding for critical scientific research. Projects studying vaccines, infectious diseases such as HIV, and the health of sexual and gender minorities were specifically axed.

Despite Poilievre’s attempts to distance himself from Trump in some areas, his platform reveals he would follow the same path in attacking critical research, which should be free from political interference.

Voters must take this seriously. Canadians deserve better. We deserve a government that won’t muzzle scientists and won’t silence research when it is not convenient for a political agenda.

New vulnerabilities are surfacing. While most polls suggest the vast majority of Canadian adults are resolute in resisting any such takeover, the younger generation (18-35) is much more inclined – given certain favourable terms – to join the United States. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be susceptible to Trump and his appeals.

One of the most unacknowledged reasons is the failure of our school systems to teach the current generation about historic Canadian resistance to U.S. threats, incursions and trade sanctions going back to the American Revolution.

The result that alarmed Colin MacEachern, a former Halifax high school history educator now teaching in Australia, was the susceptibility of today’s students and their teachers to Trump’s bluster and blandishments.

MacEachern wrote on social media that his students would likely have no comprehension of the U.S. doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” or the American threat to Canada that was a major factor in nudging us toward Confederation.

It’s also fair to assume they have little or no knowledge of critical events of U.S. pressure on Canada such as the American invasion of Quebec in 1775, the War of 1812, the 1911 election reciprocity debate, the nuclear warheads controversy of the 1960s or American pressure to join the Iraq War in 2003.

According to her campaign materials, Liberal candidate Stephanie McLean might sound like a Liberal candidate who could appeal to working-class voters in the Vancouver Island riding of Esquimalt–Saanich–Sooke.

But McLean’s allegiances can be difficult to peg down. After leaving the Alberta NDP, McLean became a donor supporting Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in 2023 and decided only a month ago she would now be running for the Liberals in BC.

Some members of BC’s labour movement also say McLean, who has represented employers in labour disputes, has a questionable history representing the interests of workers in BC given her past ties to a union that has been ostracized by the province’s labour movement as well as influential “anti-union” figures in the province.