John Bowker
@johnbowker
Policy researcher, retired record & book peddler. Transit, housing, land use, energy, infrastructure & misc #onpoli wonkery. #ONDP. Tweets my own (he/him)
The P3 contract to build the 3-km Pape stretch of the Ontario Line comes in at a whopping $1.4 billion per km. The per-km cost of subway construction has more than quadrupled under the Ford government www.infrastructureontario.ca/en/news-and-... #onpoli
Reminder that the opaque & unaccountable Metrolinx initially denied responsibility for this fuel spill, insisting that its systems were working perfectly www.barrietoday.com/local-news/m... #onpoli
AUDITOR GENERAL: When procuring medical AI vendors, the Ford government weighted "accuracy" at only 4% of total score. Most approved vendors had inaccuracies in their results, including “incorrect information, AI hallucinations and incomplete information" www.thetrillium.ca/news/health/... #onpoli
"Nieuport borrowed $650M to purchase the Billy Bishop Terminal. Nieuport may be under substantial pressure from investors to increase profits. Clearly, Nieuport has the most to gain if the federal government approves the operation of jets at Billy Bishop Airport" spacing.ca/toronto/2026... #onpoli
According to @waterfront4all.bsky.social this rendering more accurately reflects the extended Billy Bishop airport runway under Transport Canada’s aerodrome regulations, not including the expanded marine exclusion zone, which likely would close the western gap to watercraft #onpoli #cdnpoli #TOpoli
Despite insisting it completely restructured its leadership team after being sanctioned by the OSC, Argo/Facedrive seemed to retain some association with former CEO Sayan Navaratnam, who listed Argo among his investment firm’s holdings web.archive.org/web/20251014... #onpoli
Last year, Argo/Facedrive hired a Doug Ford staffer to become its head of business operations #onpoli
Facedrive was sanctioned by the Ontario Securities Commission for making misleading statements related to technology developed with provincial funding that turned out to be repackaged devices anyone could buy off Alibaba for a few bucks each www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic... #onpoli
Reminder that in 2013, after facing heavy criticism for procuring diesel trains for the UP Express, Kathleen Wynne's transportation minister assured the public that the UP Express would be electrified by 2017 #onpoli
This internal Metrolinx report warning, “the state of the GO Rail Fleet is currently poor,” is completely at odds with Metrolinx’s public report the same month, which boasted of the “strong performance” of its fleet and corridor maintenance #PublicInquiry assets.metrolinx.com/image/upload... #onpoli
This is a smokescreen. The Ford government knows full well that cabinet deliberations and the advice they receive from staff have always been protected under existing freedom-of-information law #onpoli
CIBC: “The best way to describe the current state of the housing market is to say that prices are still too high to buy and not high enough to build … the economics of homebuilding is simply broken” economics.cibccm.com/cds?id=fa94c... #onpoli
Last year, ACTO released an important report on how Ontario’s housing policies, including the Residential Tenancies Act, are failing the survivors of gender based violence www.acto.ca/production/w... #onpoli
Tech expert Carmi Levy on Ford government’s report on Intimate Partner Violence: “This has all the tells, all the signatures of having been at least partly generated by AI” omny.fm/shows/newsta... #onpoli
Ontario government report on intimate partner violence partly AI-generated, NDP says www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic... #onpoli
As more criminal cases get thrown out due to court backlogs & unconstitutional delays, the Ford government is planning significant cuts to the Justice sector, for all its tough talk on auto theft & bail reform budget.ontario.ca/2025/chapter... #onpoli
Soft on crime: Fraud incidents have doubled in Ontario in the last decade, but fewer charges are being laid, and the majority of cases get tossed out, due to lack of provincial funding www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... #onpoli
Facedrive was once worth more than SNC-Lavalin before its stock price crashed as people asked what, if anything, it actually did. The Ford govt gave this oddly well-connected company $2.5M for devices the CEO bought cheap from a Chinese manufacturer www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art... #onpoli
Behold the Ford government's contempt for the public consultation requirements of the Environmental Bill of Rights ... and basic math ero.ontario.ca/index.php/no... #onpoli
The Ford govt & the ex-Infrastructure Ontario CEO who is now the Metrolinx CEO say new P3 procurement methods apply lessons from the Eglinton Crosstown fiasco. But the Auditor General recently reported that these methods have made things even WORSE www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/a... #onpoli
Electricity rates for households are increasing by nearly 30% starting next month, hidden behind increasing taxpayer-funded subsidies now covering nearly 25% of hydro bills oeb.ca/sites/defaul... #onpoli
… and no thanks to Infrastructure Ontario, which covered up a fraud admission by one of its top executives, then somehow failed to find the mountain of evidence this former executive had conspired to rig the $300M St. Mike’s procurement www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic... #onpoli
It sure looks like the Ford government decided to stop enforcing the Employment Standards Act, which is supposed to protect workers from things like wage theft, unpaid overtime and stolen tips tparkin.substack.com/p/ontario-wo... #onpoli
“Ontario’s justice system is failing its basic promises of fairness, timeliness & public safety. If there are no consequences to offenses, if there are no consequences to crimes committed, we become a land of lawlessness” said NDP’s @kristynwongtam.bsky.social www.cp24.com/local/toront... #onpoli