The 905er Podcast The 905er

The City of Hamilton saw itself come under attack by cybercriminals in early 2024. City Council, apps, phone communication and the city's library system were all inaccessible or unavailable. Criminals used malware to hold the city hostage until it paid a ransom. The city did not pay and eventually, order was restored.
This is not an isolated event though. Toronto Public Library saw its system become unusable for a year due to a cyber attack, and numerous small municipalities in Ontario have reported similar events over the years. This isn't going away. Cyber attacks and ransomware are the new norm. A common feature that governments and businesses alike need to face reality about. In the modern age, if you possess data you're a target, and everyone possesses data. Municipalities are ripe targets though, as they have a treasure trove of our data stored. Everything including tax records, business files, social insurance numbers, and credit cards, chances are goes through our municipalities at one point. So naturally we asked the question, are our municipalities up to the task of securing our personal information?
To answer the question we invited on to the podcast Seyed Hejazi of MNP. Seyed is a cyber security expert who is hired by government institutions as well as private enterprises to consult on their cyber security needs. We spoke with him today to find out exactly how large of a problem this is, what is needed to secure our data from cyber criminals, and are our municipalities capable of meeting the challenge.
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
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Sabrina Nanji of the QPObserver joins us on this episode as we get into the weeds with the Milton By-Election.
When Parm Gill announced that he was stepping down from the Ontario PC's to run for Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives, it of course opened up a By-Election to replace him as Milton's MPP. Normally, By-Elections are sleepy affairs with little fanfare, however, this one has an undercurrent of importance to it. To start, the Ontario PC's need to show that they are still relevant in the 905, and to do so they have scooped former Ontario Liberal supporter as well as Milton Councillor Zee Hamid to run for them. Fans of the podcast will remember our interview with him when he ran for Mayor last municipal election.
For the Ontario Liberals, there were talks about whether or not new leader Bonnie Crombie would seek a seat in the Legislature via Milton. However it appears after a lot of back and forth over candidates, Galen Naidoo-Harris will carry the banner for the Ontario Liberals in this race. What does this say about Bonnie's leadership and the Ontario Liberal brand? Especially as they only lost this seat by a narrow margin in the last general election?
To discuss this all and to share her insight, we are joined by Sabrina Nanji. Sabrina is a former reporter with the Toronto Star and has since gone off to start her venture in journalism with the QPObserver. You can find her work here:
https://qpobserver.ca/
Our previous episode with Zee Hamid is here:
https://905er.ca/2022/09/the-race-for-milton-zeeshan-hamid/
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
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Hamilton Police have been having a pretty bad start to 2024.
Last month, the Hamilton Police Board made headlines when it took disciplinary action against one of its members, Ward 2 Councillor Cameron Kroetsch for asking questions surrounding its budgetary process. As of this airing date, Councillor Kroetsch is suspended from serving on the Police Board in Hamilton.
This bold action on the part of the police board raises serious questions about how much oversight and accountability do our elected officials have over the municipalities biggest expenditure. Do police in this province operate without the same conditions that other municipal agencies have?
We thought we'd get into this topic where it started, by asking Councillor Kroetsch to join us. We've had him on before to The 905er when we first launched this podcast a few years ago. Since that time, he was elected to represent Ward 2 on Hamilton City Council in the last election. Today he joins us to discuss what happened around the table at the Hamilton Police Board.
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, we released an episode on the rise of anti-semitism in the 905. We released it and thought it would be some time before we might have to revisit the topic. We were shocked to find out that only a few weeks later the topic would rear its ugly head once again in Hamilton.
On March 19th, without warning The Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton announced unilaterally it would be postponing the Hamilton Jewish Film Festival, slated to happen in April, citing concerns from emails and social media surrounding the event as justification for the decision. Later, the Cinema would clarify that no specific threats had been issued to the venue, just a general atmosphere towards the event itself because it was a Jewish Film Festival. Nevertheless, pressure on the Cinema to cancel the event because it was a Jewish cultural event can only be described as anti-semitic. We reached out to the Playhouse to invite them for comment, however they did not respond to our requests.
We did want to discuss this though with the organizers of the festival to hear their side. To that end, we invite back to the podcast Jazmyn Rymberg of the Hamilton Jewish Federation, to present their side and how this setback will not deter Hamilton's Jewish community from celebrating their heritage.
Tickets for the Film Festival can be found here:
https://www.jewishhamilton.org/film-festival
Our Previous episode with Jazmyn Rymberg can be found here:
https://905er.ca/2024/01/confronting-anti-semitism-in-the-905/
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, the Doug Ford government has promised Whitby a new hospital. As the region continues to grow it is becoming apparent that the status quo in terms of its health care will not do. In a notoriously safe PC riding like Whitby and Durham, it seems like they would be a shoo-in for a brand spanking new hospital, just like Doug promised. So where is it? Why hasn't the Doug Ford PC's started the process of fulfilling their promise to the people of Durham Region?
In a notoriously safe conservative part of the province like Durham and Whitby, it shocked us to hear about Whitby Mayor Elizabeth Roy's campaign to put public pressure on the Ontario PC party to own up to their promise. Why did she have to start a PR push last month to ask the province to spend only $3 million to start the process of development for a badly needed hospital? To answer those questions and learn more about how dire the situation is in Whitby's healthcare system, we invited her to the podcast.
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few weeks ago, Hamilton City Council voted to redesign its major street running into its downtown core.
The new plan is to essentially divide Main St, a one-way six-lane wide boulevard running through the middle of its downtown into a two-way street, despite concerns from city staff that this would create a problem with traffic, leading to congestion. Their concern is that this move will limit the ability to travel down and through the downtown. Is this a pointless and ultimately futile move on the part of Hamilton City Council? Or is this a brave decision to take steps to transform a decaying downtown into a vibrant pedestrian and people-friendly place to live, work and play?
One person who is highly critical of Hamilton City Council's decision is Hamilton Spectator columnist Scott Radley. His opinion piece criticizing the council's decision caught our eye and so we invited him to share his opinion in-depth and see if we were wrong in our approval of the city council's decision. What happened was a great conversation with two sides of the topic on how best to revitalize and improve one of Canada's most important cities. Did either side win? Not sure, but some great ideas hopefully popped out for you to listen to. This is how these debates are supposed to go, isn't it?
Scott's Column in The Spec
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices