In the latest episode of On The Line, Matt Gurney welcomes two very different guests for two very different conversations — and both of them are well worth your time.
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The episode opens with a wide-ranging chat with Dan Seljak, who joins Matt to unpack an issue that somehow turned into a strangely complicated political fight in Toronto. The whole thing should have been simple: should the city allow small retail outlets inside residential neighbourhoods? Most of us grew up with corner stores, coffee shops, and little walk-in places woven into the communities around us. But Toronto’s own governance rules have made these kinds of businesses nearly impossible to open, and the city has been steadily losing the ones it still has.
Dan set out originally to save one small store that committed the terrible sin of … selling coffee to customers. What followed was an unexpectedly intense battle to protect all the remaining shops and to make space for new ones. Dan talks about how he found himself pulled into the fight, what it revealed about the way cities make decisions, and why something so basic became so hard. He and Matt dig into a bigger question, too: how did urban governance in Canada become so tangled that even the simple things are impossible to achieve? This isn’t a left-right issue — there’s a surprising amount of agreement across political lines — and yet nothing gets done. How did we box ourselves into this, and how do we get out?
You can read more from Dan, and keep up with his work, at Another Glass Box.
After Dan, John Wright joins the show. John is a long-time friend of The Line and has been involved in a campaign to raise public awareness about a once-celebrated Canadian military hero who has almost disappeared from our national memory. He and Matt pick up the thread from last week’s discussion about Remembrance Day on The Line Podcast, exploring why these stories fade and why they matter. John also shares a quick update on his own professional world — and it’s worth sticking around for. For more information about John’s new venture, go here. To learn more about the RCAF Foundation, go here.
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