@classonde
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Fintech VC - that’s it, super boring
Joined March 2007
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Every Toronto mayoral pitch right now is “get the crazies off the TTC” and/or “reduce crime.” Yes real but also just a symptom.
Disorder on the TTC tracks an economy that no longer produces enough good jobs, housing, and tax base at rates people can actually pay. When the pie shrinks, you get more people in crisis and less money to deal with it.
Fix the economy first: • more private investment and jobs • housing that gets built • a growing assessment base
Then you get safer streets and more revenue at lower rates to fund mental health, outreach, and transit properly.
Treat the fever if you want. Treat the infection if you want the city back.
Yes, I’m skeptical of this government. Not because the other team is in power because they and Liberal voters kept a deeply unqualified leader at the helm for nine years who, by every serious measure, left the country worse off. Skepticism after that isn’t partisan. It’s pattern recognition.
Christian Lassonde retweeted
Comments off.
Three of the most expensive cities on the continent, meeting to discuss affordability.
I can only imagine what conclusions they are going to reach: “the crux of the affordability issue lies at the nexus of colonialism, white supremacy, corporate capitalist greed, all overseen by the Jew… I mean Israel!”
Today I am in New York at the Urban 20 Mayor’s Summit, co-hosted by @NYCMayor and @MayorOfLA, discussing common issues facing the world’s largest municipalities.
Here are my remarks from this morning’s session where I accepted an award and grant on behalf of the City of Toronto for our Play Mobile program.
If you one-shotted your deck with AI we notice. Why? Because we read your deck. It’s awful.
Actually read it before you send it.
Christian Lassonde retweeted
This 👇
A decade of anti-pipeline laws, tanker bans, and tax creep told the world Canada was closed for business. The activist wing that cheered every blocked project now gets to watch government scramble to undo the damage.
Real credibility can’t just be a signing ceremony. It has to be dismantling every anti-development law on the books, gutting the impact assessment regime that kills projects in review purgatory, and cutting the tax load that chased capital away in the first place. Anything short of that is just another subsidy for the status quo dressed up as reform.
Optics have a shelf life, investors will no doubt want legislation, not just announcements. I hope we see it, you know.. in Parliament.
Christian Lassonde retweeted
Hearing the first movie will be about a privilege boy who was a drama teacher, then rode his dad’s coattails and systematically destroyed a country for decades
Christian Lassonde retweeted
With the Canadian Investor Summit coming up this week, I received a copy of the prospectus.
And it confirms my hunch that Ontario has relatively few projects, at the lowest potential value, of any province.
This is not a reflection of the opportunities in Ontario.
It is a reflection of the disorganization of our planning system, and frankly, our provincial governments coordination failure with the private sector to conduct long term planning and industrial policy.
It’s just another signal we’re not generating enough economic opportunity in Ontario. There should be way more energy, data, infrastructure, and technology projects on this list.
Now, some may note that Bruce C and Wellsleyville Nuclear projects are not costed in the document. But these are projects that will move forward almost regardless of the summit.
When opportunity knocks, we have to open the door.
Christian Lassonde retweeted
Jeez, doc. You may want to check yourself for a fever because you’re serving up hot take after hot take today. If your litmus test for patriotism is whether or not somebody vacations in the United States, I sincerely have to question your judgment.
Our Prime Minister‘s kids go to school in the United States. I’m pretty sure he holds positions in a great many American companies in his personal portfolio. And when he told all of us to vacation in Canada, he went to Italy.
None of that has anything to do with his patriotism, which I absolutely do not question.
It’s OK to not like somebody and just leave it there. Ratcheting it up with slurs and libels doesn’t get us to where we need to go.
Because Premier Smith isn't a loyal Canadian. She's a right-wing populist. She's MAGA. She doesn't give a damn about the average Albertan or the average Canadian. Smith is out of synch with Canadians, and Albertans.
thestar.com/opinion/contribu…
But climate change is making extreme weather more often!!!
It looks like a lock. 🔒
We are witnessing history in the making.
There have been no hurricanes in the North Atlantic so far this year. 🌀
September 10th (Thursday) marks the climatological peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. And if we make it through Friday without one forming, which appears to be a lock now, it will be the first time in the satellite era (since 1966) that we have gotten this far into the calendar year without one hurricane formations in the Atlantic basin.
In fact, the last time that this happened was in 1941, but the lack of satellite observations mean that it is very likely we missed a hurricane or two out over open water that didn't make landfall and/or come into contact with an unfortunate ship.
If by some miracle we make it through September 21st without one, it will be the first time since 1914 (the only year other than 1907 where no hurricanes formed that season that we know of). But climatology is not in our favor, even with El Niño increasing the deep-layer vertical wind shear (change in wind speed or direction with height) in the 250–850 mb layer.
For non-weather geeks / non-meteorologists, shear suppresses tropical cyclone intensification because it tilts the storm's vortex, knocking the low-level center out of alignment with its mid- and upper-level convection. Shear imports low-entropy (cooler/drier) air into the storm's warm core, which dries the eyewall out, and causes the heat engine that keeps a cyclone organized to break down.
Christian Lassonde retweeted
Mark Warner, one of Canada’s best trade lawyers—and a friend—dismantles, one by one, every argument used to defend Canada’s current negotiating strategy with the United States.
A masterclass of an interview.
Watch the whole thing. Oh, and the midterms won’t make a difference...
Watching Qwen3.8 thinking, see it get the right answer and then go "On the other hand..." and go down entirely the wrong path... so frustrating.
Also. This gen of #f1 cars are just not fun to watch. Which sounds weird given so much passing but it’s all so artificial and temporary given battery boost. Watching cars constantly pass and re-pass because of batteries level is NOT fun to watch.
You mean $180B Alto high-speed rail project.
Once-embattled Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster is joining the federal government’s $90 billion Alto high-speed rail project. Read about his new role. thestar.com/news/gta/former-…
Christian Lassonde retweeted
Hi.
According to the City of Toronto, the number of “serious” cycling injuries dropped by almost one per month between 2016 and 2023; one would expect that the new cycling infrastructure played a positive role. Was “one fewer serious injury a month” what City Council promised the voters who funded the additional new bike lanes? Particularly when, during that same period, more than 1,500 Canadian motorcyclists quietly died on our roads.
City Hall’s Vision Zero leader, Sheyda Saneinejad, would have us believe their strategy is working and that “fatal collisions on Toronto's streets have been declining generally since 2016,” but that’s not true. A single Toronto cyclist lost their life in 2023…the exact same figure as 2016.
And while that’s one too many, it’s also true that Toronto taxpayers built 228 kms of dedicated bicycle lanes and cycle tracks over that same seven-year period – without reducing the number of lives lost. markmcqueen.substack.com/p/t…
CBC has completely lost the plot.
WSIB just bought Canadian-built AI from Vancouver’s Owl.co. A Canadian Crown insurer buying Canadian insurtech to digest thousand-page claim files faster. That’s the story.
Instead CBC runs “AI is taking our jobs” off union quotes, while WSIB itself says the cuts are office consolidation and that the tool is a co-pilot so staff spend less time summarizing paper and more time on injured workers.
Job losses are real. Blaming them all on AI — and ignoring that a Canadian company just won a $7.3M contract from a Canadian buyer — is how you talk a country out of its own industry.
