Sambasivam And The Battle For Don Valley West

Interviewing The Right Choice For DVW

This is the transcript of my Scrimshaw Show interview with Don Valley West Council candidate Evan Sambasivam. The transcript has been lightly edited to make it legible. If you’d prefer to listen to the nearly 6000 words of our 40 minute conversation, please do. Even if you don’t, subscribe, like, etc on YouTube. 

Scrimshaw: Hello and welcome to this week's Scrimshaw Show. My name is Evan Scrimshaw. This week I'm doing something a bit different on the podcast.

I'm honored to have my first candidate for elected office on the podcast, the second I've ever interviewed, but I did not actually get made for a podcast recording. I have a federal, I don't know if you're technically an ex-staffer, you're not on the Hill anymore, but the current candidate for the Don Valley West Ward is Ward 15. I believe it's Ward 15.

Evan Sambasivam, I believe that's correct on the last name. 

Sambasivam: You're correct on all fronts.

Scrimshaw: Perfect. So, it's rare that I dip into Toronto politics. It's rare that I care about your city in the slightest because I am an Ottawa boy with Montrealer parents, so therefore I don't care about your third-rate city. But this is a race that actually I do care about.

This is an opportunity for progressives to back a candidate who I actually genuinely believe in. So I think the first thing to do, Evan, is, God, this is going to be confusing because we're both named Evan. Just lay out who you are, why you're running, and what you want to do with the city.

Sambasivam: Yeah, I appreciate that. And unlike apparently everyone else, I actually love Toronto. I love my city a lot.

I was born and raised here, and I don't want to live anywhere else. But that's really hard right now for our generation with rent growing faster than our paychecks. A one-bedroom in Toronto will put you up $2,500 a month.

If you're spending 30% of your income on rent, which is what's advised, you have to be earning over a $100,000 a year to live in Toronto. Our transit system is a lot worse than it used to be. It's less reliable, it's less safe, it's slower, and that's made congestion worse too.

If you're a driver in the city, you're noticing that rush hour starts about a few hours earlier than it used to and ends a lot later. I love Toronto, but the basic things that our city needs are not there. Toronto loves to contest the status of a world-class city, but when I look at what I see around me and I compare it to housing policy in Paris or transportation in Singapore, we're not close.

And that's a choice that we're actively making. And we're seeing across the board in this country the reason we're making those choices is because we have governments that are out of touch. We have people in power who haven't rented in generations, if at all, who own their homes, who don't take public transit, who might complain if services aren't up to snuff, but for you and me and for our generation, it's existential.

And people my age are fleeing the city en masse because our city is not hospitable to the people who make it work. And so that's what I'm about. Career-wise, I was a change management consultant.

My background's in applied economics. I worked in the mental health sector, helping hospitals and youth mental health agencies reduce wait times, and I loved that work. But four years ago, I lost my oldest friend to homelessness in the city.

He grew up in Don Valley West too. And it made me reflect. I was already working in the social sector, but I realized that the changes that I needed to see in the city to save people like my friend who could have recovered but weren't supported, I needed to do that at the elected level.

So I ran for council two years ago, and I came second. And then I worked on the Hill. In Ottawa, I worked for Gary Anandasangere, who supported my last campaign, and I worked for Diane LeBoutillier at CRA and Fisheries, where I was, among other things, Indigenous policy advisor, but advising on pretty much everything under the sun.

Scrimshaw: Yeah, I've made some calls since you were running, even before this was even on my radar. You do seem like you were the jack of all trades, which is quite the – I've heard more than a few people on the Hill say they're annoyed that you're running because it means that they don't have you as their point person anymore, which is, I think, a high compliment.

Sambasivam: Yeah, I appreciate that. No, there was something to that effect in the Hill times when I left, where they're like, and I'll downplay it, right? I just did whatever was needed. But my job title was unusually long because it was just whatever needed to be done. And that's what I try to prize myself in.

I want to be able to put myself into whatever job is needed, and that's going to be Toronto Council, because you don't know what committees you're going to be assigned to. You don't know what job you're going to get. You just have to roll up your sleeves and get it done.

But that's how I've always tried to be useful.

Scrimshaw: So, in the vein of jumping from issue to issue, this is going to be a fairly wide-ranging conversation, partially because there's a lot to do, and partially because I just do not have the ability to be disciplined in what I talk about. I think the housing point is the most important, and I think it's the issue that is animating a lot of political notions these days.

But I'm going to lead with something slightly different. A mutual friend of mine, I assume mutual friend of everybody who's smart, Eric Lombardi had a piece for the Hub today, yesterday as you're listening to this today as we're recording this, about the sort of – soft corruption was the term he used, but what I'm going to say is the managed decline of Canada, the sort of uselessness, the inefficiency, the accepted nonsense. What's it, 70k per metre for a trail, for like a two-kilometre trail in Toronto? The failures on the housing front in terms of fees, applications, takes nearly two years to get a permit for anything in Toronto.

I think it's an interesting sort of like organizing frame, because I think a lot of people who would self-describe as big L liberals and progressives are sort of naturally inclined to oppose sort of deregulation and sort of streamlining. But it really does seem like one of the ways that we can become a world-class city is just make it a lot easier to do things and not muck it up in years of regulatory approvals, residence associations being able to fight every bit of development. Doesn't it feel like that is actually the key to unlocking solutions on housing, transit, homelessness, a lot of the issues that you care about? 

Sambasivam: Yeah, I read Eric's piece, and I think he was spot on, and Eric's a supporter of the campaign and I've been friends with him for a while.

He really touches on something that shouldn't be partisan. Regardless of whether you're a conservative, liberal, NDP, or green, you should want a city that works properly. If we are spending X amount of tax revenue on services, we want them to be done well.

I was actually talking to a conservative voter at the doors today, and he said, I don't mind that my taxes went up 10%. It's just hard to take it on the chin when I see it being spent on a two-kilometer walking path that costs $150 million. And that shouldn't be partisan.

If we want better services, and I do, and we want social services that serve everyone, the most vulnerable, one of the duties we have as progressives is to advocate for it being spent responsibly and not on boondocks. When we look at transit projects that are disproportionately higher per kilometer in Toronto than other cities around the world, it behooves us to ask, why is it? Why is it more expensive to build basic stuff in Toronto? Why does it take longer? How are we giving out contracts? Is Metrolinx doing their due diligence? How are we approaching construction in this city? Is it piecemeal? Is it thoughtful? Do we have a plan? Why is it that Toronto is a city of skyscrapers and single-family homes? Are we making it easy to build the missing middle, to build mid-rises, sixplexes, duplexes? Efficiency shouldn't be partisan. There's a hyper-localization in Toronto, too, of basic issues where everyone and their dog wants to comment on a duplex as it goes up, or whether an LRT is above or underground.

We miss the forest for the trees so often, and it ends up collapsing good projects. It's impossible to get anything done here. Ultimately, yeah, I think Eric is right, and it's not just the city.

The province is arguably even worse at not really understanding return on investment when it comes to pitching projects or slashing costs. It's pretty random or arguably corrupt at times. So, yeah, I think that's why a lot of folks are angry.

They see a government that's not working for them, and they want change. 

Scrimshaw: Yeah, the reason I sort of focus on the progressives' reasons to acknowledge this is I live in a city who has an LRT that routinely stops working when it snows in Ottawa. That seems like a bad thing for an LRT to do, but it's just this culture of never taking accountability, never doing it. I see it in Toronto all the time. Mayor Chow has obviously been at the job for about a year now. I don't quite remember when she was sworn in.

I know the election was last June. What do you make of her records so far? What do you make of her first year in change as head of the city? Obviously, with a council that was not elected at the same time as her and, frankly, was a very sort of John Tory-ite council. 

Sambasivam: Yeah, I think you're spot on.

John Tory handpicked his council because he was running with such high numbers that he was just focusing on making sure that his council reflected him. Olivia's had about, call it a year in change to start with her agenda. A lot of the problems that exist in the city will take longer than a year to see results on, so some of my judgments will be withheld.

I've seen some improvements. I've seen she's a shrewd negotiator, and I didn't see that coming. I supported Josh Matlow, and I'll say I've been pleasantly surprised with Olivia, but I also want to see her be stronger on the frustrations that young people have in the city.

I think a lot of housing activists want her to be more aggressive on the housing front. I'm a daily TTC rider, and a lot of the problems with the TTC predate her. We had cuts to service in winter 2023, so that would have been John Tory, but people have noticed transit getting worse and less accountable under her, fairly or not, and so I want to see bold action to rein in unaccountability at the management of the transit board, and that's her.

That's Jamal Myers. That's everyone on council right now, but I would say it's a rough look for her when in the past year, the most important problems in the city have gotten worse. I will give her time on those issues to fully bend the curve on them, but the problem that we're seeing at the doors right now is that people don't want to give time.

People are frustrated. People have been putting up with a bad housing market for over a decade now. People have been putting up with the declining TTC service for a similar amount of time, and so she needs to be a lot stronger, even if, and I'll say it, she's a far improvement over John Tory.

Incrementalism isn't going to cut it right now. We need boldness. 

Scrimshaw: Do you think that that need for boldness should include her picking fights even if she doesn't have the votes on council? Because that's been the one thing, and I've been substantially more impressed by Olivia than I was expecting to.

She has been hesitant to use the bully pulpit of the mayor's office and the fact that she has, frankly, quite high approval ratings to do anything contrary to council. Obviously, she did use the bully pulpit once, and that was for a tax hike and to stare down Justin Trudeau, and frankly, she won that battle with Trudeau, but it doesn't feel like she's willing to use the bully pulpit to be as bold and aggressive as plenty of progressives want. Do you think that she needs to start picking these fights and potentially forcing council to vote her down in a way that would, at the very least, identify who the blockades to progress are? 

Sambasivam:Absolutely. Yeah, I know the way she operates, and I want to say that she is a smooth operator. She uses her soft power really well, and that's good, I think, as a general day-to-day management of the city, but people are forgetting how powerful the mayor is now that we have strong mayor powers. If she sees a problem and she has an agenda she wants to pass, she only needs a third of council to do it, and I think the city would be impressed to see her be bold.

She has high approval ratings, and she may have high approval ratings for a while, but I listened to Nate Erskine's podcast the other day with Trudeau, and Trudeau mentioned that he regretted not getting more of his agenda passed during the majority when you had the political capital to do it. Political capital fades very quickly in this business, and so if Olivia is worried about spending too much capital now, it might disappear anyways. I think the city would love to see bold action because we are facing crises on a number of fronts right now, and we elected her ultimately to manage them, so I think a lot of people would appreciate shows of strength from her office.

Maybe she would piss off a few conservatives or make the mushy middle feel uncomfortable, but I think she'd be a stronger mayor for it. 

Scrimshaw: Yeah, especially given the fact that Toronto mayors don't generally face strong challenges. Obviously, Ford is the exception to this, but let's be clear, I don't think Olivia Chow is going to be caught on video smoking crack or tell a group of reporters, deny that he was making lewd comments to a staffer by speaking about his sex life. I don't think she's going to do those two things, so I really don't think she has to worry about the stuff. 

Obviously, an issue closer to your locality is the Ontario Science Centre. I must admit that the Science Centre is just something plainly that has never been on my radar, have never been. As somebody from Ottawa, I don't really get both the political football nature of it now and what the Science Centre means, so I think the best way to do this is, as somebody who grew up in Don Valley West, as somebody who has lived in that area for most of your life, can you please explain to me why the Science Centre is a big deal, not just to the City of Toronto, but specifically to your part of Toronto? 

Sambasivam: Absolutely, and as a bonus after, I'll explain why it should be important to the whole province, even if it's out of the way. The Science Centre opened 55 years ago. Since then, it's averaged about 1 million visitors per year, 100,000 of which were students.

It's located in the Don Valley and specifically where it is, because it's an escarpment, it's a flood zone, it's essentially impossible to build anything else there, so it's a very unique structure that was meant to last a very long time. It's also located quite near two extremely dense communities, Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Park. There's a lot of new immigrants there, there's a lot of young families there, hence why there were so many kids that went to the Science Centre, and if you go to those communities, they feel quite devastated.

There aren't a lot of extracurricular or job opportunities in Thorncliffe Park to begin with, but the Science Centre was a really useful hub for a lot of these students to go, especially the ones that were interested in STEM, and Mark Garneau, one of the high schools in that area actually has a TOPS program, so there were a lot of STEM-oriented kids that relied on the Science Centre. In its absence, in an area of 70,000 people between Thorncliffe and Flemingdon, it's a small geographic area, there's now a huge vacuum in an area that's underserved by city services, by parks, by community centres, so it has an outsized impact. Why it should matter to the province as a whole is that there's no good reason to move it, and the amount we're spending to do so is exorbitant.

We're talking tens of billions of dollars being without the foot traffic at the Science Centre for probably 10 years. It's a financial sinkhole. It's money that does not need to be spent, it's our money that could be spent on education, on healthcare, on literally anything else, call it even like the 401 tunnel if that's your cup of tea, but it is not a value-add.

The new Science Centre will be smaller, it'll be in a place that less people will want to go because it's going to be hard to get there. There's no benefit to the rest of Ontario to moving it. 

Scrimshaw: This is a very stupid question, but I genuinely don't know the answer because whenever I hear things from the TTC, my eyes just gloss over.

What is more accessible if you live in, I don't know, if you live in Rosedale, or you live at the University of Toronto, you're a first-year student, what is easier for you to get to by transit from the U of T campus, the current Science Centre, or the proposed one? 

Sambasivam: So the proposed one, it's at the X, and so you could go to Union Station and take the streetcar there. Currently getting in and out of Thorncliffe and Flemington is difficult, but we're literally building a light rail train to the Science Centre called Science Centre Station. We are building the LRT there because it's a tourist destination specifically to drive people there.

So once the Ontario line is built, and shovels are in the ground, it is coming, I would argue it would be a lot easier, or at least as easy, to get there. The other problem right now in the absence of the Ontario line is that transit to Ontario Place on the X is pretty bad, and they're expecting a lot of people to drive. I think it was announced today there's going to be 2,500 parking spots at the new Ontario Place spot.

Driving in that part of the city is awful. So the traffic that is already quite bad downtown will get worse if we're putting a million footsteps a year right there. But the people that the Science Centre currently serves, they're walking there.

There's two extremely dense communities a stones throw away from an Ontario gem, and we also have the Eglinton line that will be going there quite soon, potentially early next year. Getting to the Ontario Science Centre will not be that hard in its current location. That's the thing that I didn't know because I'm not as intimately familiar with Toronto Transit or anything, but generally speaking, you put your big institutions, either you put them right in the heart of downtown or you put them in places that are accessible.

Scrimshaw: But clearly, if you're building two LRT lines that will get you there, then yeah, that seems sensible. Okay, let's – Kathleen Wynne endorsed one of your opponents in this race. Anthony Furey is a leading conservative, does not seem to – and I am saying this, and no one can get mad at you for what I say – it seems like a miscalculation from the former Premier to be backing a candidate who does not, at least from what I've heard, from what I've seen, have a viable path to victory when your opponent – Anthony Fury is not from the district, right? 

Sambasivam: No, he's never spent a day of his life here.

Scrimshaw: So it seems like a bad idea to try and split the vote between two candidates when you have an out-of-district firebrand who has made his entire campaign right-wing culture wars, anti-bike lane rhetoric, and has seemingly no actual ideas to make the lives of actual Torontonians better. Because even I, who is not particularly urbanist, can understand the fact that bike lanes are not the reason why traffic in Toronto is bad. That's not how this works.

But what did you make of the former Premier's decision to meddle in this race? You talked a lot about generational change, generational renewal, people who are more in touch with the political state of affairs. Would you say that the former Premier – who was formerly the MPP for the area, so at least she has some connection to the seat – what would you say in response to that? 

Sambasivam: I don't doubt that she made her decision with great care for the community in mind, but I do think it's the wrong one purely strategically, and definitely in terms of values. Anthony Fury was opening a bottle of champagne when he found out that the former Premier of Toronto was going to be elected.

I heard both of them on Greg Brady's show the next day, and Greg was laughing. Look, that's his path. He wants to be the change candidate in this race.

That's the only way someone as far right as him could even have a chance in a liberal stronghold like Don Valley West. Someone as openly Islamophobic as Anthony Fury could have a chance in a riding Don Valley West. I'm a change candidate.

I think that's quite clear. What we've been talking about and what I only talk about is the deep-seated frustrations on a generational and class level in our city right now. You're either a have or a has not.

If you're renting, you're a have not. If you rely on transit, you're a have not. That population is getting louder and angrier, and Fury wants to tap into it.

The traditional liberal establishment is not. They're not running on a platform of recognizing where people are, where the tenor of the city is, and providing a sound change for that. I am.

That's my clear path to winning. I think if the establishment spent more time on the ground in the communities talking to folks, they would see what I'm seeing too. A lot of folks in the communities I'm knocking on are deciding between me and Fury.

They're not considering an establishment candidate who represents the types of people who put us in the mess that we are in right now. With all due respect to Kathleen, and I have respect for her, I do think she misread this election. If she wants to prevent Anthony Fury by backing an establishment candidate who to date hasn't even posted a platform, she's paved a path that will make it easier for him.

Luckily, though, We've been gaining a lot of support. We've been rallying. We've knocked on more doors than anyone, and we are going to stop Anthony Furey from taking a seat on council.

Scrimshaw: Speaking of the liberal establishment being out to lunch, obviously in the neighboring - yeah, it does technically. Yeah, they do touch - seat of St. Paul's, federally, the Trudeau Liberals got a bit of a nasty, well, I'd say it was a shock, but if anybody read my site, they would have thought it was coming, in June, losing the Toronto St. Paul's by-election.

Do you think, in specific, do you think the voters in St. Paul's who elected a conservative there are suffering from that same disillusionment and that same anger that you were just talking about, sort of seeing and hearing on the doors? And two, what do you make of the sort of general anti-establishment mood? I mean, John Rustad might win in BC. Trudeau's obviously not exactly polling well. Blaine Hicks might lose in New Brunswick.

What do you make of the general Canada-wide wave of anti-establishment disaffection and anger? 

Sambasivam: Yeah, I think those questions are important, and not to mention, also, the recent LaSalle election in Montreal where the Bloc took a seat back in the heart of Montreal, which was not on my bingo card. I think voters are angrier than ever in looking to send a message, and I knock doors in St. Paul's, and it's quite close to where I live, and I've spent a lot of my time in midtown Toronto, so I didn't bet it was going to change, but it wasn't exactly a huge shock. I know a lot of people are angry with the Liberals right now, and I'm not talking just, you know, social conservatives or Bay Street conservatives who are angry.

I'm talking people my age who are progressives, are angry with the Liberal government, who agree with, you know, Liberal values 99% of the time, but that is no consolation when you can't pay rent. That is no consolation when grocery prices are out of control. People are angry with all sorts of things, and whenever folks are angry, they throw out the establishment.

We saw that in Toronto St. Paul's. We saw that in LaSalle. The fact that John Rustad is competitive despite being, you know, a climate change and COVID denier is a testament to that.

The fact that Anthony Fury is even in this conversation at all is a testament that people are looking for change at all levels.I think political scientists understand that we either have static or dynamic elections. When people are happy, they continue to vote in incumbents, and when people are upset, they will vote all incumbents, irrespective of whether or not those governments are at fault for what's happening. So I see change elections on the horizon at all levels, from even your local trustee up to the  Prime Minister of Canada, and I have spent enough time on the Hill to know that not a lot of people see it that way. 

I've talked to a lot of people deep in the trenches, and I respect them, but I think there's some policy we can come forward with or something that we can pass that will turn it all around and make Canadians happy and keep this current government in, but it's really just a lack of a finger on the pulse for a lot of really important people in government, and you can smell that from a mile away. If you've been branded with the out-of-touch tattoo, then that's a death knell in a change election, and that's true for a lot of the governments we were talking about here, and that's certainly true in this race, and I respect the elected officials that have weighed in on the Don Valley West by-election, but I don't think they see the rhino that's charging towards them.

Scrimshaw: I mean, I think it's certainly fair to say that federal electeds who just cannot find it within themselves to point out what is bleedingly obvious to seemingly everybody, I don't think they – I think it's fair to say that they don't exactly have their finger on the pulse, and certainly, I agree that Kathleen made a stunningly terrible decision, and if Anthony Fury were to somehow win with, you know, 37 percent of the vote, she would have to many questions to answer, although given the state of the 2018 campaign that she ran, it's clear that she does not particularly value introspection when it comes to the role that she plays in electing terrible conservatives. 

I guess my last question would be – so I have two last questions. One, what do you think the role of Toronto Council should be in fighting Doug Ford? That's number one.We'll do that one first. What do you think the role of Council should be in fighting Doug Ford and fighting a government that I think you and I both agree is proposing some wild and crazy ideas? 

Sambasivam: Yeah, I think Toronto Council has felt pretty deflated under Doug because he, seemingly without hesitation, will overstep boundaries and make Council look impotent. Just let Council know from time to time that they have no constitutional authority and he can come in and change whatever he likes, and it's made Council scared.

We were talking earlier about whether or not Olivia should take bold action against Doug Ford or for the city in general. There are very real repercussions. We have a government in place that is willing to bully the city around on issues that really shouldn't matter, that shouldn't be priorities to Doug.

He just has a personal vendetta against a city that wouldn't elect him mayor in 2014. In light of that, I think it's even more important than ever to leverage that soft power that you have as Councillor. That's why I fight for the Ontario Science Centre.

That's why I'm still a loud critic of Doug because he is enemy number one. I'm not going to fall in line, and Councillors need to let their constituents know that they're not going to fall in line, that we're not, you know, in Doug's caucus. We're standing up in spite of the fact that we have a bully for a Premier.

I think that's more important than ever. Long term, I want to see Toronto advocate for charter status. You know, I think the fact that our wards were changed in the middle of an election, and I know folks who are running in that election and had their lives overturned, and you know, half our Councillors gone in the blink of an eye.

There are certain things that as a major economic centre, and I would say the same thing for Ottawa too, for example, that we need protections for cities to make sure that they can do their jobs properly. We shouldn't have a Premier that's so microscopically focused on whether or not bike lanes should be allowed in We shouldn't have a Premier that's changing the rules in the middle of an election so that people don't even know what ward they're voting in or who their candidates are. These are all quite terrifying overreaches that need to be corrected, and Council needs to argue for those.

I would also argue that the Ontario Liberal Party needs to do its job in standing up for cities as well. I think that I'm surprised they haven't explored that lane. I think that there's a lot of rich opportunity there that a lot of Torontonians would get on board with, but that's not my fight, but I'd be happy to advise Bonnie on that if she's interested.

Scrimshaw: We cannot get it to Bonnie Crombie because that's a whole other kettle of fish. So my last question is, and I'm going to hold you to this, I want you to make your best pitch to an undecided voter who's deciding between you and Anthony Furey, who's angry at the city and is, you know, in my view and I think in your view, wrongly considering voting for Fury in the sense that his solutions are not the answer. I'm going to give you one minute I would like to see, I want to hear your tight, confined pitch on why you and not Anthony Furey. Three, two, one, go. 

Sambasivam: I was born and raised in Don Valley West, and I love it here, and I want to spend the rest of my life here, but I am frustrated with the city. I am frustrated at the fact that I cannot afford to live here, that I cannot take transit, that the city is less safe, and that my kids going to public school will be worse off than I was at the same time.

We need real solutions. We need to look at what other cities and other governments have done better than us because these are not unique problems we're facing. I have a platform.

It's been stress tested by people that are smarter than me. I want to bring real solutions that work as opposed to randomly throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. Anthony Fury is a basement dweller.

He spent his career writing racist rhetoric in the Toronto Sun. He has no experience, no knowledge to make our city better. He's doing half the job of capitalizing on anger and scapegoating members of our community without actually showing how he's going to make our city better.

So I agree that things are not working right now, and I'm the only candidate providing solutions to that, and that is why you should vote for me, and Anthony Fury has not told you why you should vote for him. 

Scrimshaw: I gave you an extra five seconds, but that is the 65-second pitch for why you should be the next councillor for Don Valley West. When is the election? 

Sambasivam: It's November 4th, one day before our counterparts in the United States.

Scrimshaw: Oh, God almighty. I mean, I'll be cheering for you that night. I'll probably just be in a 48-hour drunken stupor before the Americans because that's just what American elections do to me at this point. I mean, I was going to try and make a joke, but honestly, Donald Trump is so repellent that I can't even joke about you being an undecided voter if you were an American. Okay, well, this has been delightful. Promote whatever you want to do, say whatever you want to say, tell people about your website.

Sambasivam: Yeah, so you can find me at EvanSambasivam on everything Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, evansambasivam.ca. I imagine that this is going to be more of a national audience than a Don Valley West audience, so if you want to support but can't vote or can't take a sign, feel free to make a donation on the website or volunteer to phone bank and just spread the word, and I really appreciate another Evan S. having me on the show. 

Scrimshaw: I will say that I have gotten you at least two votes through because one of my good friends is in Don Valley West, and so I have gotten you precisely two votes already, and I know that there will be at least one of them will be listening to this podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

Follow me on Twitter at EScrimshaw. Follow The Scrimshaw Show on Twitter at scrimshaw underscore show. I read my political writing at scrimshawunscripted.substack.com, political betting, NFL, NHL, and whatever else I can get through my editors at thelines.com. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Hopefully you get elected. If you do get elected, can I have you back on the pod? 

Sambasivam:Absolutely. If I'm elected, it's going to be strictly because of the show, so I owe you one. 

Scrimshaw: Appreciate you. Thanks, buddy.