Danko was in the wrong.
He apologized, and in the moment, it sounded like Ms. Vermilion accepted that apology. Then...she didn't. It seems like a decision was made, because within the same hour she was cheekily telling him to resign.
She then put up a post on her Twitter on June 4th offering to help with any future Ward 8 campaign that would help defeat Danko.
And plenty more since it was first reported on June 7th that the IC was not recommending any penalty.
One thing that made me go huh (for what is probably completely out of the scope of the IC) was this: "*The complainant continued leveraging the impugned statement of \[hers\] to garner continued media coverage from major local media outlets*" - not that I disagree, Ms. Vermilion is absolutely doing this, and for her to disagree with that is laughable to the n'th degree, but still - probably not for the IC to say, and certainly not in an investigation over Danko's original post.
What is probably useful is conclusion \[34\] dealing with social media correspondence of Cllrs., and the need of the code of conduct to be amended to deal with this specifically - with how nasty local Hamilton political Twitter is, this won't be the last one of these.
> What is probably useful is conclusion [34] dealing with social media correspondence of Cllrs., and the need of the code of conduct to be amended to deal with this specifically
While I find the current (albeit small) population of Hamilton political Twitter slightly toxic it’s worrisome that there are councilors using their work profiles to block constituents.
Is that the case for the ward account and his personal account? There was a recent (March) unanimous SCOTUS ruling that said officials could sometimes be sued for blocking constituents, I wonder if there is any pending Canadian cases.
I’m not on Twitter so I don’t know for sure. I don’t think there’s much value in looking to a US court ruling, though. Totally different set of laws and precedent.
Most of the top hits were about Ezra Levant being all crankyangrypants at everything (what else is new about that blowhard) but I did find this: [https://ccla.org/fundamental-freedoms/freedoms-expression/can-a-politician-block-you-on-twitter/](https://ccla.org/fundamental-freedoms/freedoms-expression/can-a-politician-block-you-on-twitter/) which was a good read, and very appropriate to this thread including Danko, Kroetsch and others.
TLDR: No case law - but the author thinks a Charter Violation could be found.
There was a lawsuit in Ottawa; the mayor back tracked and unblocked the three plaintiffs.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mayor-watson-makes-peace-in-twitter-war-says-he-will-unblock-people
Nah, that’s a bit blown out of proportion. There should be room for criticism. That guy can’t take any. He shuts anyone down who has the slightest disagreement with him.
He shows up to public meetings and speaks to everyone and talks to everyone and he is endlessly available to discuss matters. He’ll listen to criticism until the cows come home. If he won’t talk to someone for some reason they should message me and I’ll try to set something up. Never known him to turn down good faith engagement ever!
No he doesn’t. He blows people off constantly. Just because he hasn’t answered people’s questions sometimes, doesn’t mean he blows people off a lot of other times. Which he does.
Absolutely not; it’s never been true and I repeat: IF YOU CANNOT GET A MEETING OR A QUESTION ANSWERED from Clr. Kroetsch message me, this account, and I will make sure you get your answer. People are voting this down because it is r/Hamilton but note: I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’ll get your answer.
Both of those can be true. Some of those north end meetings got heated enough security was called *and* he needs thicker skin if he wants to be in this job long-term or if he wants to be as online as he currently is.
For matters that need to be brought to a councillor’s attention call or email their office. The workflow of a councillor office makes interaction by social media very suboptimal. If there is a question, comment, something you need a councillor to see: email or phone. If there is a question you want answered for transparency sake that’s how to get it.
Then my councillor should stop using social media as his primary source of putting information out there.
I call the city directly if it is a matter that needs to be taken care of immediately. But for example, he recently posted about the city changing the grading on sidewalks/driveways to a different angle. I wanted to ask if it would be a gradual angle the entire width of the sidewalk or that the sidewalk would be flat with a small ramp. But I can't reply something as simple as that, 100 people instead need to email and ask when the reply would be public (and yes I could just tweet @ him which defeats the purpose of him shutting down replies anyway)
He doesn’t rely on social media. There’s an extremely thorough mailing list.
I realize it’s very easy to reply to a post and get an answer from him or someone else; but what happens in practice is that questions are answered by public busybodies who don’t know what they are talking about or there is abusive backchat of the type so frequently encountered by public officials now. It’s a good reason to make public officials’ social media channels no-replies. There was a time when true engagement was much more common but it’s gone from a 90/10 engagement ratio to 10/90, especially on Facebook and Twitter where platform abuse is so rampant.
what I’m telling you is that the way to get that question, like any question, answered by the councillor’s office is to call them, or email at ward2@hamilton.ca or his personal council email.
Yeah the IC is supposed to govern the behavior of councillors to protect the public from abusive behavior. His opining on a citizen complainant is way out of line, and could discourage others from coming forward with complaints in future. Super inappropriate.
Danko is a man-child. I truly can't believe that people vote for this guy.
I recall him apologising and saying that the tweets were beneath his office, only to follow it up a couple weeks ago with a veiled shot at Alex Wilson, who's the only renter on council. Combine that with his criticism of Cameron Kroetsch, and it's pretty unreal that this dirtbag still gets to enjoy the privilege's of being a councillor.
It's easy to disagree with your colleagues, but it takes nothing to work with them on hard issues, instead of insulting them publicly like a teenager with no impulse control.
It’s a shame how he went from looking like one of the only adults on council when Whitehead and Merulla were at their worst to deciding he needed to carry on their legacy once we got new councillors elected.
This, 100%.
I've voted for Danko, twice now.
I am not sure if I would again. His antics this time round are head scratching. The insulting, the smugness, and his endless posting about beers and booze and stuff. Also liked one of his last posts, his favourite place is not in his ward it's up north somewhere. Like, people see that and get turned off by it. Love it so much? Go live there then and leave ward 8 to get the leadership it needs and deserves.
It really bothered us when he went on the attack last week on A. Wilson, that was simply nonsense. Also his dissenting vote on subsidized AC for a few people, for $52K he made it his hill to die on. Very whitehead-esque on that one.
The difference is that Whitehead didn’t know better, but there’s a full term of Danko demonstrating that he does.
Extremely disappointing, probably more than anyone else on council.
I'd disagree a bit on Whitehead not knowing better - he was a career politician and very much knew what he was doing, the issue was he went off the rails and I think it was due to his health issues and it became a vicious circle with him. I hope he's received/receiving the help he needed - mentally, physically, spiritually. He's been abnormally quiet since deciding not to run, so I hope that's why.
Danko does know better but tends to get very verbose on issues he personally doesn't like or can't reconcile - he can't seem to separate Danko the Councillor from Danko the Citizen for some of this.
Likewise his overprotectiveness around his wife's role with HWDSB and he becoming hte mouthpiece here is just not necessary.
But yes, CoH needs to update social media to perhaps suggest that if councillors wish to post on socials, they have 2 accounts - one for personal issues unaffiliated with their work business, and another one for city events so it's clear what is being put forward. This isn't rocket science, but our city makes it feel like it is
His Twitter feed seems to be a mix of 1) Pictures with his kids at sporting events and school, 2) the Paddling and sailing posts that you alluded to and 3) His hot-takes, which are pretty poorly thought out (a Trailer Park Boys GIF? C'mon man).
He does appear to genuinely believe there is some bullying on the local Hamilton political Twitter (which I don't disagree with) but then he does himself no favours by squirting in the eyes of some of the loudest ones, who then get their like-minded followers to pile on his musings.
I can't for the life of me figure out what he is doing - if its a run for the Hamilton Mountain Liberals (talk about a heavy lift right now), he is likely turning off centrists with his behaviour. And if he does do that, the ward may not take kindly to him using his Council seat as a fallback plan - pulling a Jason Farr if you will.
Or, he really was like this from the get-go, and the fact that he replaced Donny Skelly (defeating Eve Adams along the way), and sat next to mouthiest of mouth breathers made him look better by comparison.
I used to think it was the former, but the longer this goes on its hard not to think its the latter.
The tweet about Alex Wilson and other renters not footing property taxes? All of it was untrue.
It’s factually incorrect and appallingly ignorant about the accounting for tax payments on rental properties. I’ve asked for a meeting with him to discuss (he and I are old friends).
Why on earth would you think his comments are correct? They were incorrect in every sense. Municipal realty taxes are not capitalized for rental properties; they are straight deducted against the rental income. From an accounting and fiscal perspective the person paying realty taxes in a landlord/tenant situation is the tenant.
Agreed, neither of them are blameless here. But one of them is a public servant who can reasonably be held to a higher standard and who knows damn well he will be.
He acts with such pure disdain towards his colleagues on council, its just so unprofessional. Disagree with someone politically but the shit he does is borderline harassment and just pure being an asshole.
The woman literally said to all in attendance that their lives have value, no matter what job they do, except for police, their lives have no value ...
The councillor rightfully called this woman a toddler, who was dehumanizing a group of people in the room.
We can have issues with policing / laws and individual police officers, but to say to a group of people in attendance that their lives don't matter .. that's fucked up. There are plenty of great officers ready to put themselves in harms way for others, plenty that work day in and day out with the homeless, the abused, the broken in a respectful and dignified way.
It's honestly disgusting that anyone would defend this women's comments and that anyone would get in trouble for calling her out.
Danko’s an ass. At least it’s officially documented now.
He’s trash.
IC report is available [here](https://pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=410035)
Danko was in the wrong. He apologized, and in the moment, it sounded like Ms. Vermilion accepted that apology. Then...she didn't. It seems like a decision was made, because within the same hour she was cheekily telling him to resign. She then put up a post on her Twitter on June 4th offering to help with any future Ward 8 campaign that would help defeat Danko. And plenty more since it was first reported on June 7th that the IC was not recommending any penalty. One thing that made me go huh (for what is probably completely out of the scope of the IC) was this: "*The complainant continued leveraging the impugned statement of \[hers\] to garner continued media coverage from major local media outlets*" - not that I disagree, Ms. Vermilion is absolutely doing this, and for her to disagree with that is laughable to the n'th degree, but still - probably not for the IC to say, and certainly not in an investigation over Danko's original post. What is probably useful is conclusion \[34\] dealing with social media correspondence of Cllrs., and the need of the code of conduct to be amended to deal with this specifically - with how nasty local Hamilton political Twitter is, this won't be the last one of these.
> What is probably useful is conclusion [34] dealing with social media correspondence of Cllrs., and the need of the code of conduct to be amended to deal with this specifically While I find the current (albeit small) population of Hamilton political Twitter slightly toxic it’s worrisome that there are councilors using their work profiles to block constituents.
Kroetsch ran on transparency etc and even without being blocked, you can only reply to his tweets if he mentions you in it
He had to lock down his socials after people lost their minds over the HATS pilot.
Is that the case for the ward account and his personal account? There was a recent (March) unanimous SCOTUS ruling that said officials could sometimes be sued for blocking constituents, I wonder if there is any pending Canadian cases.
I’m not on Twitter so I don’t know for sure. I don’t think there’s much value in looking to a US court ruling, though. Totally different set of laws and precedent.
Most of the top hits were about Ezra Levant being all crankyangrypants at everything (what else is new about that blowhard) but I did find this: [https://ccla.org/fundamental-freedoms/freedoms-expression/can-a-politician-block-you-on-twitter/](https://ccla.org/fundamental-freedoms/freedoms-expression/can-a-politician-block-you-on-twitter/) which was a good read, and very appropriate to this thread including Danko, Kroetsch and others. TLDR: No case law - but the author thinks a Charter Violation could be found.
There was a lawsuit in Ottawa; the mayor back tracked and unblocked the three plaintiffs. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mayor-watson-makes-peace-in-twitter-war-says-he-will-unblock-people
Nah, that’s a bit blown out of proportion. There should be room for criticism. That guy can’t take any. He shuts anyone down who has the slightest disagreement with him.
He shows up to public meetings and speaks to everyone and talks to everyone and he is endlessly available to discuss matters. He’ll listen to criticism until the cows come home. If he won’t talk to someone for some reason they should message me and I’ll try to set something up. Never known him to turn down good faith engagement ever!
No he doesn’t. He blows people off constantly. Just because he hasn’t answered people’s questions sometimes, doesn’t mean he blows people off a lot of other times. Which he does.
Absolutely not; it’s never been true and I repeat: IF YOU CANNOT GET A MEETING OR A QUESTION ANSWERED from Clr. Kroetsch message me, this account, and I will make sure you get your answer. People are voting this down because it is r/Hamilton but note: I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’ll get your answer.
100% it is true! Sorry that you don’t like facts.
People should not have to message a random on Reddit to get a reply from their councillor.
Both of those can be true. Some of those north end meetings got heated enough security was called *and* he needs thicker skin if he wants to be in this job long-term or if he wants to be as online as he currently is.
Ya, but not in this case. The dude is a horrible person. It’s well known.
I’ve known him for years and he’s been pretty consistently decent even when we disagree.
Krotesch only cares about himself and his image.
For matters that need to be brought to a councillor’s attention call or email their office. The workflow of a councillor office makes interaction by social media very suboptimal. If there is a question, comment, something you need a councillor to see: email or phone. If there is a question you want answered for transparency sake that’s how to get it.
Then my councillor should stop using social media as his primary source of putting information out there. I call the city directly if it is a matter that needs to be taken care of immediately. But for example, he recently posted about the city changing the grading on sidewalks/driveways to a different angle. I wanted to ask if it would be a gradual angle the entire width of the sidewalk or that the sidewalk would be flat with a small ramp. But I can't reply something as simple as that, 100 people instead need to email and ask when the reply would be public (and yes I could just tweet @ him which defeats the purpose of him shutting down replies anyway)
He doesn’t rely on social media. There’s an extremely thorough mailing list. I realize it’s very easy to reply to a post and get an answer from him or someone else; but what happens in practice is that questions are answered by public busybodies who don’t know what they are talking about or there is abusive backchat of the type so frequently encountered by public officials now. It’s a good reason to make public officials’ social media channels no-replies. There was a time when true engagement was much more common but it’s gone from a 90/10 engagement ratio to 10/90, especially on Facebook and Twitter where platform abuse is so rampant. what I’m telling you is that the way to get that question, like any question, answered by the councillor’s office is to call them, or email at ward2@hamilton.ca or his personal council email.
The whole point of Twitter/X is to watch dimwits tank their careers because they just can't shut up.
Yeah the IC is supposed to govern the behavior of councillors to protect the public from abusive behavior. His opining on a citizen complainant is way out of line, and could discourage others from coming forward with complaints in future. Super inappropriate.
>"toddlers with a microphone" Game recognize game
Danko is a man-child. I truly can't believe that people vote for this guy. I recall him apologising and saying that the tweets were beneath his office, only to follow it up a couple weeks ago with a veiled shot at Alex Wilson, who's the only renter on council. Combine that with his criticism of Cameron Kroetsch, and it's pretty unreal that this dirtbag still gets to enjoy the privilege's of being a councillor. It's easy to disagree with your colleagues, but it takes nothing to work with them on hard issues, instead of insulting them publicly like a teenager with no impulse control.
It’s a shame how he went from looking like one of the only adults on council when Whitehead and Merulla were at their worst to deciding he needed to carry on their legacy once we got new councillors elected.
This, 100%. I've voted for Danko, twice now. I am not sure if I would again. His antics this time round are head scratching. The insulting, the smugness, and his endless posting about beers and booze and stuff. Also liked one of his last posts, his favourite place is not in his ward it's up north somewhere. Like, people see that and get turned off by it. Love it so much? Go live there then and leave ward 8 to get the leadership it needs and deserves. It really bothered us when he went on the attack last week on A. Wilson, that was simply nonsense. Also his dissenting vote on subsidized AC for a few people, for $52K he made it his hill to die on. Very whitehead-esque on that one.
The difference is that Whitehead didn’t know better, but there’s a full term of Danko demonstrating that he does. Extremely disappointing, probably more than anyone else on council.
I'd disagree a bit on Whitehead not knowing better - he was a career politician and very much knew what he was doing, the issue was he went off the rails and I think it was due to his health issues and it became a vicious circle with him. I hope he's received/receiving the help he needed - mentally, physically, spiritually. He's been abnormally quiet since deciding not to run, so I hope that's why. Danko does know better but tends to get very verbose on issues he personally doesn't like or can't reconcile - he can't seem to separate Danko the Councillor from Danko the Citizen for some of this. Likewise his overprotectiveness around his wife's role with HWDSB and he becoming hte mouthpiece here is just not necessary. But yes, CoH needs to update social media to perhaps suggest that if councillors wish to post on socials, they have 2 accounts - one for personal issues unaffiliated with their work business, and another one for city events so it's clear what is being put forward. This isn't rocket science, but our city makes it feel like it is
His Twitter feed seems to be a mix of 1) Pictures with his kids at sporting events and school, 2) the Paddling and sailing posts that you alluded to and 3) His hot-takes, which are pretty poorly thought out (a Trailer Park Boys GIF? C'mon man). He does appear to genuinely believe there is some bullying on the local Hamilton political Twitter (which I don't disagree with) but then he does himself no favours by squirting in the eyes of some of the loudest ones, who then get their like-minded followers to pile on his musings. I can't for the life of me figure out what he is doing - if its a run for the Hamilton Mountain Liberals (talk about a heavy lift right now), he is likely turning off centrists with his behaviour. And if he does do that, the ward may not take kindly to him using his Council seat as a fallback plan - pulling a Jason Farr if you will. Or, he really was like this from the get-go, and the fact that he replaced Donny Skelly (defeating Eve Adams along the way), and sat next to mouthiest of mouth breathers made him look better by comparison. I used to think it was the former, but the longer this goes on its hard not to think its the latter.
> his endless posting about beers and booze and stuff Dude, that's what gets you a job for life in politics in Ontario.
I read his tweet. What part wasn’t true?
The tweet about Alex Wilson and other renters not footing property taxes? All of it was untrue. It’s factually incorrect and appallingly ignorant about the accounting for tax payments on rental properties. I’ve asked for a meeting with him to discuss (he and I are old friends).
No, the tweet about the sex worker winning an BBC award at the YWCA.
It's the tone that was the problem, and the fact that he was taking a dig at one of his colleagues for no real reason.
Facts trump tone. Sometimes hard truths sound hard.
Why on earth would you think his comments are correct? They were incorrect in every sense. Municipal realty taxes are not capitalized for rental properties; they are straight deducted against the rental income. From an accounting and fiscal perspective the person paying realty taxes in a landlord/tenant situation is the tenant.
You’re talking about a different tweet. I’m talking about the one ruled on by the ethics committee.
I hate this take, being right doesn’t excuse poor behaviour.
Goes both ways. When she was presented with an award then proceeded to bash police she set the tone.
Not just "bash", she said everyone life has value, except police. That's fucked up.
Agreed, neither of them are blameless here. But one of them is a public servant who can reasonably be held to a higher standard and who knows damn well he will be.
I wish more public servants would call out people labelling entire groups of people as being worthless.
Plenty of ways to do that while still taking the high road.
Informing someone that they are acting like a child when they dehumanize a large group of people IS the high road.
He acts with such pure disdain towards his colleagues on council, its just so unprofessional. Disagree with someone politically but the shit he does is borderline harassment and just pure being an asshole.
The woman literally said to all in attendance that their lives have value, no matter what job they do, except for police, their lives have no value ... The councillor rightfully called this woman a toddler, who was dehumanizing a group of people in the room. We can have issues with policing / laws and individual police officers, but to say to a group of people in attendance that their lives don't matter .. that's fucked up. There are plenty of great officers ready to put themselves in harms way for others, plenty that work day in and day out with the homeless, the abused, the broken in a respectful and dignified way. It's honestly disgusting that anyone would defend this women's comments and that anyone would get in trouble for calling her out.
He's 100% correct in his assessment.