World Cup contracts turn Toronto and Vancouver bylaw staff into FIFA’s brand police

Disrespected. That’s the word that made national headlines this past May, after Nate Erskine-Smith was dropped as a Liberal minister. While the title of Erskine-Smith’s Substack post read, diplomatically, “Congrats to the new cabinet,” media coverage largely zeroed in on a moment in the fourth paragraph: “The way it played out doesn’t sit right and it’s impossible not to feel”—well, you know. How did it play out? The story starts back in December 2023, when, as the member of Parliament for Beaches—East York, Erskine-Smith had just come second to Bonnie Crombie in the Ontario Liberal...