From the new Hill Times:

Former eight-term Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis, who is now a Toronto city councillor, is considering running in Toronto’s mayoral race in next year’s municipal election.

“The desire is always there,” Mr. Karygiannis told The Hill Times last week, but declined to get into details of his decision-making process.

The next mayoral election is scheduled for Oct. 22, 2018, and the last day to officially register is May 1.

As of last week, only two candidates, including incumbent Toronto Mayor John Tory and former city councillor Doug Ford, had publicly announced their intention to run…

Warren Kinsella, a former senior adviser to Mr. Chrétien, said if Mr. Karygiannis entered the mayoral race, it would be good news for Mr. Tory, but bad for Mr. Ford. He said Messrs. Ford and Karygiannis are both “Trump-style” campaigners and would split their vote, which would help Mr. Tory.

“They’d be splitting the same vote,” said Mr. Kinsella, who in the 2014 mayoral campaign supported Ms. Chow for part of the campaign, and is likely to support Mr. Tory in 2018. “Karygiannis running is probably good news for John Tory, and it’s probably very bad news for Doug Ford.”

Mr. Kinsella acknowledged that Mr. Karygiannis has been a formidable campaigner in leadership, nomination and general election campaigns, but he said the mayoral campaign is very different. He said the nomination and leadership campaigns are mostly about signing up members, but in a mayoral election, candidates have to offer solutions to complex problems to earn the support of voters. After the “Rob Ford experiment,” he said, Torontonians do not appear not to be comfortable with “loud and aggressive-type people.”

“The city after the Rob Ford experiment doesn’t want to get into another era of Trump-style candidates: loud and aggressive type people. The city obviously turned its back on that when they elected John Tory overwhelmingly,” said Mr. Kinsella, president of Daisy Group, a government relations firm based in Toronto.

“Running for mayor is different. You’re not just appealing to one constituency. You’re trying to reach the whole city.”

UPDATE: Jimmy K. phoned me to give me an earful. He said I should have called him to give him a head’s up – and he’s right! We had a fun chat and I told him he should run for mayor if he’s got the fire in his belly. Dunno if he will, but we had a great chat.

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Three things.

One, it’s Forum. They’re the ones who said there’d be a Parti Québécois majority, a BC NDP majority, a Wildrose majority, and…you get the picture.

Two, it’s a poll. Every single poll in the U.S. Presidential campaign got the outcome wrong, for weeks. Polls aren’t terribly reliable, these days.

Three, as my lovely and talented wife said on Global News this morning, Trudeau’s government is at the halfway point in its mandate – and, as the Premiers, members of the Liberal Caucus and everyone in Canada has said, they’ve done a piss-poor job of communicating the small business tax changes.

Still.

Blandy Scheer can’t be the reason for this – he’s the worst new Conservative leader since Joe Clark.  It can’t be anything the NDP are doing, either – they’re at 15 per cent, have no leader, and are now only protected by endangered species laws.

Something else is at work here.  My take is still this, as expressed at the tail end of last week’s column: This government is now at the two-year mark. The indications of entitlement and arrogance — and cynicism — are everywhere to be seen.

Your take, of course, is welcome.  Comments are open.

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…and many other things, too. So SFH wrote a song about it. 

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Not what I expected to be doing this morning.  Or, like, ever. 

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Right here.

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Ugly Pop is the best punk rock label in the world, hands down.  And the geriatric punksters in SFH are tickled to be on it.  Get multiple copies today! Makes excellent Christmas, Hanukkah and birthday gifts!

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My Daisy colleague Rob shot this. It’s Ben Mulroney and me talking about protecting NAFTA on CTV’s Your Morning. Him, the son of the guy who ushered in free trade, and a ghostly-looking me, the Chrétien guy, defending his father’s greatest legacy. 

Life is full of such ironies. 

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