Nathen Mazri, who is running for a spot on Toronto City Council, was approached by Olivia Chow’s puppeteers on the unfortunately named Progress Toronto to possibly become one of their recruits.
The colourful Mazri, an entrepreneur known for creating Garfield EATS and Scooby-Do EATS, is trying to unseat Vince Crisanti in the Etobicoke North ward, previously held by the Ford family.
The 73-year-old Crisanti — who is tight with Premier Doug Ford — missed 322, or 22.8%, of recorded votes during the past council term.
Mazri, hoping to bring some much-needed fresh blood to the ward, filled out the 37-question Progress Toronto questionnaire because he was endeavouring to be transparent.
He admits he knew very little about the group, a group which I call anything but progressive.
I could have given him an earful about Mayor Olivia Chow’s puppeteers, whose main mission has been to get rid of conservatives on council by endorsing like-minded candidates and putting out mean-spirited attack literature and online propaganda that spreads untruths about candidates who might expose their radical agenda.
They have been on the scene since 2018 — created by activist Michal Hay, who later became Chow’s chief of staff.
They were largely responsible for putting Chow in office in the 2023 by-election, along with the progressive wing of council, such as Ausma Malik (I call them the Hamas caucus).
Progress Toronto is, in many ways, all that’s wrong with the city and its decline.
They claim to subsist on donations, but it’s dubious.
They targeted my former Toronto Sun colleague Anthony Furey with hate literature alleging he was far right and racist when he ran for council in Don Valley West in 2024.
The executive director, Saman Tabasinejad, subsequently gloated about it in a missive to its followers.
If we needed any proof of their mission to promote a radical left agenda, their 37-question survey to pick what they call “Progressive Champions” is indeed revealing.
They ask potential recruits to support throwing more money at Indigenous in Toronto, a mere .08% of the population.
They push all kinds of protections for tenants, good or bad, and ask would-be candidates to vote to prevent ‘renovictions’ and do “everything in their power” to prop up affordable housing and create more expensive shelter spaces.
The Progress Toronto questionnaire asks that their recruits support the use of social workers instead of police in violent situations and overdoses on the TTC or on the city’s streets (a ridiculous concept!).
Not surprisingly, their recruits are asked to vote against any bylaw that restricts the “constitutional freedom” of Torontonians to protest (of course they’d be happy to let the terrorist sympathizers occupy our streets with impunity).
They make it clear they want to hike the vacant home tax to 5% from 3% of the assessed value, bring outsourced services back in-house and expand safe injection services.
The Progress Toronto questionnaire makes their anti-policing, pro-chaos agenda very clear: Spend with impunity on social programs, eschew policies that improve law and order, protect drug addicts and violent protesters.
Mazri said when he filled out the questionnaire, it became very clear that they are an “ideological group” that wants candidates “they can steer.”
He said his mission is to focus on accountability, lowering property taxes and doing what’s right for his community — not serving a special interest group’s agenda.
”They endorsed my opponent because they know (she Ala’a Adib) can be managed… they knew they couldn’t control me,” he said.
”I refuse to be anyone’s puppet.”
Sadly, their puppet Olivia Chow has done just about everything they’d hoped she’d do and, in the process, has contributed to the city’s decline.
With Brad Bradford gaining in the polls, Progress Toronto and its activist recruits have tried to fling as much dirt as they can before election day next Monday.
At least this time, I sense many Torontonians aren’t buying their propaganda.