Therme ravaged Ontario Place for greed. Make their collaborators pay the price.
We will not allow our city's loss to become their financial gain.
Ontario Place has been destroyed. It has been reduced to rubble, blasted to oblivion. There is little which remains of what once stood on opening day in 1971; while the Cinesphere IMAX and the Pods complex are hypothetically being preserved for use in a relocated Ontario Science Centre, everything else is completely gone.
Trillium Park and the William G. Davis Trail, first opened in 2017 by the Wynne government, will also remain in its current form. The preservation of this relatively new park, the Cinesphere, and the Pods, are one of the few successful victories from public pushback against Doug Ford’s privatization of Ontario Place.
Without the advocacy of Ontario Place for All as a pressure group, these public spaces likely would have been cannibalized as well. But this is far from victory, and not the success that we have envisioned for ourselves.
To say that this is a depressing turn of events for our cause would be an understatement. I’ve been a part of many protest movements, some of which thankfully were successful, and some which were unfortunately unsuccessful.
A key aspect of success isn’t just throwing resources at an issue, but maintaining the morale of your movement’s supporters through consistent and visible wins. Without any signs of progress for your movement, people get depressed and stop showing up to help.
This is the problem that Ontario Place for All currently has in stopping Premier Ford and Therme Group’s plans for our public land. They need to demonstrate not merely the ability to mobilize supporters, but the ability to show those supporters can obtain tangible wins against Therme Group through applied pressure.
And while Doug Ford has cowed to blowback when it threatened his populist appeal, he will never do so in the case of Ontario Place. Contrary to popular understanding, this is not merely because of his resentment against the City of Toronto and the downtown core, and it is not merely because suburban voters themselves are alienated against Toronto.
Beyond mere regionalism, Doug Ford resents the very idea of public owned spaces like Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Centre, and he resents most of all that they were the product of Tories who came before him. In destroying the physical legacy of his Ontario PC predecessors, he seeks to remake Ontario conservatism in his own image, and by all accounts, he has succeeded.
As the issue mainly affects Toronto alone, we should expect little sympathy from voters outside our city; much the same as the 2018 Toronto municipal election interference conducted by Doug Ford, the rest of Ontario has little sympathy when we become the target of his malfeasance. Expecting this to influence voter decisions in the next provincial election would be a fool’s errand.
So, what is left to do? If the current line of tactics is ineffective, if there is no political pressure to be placed directly on the Premier, then perhaps elected officials are not the most effective protest target. Where else can Ontario Place for All direct their resources?
Therme Group has received enough animosity from Toronto’s public that at least two charitable organizations, Swim Drink Fish Canada and the Toronto International Film Festival, have cancelled sponsorship agreements with Therme Group, the latter explicitly after a campaign by Ontario Place for All.
This is good! This demonstrates that by selectively picking targets, and applying pressure, Therme Group can gradually be deprived of necessary allies. But I would argue that there are much better targets to pick, that have more direct involvement with Therme’s plans to cannibalize Ontario Place for private profits.
With Doug Ford’s backing through their signed lease, Therme Group has insulated themselves from concerns about public opinion. Ultimately, their sponsorship of TIFF was never integral to their plans, and likely an unnecessary expense in hindsight. Far superior targets for pressure, in my view, would be those directly collaborating with Therme Group to steal Ontario Place from the community.
Clearly, Ontario Place for All agreed with my assessment, and posted a list of associated bad actors who collaborated with Therme Group on this past week’s tree removal. Diamond Schmitt, the architecture firm which designed the proposed Therme spa, is certainly high on the list.
Urban Strategy and STUDIO tla, two urban design groups collaborating on the project, are also valid targets for protest action. There are, in addition, contracted construction crews through AECON Group and EllisDon that are performing the dirty work on the ground. But I have a better idea for protestors to target, a collaborator so integral that Therme Group’s ambitions for Ontario Place likely hinged on their involvement.
StrategyCorp Incorporated, according to their own website, is a “government relations, strategic communications, and management consulting advisory firm.” In plain talk, what that means is that companies pay StrategyCorp to do one of two things: help them lobby the government, or help them talk about something unpopular.
Management consulting, ironically enough, is a task they’re frequently called upon by perform by governments, rather than corporations. StrategyCorp has completed over 30 service delivery and operational reviews for various Ontario municipalities, and those contracts make them a fair amount of money! But that’s a different story, for a future column.
According to the Government of Canada’s Registry of Lobbyists, as of July 3rd of 2024, Therme Group had registered John Perenack of StrategyCorp to lobby federal entities on their behalf, as Ontario Place is adjacent to federally regulated waters. When it comes to provincial lobbyist registrations with Ontario’s Office of the Integrity Commissioner, further illustration was provided.
Therme Group currently has five registered consultant lobbyists acting provincially in Ontario, three from StrategyCorp and two from Amir Remtulla & Associates. The three StrategyCorp lobbyists registered, as of June 28th of 2024, are:
The previously mentioned John Perenack, one of StrategyCorp’s Principals on their leadership team. Mr. Perenack has an extensive history mainly working as a consultant, but his LinkedIn history indicates he began his career in a partisan role at Queen’s Park, as a Special Assistant to PC MPP John Baird from 1995 to 1996, leaving for StrategyCorp immediately after.
Aidan Grove-White, another Principal on StrategyCorp’s leadership team. Mr. Grove-White has extensive non-political experience working in Ontario’s Public Service as a policy advisor, an associate, and then into a management role.
Ana Salvagna, one of many Managers at StrategyCorp, who formerly worked in a political context at Toronto City Hall. Before coming to StrategyCorp, she worked for Councillor Michael Thompson as a Special Assistant, before transitioning to serve in Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s office as his Legislative Affairs and Communications Coordinator.
Curiously, despite having registered several consultant lobbyists to represent Therme Group and their interests, StrategyCorp does not describe themselves as performing any “government relations” activity for Therme. Rather, on their website, they have them listed as a client under their “communications” practice. In any case, StrategyCorp is performing lobbying activities as defined by federal and provincial law.
Additionally, on August 2nd, Therme would re-register two more consultant lobbyists with OICO, not from StrategyCorp but rather a second firm, Amir Remtulla & Associates. Amir Remtulla, for those lacking context, was Chief of Staff to Mayor Rob Ford; after leaving that role to work for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games committee, he founded his own lobbying firm upon the conclusion of the games.
Tasnia Khan, who works for Mr. Remtulla at his consultancy, previously served in Mayor John Tory’s office, first as an Advisor on Legislative Affairs, then being promoted to Senior Advisor on Council Affairs & Strategic Initiatives after Mr. Tory’s successful 2022 re-election. Her employment concluded once Mayor Olivia Chow assumed office, and she has since worked as a lobbyist for Amir Remtulla’s firm.
StrategyCorp is a much larger entity than Amir Remtulla’s firm, despite the latter’s recent prominence by virtue of his closeness to the Ford family. Many former staffers, Liberal and Conservative alike, will flow through StrategyCorp, before moving on to other consulting work. The relationships between larger lobbying firms and government staffers is so close, it’s best described as a revolving door.
The dirty secret of lobbying is that it’s largely the main career path which staffers will pursue after “leaving” politics; the virtue of a lobbyist is their ability to get you meetings with politicians, and that’s why former staffers are so useful. So-called “government relations” firms will openly tell people that if they have a five-year lobbying ban that hasn’t been exempted, they are less useful to hire.
While lobbyists can and do meet with politicians from other parties, it’s commonly understood that lobbyists with a personal relationship to the politician, or at minimum from the same party as them, will have superior results. Let us have no illusions about the reality of lobbying as a profession, or how close their ties are to decision makers.
StrategyCorp is used to performing work for clients like Therme, but they’re also used to a wall of distinction between them and their clients. Most lobbyists have a peculiar cognitive dissonance, where they act genuinely surprised that people may be upset with them over who they’ve lobbied for. Despite the fact that they are, in many cases, former political staffers, their resilience to public protest actually reduces once they switch to lobbying work.
StrategyCorp played a key role in lobbying the Government of Ontario on Therme Group’s behalf. It is perfectly acceptable to hold StrategyCorp responsible for their role in that, and to make them the target of peaceful and legal protest. I would argue that without StrategyCorp’s assistance and connections, Therme Group may have never become Premier Ford’s selected partner.
Ontario Place for All thus has a clear target of action for further activity. While the previous campaign towards TIFF didn’t target Therme’s capacity to generate revenue, targeting the lobbying firms they hire changes the game. It sends a message not just to StrategyCorp, but to all lobbying firms in the province, that if they advocate for things which hurt the public, the public will not respond quietly.
StrategyCorp possesses two offices in Ontario, one located in Toronto and one located in Ottawa. In Toronto, their office is located in the Financial District at 333 Bay Street, in Suite 1720. Meanwhile, in Ottawa, their office is located in Suite 850 at 100 Queen Street, just south of Parliament Hill.
StrategyCorp helped Therme Group steal Ontario Place from the people; they helped them ravage the entire West Island, and destroy what took generations to grow. They did this in the name of greed, because the money Therme Group paid them was more important than any moral consideration, as it usually is for lobbying firms.
It’s time to tip the scales back in the direction of the people, rather than the greedmongers and their petty collaborators. I hold StrategyCorp responsible for the destruction of Ontario Place, and if anyone should be blamed for bringing Therme Group and Doug Ford together in unholy union, it really should be them.
If the movement to keep the remains of Ontario Place public wants to shift tactics, and find somewhere effective they can put pressure? StrategyCorp is right there, waiting for people to protest outside their office building. They really won’t know what hit them.
I can’t think of any better place to start. Can you?