CANADA’S CATASTROPHIC COWARDICE: While Hong Kong Jails Corrupt Officials After Deadly Fire… Toronto Sleeps, Smirks, and Lets Its Poor Burn

A DEMAND FOR ACCOUNTABILITY: While Hong Kong Acts, Toronto’s Inaction is a National Disgrace

By Eddie Hardie 🍁 The Voices They Hope You’ll Forget

Let’s be clear. When a deadly fire exposes a chain of negligence, a just society responds with decisive action and accountability. In Hong Kong, a fire that claimed five lives has led to the arrest of 21 individuals for bribery and safety violations. They are confronting the alleged corruption that led to tragedy.

Re: Hong Kong arrests 21 for corruption in building renovation crackdown

Now, look at Toronto. The Thorncliffe Park inferno of 2023—a blaze in a poorly maintained high-rise that killed two neighbours and displaced hundreds—has resulted in a familiar, devastating silence. No sweeping charges. No profound systemic overhaul. Just a slow-moving inquiry and a gaping wound in a community that had sounded alarms for years.

The Fatalities: The fire killed Tania Yonan, 31, and her mother, Kohar, 61. They were trapped in their 15th-floor unit. A third victim, a man, was critically injured.

Here is yet another preventable fire just took place before Christmas right in the same neighbourhood: Thorncliffes Park:-

BETRAYED IN THE BURNING COLD: How Olivia Chow’s Toronto Abandoned Thorncliffe Park Residents to a Predictable Inferno

Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop has confirmed the unthinkable: buildings at Thorncliffe Park were insulated with DEADLY COMBUSTIBLE PARTICLE BOARD—the same type of material that turned London’s Grenfell Tower into a funeral pyre for 72 people in 2017.

Where is the Investigation? Where is the Accountability?

Zilch, zero, nada

Kamal Gogna, Chief Building Official & Executive Director, City of Toronto refused to answer why there remain no responsible names, no investigation why ILLEGAL COMBUSTIBLE materials are allowed on Highrise Buildings, no nothing except some scripted trivial matters…

TORONTO’S MURDEROUS INDIFFERENCE: A Masterclass in Bureaucratic Manslaughter

This isn’t just failure. It’s a betrayal of the public trust. It reveals a system that too often protects the powerful and ignores the vulnerable. We must channel our collective grief and anger into demanding better.

Toronto’s Paralysis: When “Review” Becomes a Synonym for “Forget”

While other jurisdictions demonstrate what accountability looks like, Toronto’s response has been plagued by a bureaucratic inertia that borders on contempt for the victims. The building at 2245 Kipling Avenue was, by numerous tenant accounts and a damning city audit, a disaster waiting to happen. Warnings about fire safety were ignored.

And after the smoke cleared? The momentum for justice dissipated into the labyrinth of City Hall. The promise of “never again” rings hollow when the mechanisms of enforcement remain chronically underfunded and toothless. This inaction is a message to every tenant in a neglected building: your safety is not a priority. That is unconscionable.

The Scandal of Our Double Standard

This is where the scandal cuts deepest. We are a nation that prides itself on justice, equality, and compassion. We rightly hold ourselves to a high standard. Yet, in our own city, we are allowing a two-tiered system to persist: one for the wealthy and well-connected, and another for the working poor, newcomers, and marginalized communities who populate these neglected towers.

The bitter irony is that we often critique other nations for their failures of governance or justice. The Thorncliffe fire holds up a mirror, and the reflection is profoundly unsettling. It shows a gap between our national ideals and our municipal failures. We must be angry enough at this hypocrisy to force change.

This is a Canadian Problem, Demanding a Canadian Solution

The suggestion that Canada needs annexation to solve its problems is a cheap shot, but it speaks to a real frustration: the perception of a governance deficit. We do not need external saviours; we need to summon the political will to save ourselves.

We have the tools. We have strong laws. What we lack is the relentless enforcement and the political courage to wield them without fear or favour. We need:

• Proper funding for proactive, surprise building inspections with real power.

• Real, deterring penalties for landlords who treat safety as an optional expense.

• A tenant protection system that acts with the speed and urgency that emergencies require.

• And, ultimately, criminal charges where evidence points to wilful negligence that costs lives.

This is not about American-style justice; it is about Canadian-style justice— the kind we claim to believe in. It is about the rule of law applied equally to all.

A Call to Our Leaders and to Ourselves

To Mayor Olivia Chow, to Premier Doug Ford, to every elected official: The legacy of Thorncliffe Park is being written now. Will it be another chapter in the long story of forgotten promises? Or will it be the catalyst that finally fixes a broken system?

Olivia Chow aka ‘Hearless Attention Whxre’

To our fellow Canadians: Our compassion cannot be passive. It must be fierce, demanding, and sustained. It must translate into votes, into voices at council meetings, into support for tenant unions, and into an unwavering demand for answers and action.

Hong Kong’s actions show that accountability after a fire is possible. Let us make it inevitable here. Let us honour the lives lost not with empty platitudes, but with a system that ensures no one else dies from our collective indifference.

The world is watching. More importantly, the people of Thorncliffe Park, and of every neglected building in this country, are waiting.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

1. Hong Kong Arrests: Hong Kong arrests 21 for corruption over fatal fire

2. Thorncliffe Murderous Inferno: Toronto’s latest fire cause by Illegal Combustible Building Materials 

3. Thorncliffe Park Fire Reportage: Toronto Star – What we know about the deadly Kipling Avenue apartment fire

4. Tenant Complaints & Neglect: CBC – Months before fatal fire, tenants warned of ‘disaster waiting to happen’ at Kipling Avenue building

5. City’s Failed Audit of Property Standards: CTV Toronto – Audit finds Toronto’s property standards enforcement is failing tenants

More…

• Mayor Chow Complicit in Lawbreaking
• Ontario Building Code Act & Toronto Municipal Code Violations

• How Olivia Chow’s Toronto Abandoned Thorncliffe Park Residents

• Toronto Fire Chief reveals deadly combustible cladding at Thorncliffe

• Thorncliffe Park Fire Cover-Up: Media Only Cover ‘Trivial Matters’

• An Inferno of Corruption: How City of Toronto’s Murderous Administration Is Burning Toronto To The Ground

• Corruption & Bribery in City Hall: Canuck Post Exposé

• Why London’s Inferno Will Happen in Toronto: Canuck Post Warning

• London Inferno – “Posing Fire Risks & Killing A Few Is Okay”

Our city is literally burning from corruption. It’s time to fight fire with fury.