The Sign on the Door

I found this taped to a door in Ward 13 last election.

NO SOLICITATIONS Politics. Salesmen. Charity. Religion. Petitions. Estimates. DO NOT leave papers or pamphlets.

Someone sat down with a marker and colour-coded this. Underlined it twice. It's not hostile — it's tired. Tired of the doorbell, tired of the pitch, tired of being asked for something before the coffee's even made.

I get it. I left the door alone.

But here's the part worth knowing, because it says something about who actually gets heard in this ward.

Right now, that sign works. It's July. The writ hasn't dropped. If a candidate knocks on that door today, the resident, the landlord, the super, the condo board — any of them can turn us away, and there's nothing in Ontario election law that says otherwise. Access before the writ period is entirely a matter of asking nicely and getting told no.

In October, that sign stops working — for candidates. Once writs are issued, Section 88.1 of the Municipal Elections Act overrides it. No landlord, condo corporation, or building owner can prevent a candidate from knocking on unit doors between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends. The sign still works on the vacuum salesman. It does not work on us.

That's not a loophole. It's the law recognizing something true: multi-unit buildings are where a huge share of this ward actually lives, and if private "no politics" signs could lock candidates out building-wide, entire towers of voters would simply never be reached. The law exists because the alternative is worse — a two-tier democracy where houses get knocked on and towers don't.

So why does this matter enough to write about?

Because the right to knock in October doesn't erase the four months before it. An incumbent spends a full term building relationships with supers, sitting in on condo AGMs, getting invited into buildings nobody's legally required to open yet. A challenger starts from the sign on the door. By the time the writ drops and the law finally levels the field, one candidate has been inside for years and the other is showing ID for the first time.

That's not a complaint. It's a description of the terrain. If you live in a building like this one — St. Laurent, Montreal Road, anywhere in Ward 13 where the answer to "house or apartment" is apartment — and you haven't heard from me yet, this is why. Not because you don't matter. Because the law that guarantees I can reach you doesn't start until the campaign officially does.

Once it does, I'll be at the door. Sign or no sign.

— Peter Karwacki

"something needs to be done".