Ryan Wedding’s alleged $100,000 a month cartel subscription - Toronto Star

In today's First Up: Regional chairs and a musical in SickKids.

Ryan Wedding is a former Olympic snowboarder accused of running an international drug trafficking empire.

Good morning. This is the Thursday, Nov. 12 edition of First Up, the Star’s daily morning digest. Sign up to get it earlier each day, in your inbox.

I know some of you have been waiting for my permission: Now that Remembrance Day is over, you may begin your holiday-season decorating or shopping or marketing. The Eaton Centre lights its tree today, the Distillery opens its holiday market, and the Shaw production of “A Christmas Carol” opens at Harbourfront. It’s on. (Still, in my house, by order of my daughter Mary, we don’t play any Christmas music until December. And then we don’t play anything else until January.)

Trivia Time: In today’s Conversation, I discuss how the chairs of Metro Toronto were elected by Metro Council. This was true for all but one of them. That one, who has a highway named after him, was appointed by the premier of Ontario. Who was he? The answer is at the bottom of today’s email.

Now, let’s get to the rest of today’s news.

U.S. authorities say the ex-Olympian-turned-alleged cocaine kingpin joined a service where, for a monthly fee, Mexican crime bosses received stolen police intelligence and alerts of impending arrests. The allegations come from an indictment filed against another alleged cartel member in Mexico City. Wedding is accused of running a drug ring that worked with Mexican cartels and ordered multiple murders around the globe. Once one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives and the subject of a $15-million reward, Wedding was arrested in Mexico in January. Calvi Leon reports on the latest indictment.

Tooba Gholan Hasan and her son Mehran Youssufi, top right, remain in Denmark, separated from the rest of the family.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to reporters during a scrum at the Ontario legislature in Toronto on Oct. 27, 2026.

Voters across Ontario showed up to elect new mayors just over two weeks ago. But on Tuesday, in many cities and towns, Premier Doug Ford appointed regional chairs — basically super-mayors who will oversee the most important issues where they live. No election necessary (or even allowed). 

One NDP MPP accused Ford of setting up a “dictatorship.” A Liberal MPP said he was “steamrolling local democracy.” It isn’t hard to see their point.  

The regional governments of Peel, Halton, York, Durham, Niagara, Waterloo, Simcoe and Muskoka act much like the old Metro level of government once did in Toronto: handling the largest portfolios, such as police, paramedics, garbage, water and wastewater, social services, roads and major infrastructure. People might consider these responsibilities to be the most important services delivered by their municipal government. Residents elect councillors to serve on the regional council (their city mayors get to serve on it too). But residents get no say in who oversees that council in the role of chair.

That part isn’t completely new: On such bodies, the chairs have not typically been directly elected by the general public. In the past they have been elected by the regional councillors from among their own membership. The people elected the councillors, the councillors chose someone to chair their council.  

Not anymore. Now the provincial government just appoints someone to be the chair. They took applications after passing a new law in April, which said Ford’s government would choose chairs to make sure housing and infrastructure projects are accelerated.  

This might be controversial enough in a place like York Region, where Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca has been appointed. Del Duca will continue to be mayor but won’t be paid more to also serve as the regional boss. Residents of the other cities that make up York might wonder what his priorities are likely to be.

But then consider the case of most of the other municipalities, where the appointed chair has not been elected to serve in any current municipal capacity.  

Muskoka residents did not elect their new chair Scott Aitchison to municipal office. He’s a federal Conservative MP stepping down from Parliament Hill next month. The new chair of Halton Region, Ann Mulvale, used to be a mayor (for six terms, in Oakville). But she hasn’t been elected to anything by anyone in Halton since she left office 20 years ago. The new Niagara Regional chair, Frank Campion, has been the mayor of Welland since 2014 but did not seek re-election this year. 

In the case of Del Duca, at least some voters in the region chose him for a job, but he now gets to rule over all of them. In other cases, no voters in the regions had anything to say about these new chairs at all. 

It used to strike me as strange, as a resident of Toronto and Scarborough in the old Metro Council days, that the Metro chair job was maybe the most powerful in the city, and yet was obscure because only councillors got to elect the chair. It strikes me as even stranger that even that indirect form of democratic legitimacy has been removed from the position. Now, the premier just names someone. Maybe that’s no surprise. This is the same premier who has so often overruled or bigfooted Toronto’s local government, has seized control of school boards and created “strong mayors” whose strength depends on alignment with Ford’s own priorities.  

What do you think? Do you live in one of these regions controlled by the newly appointed chairs? Are you concerned that you have no say in selecting the leader of your region? Or do you think it makes sense to have the premier directly appoint the heads of these governments? Let us know in the comments section here.

Several hundred Torontonians gathered outside Fort York for Remembrance Day ceremonies.

LINDA MCQUAIG: We haven’t seen that kind of anti-oligarchy fervour sweeping the U.S. in 90 years.

JUSTIN LING:After Netanyahu’s gone, will Canada and Israel make up?

ELIZABETH RENZETTI:Russell Brand’s reputation as a sexual predator was well known. It still took more than 20 years to get justice.

SickKids has turned decommissioned clinical spaces into a theatre experience.

“Dump him or I will dump all the merchandise. Bring clarity that this hate or any hate is not part of Canadian ethics.” — Sal

“All fans deserve better as we stand together against this kind of hate ... And better means the Jays dropping him, now.” — Charlie

Today’s term of the day is “investigative genetic genealogy.” That’s a process that combines DNA with the tracing of family history to identify people. Toronto Police used it recently to finally identify “Derek,” a man from the U.K. who died on the streets of Toronto in 1992.

Trivia answer: The only Metro Toronto chair appointed by the premier was the first person to hold that job, Frederick Gardiner.

Thanks for starting your day with us. If you enjoy First Up, please share it with a friend. And let us know what you think of the changes we’ve made, and what you’d like to see. Email  firstup@thestar.ca. I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning.