Mayor Olivia Chow seems perfectly content with Tyler Johnson running a private business while collecting a hundred thousand dollar salary as Moise’s chief of staff. After all, Chow is one of Johnson's best clients, and if his business is successful, it will help Chow consolidate power at City Hall.

According to several accounts coming from Toronto-Centre, Chris Moise's office is in disarray. People complain he doesn't respond to emails, that he ignores the community, that he is quite unresponsive. Even Progress Toronto, which backed Moise in 2022, has left him out of promotional materials telling everyone how great their 2022 candidates are doing on City Council.

Moise might not have the greatest reputation, but his chief of staff, Tyler Johnson, should accept some of the blame.

As Moise’s chief of staff, Tyler Johnson earns $102,486.00. However, he spends much of his time running a private business from City Hall. In Johnson's “spare time,” he’s the Chief Operating Officer of a successful web design company that specializes in helping people campaign for political office.

This is a very busy time for Johnson's company. In the current municipal election, there are about 14 candidates using NationBuilder.com websites, the American platform that Tyler Johnson repackages for his clients. Johnson also provides ongoing tech support in a private Slack channel during a candidate's campaign, and other add-ons that aren't part of the NationBuilder platform. Johnson's company is currently so busy helping candidates that his email autoresponder (for tyler@progressivenation.ca) says he's stopped taking new clients until October 26, the day of the election. This is all on top of the work he's supposed to be doing as Moise's chief of staff.

Johnson calls his company ProgressiveNation. One of his top referrals is the advocacy group Progress Toronto. All six of the "progressive champions" backed by Progress Toronto are using Johnson's business. Furthermore, four out of the five Progressive Toronto candidates from 2022 are clients of Johnson's business, as are other older progressive councillors like Perks and Fletcher. Once Moise got elected in 2022, Johnson moved into his office as Chief of Staff but kept running his business. Moise still uses Johnson’s company for both his constituency website https://www.chrismoise.ca/ and his re-election website https://www.chrismoise.vote/

When asked via email if ProgressiveNation and Progress Toronto were affiliated, Johnson responded, “We aren’t affiliated but do support a lot of the same candidates due to our progressive nature.”

Johnson is quiet about his second business. It doesn't say anything on his company's website www.progressivenation.ca that it is owned by Chris Moise's chief of staff, nor does his City of Toronto profile mention anything about him running a business that serves City Council members while collecting a large salary. In fact, it appears that Johnson is careful about keeping his details out of the public eye. You will struggle to find any information on www.progressivenation.ca explaining who owns it. (Johnson's business parter is Jeff Slater of the NDP).

Johnson also isn’t the only person in Moise’s office running an outside business. Moise’s director of communications Noel Copping runs a business called Progressive Content, which is one of Progressive Nation's partners. Copping helps write content for Johnson's websites.

All of this entrepreneurial activity is taking place while Moise's office is allegedly ignoring constituents. In an Instagram video about Moise, Curran Stikuts provides quotations from Toronto-Centre constituents who say Moise has become “completely unresponsive” and “ignores the community.”

Progress Toronto also left Moise out of a Facebook post in May, where they talked about the great attendance records of the candidates they backed in 2022.

One of the most puzzling aspects of Tyler Johnson's situation is that none of his clients (who include Mayor Olivia Chow, eight current City Councillors--Matlow, Fletcher, Perruzza, Perks, Morley, Bravo, Malik and Moise--and six first-time hopeful candidates for City Council) seem to care that he's running ProgressiveNation as a private business while working as Moise's Chief of Staff. These people should know that ultimately Toronto-Centre constituents are the ones who suffer when Moise's office is in disarray. However, there are clearly incentives for Mayor Chow and her friends on City Council to turn a blind eye to Johnson's business activities. After all, everyone he's helping get elected supports Mayor Chow and the Progress Toronto platform.

We contacted Mayor Chow's office but she declined to comment.