Tod Maffin admits a mistake that affected his recent videos and commits to two changes: launching more Canada-focused projects like CanadaIsNotBroken.org and a grocery audit, and publishing all video sources at sources.todmaffin.com for full transparency. He's aiming to leave his day job in 2026 to do this work full-time.
Chapters
I have made a big mistake, and it has affected almost every video I have made in the last 6 months. As a result, I'm going to make you two New Year's resolutions going forward. Neither involves fitness, so everyone can relax. One of those resolutions has to do with the projects. So besides making videos, I've done a bunch of special projects that I hope have benefited Canadians this year. CanadaIsNotBroken.org, which lets you copy and paste facts to counter the social media bots and commenters who parrot political talking points to make people think that our country is destitute, all sourced and categorized. The grocery audit, where I counted every single produce SKU across a dozen grocery stores. That was thousands of fruits and vegetables to be able to report which chains were doing the worst job at keeping Canadian products on the shelves. The music video, practically my whole community was involved in, that showcased our area to healthcare workers wanting to move north. There was the Chucklehead fundraiser, the Canadian Maker Gift Guide, a book of my most popular writings which I gave away for free, and of course the Healthcare Infusion Project that has turned into a national movement and is bringing healthcare workers to Canada. There are now 17 regional chapters. And before I tell you about that big mistake, I want to commit to Resolution #1, which is to do more of these special projects. My goal for 2026 is to be able to take a year sabbatical from my day job and work on content that supports Canada full-time. If my work this year has meant anything to you, This is the only time that I will ask you to join me in that effort. The best way to support my work is to join my newsletter. It's called From Far and Wide, it's about Canada, the news you didn't hear, lots of good news plus trivia and other stuff, 25,000 people already read it every week. There is a free tier that gets you an issue every Saturday, but you can also give a one-time contribution or join the monthly premium plan which gets you twice as much content, monthly meetings with me, and a bonus members-only midweek issue. If you're able to support my work this way, it would mean a lot. The second resolution is to fix that mistake I mentioned. I spend a lot of time researching my videos to make sure that the information is accurate, but I have not always been very good at disclosing those sources. So in the new year, I'm gonna put a list of my video sources up at sources.todmaffin.com so that you can see for yourself where the data's coming from. This has been a weird year. It started with a video I did about buying Canadian that went viral, and now I'm co-starring alongside Neil Patrick Harris in a movie coming out next year. I could not be more thankful for the trust that you have given me. So thank you for considering supporting my work, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday. And just kidding about the movie thing, but seriously, Neil, my DMs are open.
