“Toronto – Canada’s version of a Democrat run city”

Nearly two-thirds, 64 per cent, of Torontonians think the mayor and city council are out of touch with what residents want and need, according to a new poll.

The Canada Pulse Insights poll for CityNews also found 56 per cent said they believe the mayor was doing a good job, 64 per cent believed their local councillor was doing a good job and 55 per cent rated city council on a whole as doing a good job.

Do you believe your property taxes should go up to pay for food for middle-class and wealthy families? That’s not a trick question. And there’s no typo in the above line.

The answer will obviously be a resounding no for most people. Yet that’s the question Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow effectively put to voters on Monday at a re-election campaign announcement.

Chris Alexander has announced he is dropping out of the race to become the next mayor of Toronto.

The former Conservative cabinet minister made the announcement at a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday morning.

“Our path to success, it became clear to me over this weekend, was not obvious and perhaps not there at all,” he told supporters and members of the media at his campaign headquarters.

Was never in the running.

h/t DM

Shortly after becoming mayor of Toronto in 2010, Rob Ford tried to reduce the amount of the city’s municipal land transfer tax (LTT).

The much-loathed tax placed on the purchase of new homes within city limits had only come into effect a couple years earlier, introduced by then-mayor David Miller. It was a duplicate tax — replicating the Ontario provincial land transfer tax that buyers were already paying.

Taxes have gone up by a cumulative 28% since 2023, yet Torontonians would be hard-pressed to point to equivalent improvements in the services they receive. That figure includes the last tax hike pushed through by former mayor John Tory, but just since Olivia Chow took office, property taxes are up by more than 20%.

At one point in Tuesday night’s Toronto mayoral debate, Brad Bradford, the councillor running to unseat Olivia Chow, was decrying the city’s reluctance to uncover wasteful spending.

City Hall, he said, is “defined by a culture of status quo.”

Well, yes. And that is basically the problem that Bradford must overcome.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has done a decent job sticking to a tight script during her bid for re-election. It’s a script that casts her as a centrist concerned about public safety and affordability — two of the electorate’s main concerns.

But at a recent debate she let the mask slip and reminded Toronto voters of her true colours — that she has never been an ally of the police. That’s not something you want to do, especially when we need law and order more than ever.

Concerned citizens from across Toronto are suing city hall and three of its leaders, alleging they broke the law and acted in bad faith in choosing where homeless shelters will go.

Safe Neighbourhoods Toronto, a non-profit incorporated last month, is seeking an injunction against the City of Toronto to stop it from setting up shelters that don’t “comply with the criteria approved by city council.” It also seeks $1 million from Mayor Olivia Chow, Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik and Gord Tanner, the city’s head of shelter services.

What’s the ballot box issue for the Toronto mayoral election? It’s not yet clear. With only six weeks to go, there is no defining matter that has seized the minds of the electorate and driven the debate between candidates.

Now there doesn’t necessarily have to be such a topic. Not every election is a referendum on a divisive matter. But there are examples of previous Toronto mayoral elections that have been strongly defined by a single issue.

Olivia Chow stood on the stage at the mayoral debate hosted by the Daily Bread Food Bank and said that Toronto is living up to its full potential. One statistic from Daily Bread’s annual report shows just how wrong Mayor Chow is.

Since Olivia Chow came to office in 2023, visits to food banks across the city are up 47% and came in at 3,760,888 client visits.