Toronto’s mayoral race exposes the weakness of city politics

Christopher Hume –

No one could accuse Toronto politics of being slick. Only in this city could Rob Ford have been elected mayor.

Even so, the current elector­al campaign ranks among the clumsiest and most chaotic on record. While incumbent Olivia Chow, every Torontonian’s best friend, resorts to folksy story­telling, her main rivals – Brad Bradford and Chris Alexander – trip over each other performing a Tweedledum and Tweedledee routine.

Chow can at least point to her remarkably successful record. For their part, Bradford and Alexander have been unable to offer anything more than that they’re not Chow.

For Bradford, this has made for some amusing, if awkward, moments. That became clear recently when Ontario Premier Doug Ford unexpectedly ap­peared to endorse Chow. Boast­ing about his “phenomenal” re­lationship with the incumbent, Ford said that because she has done “an incredible job” he “would continue supporting the mayor.”

All this was too much for the councillor from Beaches-East York. Bradford quickly fired off an angry release accusing Chow of being “the easiest negotiation [Ford] has ever had.” According to him, “Everything she told To­rontonians she would fight and oppose she handed over on a sil­ver platter.”

What Bradford didn’t men­tion was that he supported many of the decisions he lambastes Chow for not defending, includ­ing the removal of bike lanes and expanding Billy Bishop Airport.

Chris Alexander, Stephen Harper’s immigration minister and former Canadian ambassa­dor to Afghanistan, has yet to move beyond motherhood and apple pie. Toronto, he insists, needs to be better, its potential released. Hard to disagree with that, but he’s a little short of spe­cifics. Perhaps his most concrete commitment is that his time in Afghanistan will help him “bring safety and order to To­ronto streets.” Any questions? Just ask the Taliban.

Clearly, self-awareness is in short supply among those who aspire to the city’s highest of­fice. Apart from naked ambi­tion, it’s hard to tell why at least two of these candidates actually want to be mayor.

Bradford has been running for years. Perhaps his motivation is to undo many of the motions he supported as a councillor. For instance, he promises to change the name of Sankofa Square, though he voted for it. He would also remove bike lanes he sup­ported.

When Bradford first put him­self forward in the election called after John Tory’s sudden departure in 2023, he placed a distant eighth. Still, the former planner is grimly determined to become mayor at any cost. This seems somehow appropriate for a candidate who views Toron­to as a hotbed of crime, a city whose bleak streets are lousy with trash and potholes, whose transit system is beset by vio­lence and unsafe to use.

On the other hand, Alexander sees Toronto as essentially good but suffering from poor man­agement. Hard to disagree with that, too.

The real problem, largely un­acknowledged, is that like every Canadian city, Toronto does not control its own destiny. That’s in Doug Ford’s hands. Though the city faces a daunting array of issues ranging from housing, poverty and congestion to in­adequate public transit, home­lessness and global warming, there’s precious little the munic­ipal government can do to ad­dress any of these. Municipali­ties are mere “creatures of the province.”

Chow’s singular strength is her understanding of the fra­gility of local democracy and the tenuousness of civic pow­ers. Despite Bradford’s intem­perate words, she has learned better than any mayor since David Miller how to work with Queen’s Park and, when neces­sary, Ottawa.

Even Miller, though he man­aged to cajole then premier Dalton McGuinty to update the City of Toronto Act, failed to convince either of the “senior” governments to give the city desperately needed access to in­come and/or sales taxes. While many cities in Europe and even the United States receive a por­tion of income and sales taxes, we must rely on property levies.

For Canadian towns and cit­ies, co-operation – a.k.a. beg­ging – is key to survival. With­out it, urban Canada is on its own to cover the 60-odd per cent of public services it han­dles on eight percent of public revenues. Even mild-mannered former mayor John Tory was moved to complain about be­ing treated like “a boy in short pants” by Queen’s Park.

Regardless, the mayoral can­didates, like the country’s po­litical leaders, have no desire to address the fundamental flaw that leaves the Canadian feder­ation a veritable house of cards. The failure to empower urban Canada – and the 80 per cent of the population that inhabit our towns, villages and cities – undermines any effort, as the prime minister puts it, “to build Canada strong.”