Rivals take aim at Olivia Chow during Toronto Region Board of Trade mayoral debate
· Toronto Sun
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The three main candidates for mayor squared off at the Toronto Region Board of Trade debate on Tuesday night, but it was the incumbent who took most of the incoming fire.
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Candidates Brad Bradford, Chris Alexander and incumbent Olivia Chow covered what Torontonians consider the municipal election’s main issues: A lack of affordable housing and the cost-of-living crisis .
The run-up to the debate saw Chow’s main opponent, Bradford, erode some of her lead in recent polling. A Liaison survey has Bradford sitting at 40% among decided and leading voters, while Chow sat at 47% compared to Bradford at 39% and Chow at 50% earlier this month.
Bradford, 40, is increasingly seen as the candidate of change and made that clear at the debate, attacking Chow, 69, for presiding over the largest property tax increase in the city’s history and having little to show for it despite record investment from the federal government. Bradford pledged a freeze on property taxes in his first year as mayor along with a line-by-line audit — not done since 2011, Bradford noted — of municipal expenses to eliminate waste.
Families ‘can’t afford to be here’
He added that under Chow, city hall spent $11 million on Microsoft Office programs for retirees.
“There are families leaving the city every year because they can’t afford to be here,” Bradford said. “And Olivia Chow, as NDP mayor, always goes back to taxpayers without doing the work to find the savings.
“City hall takes your taxpayer money for granted. And despite record investment from the federal government, the provincial government, billions of dollars in transfers, we still very much have a starting deficit of $1.7 billion going into this year. So I was surprised that Mayor Chow suggested to us that she fixed the budget. She’s actually put us in a worse financial position.”
Alexander got a zinger in on Bradford shortly thereafter: “You’ve been on council for eight years. No line-by-line spending review,” though Bradford later claimed Chow batted down any attempt he made as councillor to conduct such a review.
Chow attempted to defend her record, casting herself as a proven leader in tough times who has brought in investment and speedily built affordable housing — the latter claim hotly disputed by both Bradford and Alexander and seemingly corrected in one instance by Toronto Star editor-in-chief Nicole McIntyre, who moderated the debate and told Chow that Toronto does indeed have an affordable housing problem.
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Chow seemed to feel the heat from the newest polling numbers. She mainly targeted Bradford, challenging him on his record as a city councillor and accusing him of calling Toronto a “wasteland.” She also warned that Bradford would take a slash-and-burn approach to the progress made under her administration.
The mayor later pledged those who use the TTC more than 10 times per week would ride for free after that.
“You can’t run away from your record,” Chow told Bradford, “I’m working hard in these tough economic times. There is a trade war. There is uncertainty. I’m bringing in investment, promoting our city. You denigrate it and call it a wasteland.”
Sitting in third place in the polls at 10%, Alexander is viewed by Bradford’s supporters as a spoiler siphoning support from him. But the former federal Conservative cabinet minister took aim at Chow, too, calling her claims “a lot of eyewash.
“Our housing market has collapsed, 25% down,” Alexander said. “Construction of housing has collapsed. We’re in an income crisis. We’re in a hunger emergency. We’re in a hate crime wave. We’re in a transit crisis — 40% don’t feel safe on transit and God knows how many who don’t use transit feel unsafe. We’re in an operational budget crisis. We’re in a capital budget crisis. We don’t have more money. We are in trouble in this city.”
Election Day is on Oct. 26. from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Advance voting starts on Oct. 6 and goes to Oct. 11 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.