The other 51 mayoral candidates beyond Chow and Bradford

I think tenant rights just like at the top of the list there, like landlord and tenant equality. I think for me, honestly, like I was just walking around looking for some parkland. There's like no place like just have like some lunch, maybe some food. So I think some investment on like some third spaces. Some voters there in the dying days of this election campaign talking about some of the issues that they wished they'd heard more about. But just because we didn't hear promises around them from Brad Bradford or Olivia Chow doesn't mean that other candidates weren't bringing up those ideas. I'm Chris Glover, and this is Toronto. We focused a lot on this mayoral battle between Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford, and you can go back and listen to those episodes. But the race for mayor is much more crowded than that, and our reporter Hayden Waters has been going through those other candidates and their promises, and he joins me now. All right, so you've had a chance to go through all, what is it, 53 minus two, that's 51, that are running for mayor. What have you found? Yes, so 51 names beyond Chow and Bradford, not as big as that 102 candidates, remember from 2023, when Chow won. It's still a very, very long list. And it has a mix of people on it who are obviously taking this race seriously for mayor. Some perennial candidates who run for mayor every single election, no matter what. and others who I couldn't find information on whatsoever. Like you go, there's no social media presence, there's no website, there's no emails, basically ghost candidates. For those I could find details on, they put forward varying levels of policy. So some candidates have these full-out platforms with realistic promises. Others have these wildly outlandish proposals. One candidate, his name's Jack Hartley, proposes expanding the 401 to 100 lanes and banning social media influencers within Toronto's borders for once and for all, he says. At just 21, he's campaigning to be the city's youngest mayor. Okay, so as you look at all these candidates, what parallels are you noticing between these, what you might call longer shot candidates? Yeah, I notice a lot of transit promises, both big and small. I guess that's a parallel with Chow and Bradford, who have been talking about transit a bit as well. Candidate Paul Collins wants people outside of Toronto to pay more for using the city's transit. Candidate Corey DeVille suggests creating subway cars for women only, while candidate Laura Dean is promising to get rid of the urine smell in stations. Several candidates are even floating, making the TTC free to ride altogether. Roberto Curdo is also running for mayor. He's 29 and his background is in environmental urban planning. Right now, he's working at a bar downtown. And working these late nights at the bar has helped him inform his promises, his transit promises. One of them is running the subways all night long on Fridays and Saturdays. last call is at like 1:45 a.m. the last trains depending on the station it varies from like 1:05 to like 1:30 so this you know unfortunately makes a lot of people anxious they're like i have to leave i have to go and get the last train so that makes a lot of people leave our bars early and that's not great for nightlife economy your evening shouldn't have to end because the subway does? It's not a new idea. Several other mayoral candidates are floating 24-7 service for the TTC. Many other cities around the world have this type of service. Bradford has promised a watered-down version of this, pledging to open the subway earlier on big event days like the marathon we saw last weekend. But many of these longer-shot candidates or fringe candidates are going further beyond what Bradford or Chow are proposing, suggesting bigger, more ambitious ideas for the city's transit system. Yeah, like a 24-7 transit system. That's a pretty big idea. When you look at some of the other promises, how far do the other mayoral candidates go on these big ideas? Well, the sky is the limit, Chris. One candidate promises to buy undesirable condos to expand the housing stock. Another plans to plant the largest number of trees the city has ever seen. There's even a proposal to take the gardener back into the city's hands. So reverse that new deal or the deal that Chow got with the province. Make it the old deal. Yes, exactly. And of course, that's one of the achievements that Olivia Chow likes to talk about the most. Edward Gong is one of those perennial mayoral candidates I told you about. This is the fourth election he's run in since 2022. Perhaps you've seen his blue, yellow signs. Maybe you've seen his face on the bus. This time around, he's pledging to hand out emergency relief payments of $1,000 to Torontonians over 18. And I did the math a little. In a city as big as ours, that's a lot of money we're talking about here. I spoke to his campaign yesterday, Gong was on the Zoom call but he didn't speak for himself, he was wearing a mask and an aide sitting next to him said he had lost his voice, that aide couldn't give an exact number of how many people would qualify for this promise, this payment floating a number between 2.5 and 3 million people, that means this promise would cost somewhere between 2.5 to 3 billion dollars, that's a lot of money you got to keep in mind Toronto's operating budget this year, $18.9 billion. So this promise would be a huge chunk of that. Gong's also promising not to raise taxes, but to reverse them. When I asked how he planned to pay for all that, the aide told me that's the most common question they've been getting during this campaign, telling me Gong would do an audit of the budget, find savings, and make cuts. Okay. So what else were candidates taking big swings at? Yeah, I noticed some of these mayoral candidates have been going much further in their criticism of Doug Ford and the provincial government's encroachment into Toronto politics, arguing Olivia Chow hasn't gone far enough while being mayor. One candidate suggests making Toronto its own province in Canada. Another candidate who just dropped out of the race campaigned on drafting a city charter. Cultural journalist Odessa Paloma Parker was running for mayor, but suspended her campaign this week and endorsed Olivia Chow. Before dropping out, she told me the charter would help fortify Toronto and give it more autonomy. I think that city council needs to lead by example and to kind of dig their heels in and say, hey, like we have to protect our city. We do have to stand up for ourselves. And I think, you know, more people have to do that to Doug Ford. I think right now a lot of people are yelling about him on social media and kind of an echo chamber or we're protesting him. But I think if we were to collectively come together as a city and say this is a priority for us and we are part of your voting base, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. so to say. This idea has been floated at City Hall already. It came up in a recent report on municipal autonomy requested by council. So though Paloma Parker not running anymore, her name's still going to be on the ballot. It's probably not the last we're going to be hearing about city charters. She also had this neat idea that I hadn't heard of from anyone else, launching a task force to deal with the rise of ticks in the city. Okay, well now that is out of the box thinking, I suppose. What other ideas did you hear like that? Oh, so if you comb through these platforms uh these promises there's a bunch of these outside of the box ideas uh there was building vertical farms on converted city-owned buildings tax incentives for traveling broadway shows that are coming to toronto uh one candidate is suggesting making drake toronto's chief victory officer i don't know if you'd accept that title or not uh sarah mcvee is an actor who is running for mayor one of her ideas is to round up all the vacant city-owned buildings repurpose them and release them for co-op ownership models. McVie is also a member of the Black Creek Flood Coalition. Her house has flooded many, many times, so it's something that she's very passionate about. She is suggesting something out of the box to prevent these floods, bringing Toronto's hidden waterways, streams, rivers above ground, this process they call daylighting. Right now, our approach is entirely concrete-centered, and there's no thought to the opportunity for releasing these streams in places where you can. The city of Zurich did it for less than the concrete options per mile, faster, and they completely eliminated flooding in the entire city. I couldn't find any other mayoral candidates pitching an idea quite like that. I would love to see how it worked in Zurich, though. Yeah, no, certainly. These are a ton of ideas. And you mentioned candidates like Chris Alexander and Odessa Paloma Parker have dropped out of the race. Their name's still on the ballot, though. I guess the big question as you kind of step back is what keeps these candidates in the race? Yeah, McPhee, I talked to her about that. She has a lot of thoughts about the municipal election process, who gets covered and who doesn't, and how hard that is for new voices and ideas to break in. Even to this day, I'll be out canvassing and people will say, oh, there's more than two people on the ballot. So the messaging from May in the mainstream media was this is a two horse race. The other systemic barrier is the money. Right. So when you have already established money behind you or potentially a political party, the astronomical amounts, right, the over a million dollars versus a couple hundred dollars, the good ideas might get lost. Right now, everything has been reduced to sort of finger pointing. And, you know, it feels too much like a two party system. And that that worries me. she's gotten to meet a bunch of these other mayoral candidates during her campaign and feel sorry that not all voters are going to get a chance to hear their vision she thinks candidates beyond Bradford and Chow have good ideas to build on too regardless of how many votes she gets on Monday it seems to me that she's got the politics bug I would say McPhee's got the politics bugs Roberto Curdo that urban planner and bartender candidate I spoke to was much more frank about his prospects listen i'm not i'm not delusional i i know i'm not polling that much i've put forth ideas that a lot of people aren't talking about by the time monday comes we'll see what happens but it's a great learning opportunity i've learned a lot and we'll see what happens in four years time so i think maybe he has the bug as well as cbc toronto has put out a question to all the other candidates on the ballot beyond bradford and chow asking why you should consider voting for them. We heard back from eight of them, and you can read their responses on our website. You can also see the full list of all the 53 names that you're going to be seeing when you go and vote on Monday on the city's website, and you can comb through their social media pages and links for yourself if you can find them. Hayden, this was really important work. Thank you so much for coming in today. Thanks for having me, Chris. That's our reporter Hayden Waters. They're breaking down the names on the list of who wants to become mayor beyond Brad bradford and olivia chow i'm chris glover this is toronto for saturday october 24th voting day is monday and if you still need help trying to make up your mind you can go back and check out our other episodes we have full sit downs with both olivia chow and brad bradford we also dig into the hottest council races to watch and there's even a podcast on why scarborough may be so crucial in deciding who becomes Toronto's next mayor. Plus, of course, we'll have extensive coverage for you next week on our podcast as well. But for now, thanks so much for listening and watching. I am Chris Glover, and I hope you go ahead and like our podcast, review it, and tell a friend. And I'll talk to you again soon.