Front Burner - Can a new mayor fix Toronto’s problems?

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Skyrocketing housing costs, decaying infrastructure, anxiety over public safety and budgets stretched thin. On June 26, Canada’s biggest city goes to the polls to decide who will lead Toronto’s approximately two-and-half-million residents amidst all these issues and more. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts A lot of the problems that the Toronto mayoral candidates are going to have to confront are felt in cities across the country. Today on Front Burner, CBC Toronto municipal affairs reporter, Shawn Jeffords, discusses the problems Toronto’s facing and how the big names in the mayoral race are saying they’ll tackle them.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Sorocha Coelho. Skyrocketing housing costs, crumbling infrastructure, anxiety over public safety and budgets stretched thin. On Monday, Canada's biggest city goes to the polls to decide who will lead Toronto's approximately two and a half million residents and tackle those big issues.

And I know Toronto gets a lot of flack for thinking it is the center of the universe. But a lot of these problems that the Toronto mayoral candidates are going to have to confront, well, they're pretty universal. Or at least they are felt across a lot of different cities in Canada. felt across a lot of different cities in Canada. So today I'm talking to CBC's Toronto Municipal Affairs reporter Sean Jeffords about Toronto's problems, which are really a lot of Canadian cities' problems, and what the big names in the mayoral race say that they're going to do. Sean, hello. Hello. How are you? I am well and excited about Monday. This is a very interesting race. Before we get into the issues, it's hard to take the temperature of an entire city in one go. But is it fair to say that we are meeting Toronto at this moment? It's not at its best and things are not running so well.

Yeah, I think that there has been a building consensus over the last eight or nine months specifically that, you know, things are just not in the state of repair that they kind of need to be in Toronto. And frankly, even former Mayor John Tory had to concede during last fall's municipal election that things were, and he used this term, fraying. City services were just a little shabby coming out of the pandemic, that the state of repair of, frankly, the city's garbage cans were, you know, they were bad. There was just a feeling that, frankly, we'd lost a bit of ground during the pandemic and things needed to be reinforced and maybe rebuilt a little bit.

That feels like an easy go-to answer. It's all because of COVID. But when you look at it, what do you think is really going on here? Is that the full answer or is there more? Oh, it's part of it, but it's not the whole picture. You're right. I mean, I think it's also a situation where the city has been grappling with serious financial challenges for years, you know, maybe a decade. And COVID-19, the pandemic, it just made it all worse. And the city was called upon to do a lot of really important work and provide a lot of really important services, life-saving services really during the pandemic that it hadn't anticipated. And it was leaning on the province and the federal government for financial support. But that financial support has really started to dwindle. And some of those

costs still remain, and there are still impacts that are being felt. It seems to me that this is not uniquely a Toronto state of affairs. That's right. I mean, I think you just need to look back three weeks ago, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities held a meeting in Toronto, and they were talking about a lot of the same things that you would hear Toronto politicians talk about, Toronto City Councillors, former Mayor John Tory, about this need for a new fiscal framework. So it's kind of a fancy term for, frankly, we need more money. We've got to have more cash to pay for the increasing number of services that cities across the country are being asked to provide. And there are a lot of like basic fundamental things that frankly, you probably just take for granted if you live in a municipality across Canada, you know, anywhere from fire to ambulance services, police, sewer, you know, the water that comes into your

house and leaves your house, garbage pickup. You know, some of these are really complex. Some of them are pretty simple, but they all cost money. Services and the pullback on funding for services has been a big part of the conversation we're hearing. And another piece of it is the downloading to cities from provinces, from national government. And that's something that seems to go back decades. And I get that the pandemic has put a strain on there, but why are the city's finances so strained? You know, one of the real knockoff effects of the pandemic was transit ridership. Well, it's known as the better way, but fewer and fewer commuters are choosing it as

their preferred mode of transportation. The TTC is reporting that so far this year, ridership has gone down in the millions compared to last year, leaving transit looking for... You know, obviously people were not, they were in their homes, they were not using the TTC. The TTC, it has a real dependence on the fare box. It's not as subsidized, critics would say, as other transit services across North America or around the world. And as a result, when ridership drops, so too does funding. And the idea then is that there's this eroding effect on the service, frankly, that when you have less riders and frankly, less revenue coming in, you've got to cut service. So it becomes less

reliable. So you get this feedback loop where frankly, if people can't depend on it, they take it less. So then, therefore, there is, again, less revenue. Now, this is built over the pandemic. And the city has had to subsidize the TTC to a greater extent and had to cut services. So that has created this annual budget deficit in combination with some other things. And right now, Toronto's budget deficit, depending on the figures you use, if you include last year's number that was not paid by the federal and provincial governments and this year's current number, this year's is about

a billion dollars. Last year, when you combine some of those figures, maybe it's anywhere from, it could be as high as 1.5 billion. So this is a lot of money and it's not something that frankly you could just take care of if you were a city councillor by raising property taxes at a manageable rate or increasing fees. You know, a property tax increase in the city of Toronto, for instance, raises about $40 million. So that's one percentage point. The city adopted an increase of around 5.5. And that was a historic high back in February. So you can imagine they can't just fill that gap with these things. So they're saying we've got to have more help from upper levels of government. You have laid out some of the really big issues here, particularly the money that is being talked about in the middle of this campaign.

And we're going to get into some of the issues a little more deeply, but the election itself is also interesting. Kind of a surprise. It is. Toronto's previous mayor of nearly 10 years, John Tory, resigned over an extramarital affair. And who threw their hat in the ring to replace him? Yeah, it was a really shocking development. I don't think anybody really saw John Tory's resignation coming. He ran and swept to victory last fall with a pretty big mandate, didn't really have a lot of competition. It was kind of a sleepy election. And this time around, though, I think we are getting the election in this by-election period we didn't get last fall. So you've got 102

candidates. But of those 102 candidates, you probably have six or seven top tier candidates who have some level of name recognition or some record in public life to kind of stand on. So you've got the front runner, Olivia Chow, who previously ran for mayor in 2014, is a former NDP MP and former city councillor, and is also, of course, the widow of Jack Layton, the former NDP federal political leader there. You've got Mark Saunders, who's the former police chief in Toronto, Anna Bailao, who is a former city councillor and deputy mayor, Brad Bradford, who's a city councillor, Josh Matlow, who is a city councillor, Mitzi Hunter, who is a former liberal MPP provincially, and Anthony Fury, who is a former journalist and columnist

for the Toronto Sun. So these are the folks who largely have emerged as the frontrunners in the race. But I should say, Olivia Chow is out quite a ways if the polling is to be believed. If we look at some of the big overarching issues that are facing the city's finances, you've talked about how they're just stretched way too thin. Each of those candidates, I'm interested in what they're actually saying they're going to do about the situation that you just described. You know, there are a lot of varying approaches here. And I think everyone acknowledges that there is a problem fiscally with the way the city operates, but that there is also just this general state of disrepair that the city kind of feels like it's in right now.

And there are a lot of knockoffs on that, a lot of offshoots to that problem. I think depending on the candidates, they have various approaches. Some are saying, frankly, we've got to go to the federal government in the province and negotiate this new deal. And many are trying to position themselves as the key figure to do that. And the approaches are different. You know, some people are saying, frankly, we've got to be a little more forceful. We can't just, as Josh Matlow would say, go along to get along, because that hasn't worked. You know, he points to former Mayor John Tory's approach saying he was too conciliatory and he didn't get

anything done as a result. And then you've got other folks who are kind of more along that line of approach that Tory used to take, like Anna Bailao, frankly, Mark Saunders, pitching themselves as the candidate who will be taken seriously, who is the adult in the room, who can go to Premier Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, and say, look, I am willing to give and take a little bit here and I think I can strike a deal. A lot of candidates are looking at Olivia Chow and they're pointing to her and they're saying, you've spent your career in opposition. You're not going to be able to get along with Premier Doug Ford, who himself is pretty openly campaigned against her and endorsed Mark Saunders, says he's voting for Mark Saunders. I put Mark's sign on my lawn. I'm proud to have his sign on the lawn.

But again, I tell everyone I'll be voting for Mark. That's just my opinion. He'd be the best mayor. There is certainly an ideological divide in this campaign about, frankly, what the city should do. And I said, the city does a lot of things. It provides a lot of services. That is an issue for some candidates who say, we got to get out of the business of doing some of these things. Mark Saunders likes to point to the fact that the city has 72 strategic plans. Brad Bradford talks about the slow bureaucracy at City Hall and how it just takes so much time to do everything. We're just too bogged down. We do too much. And if we just streamline services, that would actually help take care of some of these spending issues. Now, on the other side of it, you've got candidates

who are arguing against any service cuts at all. They say this will just make problems worse in the city. And there's a real debate about how, frankly, you just pay for anything here. I think Olivia Chow has really been dogged by questions about how much she would increase property taxes by. She hasn't given an exact number. I do want to say, though, that it would be modest in terms of an increase because affordability is something big in my platform. People can't afford it. Now, Josh Matlow and Mitzi Hunter have been very clear, you know, they're going to increase property taxes. They have some varying degrees to their plans, but they're at or around the

upper level of the rate of inflation. And the reality is that whoever comes in is probably going to have to increase taxes. There's no simple solution here. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I want to focus on one of the issues that I think every city in the country can really relate to right now, which is the glaring lack of affordable housing. What are the frontrunner candidates saying that they are going to do to tackle this issue? I think it's emerged as one of the key debates of this campaign. And it's a real problem

in Toronto, not just on the home ownership side of the coin, but also rents in the city have jumped pretty dramatically. And just finding an affordable place is really difficult for a lot of folks. So a lot of different plans. But one of the key debates of the campaign has been whether the city should be involved really at a ground level in building housing. It's a thing that used to happen federally, provincially, municip Hunter, Josh Matlow is that they all say that the city should basically take over building from the private sector and ensure that affordable housing is built in a way that is, you know, it's not subject to delays or frankly, a profit driven motive that a lot of developers have. Obviously, they're businesses. They're in it to make money. But that can sometimes delay projects in their view. Right now, there are 90,000 households waiting for affordable housing.

That's how desperate it is because the city has walked away from its responsibility for over a decade. And we have to come back and build. We can't just leave it up to developers because you get more of the same as what you've explained with housing now. We're going to be having a public builder rather than rest on the private sector to build deeply affordable and market

and below market rate rental on city lands. We can do it because we're not... And then you've got on the other side, Mark Saunders and a by by now Brad Bradford saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, like the city bureaucracy could never do this. We need the builders, we need the non-profits, we need three orders of government. That's how you're going to build housing, not adding more bureaucracy. What we need is to make sure that we have the processes in place, the supports and the relationships with the other orders of government as well.

The answer to Toronto's housing crisis is to build more homes, not build more bureaucracy. We need to save time and money and streamline the approval process. They think it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and it still wouldn't get anything built. So it's a real challenge. Well, we certainly had a vibrant debate all the way along for this campaign. As you were describing, I want to talk about public safety, which has been a priority for some candidates, not so much for others. What are candidates saying about safety and policing? You know, Mark Saunders is the former police chief of Toronto, and he got into this race, I think, ostensibly thinking that the campaign might be about public

safety. And if that was the case, he stood a pretty good chance of winning. Now, Saunders, by most of the polling, has kind of been in a distant second in this race. I'm sure name recognition has played a role in that. He's pretty well known, obviously, because he was chief of police for years. But I don't know if the public safety issues played out the way that maybe he anticipated it. When the campaign first started, we had this very upsetting high profile attacks or a string of them on the TTC. And, you know, he pointed to and a lot of people pointed to this, what he would call this level of disorder that was sort of kind of at play in the city and how we needed to address it. When someone is screaming in your face, when someone is sleeping on the seats that belong to seniors or people that live with disabilities, or if someone is defecating near you, do you feel safe?

We can't normalize this. This is completely... His plan involves hiring hundreds more police officers and officers specifically on the TTC, security for the TTC to help protect people and ensure that there's a level of trust and a feeling of safety on the system. And a lot of candidates have touched on this, but I don't know if it's played out quite... Let me put it this way. It's a theme, definitely a theme in the campaign, but I don't know if it's the ballot box issue that maybe he thought it would be. It wasn't impossible that safety and security policing could have been central issues here. Just last October, Vancouver, they elected a new mayor, Ken Sim, on the campaign that focused quite a bit on public safety.

We're super excited that the city of Vancouver gave us a very clear message that they want change. And we're excited to be part of that change. Public safety is a big priority. So we want to get moving quickly on the 100 new police officers and 100 mental health nurses. He pledged to hire 100 police officers and 100 mental health nurses. So does that seem to be a winning issue or is it completely off the radar now in the Toronto election? I think that it is still very much on the radar. Mark Saunders is still talking about it. So are other candidates.

Brad Bradford is definitely talking about it. Anthony Fury, as I said, the former journalist, he is talking about it. And he's made some very big gains in the polls over the last couple of weeks. And I think in large part, it's because he's been a very, very clear communicator on what he would do. And he's pretty plain spoken. As mayor of Toronto, I will hire 500 new police officers. very clear communicator on what he would, you know, do. And he's pretty plain spoken. As mayor of Toronto, I will hire 500 new police officers to increase a visible presence of law enforcement on our streets, in our communities. We're going to bring back the beat cop.

So the bad guys feel like they just can't get away with this stuff anymore. Now, I'm also going to do... Now, as critics would say, his plans don't have a lot of detail. They haven't been really fleshed out. But they are trying to still very much tap into anxiety about public safety in that way. But I do think that a lot of people are questioning how they would pay for their plans, specifically those plans of Mark Saunders to hire hundreds of police officers and hundreds of security for the TTC. Those are valid questions. I mean, that would swell the city payroll. It would cost tens of millions of dollars. And I think critics have pointed out it's kind of a, it's a little counterfactual in some ways that you'd have conservative candidates

talking about swelling the ranks of the public service. Although, you know, I think you probably could square that by saying, this is for safety security, which is very on brand for a guy like Mark Saunders. Right now, there is one candidate who seems to be way out ahead in the polls. Of course, everything is up for grabs on Election Day. So we have to be wary about how we read some of those numbers. But what does it say to you that Olivia Chow really seems to have pulled ahead in this race? It's a fascinating story. really seems to have pulled ahead in this race. It's a fascinating story.

I mean, I covered the 2014 mayoral campaign, which was different, which was chaotic, which was really about, it was a referendum on Rob Ford and then his brother, Doug Ford, who now, of course, is the premier of Ontario. And they had just come through this, you know, really huge scandal with Rob Ford's substance abuse issues being exposed in a massive way. Olivia Chow was a candidate in that campaign in 2014. She entered the race in spring of that year and was the front runner instantly.

And over the course of that marathon, dropped well back in the polls polls and John Tory emerged and won. And I can't help but see some parallels here between Tory and Olivia Chow's journey if Chow is able to win this time, because John Tory ran in 2003 against former Mayor David Miller and lost, now did a comeback and successfully in 2014 was thought to be yesterday's man, was kind of labeled that way by a lot of people who were his opponents in that race, but won and changed, I think, the view of people in politics and maybe in the city of him as a politician. And I think there are some parallels with Olivia Chow in the sense that she ran in 2014, lost, finished a distant third. And she's come back in this race and her reception from some early on was, well, why is she doing this? She's yesterday's candidate as well.

She hasn't been really in public life for years. And I think there were a lot of questions about whether she would actually gain any traction at all in this race. And I think what we've seen is that, frankly, she had a base in a level of name recognition that maybe was underestimated. And she's been able to build from that foundation with her team and by running a relatively mistake-free campaign. And I think her critics would say she hasn't promised a lot, but that is actually a classic front runner tactic. And she's just tried to appear as this happy warrior and, you know, someone who is authentically herself where she maybe wasn't that by her own admission in 2014.

She was worried about things like her English and, you know, staying on script and really not making a mistake. And by doing that, she kind of came across, I think, in her own view as maybe an authentic to voters. So it's going to be really interesting to see if that parallel with John Tory becomes reality, if she's able to win on her second try. No matter who wins, how much impact do you think a city's mayor can really have on the everyday lives of the people who live in the city? It's difficult to understate how much an impact the mayor can have. The mayor's office steers a ship at City Hall.

They control the agenda. They control all of the key appointments. They build coalitions to pass an agenda. And I think there can be a bit of frustration from people who live in the city who say, well, you know, what can anybody ever do? And as someone who's covered city politics for a while now, I can tell you when the mayor and the mayor's office decides to turn on a dime and they tell the city civil service that they want to change directions, they jump and they move. And it's not always smooth and it's not always pretty, but there is a real heft to the mayor's office and the influence they swing at City Hall. And when the mayor speaks, people listen at City Hall. Well, in the meantime, off they go to the polls. Thank you so much, Sean.

No problem. Happy to be here. That's all for this week. Front Burner was produced by Imogen Burchard, Derek Vanderwyk, Lauren Donnelly, Rafferty Baker, and Jodi Martinson. Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Will Yar. Our intern is Rachel DeGasperis. Our music is by Joseph Shabison. And our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Saroja Coelho. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.