The Ben Mulroney Show - Why is Chris Alexander running for mayor?

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben is joined by mayoral candidate Chris Alexander to discuss his decision to run for mayor of Toronto and what he believes the city needs to get back on track. They explore Alexander’s vision for Toronto, his priorities on crime, transit, infrastructure and the economy, and why he believes voters are ready for a different direction in the upcoming mayoral election.   If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast!   ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney   Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠       Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet   Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail]   Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With so much experience to draw on, it's like having your own coach. Whatever your favorite game, we have your playbook. OZoon. Well played. Discover free sports tips, casino games and poker guides at OZoon.net. The story that I'm most excited to talk about is the fact that it's sitting in front of me now in person, is someone running for mayor who, if we're being honest, up until a few weeks ago, was an unknown quantity in the city of Toronto. And I am, of course, speaking about mayoral candidate, Chris Alexander. Chris, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having you then.

Where are you coming from? Coming from the Korean Food Festival up in Mel Aspen Square. Oh, did you eat any, was he eating anything? Insane. Free fried chicken? Korean barbecue. Fantastic. And Korean wine.

I'd never had that before. I didn't know that that was even a thing. Not with alcohol, but it's like, I mean, it's Korean, but it has a family resemblance with sake and it's damn good. Oh, excellent. Excellent. Well, I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. Chris, the last time we spoke was

before you decide to announce. And I posed a specific question to you. And I want to make sure that we have it. You got it? Yeah. Play that for me, please. Yeah. If they could all agree that whoever is leading in whatever a predetermined number of polls

by a certain date, whoever is leading gets to stay on the ballot, would you consider something like that? If in the waning days before the ballots are set, whatever that cutoff date is, saying, all right, if I don't have, if I'm not leading, the alternative to, I'm willing to step aside in favor of somebody other than Olivia Chow winning. Listen, I don't have a campaign. I haven't taken decision. I'm not in this yet. So it's a premature for me to make hard commitments. But I am open to thinking like that. I am not a

zero-sum guy. I want the best for the city of Toronto. And if, if, if we, if we, can bring about stewardship together with other candidates who are alternatives to the current mayor, I would be totally open to that. I've always been a team player. I'm going to put the interest of Toronto and Canada first every time over my own personal interest. That is for sure. All right. So that moment to get off the ballot has come and gone, which indicates to me that you know

something that a lot of other people don't. know. You believe that there is a path to victory for you. So you got to fill us in. Tell us what we don't know, because there are a lot of people today perplexed that you're still on the ballot. Yeah. And they're associated with one campaign. And I can understand why they're perplexed. It's not between us a great look for them. If they have such a great campaign, if they're so confident of victory, why aren't they directing their fire at the mayor, we all want to replace and instead at the guy who just joined and is in, you know, just over 10%. But putting that aside, we have a path because this campaign hasn't really started.

I was at this Korean food festival. Most people don't know that there's an election going on. They certainly haven't focused on the candidates. A lot of people don't know who our current mayor is. and the way we were going, there's a piece in CP 24, quoting a professor confirming this, an incumbent versus one challenger, that's not an interesting race.

That tends not to drag people in in the history of municipal politics. Having someone from outside counsels, having someone with experience, with new ideas, that can open things up. And I think the challenger and I share the same goal, which is to have a new mayor. And I stand by what I told you on the show.

but I think we're in new territory here. We've gotten into double digits very quickly. We haven't launched our social media campaign. We haven't launched our policies. We haven't sharpened things up. But when we do, there are 60% of Torontonians that haven't heard from Chris Alexander. So that's what I want to talk about.

And I want to go on record first. I have a great deal of respect for everything that you've done for this nation. So my hard questions as we move forward have absolutely no bearing on that. I want to be very clear. But this is a very perplexing campaign. Because, and I've followed a lot in 25 years in this city.

I've Googled so many times. I've used AI to help me. Since your announcement, you've been a ghost. You haven't, I've, I saw that you made the announcement. I haven't seen policies. I haven't seen a platform. I haven't seen endorsements. I've seen very few public appearances of consequence.

I've seen a few tweets, but a lot of them are dealing with. NATO and Russia and Ukraine. And so I need you to, and I think the people of Toronto need you to pull back the curtain and show us something we're not seeing because after the last election, the moderates in this city put a game plan together to make sure that we didn't have a repeat of last time. And unless we know more about you, we're going to have a repeat because of redundancy. on the right? Disagree, Ben.

We are not going to have a repeat. Our campaign is going to beat Mayor Olivia Chow and have success in this election. That's why we're here. Yeah. And it wasn't all the moderates in Toronto who said that they were rallying around this one candidate. They want to

create that illusion. But I'm only in this race because dozens of people that I respect enormously who have many decades more experienced than me following municipal Bobolitic said, Chris, we don't have the candidate we need. But who are they? Look, I've got a list here.

I got a list here that they came out with. The other side came out with. Lisa Rae, Robin Urbeck, Brian Lilly, Christopher Hume, John Torrey, Tim Hudak. Robin Irbock's on the list. Jerry Agar, Anthony Fury, Deb Hutton, all of them have said that this is not a good idea. So who's on, give me some names. Oh, sorry, I thought you said. No, give me some names on who's on your team.

We've had lots of people speak. No, I'm sure lots of people, but, Chris, I got to have a name. You got to give me a name. Somebody who's supporting you. I can't give you those names without their permission. We will give you those names during this campaign. But a campaign goes one step at a time. Do you know how the rules in this city work?

You cannot spend a dollar until you've raised a dollar. It doesn't cost anything to say a name. But what does it say, Chris? Chris, what does it say that you, these people are putting their names out there. They're going out and saying, I'm standing with Brad, and I can't get you to give me a name. of somebody who's endorsing or supporting you? Does it come down to that?

They've been doing this, running this campaign since May the 1st. He's been on council for eight years. A lot of the problems that we're dealing with, the drift, the lack of delivery, the low numbers of housing units built, the unbelievable disconnects in the TTC have happened on the watch of this council. And this mayor, yes.

Why should anyone think that it's going to be any different when these insiders, another one, a new face from inside, takes over, and yes, they've been working at it for quite some time. And yes, they have endorsements. But we have a huge response from volunteers, from people that I've met in Etobago Scarborough, and just now in North York, from all over the city, of people who want something new,

who aren't satisfied with this bipolar choice. And there are a couple of issues that cut across this whole thing. We have a city that I grew up in, went to school in, that is divided by an issue of hatred, threats, acts of violence against one group that is unprecedented. And I haven't seen any candidate in this race. And it's one of the reasons why I'm in the race. Speak out about it.

speak out about the solidarity that all Torontonians need to show to make sure that we are not victimizing a group, in this case Jewish Torontonians, and letting the perpetrators get away with it. It's been going on for three years. I haven't heard any of the incumbents say a word about this. I think that is a lot more important, having courage on these issues, talking about the economy of Toronto,

talking about how we need that airport to drive our growth, to drive a next level of corporate interest, Chris in Toronto and investment. I think that's much more important than who I have announced as a sponsor so far. Well, okay, so we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to reset. We're going to talk about some of those issues. We're going to talk about the budget, and we're going to get to know the candidate a little bit more.

Much more. I'm very glad to see you here, sir. Thank you very much. Much more with Chris Alexander when we come back. Continuing on my conversation with mayoral candidate Chris Alexander. Thank you so much for sticking around. And thank you for sticking around for the tough questions. I appreciate it.

Let's delve into the city budget. I think moderates and anyone to the right of Olivia Chow acknowledges, believes, and is exasperated at the fact that Toronto does not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem and we have a culture of problematic spending and probably this change election requires blowing up the budget and starting from scratch. So how much is the city budget? If you put all the investment, I think it's $26 billion. Okay. 16 billion if you take out the... 18.9.

Okay, so with a capital budget plan totaling 60... I think that's 16 revenue. Yeah. So what would you do? I know that Brad has put forth an idea of sort of turning the entire thing for a massive audit and then turning the whole thing on its head and having every line item be justified every year before it gets re-approved. Absolutely.

Yeah. That is the kind of drift that's happened. And I'm not disputing that there are members. of council that wanted to scrutinize the budget more, but it hasn't been done. And it needs to be done line by line. But it also needs to be looked at in strategic terms. There is a structural deficit. Everyone agrees not just in Toronto in many cities. We're a bigger city. It's bigger. It's more critical. And we need to have a discussion with the province and the federal government about what gets paid for by whom to make it predictable over the longer term. And that can go two ways.

It can be tax powers or revenues that exist given to the city, or it can be the province and the feds doing things with the city now does, instead of having new tasks, new services dumped on the cities all the time. I think the Board of Trade has quite a good proposal for revisiting and solidifying the fiscal framework for Toronto. But it's going to take a discussion, a consensus around the council table, that then goes to the province and the fence. There is an ideological war at City Hall between what I think are common sense moderates

and ideologues. Ideologs in the form of the appointed people by Progress T.O. And it manifests in death and decay amongst our most vulnerable being those suffering under the yoke of addiction. Toronto Public Health has a massive budget and we have been handing out millions of members, bath pipes, crack pipes, and syringes every year,

punting the ball until these people just die. I think it's heartless. I think it's callous. What would you do differently? It is so heartless and callous. It needs to be front and center. It needs to be on the mayor's agenda every week. We have to be with those people and in those places

where they're all too rarely receiving treatment, sometimes not receiving treatment, showing solidarity, standing behind what works. Yeah. Because we do have some services. There's one house done, house, I believe, established with UHN.N. All the services are in house. It's beds.

It brings unhoused people in, usually often with addictions or mental health problems or both. And then it applies with services, meets their needs, until they can go on a different path that doesn't involve going back in the shelter system. Brad says, Brad said came out pretty strongly in favor of involuntary holds for those suffering under the worst addiction. circumstances, what's your position? I think it needs to be clinical decision about who is put into care. I think that is the best practice worldwide, even in cities that have gotten this right. But we do need treatment, and we do need to scale up the treatment.

And I don't think it's enough for the city to promise 100 new beds. It needs to be thousands. We have at least 8,000 homeless people who've been in the system for the last three months. It hasn't come down fast enough. There's a lot of addiction in that population. and there are addicted people in their thousands who aren't in the shelter system. We need to reach them as well.

We need to give them hope. I think there's scope here, Ben, for mobilizing the goodwill of the city of Toronto, for getting people who care about these issues involved as volunteers. We have a private sponsorship system for refugees that come from abroad. Why would we not have that kind of sponsorship for people who are looking for a path out of homelessness,

out of their mental health predicament, or out of addiction. Safety on our streets is a priority for everybody. How we get there depends on who you support. Brad says he supports hiring a thousand new police officers and he wants a police officer on every underground through the TTC. It can be chaotic down there on certain lines at certain times. A lot of people don't feel safe. How are you going to make people feel more safe on the streets of Toronto and underneath the streets of Toronto? To be honest, I don't think that's the right approach. That wouldn't be my focus, increasing the size of police by 20%. It's costly.

I don't think it's what Toronto needs. Certain forms of crime, including the murder rate, thankfully, are down this year. Violent crime and other categories has fallen. That's good news. Let's celebrate it. At the same time, there are specialized units that are not strong enough to go after car theft, to go after the groups I was talking about, sometimes sponsored from outside, that are terrorizing the Jewish community,

to go after certain groups of organized crime that are involved in violence and extortion against businesses and others. But you don't do that with beat cops. You do though especially trained groups. Listen, last weekend, on Sunday, a random guy stabbed another person in broad daylight at young and blure.

This is, this didn't use to happen. This used to happen. And if it did happen, it happened in the middle of night in a dark alley. Instead, it's happening at the busiest intersection of the most populous city in the country. That to me is a sign that crime is unafraid. It is unafraid. And if we don't have enough

police officers, crimes are afraid of police officers. And I don't know that we have enough for the city that we have, for the crime that we have. And yes, certain big ticket crimes are down like first degree murder. But if you view it as a pyramid of crime, that one's down, but the ones that are affecting the most people, not necessarily down. I agree. There's still a big challenge. And I want the police force, the Toronto Police Service, which has this proud history, to keep growing in line with the population and growing its specialized capacities where we need them. But let's be clear about what's worked in Toronto over the years. We are a relatively safe city

by Canadian standards, and that's because we have targeted things properly. And we have when neighborhoods need support, when crime spikes in any part of the city, because of a group, because of addiction, because of a gang. We scale up not only the policing there, but we scale up the intervention in the neighborhoods. That is the kind of advice that this city got decades ago and that it has acted on and that has kept us in a pretty good place. What is up, though, Ben, just to conclude this thought,

is that people are afraid. There may be less crime in some areas. There is substantial crime in others, but fear of crime is higher. And the polls show that, anecdote of evidence shows that, How do we deal with that? It's a variety of things. I don't think the police's main job is in the TTC.

I think we need provincial offenses officers. I think we need the officers in the TTC whose job it is to get people out when they're disorderly. There are different fixes for the lack of order for the different parts of the city. I think if there's a crime happening underneath the city, then somebody who is tasked with enforcing the law should be down there. You can, you know, a crime is a crime, whether it's up on a street level or on. underneath and a police officer is still a police officer. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no difference between the two.

But I do want to, yeah. I got to move on because I only have a little bit of time left and I don't want to miss out on a few things. There are the people in this city who say, oh, crime is down, are not working on a long enough time horizon. I moved here in 2001 and I watched this city grow to incredible, to incredible places. And it was a peaceful and wonderful place until it wasn't. And once it wasn't, and ideologues,

got control of this place. We were told it was always like that because there were systemic issues that made it that way. No, no, no, no. This place was almost at the apex of what was possible 10 years ago. And ever since then,

it has been managed decay. And I refuse to live in a place where people say, look at one indicator or another and say, oh, everything's, well, those things are better so we don't need to massively overhaul how we do things.

It's bad. It is bad. And no one indicator is going to change my mind. Getting around this city, our police, our first responders, are stuck in traffic. They're stuck in congestion. I personally blame on Youngstreet the bike lanes. And I refuse to listen to those who tell me that bike lanes do not cause congestion. Spatial reasoning will tell you otherwise.

What is your position on bike lanes? Because that's a hot button issue, whether or not it's the most important is up for debate. And how are you going to get people, how you can get the city moving? bike lanes I shake my head we had a half-baked plant we put bikely we have bikers we need them to move

they're part of traffic we want more people to use them to get out of their cars and even to get out of the subway to use bikes it's good for your health but they were not well built the roots were not well chosen some of them might make sense others do not we need a proper standard for bike lanes other cities have been through this

in north america and europe they made all kinds of mistakes. Toronto has made them on an even bigger scale. My solution is a high-quality standard for bike lanes, grade separation. The best European cities have this. Keep drivers on the road safe, keep pedestrians safe with enough space for bikes to be safe

and pass each other and so forth, and do it in thoroughfare where there's enough space so you don't create a new congestion problem. That will mean taking up some bike lanes. it will mean putting some new ones down in other places. Secondly, traffic. We need to use all the power of analysis and data that the city has to come up with a way of spreading the burden over all the hours of the day,

using our thoroughfares, and not penalizing the car. At the same time, we need to make people feel safe and feel that the service is reliable in the TTC. If you told people that their subway trip, that there would be space for them, that would come often enough so they didn't have to squeeze in like a sardine. And secondly, that it wouldn't stop every second trip

because of repeat offenders putting, pulling that, pushing that yellow strip. You would have a lot more people on the subway and you would help congestion. So all of these things need to happen together. 90 days in office, plan for all of these things, bold decisions on traffic, targets and incentivization for the DDC

and better bike length. My last question for you, Chris, and I do thank you for answering all of my questions. But this one I think is really important because, yes, the idea of an outsider coming in and disrupting things, it's a compelling one. And John Tori, I believe, was the first mayor in history who became mayor without first sitting on council.

So I appreciate what you're saying. However, as an outsider who only, yes, you have a history here, but you're not, you haven't been in Toronto for a very long time. to be mayor in Toronto requires relationships with the city councillors. Things are done by consensus far more than some would like. My question to you is, have you been speaking with city counselors? Do you have relationships with these people already? Because if you assume power on day one, you're going to need to know how to work with them.

There's horse trading that happens. What can you say about your relationship with citizens? city councilors today. Ben, I went to high school in the city. I grew up with Gord Perks debating with him, understanding him. He's gone, but that's the kind of relationship I have with more of them than you think. Probably half of the current council. Some will win, some will lose.

Can you name any of them? Well, absolutely. Who? Thompson, Madlow. I mean, but you know them. I know plenty of them. I can give you a whole list, and I will be in touch with as many others as I can. They're all busy people too.

But I don't think this is the issue. The issue is leadership. The issue is strategy. The issue is having the skill to make sure those feuding factions and that gridlock we sometimes have around the council table is overcome. I'm a diplomat. I didn't have personal relationships with everyone who sat around the cabinet table with me in Ottawa, but I found ways to persuade them.

And I know the power of not just having half, but having two-thirds or even a strong, consensus around the table behind something you're doing and backing off when you can't get that so that we don't have the gridlock we've had at council the feuds we've had with the province and and the lack of delivery across the board you know i thought it i was going to be my last question but this is my last one i'm going to ask you the same question i asked you last time you're in this you're in this to win it but if you butt up against data that tells you you cannot win will you bow out and throw your support behind the person who you think can win when i met

Brad Bradford for the first time at Taste of the Danforth. He came on a bit strong. I said, Brad, we share the same objective. We want a new mayor. You think you can do it. I think I can do it. But let's work to that end together. I stand behind what I said to you the first time, Ben. But I also feel more confident now than I've ever felt that there is an opening,

that people want new ideas, that people still want to hear who has the credibility, the experience, and the drive, literally, to carry the city forward. And that decision is going to happen, hasn't happened yet. It's going to happen in the next two months. In the minds of each voter, there are a ton of debates happening. I will be at everyone I can physically make.

I will be listening to Torontoans. I will be thinking differently, I think, from the way people around the council have. I will have a level of ambition for this city that we haven't seen in some time because I care deeply about it. You said, I haven't spent much time here. I spent 16 years growing up here. I spent 12 years. It's not that Toronto anymore.

It is. I lived in Ajax. Every family I knew in Ajax has a larger family in Scarborough. My parents lived here every year that I was away with the Foreign Service. This was home. I came back to it. I've been here for four years. I don't think for busy people who've had careers in different places,

you can have much deeper contact with this city. And my family's been here for a very, long time. The concern for the city in me runs very deep. The perplexity at seeing a drift horrifies me, and we're going to do better. Chris Alexander, running for mayor. I appreciate you coming in, sir. I wish you a solid campaign, and I hope you come back soon.