Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Your 2023 Toronto Election Primer with Matt Elliott: Toronto Mike'd #1259

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

In this 1259th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by City Hall Watcher's Matt Elliott to set you up for the 2023 By-Election for Mayor of Toronto. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, the Yes We Are Open podcast from Moneris, The Moment Lab, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

Welcome to episode 1259 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

Season four of Yes, We Are Open, the award-winning podcast from Moneris, hosted by FOTM Al Grego. RecycleMyElectronics.ca Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. The Moment Lab.

Brand marketing and strategy, PR, advertising, and production. You need The Moment Lab. And Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning to prime us for the June 26th Toronto mayoral election is FOTM Matt Elliott. Welcome back, Matt. Oh, so happy to be here.

Things have changed a lot, but it still feels comfortable, like home, you know. How long has it been since you were here? I was thinking about that in the way, because, you i have the answer if you're struggling you do this thing where like when people get like laid off or fired you like swoop in and you're like let's have a chat the exit interview i slide in your dms i'm like hey what are you doing tomorrow exactly turns out nothing so uh so yeah like the last time i was here i think you could tell me if this is accurate uh was like spring of 2018 you are good yeah this is why i subscribed to city hall watcher because i know it's going to be accurate yeah april 2018 yeah yeah so uh i just lost uh my columnist gig at

metro news because they were rebranding as star metro toronto which how did that go no for them not not super great um for me it tended to work out okay. Still kicking here however many years later. So yeah. Cityhallwatcher.com. That's where everybody listening right now should literally pause this episode, go to cityhallwatcher.com and subscribe, right?

Yeah, I would appreciate the hell of that. Yeah, that would be awesome. That's an order from the host of this fine non-award winning podcast. But okay, so cityhallwatcher.com. How long have you been doing that? So the Metro gig ended in the spring of 2018. Spent some time at the CBC after that in the run up to the 2018 mayoral election. And then, you know, it turns out like during mayoral elections, people want to like, you

know, pay you to write about city politics. But after the election, people are like, oh, whatever, we'll wait four years. This is boring now. Yeah, exactly. That's the part I actually like to cover. That's where Rob Ford came in handy, I think. Yeah. There was something to talk about beyond elections.

Exactly. Exactly. So I started City Hall Watcher, my weekly newsletter about what's going on at 100 Queen Street West in like January of 2019. So right after the election. Okay, amazing. So everybody go to cityhallwatcher.com, subscribe.

Helps out Matt and I'd appreciate it. And now that you're back, you're a little younger than me. A little, yeah. Like a little bit. A little bit, yeah. You remember this jam? We'll let it brew for a minute here. But this is the song that popped in my head when we were going to talk about the...

Merrill? Mayoral? How do you say the word? Mayoral? See, I think I skipped a syllable on there. Yeah, I think you do like a little bit of a slur thing. That's cool. It's like brewery.

Okay, let's hear this. The politics of dancing. The politics of who, feeling good. The politics of ooh, feeling good. So do you remember when Toronto Rock Radio would play The Politics of Dancing by Reflex? I feel like this was a little bit before my time, yeah. See, I have memories.

Like early 80s, I'd hear this on the radio. And if you put a gun to my head right now don't do that matt but if you did and you said mike yeah name another song by reflex which is a like a british new wave band i couldn't do it like i literally know one song by reflex and then if you tell most people reflex they're gonna think of the duran duran song which comes a few years later right so i almost feel like this band like their name like uh when it comes to SEO and before the internet we would call it just recognition uh got screwed over by Duran Duran yeah no I think that's fair to say but I mean I think you're probably fine it's to be a weird hostage situation if somebody

was demanding yeah of all like hearing I'm we're gonna about these 2023 by, it's a by-election. It is a by-election, yeah. So I'm going to just tell people, though, that this will be about the 2023 mayoral by-election here in Toronto. But if you want to hear like the A to Z of Matt Elliott's career up to spring 2018, so everything before cityhallwatcher.com that episode is available uh for your ears right now it's episode 329 and i'm going to read the description i wrote at the time in this 329th episode matt chats with matt mike chats with matt elliott about yesterday's oh the young street chat tragedy it just happened oh that's right so we talked about that it like literally just happened the day before i think we chatted ohatted. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Your coverage of the Rob Ford years,

you were one of those young guns covering the crazy Rob Fords. Is any part of you miss the Rob Ford era? It was a bit of a throwback when suddenly John Tory had a sex scandal. So that sort of brought me back to the Rob Ford days. Did you know that story was going to break before it broke? I had sort of a hint that something was coming because I had pitched a column like that early that Friday about like some like totally unrelated topic. And there was just something about the response that I got

where I was like, I think they're probably going to want me to change this and write about something else, you know. And it all sort of clicked into place later on once that David Rider story dropped. So it's FOTM David Rider. FOTM David Rider. It could be easier at this point to just flag the people who aren't FOTM. You know what? I want the list of those who are not because I have some catching up to do.

My goodness. But you are definitely. So yeah. So your coverage of the Rob Ford years, we got in depth about that. Your work with Metro and what's next for you. We just learned what was next for you is cityhallwatcher.com people can subscribe you're still covering municipal politics in the city and that's why you're here because on june 26th the day before my birthday we have a mayoral election it's a by-election because John Tory resigned.

There's actually, I don't know if you heard it, but the day after that story broke in the Star and John Tory resigned in that press conference, I had David Ryder on the phone because I had a lot of questions and he was great. Shout out to FOTM David Ryder who answered all my questions on a very busy Saturday

morning. Did you hear that episode? I did listen to that one. I'm like way behind on my podcast. Like my next Toronto Mike episode of my queue is the Chuck Swirsky episode from the fall. Oh my goodness. Get out the salami. But sometimes something like comes across in the feed

and I just add it right to the top. When was the last time that happened though? Was that the last time that you had to just bump it to the top because it was time sensitive? I think so. But you have to remember that I have a very narrow cone of interest. So if you have other breaking City Hall type people on, I'll be top of the queue for sure.

You know what? I do have a quarterly recurring visit by Ed Keenan, and he's going to come back in July, actually, to talk about what the hell happened on June 26th. So Ed Keenan's up next. You were my first choice. So I said, I need to do something because I just need to advise FOTMs in Toronto

about what's going on with this election. And you were actually my first note because I thought, yeah, David Ryder's an FOTM, Ed Keenan, there's a bunch of people I could call on. But you were my first thought because you're the City Hall Watcher. I appreciate that. And you're a lovely man.

Aw, well, thank you. I want the world to know that. All right, before I get to the first quote, did I finish? Oh, yes, that episode was an hour and 41 minutes. This one's going to be a lot shorter, but it depends if we cover everybody because I pulled a little audio here.

Switch your radio to Toronto's modern rock, FM-102, CFNY, and get into today's hottest music. you will hear the same old song over and over like everywhere else you will hear great modern rock from today's greatest artists with more variety than any other station on your radio dial get into today's music tune in and turn on to fm 102 cfny toronto's modern rock all right the brief period of cfny when it was modern Tune in and turn on to FM 102 CFNY Toronto's Modern Rock Alright, the brief period of CFNY when it was Modern Rock playing

Sting and stuff like that, but the reason I'm playing, do you know why I played that retro ad for CFNY? No, I'm trying to Alright, let me help you out It's 102 on your dial How many candidates do we have in this election, Matt?

We just so happen to have 102 candidates. I saw the ballot yesterday and it really worked out well. How long is it? They fit it all on one page. It's bigger than a standard sheet of paper. But the nice thing is 102 divides by three evenly. So they have three equal columns of candidates. Do you have any idea?

I'm putting you on the spot here. You don't get the questions in advance. That's not how it works here. What is the previous record for most candidates in a Toronto election? Do you have any idea? This is the record. Oh, for sure. But do you have any idea what the old record was? I think it

would have been 2014, which was the year that Rob Ford was up for reelection. And there was a ton of interest around that, but don't quote me on that. We'll do a fact check after the fact, but I believe it was somewhere in like the 60s was sort of where we were at with the previous election

where it was like, wow, so many people are running. And this one just blew it the hell away. 102. Okay. Cause it felt like a balloon. Like it felt like we were at like 60 and it's like, oh, that's a lot of candidates. And then I feel like I maybe took a couple of days off of reading into it because it's like what's going to change and then i pop back in to find out what's going on and it's

like it was like 102 all of a sudden yeah i i really like i thought it seemed to stabilize for a while and i actually thought it might shrink a little bit before the deadline i was like people drop out right like they're not actually going to want to go through with this like who wants to like see their name on the ballot and then see like 0.02 percent next to it it's like you got two votes all right then you find out oh my mom didn't even vote yeah exactly like you just you can figure that out why do you want why do you want to go through that you could drop out get your name off the ballot but you know why because at every dinner party for the rest of your life you can say i ran for mayor of toronto like it's just a conversation piece i know but

like what do you say to that person like if somebody came up and said that to you at a dinner party, are you like, cool? What is the price? Remind me, what is the price to put your name on the ballot? 200 bucks. 200 bucks. See, honestly, like,

I'm better than that. But if you just wanted some cheap-ass publicity for Toronto Mike, okay? I mean, not that they could put Toronto Mike on the ballot, but I could pay $200 just to say I'm one of the 103,

I guess it would be 103 candidates. Like I can see that mindset, even though it's kind of cheeseball. Yeah, I do think there is a really good case to, you know, you feel a little bit weird saying it should cost more to sign up to run for mayor. But like, I also don't think voters are well served by going to the voting booth

and seeing a giant sized ballot. And for the people who don't really pay a lot of attention but do want to vote, it's a barrier when you're like, OK, I guess I'm going to go see you to vote for today. And instead of like 100 plus names, it's a lot. It's a lot. It's overwhelming, visually at least. OK, so we're going to get into it. And don't worry, we won't have to talk about all 102 candidates.

I mentioned that FOTM Ed Keenan dropped by every quarter. So he was here in April and he kind of set us up ideologically in terms of who are the prime candidates that are on the right side of the political spectrum, who's the centrist candidates, who are the lefties, the progressive candidates. So they kind of gave us a good primer. But I just wanted to remark that you made me laugh out loud

of a tweet you wrote about Steve Paikin because I think Steve Paikin was hosting a debate. Was this maybe the last? Like Steve Paikin was hosting a debate, which he's very good at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was the fall election, I think. Yes, yes, right, the previous one.

And you tweeted, you described Steve Paikin as like, I think you described him as a frequent guest on Toronto Mike or something like that. Do you remember this? Yes, yes. This is my entire frame of reference for Steve Paikin now is he's like a Toronto Mike super fan. Oh, he's listening right now. In fact, I might have lost him with that 30 second CFNY promo from the Modern Rock era. Because he has told me he loves every episode he listens but he actually skips

my cfny episodes and there's a bunch of episodes where we dive like david marston and says scott turner may potts a lot of alan cross there's a lot of cfny themed episodes of toronto mike and he skips them because he's a sinatra guy who just for some reason just hated cfny oh well you know nobody's perfect so therefore he probably never heard uh reflexes politics of dancing i feel like that would have been a what a massive loss to him and his career and his ability to moderate debates understand politics you know like yeah huge okay you're ready for the first question yeah so some questions came from fotms and some are going to come from the top of my brain damaged head here okay eric this is from eric eric writes there are 100 plus candidates

running for mayor how many of those 100 plus are legit contenders who he wants to know he basically he wants i'm going to summarize because he's thanking in advance for this but like so yes there's 102 on the ballot but how many have an even reasonable chance of winning this election of those 102 candidates? I would say the number is six at this point who have a reasonable chance. And that's who you see get invited to the debates. One of the things I don't like about the current system is it does create like this gatekeeper thing where somebody has to make the decision about who are the real candidates who get the debate invitations and who are the candidates that were just basically going to get kept off the stage and ignored. But I don't know how else you would do it. You can't have 100 candidates on stage all at once.

Could you imagine? It would be a bit chaotic. So at this point, you know, and it wasn't like a decision that was just made arbitrarily. Like, you know, there were a bunch of polls done. There are multiple posters polling publicly, you know, there were a bunch of polls done. There are multiple posters polling publicly, you know, once a week. So we have some pretty good data at this point showing that,

you know, the people who are sort of hovering above 5% anyway, are, uh, Olivia Chow, Brad Bradford, Anna Bailao, Mitzi Hunter,

Mark Saunders, and Josh, Josh Matlow. That's right. Yes. I'm here to help you. I should have done that alphabetically or something so I could keep track. Well, then it would be Anna, Brad, Olivia, Mitzi, Josh, and Mark.

That is the alphabetical six viable candidates. So I'm now naturally curious, who's that seventh person? Like that person who, and I don't know if you know it off the top of your head or whatever, but who's that seventh person who's like, sorry, we got six microphones. You are not going to be part of these debates. The person that I would like to see on stage is Chloe Brown, who came third in the fall election. It's a much tougher field for her this time, but her performance in the fall as far as coming in third with, I think, 6% of the vote. That was a really impressive performance

given the lack of resources that that campaign had. It was really just about, you know, her ideas and her, you know, what she was presenting and the vibe and all that. And it resonated with a lot more people than anyone expected. So I was excited to see her run again, but it's just, it's a different race this time.

It's a way more crowded field and she's found herself on the outside looking in. But I think that would be the person that I could argue, you know, deserves a spot up there on stage and, you know, could see some upside from that. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, with these polls, and I've never been polled, but these polls, and I don't know, are they landlines still, or they've now figured out how to pull the cell phone? They do pull the cell phone. But I mean, the challenge is if you get like a call from like an unknown number, and it might also say likely spam, how often?

And these are recordings, right? Because I feel like what I do is once I hear it's an actual recording, like I hang up on it. I don't have time to listen to some robot tell me. It's interactive voice response. So it's basically, you know, a robo dialer who's dialing numbers. And then when somebody picks up, it's interactive voice response so it's basically you know a robo dialer who's dialing numbers and then when somebody picks up it's this automated voice that walks them through this script where it's you know press one for this candidate press two for this candidate that kind of thing they have to dial a lot of numbers to get a good sample and a good sample is like a

thousand voters and we know what uh favors a candidate in these early polls because we're still a month out here, is basically name recognition, like your fame level, right? So I would argue, I mean, I don't know, you can have a chat about somebody like a Frank D'Angelo or something like that, but I'd rather not, okay? But you got your Anna Brad, Olivia, Mitzi, Josh, and Mark. Those are probably your six most famous

name recognizable candidates. Would you agree? Yeah, I would agree. I mean, there's some other candidates as far as former councillors. I think Giorgio Mammoliti has some name recognition that has not really translated into the polls. Well, he couldn't win the mayoral election in Wasega.

He couldn't even come second. He came third. So I think he sort of lost his mojo. He's trying to do this thing where he's like calling Toronto woke Gotham, which is like points for creativity, but it's not really. Who's the Toronto Sun journalist who's running?

Anthony Fury. It would be the other one that is, you know, you could make an argument that he would be like the seventh candidate, depending on which polls you're looking at. He's, he's running sort of as like a, I'm like Mark Saunders,

but even more to the right side of things on on law and order and stuff like that and his idea is like he's gonna sue metro links for a billion dollars over the eglinton lrt which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense but okay you know he's but anthony didn't make that that big six that we keep seeing no no and a lot of times you'll see like articles i don't know uh people are just they're just sort of now it's just we're gonna write about these six it reminds me of when kevin mcgrann came over he covers hockey for the toronto star and he was telling me like i pretty much am told like now i write about these four guys on the leafs because they're getting all the clicks like it's like i like i don't i'm not going to talk i'm not going to write a piece

necessarily about like a fourth uh uh the fifth or sixth defenseman because no these are the four or five names that get the clicks so just keep feeding the beast or whatever so yeah it's disappointing because i mean there's you know in other places they have like a primary system we do not have an official primary system we just sort of have this primary system that's very informal and involves like media companies and debate organizers making this decision and then that becomes the the top tier of the field who are like the people who anybody thinks has a real shot. I would love it if it was more of a system where, you know, one thing I was thinking, it would be great if we like on June 26, we were having a vote with this giant ballot.

And then if nobody got 50 percent, which nobody is, maybe we come back after Labor Day and we just do like the top two one to one, you know, have some really good one-one debates, have a real contrast of ideas. I think that might lead to, you know, a better system, a mayor ready, more ready to take on the challenges of the city, that kind of thing. But, you know, that's not what we have. Well, we're going to chat about these, the big six here, and we're going to address more questions from FOTMs. And I'll share my frustration with it all, which is kind of around that. My huge frustration with all of this is the first past the post system.-post system. Especially in an election like this, I despise it, because I now know when I'm in that voting booth, I know I'm going to do what I almost always do when I vote, whether it's municipal or provincial or federally. I almost always end up voting strategically as opposed to voting for the candidate I actually want to win. Like this is a recurring event and it's because of our first past the post system.

Why can't we get some kind of a more democratic ranked balloting system? Why not? We came close. We came really close. It was the position of council that they were going to move towards ranked ballots, starting with the mayoral race and then also transition to using ranked ballots in councilor races. John Tory supported it, council supported it under John Tory. But then there was a switch. There was a councilor who represented an area very close to here named Justin DiCieno. This was in the days when there were more wards. And he really hated the idea

of ranked ballots. And he pushed very hard to have council rescind their opinion on it. Um, and that changed things. And then Doug Ford got elected and basically made it so that municipalities don't have the option to use ranked ballots. So it was very frustrating. Um, Dave Meslin, I don't know if he's an FOTM. Not yet. Not yet. Uh, but he's somebody who's, he's pushed for lots of positive changes in the city over the years, has been involved in all kinds of campaigns, pushed very hard in ranked ballots. And it was heartbreaking to get so darn close to making that change. And then to have it snatched away is incredibly frustrating. So I'll tease it.

But later in this conversation, I'll tip off the universe where I'm at and why I wouldn't have to be there if there were ranked ballots in this election. But there's not. It's first past the post. So whoever has the most votes is going to win this thing. So we'll talk more about that. I'm going to reference, I talked about FOTM David Ryder earlier.

He's a good guy. And his recent headline in the Toronto Star reads this. Okay, I know you've read this, but the headline reads, Olivia Chow has has and it's in quotes untouchable i know in a podcast you can't see my air quotes untouchable lead in final weeks of toronto's mayoral campaign new poll fines really okay so what the heck uh olivia chow has untouchable lead with a month to go.

What are your thoughts on that? I mean, this is the first week where I've really started to wonder, like, is this just a foregone conclusion? Like, is I think the conventional wisdom slash fear slash concern, especially amongst voters on the left, when Olivia Chow announced that she was going to take another crack at running for mayor, was that she was going to blow it again. Looking back at 2014, when she ran against John Tory and Rob Ford, I think people feel like she started out as the very strong favorite, and then just couldn't make it to the finish line and ended up coming in third. People tend to sort of think history repeats, so that was the concern.

But you look at where she's at now with the polls, and it's not just one pollster. It's, you know, all the pollsters are basically saying the same thing. And all the pollsters can be wrong. That's happened in the past. But, you know, we're looking at a situation where she's up, you know, between 30 and 35 percent decided voters, and the next closest competitors are down between like 10 and 15 these days in most polls. So it's almost, she's almost doubling her closest competitor. And then you have to look at, you know, have there been cases where somebody has made like a comeback in like the month that we have left of this kind of magnitude? It's not, you know, there's not a lot of precedent for it.

So that's where you get the case where, you know, in the David Ryder column, I think it's the forum research pollster is saying, yeah, it could be untouchable. Like based on our experience covering elections, like you don't often see this kind of lead get erased without some kind of, you know, major campaign change and event, whether it's a scandal or something happens in the city that sort of causes everybody to decide that, you know, this issue is suddenly their number one issue and they're going to vote for the candidate that that, you know, has the idea they like on the issue,

something would need to change. If nothing changes, Olivia Chow is probably going to win. Like that, I think that's fair to say. I remember well, I remember all the, I think since Art Eggleton, I remember all the municipal elections. Okay. Shout out to Art Eggleton. Okay. So I remember 2014 and I remember it was Doug Ford, because of course you covered it while Rob was going to be there, and Doug Slade. And so it was Doug, John Tory, and Olivia Chow were the big three, as I recall.

And I remember a lot of people I know who supported Olivia Chow said that they were so afraid of a Doug Ford victory, they were going to vote John Tory as a strategic vote to prevent Doug Ford from being mayor of Toronto. And I actually, and I'll tell you this, I'm a pretty reasonable, open-minded guy. I actually totally, 100% understood that logic and appreciated that logic. So this is another example, I think, of where first past the post sucks because you might support Olivia Chow and want her to be your mayor in 2014. But then you pick your poison and say, well, I'd rather have John Tory as mayor than Doug Ford. So I'm just going to hold my nose and vote for John.

Yeah, that was a huge factor in 2014. And we don't really have a similar narrative with this one. I think if Mark Saunders was stronger in the polls and was closer to Olivia Chow, you might see some anybody but Saunders voters materialize. I know there are some conservatives, FOTM Sean McAuliffe wrote about this over the weekend who are sort of getting to the anybody but Chow point of view where they're trying to figure out how to stop her. But the reality is, I mean,

there are more left-leaning people in Toronto than there are right-leaning people in Toronto, you know, aside from, you know, moments when like Rob Ford sort of captured everybody's imagination in 2010 and won 47% of the vote. But even then he didn't get above 50. So, you know, conservatives are always going to be at a disadvantage as far as, you know, getting to that majority position. But yeah, in 2014, it was a fascinating thing because Olivia Chow started out so strong. John Tory started out not great. And then something happened over the summer

before that election where it was like, oh, everybody's just going to decide that John Tory is the person you got to vote for. You don't necessarily love him because we want to close this Ford chapter at City Hall and move on. And Don Torrey's the guy to do it. And that's almost palpable. Like you could feel in the air.

So let's start. And I'm not a huge fan of this, but I think it just makes it easier to progress here. Pun intended. But like if we think of the buckets, like right, centrist, and left, like where would you drop these six names that we talked about as the big six? I mean, if we start on the right of the big six, we'll call them.

Mark Saunders is the most to the right for sure. He's running on this law and order platform. He's somebody who has run as a conservative candidate at the provincial level, not successfully, but he's been their candidate. Doug Ford keeps saying not successfully, but, you know, he's been their candidate. Doug Ford keeps saying basically like, I'm going to stay out of the election, but also have you, have you seen this Mark Saunders guy? I like the cut of his gym. I can't imagine that man fibbing.

Yeah. Unbelievable. Right. It's, it's, it's a very impressive thing to say like one thing in the first half of the sentence, then another thing in the second half. But he's clearly, you know, Doug Ford's guy. And his platform is very much like, you know, I'm just going to sort of, you know, mind the shop at City Hall and whatever the province wants to do, that's fine. And, you know, that'll be that. You know, continuing from...

Well, there are just, are you surprised? Because Ed Keenan was, and I'm curious, are you surprised Mark is running at all? Like, isn't it surprising that he'd want this job? It is a bit surprising, especially considering what an emphasis he's put on law and order and the police. He had the job

where you can direct the police to do things. The mayor cannot direct the police. It's the law. The mayor can't call up the chief of police and say, hey, you should go over here and fight crime in this neighborhood. Only in The Simpsons can that happen. Exactly.

Because Quimby's always calling up Wiggums. Exactly, exactly. So the mayor basically can suggest things to the police. The mayor has some control with counsel over the police budget, obviously. But when it comes to a lot of the stuff that Mark Saunders is talking about as far as reducing crime or preventing crime or whatever it is. He had the job where you can really make an impact in doing that, and his record was not fantastic.

So it is strange that he would be looking for this job after not necessarily succeeding in the last one and leaving the last one. But I mean, I guess maybe he got bored in retirement. I don't know. But yeah, it was a bit of a head scratcher. Is it possible that Doug Ford needed somebody in his camp? I think that's absolutely part of it.

I also feel like there were a lot of people telling him, you know, if you think about when the John Tory scandal broke in February, there were a lot of headlines about crime in the city. And I mean, there still are, but I feel like it's... Particularly on the TTC. On the TTC, absolutely. So, you know, there would be people calling up Mark and saying, like, you know, this is your moment. Like, crime is going to be the number one issue in this election. People are going to be looking for somebody who's

going to be talking about cracking down on it. You are somebody with name recognition you're the former chief of police so uh you know you can totally win this thing um and although i will say from where i sit in the southwest corner of the city i never felt like he was particularly beloved or popular no no and i mean it came up in the debate yesterday he got like an 86 percent no confidence vote from the toronto Association, which are the police members. So, yeah, not a super popular guy with anybody, especially, you know, some of the councillors who worked with him when he was chief of the police don't think of him too highly. So not somebody with a fantastic reputation for sure. And I mean, ultimately there's things like, you know, you don't hear a lot about serial killers

in our modern era with surveillance and DNA and things like that. And there was a serial killer in the gay village when Mark Saunders was police chief. Like that is something that I think he has to answer for. Oh, without a doubt, particularly, because I'm pretty sure he said there wasn't, right? Yeah.

Because there were concerns. People were disappearing in the community and uh he sort of dismissed it initially yeah i think the you know if there had been a level of investigation that you would like to see over reports like that uh you know maybe it wouldn't have been allowed or you know wouldn't have gone as far as it got right okay is Is there any other candidate of these big six that you would throw into the bucket of a right? Brad Bradford, the city councilor is interesting because he is not somebody I would have classified on the right. You know why?

I'm going to tell you why he fools you because he bikes a lot. He does bike a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't really make a lot of sense. People call me left wing pinko because we've been training. I've been, people call me left-wing pinko because I bike every day. I bike everywhere.

And it's like, I might be a left-wing pinko, but not because I bike. Why are you politicizing cycling? You don't like suddenly become like a few steps to the left because you get on a bike. Like it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But in Toronto, that is the way it goes. But I mean, also like, you know,

I've had conversations with Brad Bradford over the years. He started as, you know, a sort of thoughtful, pragmatic guy, somebody who had some city planning experience, you know, not somebody who was, you know, who gave me that vibe. Like, oh, this is somebody who's on the right. I don't think he, you know, is like a...

Yeah, I'm almost surprised he's going in the bucket only because I would have thrown him in the centrist bucket. But you're the expert. You're the city hall watcher. That's where I would have surprised he's going in the bucket only because I would have thrown him in the centrist bucket. But you're the expert. You're the city hall watcher. That's where I would have thought he would have ended up if, you know, if slash when he made a mayoral run. But, you know, again, like there's so much outside influence on candidates. And, you know, people come in and say, like, this is how you should run your campaign. This is how you should present yourself, all that kind of stuff.

present yourself, all that kind of stuff. And with Bradford, I think the idea was like, you know, you need to come in and distinguish yourself versus somebody like Matlow or Bailao and Chow especially. So there's an opening, you know, if you sort of present yourself more as somebody who's on the conservative side, but not as conservative as Mark Saunders, but, you know, somebody who's saying things like we got to stop Oliviaow's you know NDP activist agenda okay now I will uh shout out Brad Bradford for his taste in beer because he's a huge fan of Great Lakes Brewery so he's a big fan of the the craft beer so and I will tell you Matt that I will send you home with some fresh craft beer from Great Lakes so uh you can enjoy enjoy the the tasty uh tasty beer from Great Lakes. So you can enjoy the tasty beer from Great Lakes Brewery here in Southern Etobicoke.

Fantastic. Looking forward to it. And I'm still wrapping my head around this. There's a candidate on the right end of the political spectrum who bikes all the time, love the cycling. Okay. Who would you put into the centrist bucket? Anna Bailao, I think, is in the centrist bucket, maybe on the right side of the centrist bucket,

if we're making a spectrum here. But Bailao is taking a not as right word tract as Bradford is, but is very similar in terms of profile. Both Bradford and Bailao were very close to John Tory for the years that John Tory was mayor. And there was a photo recently of John and Anna. Yeah. There was a photo of John and Anna and also of John and Brad having a beer

together and commiserating about the campaign. So from what I hear, John Tory is not going to endorse anybody and is not really backing anybody, but is offering advice to Bradford and Bailao on an as needed basis. Okay. The killer bees, if you will. Yeah, exactly.

And what else? Yeah, we'll just get a little tidbit on the candidates before I get into like some of the big issues and get to more questions from listeners who sent in these great questions. But what else? I mean, Anna's a known commodity in the city, just like Soad is but because she was a city counselor yeah exactly and i mean both bradford and bylau have the the challenge of being very associated with john tory and this is an election where i feel like people have sort of congealed around the idea that hey maybe it's time to change the approach like the approach from from the john tory era and there is a question

coming up soon actually on that note yeah so the to John Tory is both a blessing and a curse in some ways, I think, as far as their fortunes are concerned. But Bailao is a little bit more to the left than Bradford, you know, isn't going at the idea of like opening up tendering to non-union workers and that kind of stuff like Bradford is. So, but very, very similar platforms in a lot of ways. workers and that kind of stuff like Bradford is. So, but very, very similar platforms in a lot of ways. Interesting. Okay.

And, you know, then that, again, the first past the post system, Hertz candidates that are similar fame, similar background, similar platform because they split. So anything can happen when the vote split. Absolutely. Karketty became mayor of Baltimore because of the vote split. Just remember that. Okay. Always always remember okay now any uh is there any other candidate here that you would put into the centrist bucket uh I would have started with Mitzi Hunter uh the former

MPP from Scarborough in the center uh bucket uh but she with her policy announcements is making me reconsider that and pushing her more towards the left side of things. She's got a budget announcement today that I think is happening close to here, actually. Let's go and cover it live. Yeah, that's right. We'll crash it. I can go remote. But yeah, so she started as somebody a bit more moderate, but she's pushed some pretty bold ideas. Seems open to the idea of spending money.

So I'm interested in seeing the rest of her policy ideas. I think she's the one that's pulled better than I expected. There was a time when it looked like this campaign would be a big five and not a big six, but Mitzi Hunter sort of has justified her place at the table. So, okay. So now that we're in the left bucket, we've got Mitzi Hunter. And I guess if we're going alphabetically, how do you want to do this, Olivia or Josh? Olivia and Josh, I think, are about the same as far as on the left, though Olivia Chow supporters would say that she's the true progressive. And Josh Matlow is somebody who sort of came to his progressivism more recently. If that matters to voters, I don't know.

more recently. If that matters to the voters, I don't know. But, you know, Olivia Chow has the NDP history, you know, long time, you know, wearing orange, proud and true and all that stuff. Josh Matlow is somebody who started his career at City Hall really proud of the fact that he was this moderate centrist, truth is in the middle kind of guy spent a lot of time trying to to be that guy and then it was issues like the the scarborough subway and the gardner expressway that pushed him more towards embracing some of these these leftward policies um but you know if you look at their platforms a lot of overlap a lot of similarities uh j Josh Matlow's platform tends to be more detail-oriented. Olivia Chow is presenting a lot of ideas that are just like, you know me, you trust me.

This is the direction I want to go and I know how to get us there. Josh Matlow is like, here's my plan and here's how I'll pay for it. And it's got a bunch of URLs and all this stuff. So different types of approaches, but very similar direction. See, I think this is bad news for Josh Matlow because even, and let's talk about me for a minute here. Come on, it's my show, Matt.

It's called Toronto Mike here. But I find myself wanting Josh Matlow to be our mayor. Okay. I'm leaning towards Josh Matlow. I also, and we'll get into some of the issues and specifics why in a moment here but i also feel the uh the guy i want the person i want the least to be mayor of this city is mark saunders right so i do feel like when i'm in that voting booth in confidential privacy to put an x beside one of those 102 names, I could see myself voting for Olivia Chow

to block Mark Saunders from somehow coming up the middle and winning this first-past-the-post system that I despise. So I wonder how many like-minded people in this city are there, like me, who might want Josh Matlow. I always want to say Matlow.

Matlow is what you're saying. Yeah, Matlow? That's what I say. You're saying. Yeah, Matt Lowe. Matt Lowe. Okay, of course. I don't know. You're making me second guess myself. I can't say. You notice I've been calling Anna Anna.

I actually can't say that last name. Bai Lau? Bai Lau. Bai Lau, yeah. Is there something there that there's a syllable that's not really a syllable? There's an accented A above there. I can't say brewery. It's okay.

Francis Nunziata, the speaker at council, has called her Anna Bylaw for years, and so Anna seemed fine with it. As long as you get the X next to her name, she's happy. Anna Bylaw. So, Josh Matlow, I could see

many progressives in this city wanting Josh to win this election, but voting for Olivia to block Mark Saunders, because Olivia is leading the polls. How many times, I don't know, in this city wanting Josh to win this election, but voting for Olivia to block Mark Saunders because Olivia is leading the polls. How many times, I don't know, in this writing here, uh,

provincially I'll see, okay, who has the best chance of beating the, uh, uh, the progressive conservative party candidate. And then I'll vote for whether it's NDP or liberal party, I'll vote for that person because I'm just trying to prevent the,

uh, Doug Ford's party from winning that seat. Like this is a regular occurrence in this particular neck of the woods here. Is that something that might happen in a month where the Matlow voters vote Chau to block Saunders? Yeah, I think the movement that I've been seeing in the polls is that, you know, once Olivia got in the race, her numbers went up immediately, and Matlow's numbers went down a bit. So I think that was absolutely an almost immediate effect, where we saw people who had sort of parked their vote with Matlow. They were excited about it, but then Olivia Chow came in and immediately became the frontrunner, seemed like the sure bet. And they just said, you know what, I don't want to play a dangerous game here. Let's just go with the person who is most likely to make sure that somebody like Mark Saunders doesn't become mayor of Toronto.

Well, we don't want all these bike lanes to get ripped up. Yeah, yeah. Mark Saunders is the only candidate who is out there talking about ripping up bike lanes. And there's always somebody. It's very frustrating and tiring that the same arguments are still trotted out there, like the idea that traffic would suddenly

get better if we just got rid of bike lanes on University Avenue or whatever. And I tweeted this Matt and this is the honest truth. And again, I cycle every single day. Okay, I don't want a medal for that. I don't even want an award. I'm just, this is just a fact. I can give you a medal for that. That's pretty cool. Every single day, all year round, by the way, I recorded all of my

app. I can show you the stats. Let's do a, let's do an episode about that one day. Okay, but where am I going with this? Yeah, like this is what will happen. If I, because I need to, I use it for destination rides. Like I have a meeting with clients or meeting somebody or picking up something.

So I map out what's the safest route to get there. But often I'll be on Toronto streets. And if there is no bike lane and I feel unsafe with my like one meters meters whatever i take on the right side of the road and let the cars fly by if i feel unsafe i take the lane this is what i do absolutely and i teach my kids to do this i have the right to do it so i basically take the lane now i might be cruising let's make it up i'm going at 20k an hour or something on these busy streets now i got cars are frustrated behind me because i took the lane but i'm only taking the lane because i want to survive to fight another day i don't want to get

run over by a car and die and i'm taking the lane i'm taking the lane because there is no bike lane so i never understood this like even with like like like why do you think taking away our bike lanes will make traffic better when i'm just now going to be clogging up the lane completely with my 20k an hour ride. It's a very like narrow-minded idea that people sort of are how they get around. So your identity is you are a driver or a cyclist and that's the only way you get around. But like I would guess, you know, you cycle a lot. If you were to stop cycling, you would probably end up driving more, you know, you would be creating more traffic because your car would be out there on the road more often. Right. And

that is true for a lot of cyclists. A lot of cyclists also own cars. The majority of them do. So I do drive as well. Yeah, exactly. So this idea where there's like, it's like cyclists versus drivers and it's one or the other is ridiculous. The idea is that, you know, if we can convert, even if it's a small percentage relatively, but you know, two, 3% of the cars on the road to cyclists, that is, you know, an actually significant drop in the number of cars on our roads. And if we can keep moving towards that, you know, incrementally year over year, that's how you get to a city that's easier to get around in. You know, we're not going to get there by like ripping up the bike lanes

and there's no room to make the roads any bigger. Like the idea, Toronto had its sort of last day ever where it was like a pleasant place to drive around in in like the 90s maybe. It's never coming back. And I remember the 90s, it was just parking lots as far as the eye can see. Everywhere.

Yeah, it was really beautiful i'm going to a question from brian gerstein here sure shout out to property in the property in the six see yeah there's you know the jingle yeah i wish i could play the jing brian hit me up we got to get that jingle back on the show okay to go this is brian's words to go from tory to chow is a pretty big change it's her is her popularity due to empower her to fight against Doug Ford and his policies? And how much is due simply to name recognition? Does Matlow have any Hail Mary chance by election day? It would take a major gaffe by Chow, who will say nothing.

All right. What would you say to Brian Gerstein? And I can tell you, I know Brian well. He does not have a vote in this election. Brian does not live in Toronto. I believe you're in Thornhill, right, Brian? Still, he has vested interest in what happens in this city. So what do you say to Brian?

I think that's good analysis. Ultimately, I think where we're at right now, Matlow's ability to move up is challenging. But Chao could absolutely, you know, stumble badly enough that her numbers go down and Matlow takes her place. So it's less about, you know, can the Matlow do anything, but more like, can Chao screw this up? And, you know, there's enough time where something could happen to that effect. I think Olivia Chao's strengths are, you know, a lot to do with name recognition for sure. I also think, you know, if you look at the polls on is Toronto headed in the right direction or

the wrong direction, it's like 70% wrong direction right now. So the fact that, you know, people know her, they know her name and they know that she's going to take a different approach to what we've been trying is, uh, appealing to people. The one sort of wrinkle to this is that we've also seen polls that John Tory, if he were to have run again, would probably win, uh, which I can't really explain except that, you know, there is that name recognition component to, and that Torontonians, a big chunk of them, are also very cautious. You know, like small C conservative where it's like, oh, maybe like, you know,

we want some change, we're not loving this direction, but we also are concerned about, you know, what might happen if we try something new. So it's the electoral landscape is complicated. There's lots of different types of voters, but that's where I think things are at. All right. So thank you, Brian, for the,

the great question here. There is a question that just came in a real time now, cause we're streaming on live.torontomike.com. And this is from Leslie and Leslie heard us talking about Mark Saunders, ripping up the bike lanes. Leslie's also an avid cyclist. I met her at a couple of TMLX events. So Matt, one day you got to get to a TMLX event.

I would love to get TMLX. There's one on August 31st. One of the other things that happened since I was last year is I had a child. So I have a 1.5 year old at home. Congratulations, Matt. Yeah, thank you. So my ability to get out to evening events. You can't sneak out for two hours on a Thursday night

to hang with good FOTMs. It's getting more and more possible. So as he gets older and a bit more independent, so maybe we'll get there. But the last little while has been challenging. Well, I can tell you this.

Yes, the TMLX 13. Do I have that right number? Yeah, which is taking place August 31st. It's going to be at Great Lakes Brewery here in Southern Etobicoke. So you got your beer, but also Palma Pasta is going to feed everybody. And because you got a family to feed there,

I'm going to send you home. I don't know. How old's your kid? 18 months. You know, I've had four kids. I can't remember it. 18 months. Are you eating like lasagna?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know, I know. It's a lot of like craft dinner and stuff. It's funny how it works. I lived and breathed this and it's like my youngest is now seven and I've completely forgot. Like when do you, you're eating lasagna?

Of course you are. So I'm sending you home with a lasagna from Palma Pasta. Awesome. That's going to be great. Okay. Back to Leslie. Leslie just points out, well, her, her statement here is Saunders isn't polling very high though, is he?

Like she's just, I guess she wants to know, is Mark Saunders a viable threat to actually win this election? No, again, like where we're looking at the polls right now, we got Olivia Chow in like the low 30s to mid 30 range of decided voters. Mark Saunders is hovering in between like 10 and 15% in most of the polls that I'm seeing. So you see, this is where I'm i mean rightly so completely jaded uh with talking about polling at all is because of that damn american uh election with uh hillary clinton and donald trump because oh my god let's share

the story before but like an hour before polls closed i told my my sweet oldest daughter who was really worried, like legitimately worried that Donald Trump might win. I said, cause I was on, was it five 38 and all the different. Yeah. And I said,

Oh, don't worry. Uh, it's like 95%, a chance of, uh, Hillary winning. Uh,

there's like, there's no chance that Donald will win this election. Like I said that. And then like two hours later, I was like apologizing to her for like giving her this false hope because it was clear by like 8 30 PM or whatever it was, Donald Trump's going to win this election. So polls,

like, I mean, polls are polls and they're give you an idea, but they, they got that election. So very wrong. I don't know if I trust him anymore. So I just assume there's a whole bunch of people who want to rip up bike,

bike lanes who haven't been pulled, who are going to be like Saunders is my man. Yeah, no, there's always that chance. And that's why I think we'll see people on the left vote strategically, even if, you know, it's probably could be okay, depending on where things look on June 26. Another thing to keep in mind, too, is that like early voting starts, I think, June 8th. It's soon. We're going to see a pretty significant percentage of the vote locked in before June 26th. There's also a vote-by-mail program where people are going to be voting. So that's an interesting dynamic, too, is that in one sense we have a bit more than a month left before the election. And I always do pre-voting.

I feel like that's the move, man. Yeah, exactly. If you know who you're going to vote for, obviously. Absolutely. Get it out of the way. They don't have to think about it. On election day, you can just sort of kick back and watch the results later.

So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see. But there was some thinking that this would become like a one-on-one Chow versus Saunders horse race type of contest. That is not the narrative that we're seeing play out. So, you know, I would not say like, you know, there's, again, there's not really like a real strong anybody with Saunders movement brewing yet. But, yeah, stuff can still change.

Absolutely. And at the very end of this conversation, I'm going to see if you have a prediction in you as to who win this thing. You're allowed to do that as a journalist, right? You can make a prediction. Yeah, sure. Why not? As long as we aren't

making a bet or anything. Oh, yeah. Don't worry. I don't yet have a betting sponsor. You're like the one person. Hit me up if you want to sponsor the show

for sports betting. On CFRB, a question again. This is actually Brian again. On CFRB roundtable this morning, so that's today actually, so Brian's listening

to 1010 and he's listening to the round table. And, uh, Brian writes, they said that there are no viral type moments that make it to the mass public. Why would the candidates all, and again,

Brian is missing words here, but I'm going to try to film it. Be around 10. Well, why would the candidates all around 10 percent not team up and go after chow in a big way to get her to say something controversial to change the narrative it seems they are handing her the win um i i think it again like just like there's not like an anybody but saunders uh narrative forming there's also not really like a strong anybody but Chau narrative

forming. Another interesting wrinkle in this election, which is different than other elections that we've seen is, you know, after this election, should they not win, Josh Matlow and Brad Bradford will still be sitting city councilors and will still, you know, want to work with the new mayor if it's Olivia Chau. So,ow. So there's a danger in going nuclear with it and making a real enemy out of the person who might be the mayor after June 26th. So there's that calculation, and then there's also the calculation.

I think a lot of these candidates, Matlow, Bradford, maybe Bailao, were thinking 2026 would be when they would run from there. Um, and that still might be in the cards, uh, for some of them, even if they aren't successful now. So, uh, Olivia Chow is a popular person in the city. You don't necessarily want to be the person who's going all out, uh far as you know campaign warfare against her uh what you will see more and more of is like the backroom stuff where it'll be like not the candidate but somebody affiliated with the candidate who's out there on social media uh making sort of uglier or

sharper attacks against right like a good cop bad cop exactly exactly and that's a good analysis you're right a lot of you know you're right brad bradford was always looking at uh 2026 yeah and it just so happened uh a surprise uh john tory sex scandal i can't believe those words string together like that's a shocker i'm still reeling here that no one saw that coming and uh it happened and suddenly it's just sped things up i will will just share with the listenership that for a period of time, just before Brad Bradford announced that he was running for mayor,

Brad Bradford was in the Toronto Mike calendar to come over and chat. Oh, nice. But what's interesting to me is that it was removed from the calendar. So I'm not going to read. I just find that interesting because somebody

asked if i'd talk to brad on the show and i said yes i would talk to brad on the show and then it was removed so there that's just a fun fact i suppose i'm just gonna share that with everybody uh that is an interesting uh tidbit right there yeah um i don't know he would want the the exposure exposure from being on this program. But I also know like, you know, he's got people advising him and Brad Bradford is not talking about cycling as a candidate as much as he talked about cycling as a councillor, for example. And part of that is like, there's all this calculation about who you're trying to appeal to and which voters are your addressable voters and this kind of thing. And I do wonder if,

if maybe the calculation is that, you know, you don't want to necessarily be like, uh, the Brad Bradford who'd come over here and geek out with you over, you know, long distance cycling for, for two hours,

uh, isn't really fit the campaign. Right. Cause Saunders over there. Cause you, you did stick them both in the right bucket. So you've actually got Brad Bradford and Mark Saunders in the same right of center bucket and if you got mark saunders out there saying i'm gonna rip up bike lanes which is wild in 2023 uh brad bradford would not escape my

basement without a cycling chat exactly and he knows it and instead of talking about you know i don't play like you don't get to tell me what's out of bounds or whatever if i want to talk about cycling with you he's talked about hiring a congestion czar, somebody who will, I guess, be in charge of trying to get cars to move through intersections better. That's a good point. It wouldn't serve him, considering he's

trying to take votes from Mark Saunders. You can't get 100% of the votes. You have to figure out which voters you are going to try to get. I didn't even finish Brian's point here, because he actually writes, have the other candidates given up already? And this kind of, you kind of just answered this,

but, and are they hoping to be in a better position when she's mayor? You did address that. Are we at the suck up stage already having conceded? So that's interesting. Like for some of these big six, if they've already seen the writing on the wall and Olivia Chow will be the next mayor of Toronto, are they now at the, yeah, the suck up stage

is what Brian's calling it. I think there might be an element to that for sure. But my read on it is still there's this feeling like Olivia Chow might blow it somehow. And they want to be, there's a month to go. They want to be positioned to capture some of that, you know,

35 ish percent of the vote that is part of Olivia Chow right now. The way you get that vote is not by like coming out and being like, Olivia Chow is terrible and all the radios are bad. You know, the way you potentially get that vote is by saying, you know, like I like Olivia Chow. I just don't think she's the right person for right now.

And you get some other people talking about how maybe she's just not the right candidate for the moment or whatever. It's a delicate dance. But I don't think they're at the point where they've given up all hope yet. But I do think that there's this general idea that, you know, it's going to need to be her making a mistake rather than any other candidate who's just sort of like suddenly catches fire with voters and jumps 20% of points, 20 points in the poll. If things go sideways here and things are dramatically changed, you're going to have to come back like closer to election day. And you're going to have to, well, I got got that maybe i'll play clips and then we'll talk about how ridiculous we sound in retrospect absolutely that sounds like a great

use of i love doing that i have a question about mitzi hunter here so mitzi hunter yeah who i thought might be a centrist but you've got her on the left here but she was an mpp uh with the liberal party but she had to resign to run for mayor right yeah like that so so it's kind of unfair when you think about it that a mitzi hunter has to resign as mpp to run as mayor of toronto for mayor of toronto but um you know anna and brad don't have to resign as city so they they have their jobs their full-time jobs uh even if they lose this election. Well, Anna didn't run last time. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, Anna's a former councillor.

My apologies. Yeah, so it's Brad and Josh Matlow. Right, Brad Bradford and Josh Matlow. In the boat of, and it's a rare thing because traditionally in a municipal election, if you wanted to seek the mayor's office, you would have to, you can't also run for your council seat, right?

So they would. That's true. You can't be on the ballot twice. So they would have to have made that choice. So I your council seat right so that's true you can't be on the ballot twice so they would have to have made that choice so i do think that that was one of the things that was appealing to to them about this opportunity well they can't really lose because they're gonna get name recognition out of this and they're gonna they're gonna if they're viable this is only win-win for them because they keep they go back to their jobs and maybe in three years or whatever they run again and they build on like they did here like it's you know that $200 is well spent for uh Josh

and Brad yeah exactly I would imagine they're gonna end up spending some some more uh cash than that maybe some of their own cash uh on campaign expenses but yeah it uh it was a really good opportunity in that sense because you don't really have that downside risk of like after the election being like well I guess I find out a job now. Like, um, you just go back to city hall, but it does change the,

the dynamic as we talked about is, you know, they have to position themselves for, for post-election, you know, life at city hall. All right. Can we,

uh, cover five, I picked five. I know we talked about the big six candidates, but I picked five issues, like actual issues, Matt, we can talk about some issues. Let's do it. And we're going to just picked five issues, like actual issues, Matt, we can talk about some issues.

Let's do it. And we're going to just, you can summarize like everybody's take on these five issues, but very quickly, I just want to send you home with a wireless speaker from Maneris. And I'll just tell you the most recent episode of Toronto Mike prior to this one was actually a award-winning podcaster, FOTM,

Al Grego kicking out jams. He was here yesterday and he hosts. Yes, we arego, kicking out jams. He was here yesterday. And he hosts Yes, We Are Open, which is this inspiring podcast from Moneris. And I urge everybody to subscribe to Yes, We Are Open. Listen to his current season four. Then go back and listen to what you missed. And listen

to him on Toronto Mike, Al Grego, kicking out the jams. We had a great time yesterday. It unlocked a memory, okay? So, Mickey Dolenz came up because we We had a great time yesterday. It unlocked a memory, okay? So, Mickey Dolenz came up because we kicked out a monkey's jam. Spoiler alert. And I remembered

Mickey's daughter being in a movie. And I remembered this movie starring Gerard Depardieu, the famous French actor. Okay. But then,

a little Googling in real time, I realized, I was conflating a movie. It was actually Tony Danza. The movie was called She's out of control and it was amy dolan's mickey's daughter all right with tony danza and i was conflating that movie my father the hero correct do you know who played the daughter and my father the hero i do not but i'm very curious to know i remember that movie yeah uh the woman from gray's anatomy uh oh um yeah it is i'm blanking on her name but uh her name of course is terrible um hold on here i know her name very she's very famous and she's in Ellen Pompeo no no no no this is uh Izzy

and it's Catherine Heigl yes you know how did I forget the name Catherine Heigl so Catherine Heigl plays the daughter in My Father the Hero and I had this memory because I remember uh I would say this phrase out loud I would say I'm dying now because there's a scene with Catherine Hegel my father the hero the father was Gerard de Bardot and she's saying that she made up a lie about how she's dating him but he's dying I'm dying now anyway this memory gets unlocked in real time if you listen to

the Al Grego episode of Toronto Mike I think you might be the only person in human history to confuse Gerard de Bardot with Tony Danza. And again, Community did this better than I could ever do, but I did have the thought before Community shared it under that great sitcom. But there's no doubt who's the boss, right?

Like, this is not a real debate. No one's really debating who's the boss, Tony Maselli or Angela Bauer. Yeah, I mean, Tony works for Angela. Yeah, like Angela can fire Tony. Yeah. Angela presumably pays a salary to Tony. Right.

Tony's not the boss. Once they're in a romantic relationship, though, I think the power dynamic probably changes a little bit. But it took a long time to get there. She's probably breaching some sort of sexual harassment law, potentially. I mean, it was the 80s, so maybe that wasn't a thing. Yeah, in the 80s, everything went in the 80s. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, I think generally, I don't know how you can make the argument that Tony would be the boss in this situation. It makes zero sense. Right. With you 100%. So, I will tell everyone listening, recyclemyelectronics.ca. You go there to find out where you can safely dispose of your electronics, your old tech, your antiquated 8-track player or laser disc player,

whatever you have lying around. Don't throw it in the garbage. Go to RecycleMyElectronics.ca. Okay, let's start with Ontario Place. Sure. It actually isn't the issue I thought it was going to be when I was talking to Ed Keenan in early April. We thought maybe this would be the

issue and it maybe it's still a big issue but i don't i don't feel it in the zeitgeist as prominently as i did like a month ago but where does everybody stand at the big six anyways on yeah tell me where all 102 candidates stand on ontario place uh it was it was very weird that like the first three weeks of this election campaign were spent just talking about Ontario Place. It's an important issue, but A, it's just one of many important issues, and B, it's largely a provincial concern. The next mayor of Toronto will be able to weigh in and make their opinion known and all that stuff. But ultimately, there's not a whole lot that the City Hall can do to stop Doug Ford from barreling on with whatever he wants to do.

So if a private spa is built on Ontario Place, we as a city can't stop that. Not really. There's a few things they can do to maybe gomp the works and slow things down as far as dragging their feet on various permits to do construction and things like that.

But what if Ben Rainer and I chain ourselves to, uh, I don't know the sinosphere or something. Could that, could that. I mean, worth a shot. Cause Ben's on board.

Yeah. I'm there. No, I mean, as far as I know, they're not actually going to demolish the sinosphere. So, uh,

you might just be standing there watching. Put up a safety wall. Spa workers are coming in. You should have thought this through. There's got to be something you can change yourself to. So Mark Saunders, what was his role with this? I know he had a role with this. Yeah, he was on an advisory board that was sort of deciding what Ontario plays should be for the Doug Ford government.

I don't get the sense that he did a lot of actual work as part of this process. It was just he had lost that bid to be an MPP and needed a gig for a while, so they put him on this advisory board. But it does sort of lock him into supporting the Doug Ford direction for Ontario plays. Oh, yeah.

Because he was on the advisory board. And he's Doug's guy. He's Doug's guy anyway, so he probably would. Does that work for or against Mark Saunders to be Doug's guy? I think it works against him. Doug Ford is not very popular in this city. In Toronto, right? I mean, there are parts of the city where he does well, obviously, north of here.

Although you're in a place where our MPP is a member of his party. That's true. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, you know, his real base of power is, you know, you have to go up Kipling Avenue for a while. But, yeah, no, he is not the most popular guy in Toronto. So, you know, being as sort of wedded to him as Mark Saunders is, for lack of a better word, I think is more of a hindrance than a help because, you know, people don't love the idea of somebody just being like a lapdog, right? Like even if you're saying,

I'm going to work with Doug Ford, this idea where you're basically just going to like do whatever Doug Ford wants is not the most appealing thing for a mayor to signal to voters. So Mark Saunders has to figure that one out. And so far hasn't done a great job of explaining how he'll sort of stand up for Toronto in cases where maybe Doug Ford is wrong about what he wants to do. What has Olivia Chow said about Ontario Place? Olivia Chow has less of a detailed proposal than some of the other candidates, but is generally against the mega spa thing and has talked about the idea of, you know,

green space and public space and all that stuff. So, you know, I would not be in the camp of thinking that the provincial plan is a good idea. Okay. Now we'll move from Ontario place there to just the next issue I would like to chat about is affordable housing. Can you surmise everybody's take on affordable housing? Yeah, it's really sort of

cleanly divided into the two camps. So for the last bunch of years under John Tory, the approach on affordable housing is, okay, we've got a bunch of land that is owned by the city. We are going to lease that land to private sector, not-for-profits, people who aren't us. And we're going to create a pretty complicated program with a bunch of incentives to get people to develop on that land and make sure that a percentage of the development is designated affordable housing that would be rented below market rates. That plan has not, it's called housing now, it has not led to any construction as of yet, despite being passed by council in 2019. So that hasn't been going well,

the pandemic caused construction prices to go up. General inflation has been tough. Interest rates have been tough, that kind of thing. There's a whole range of factors, but whatever. The bottom line is that it has not led to a lot of or any construction at this point, which is a challenge in a city that has such a big affordable housing challenge. So you have candidates like Bradford and Bailao who were, you know, really involved in developing that plan and are basically pushing for, you know, let's keep the general direction. Let's just sort of tweak it, change it to actually get some shovels in the ground and make this housing now plan happen. Mark Saunders has not presented a detailed proposal, but is generally, you know, on the same train as that. So same idea, take city land, hand it over to private interests and give them some

incentives so they build some affordable housing. Matlow, Chow, and Hunter are instead thinking, why don't we, instead of sort of trying to incentivize the private sector to build this housing, why doesn't the city just build this housing directly? Why doesn't the city just retain ownership? So instead of it being sort of affordable housing as part of a private development, let's just make it publicly owned housing. And it would be a range of rents. There'd be some rents that would be at the market rate.

There'd be some that would be a little less than market, and then some that would be like deeply affordable, you know, supportive housing for people who, you know, would otherwise be in a shelter or camping in a park or whatever. That's a new approach, so that has some appeal. And it also, you know, is there cities all over the world where there's a lot more sort of publicly owned housing than we have in Toronto, though we do have a significant chunk of it with the TCHC. It's just we haven't built any new buildings for the most part in a very, very long time. So that's the divide there is, you know, should we just sort of stick with this, you know, private sector plan or should we get back into the direct city-built housing game okay now before i get to

public safety uh which we referenced earlier but i want to get to a question that came in from mv mv says and i find this interesting i want to hear what you say matt about this how many percentage points is an endorsement from tory or ford worth assuming that both are likely to announce their endorsements when they or their advisors deem that timing is right now you have said a few things during this conversation because i'm listening matt i'm listening everywhere but you said you don't you don't actually think john tory is going to overtly endorse anybody yeah no i would be surprised if it's like an outright john tory appears with a candidate and endorses that candidate.

Although you mentioned Brad Bradford and Anna Bailao are benefiting from his wisdom and experience. And we could see more stuff like that. So maybe not a formal endorsement, but hey, they happen to be at some events where John Tory is at that event. Although he'll take a selfie with anybody. He'll take a selfie with anybody. There could be some messaging from his people

that sort of indicates that he's made his choice and that he thinks people should go with Bailao or Bradford or, you know, it would be one of the two most likely. So, you know, we could see more indication of who of those two John Tory thinks that people should vote for. I don't think at this point it would move the needle a whole lot um just because like it's you know it's already well known that bylau and bradford are are you know closely aligned with john tory worked with john tory right so if you're somebody who thinks john tory was the bee's knees like here's not really and that's an expression he would use right exactly um so you're not really

like in any doubt about whether you should be voting for Olivia Chow or one of those other two. It might just help clarify, you know, between Bradford and Bailao, where should voters go? But even if you add, you know, their polling averages together, you're not getting to the point where they are in Chow territory at this point. And we did address this, but it's obvious to me that Doug Ford, his preferred candidate in this election is Mark Saunders. Yeah, I don't think anybody has any doubt about that. I can't imagine. It settles a sledgehammer to that. Any Ford Nation supporters that are like all in on Olivia Chow right now

because they're thinking she's Doug's person. So I can't see that making a huge difference. And again, I think it also has a negative impact on Saunders as well. So I don't see that as something that would, you know, materially change the race. If it became like, if you actually said the words, I endorse Mark Saunders, instead of just saying, I'm not going to endorse anybody, but here's Mark Saunders. Yeah. Okay.

Now this is a second part to MB's question, and I'm very interested to hear your reaction to this. And it's kind of frightening, but I'm going to read it verbatim. to this and it's kind of frightening but i'm going to read it verbatim is my fear legitimate that if chow or matlow win that there will be a fast track legislation to weaken the mayor's powers and possibly even introduce direct provincial oversight overriding council decisions oh i can't worry like yeah so if chow or matlow win will doug ford become mayor of toronto i mean i don't want to rule anything out that doug ford could do at this point since i he's done some stuff that i would not have expected he's done some shit yeah um but at the same time

uh i think you know the obvious move that doug ford could make if Chow or Matlow wins would be to rescind the strong mayor power stuff. But that wouldn't matter a great deal in the sense that both Chow and Matlow have promised not to use the strong mayor powers. They'd rather build the consensus on council like a mayor would have before the strong mayor powers existed. Right. So, you know, as far as, you know, their intentions, their plans, their strategy, it wouldn't make a dynamic difference. Aside from the fact that, you know, they always have the option of sort of breaking that promise. If it was like a, you know, break glass in case of emergency type situation, they wouldn't have that anymore. think generally what we would see is you know doug ford in 2023 is very very different than doug ford that i remember from city hall when he was very much like dogmatic doug like uh you know talk radio listening to doug who was right uh you know fire breathing conservative uh doug ford as premier wants people to like him like he really uh just craves that attention and that those warm feelings and

that kinds of things. So you look at like him and like Christia Freeland, for example, and he always talks about how much he loves working with her now. And he's palling around with her. There has been a very interesting alliance between Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau. Exactly.

So I think that's the blueprint is I don't necessarily think it would be like Doug Ford would immediately move to clip the wings of a chow or then you might as well just rebrand it uh instead of super mayor it's super tory powers exactly exactly this was a john tory thing yeah exactly so i i don't think that's likely i do think that you know things could come to a head over issues like if matlow and chow moved to uh you know as they've said sort of radically changed the gardener uh project so that it uh the eastern gardener is is now like an on-street boulevard and not an elevated well i was gonna ask you about gardener maybe yeah you do that now gardener expressway is one of the five issues i was gonna ask you about yeah go for it um

just did it just did it uh yeah so i, the Gardner debate goes back to like 2015, even earlier, really. But I mean, the basics of it is if you look at like the state of good repair budget for the transportation department at City Hall right now, the Gardner alone, one expressway is about half of spending. It's about 4% of traffic. It is a monster of a project that has really impacted the city's ability to keep up with their other repair bills. So there's been some conversation over the year about, is there ways that we can make this gargantuan project less expensive? One way was to look at the section between uh jarvis and the dvp which is the least used section of the highway right and say like oh okay instead of having to like rebuild this thing at great expense maybe we just take the

highway down to a boulevard um between that that section it's a few kilometers. And that will be the way that you connect between the Gardner and the DVP. There's a lot of ancillary benefits in the sense that it opens up some more land where you could build some housing. You could do some public realm stuff. It could connect the waterfront to that part of the city better than we have right now.

The rail corridor is still a bit of a concern. And ultimately it would just have saved, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars that the city could redeploy. So it's simmered because, you know, construction is slow. There's been some work on the Gardiner, but the real work on that bit doesn't start until 2026. So we've had candidates like Matlow and Chow specifically who've come out and endorsed the idea, like, let's go back to this boulevard idea.

Let's not spend as much as we were planning to spend on rebuilding an elevated portion. Other candidates have said, you know, this is nonsense. Let's just stick with, you know, the plan. And, you know, we need to stop sort of going back on our decisions's just stick with, you know, the plan and, uh, you know, we need to stop sort of going back on our decisions and just stick with what we've decided on. Um, and then there's also some stuff about, you know, how this is the war on the car and it's, it's unconscionable to think about getting rid of this connection. Um, so love their cars. They do love their cars. Some of them for sure. So, uh, that's where that issue is. Um, but a lot of, you know, a significant chunk of Matlow and Chao's plans are contingent on the idea that you could take some of this money from the Gardiner East and put it towards other things. Interesting. OK, I refresh. I promised the next topic would be public safety.

And then I decided to jump ahead to Gardiner Expressway. But what about public safety? Yeah, this was one of the issues that people thought might be like the big issue during the election. And then we've talked about Ontario plays for a few weeks and then we've talked about other things since. I don't think that this is going to be like the issue that people have in mind when they go into the ballot box. It'll be one of a bunch of issues.

Housing seems to be the one that is like top of mind for most people, But still an issue. Crime is up from pre-pandemic levels on some metrics. We saw a wave of really devastating, in a lot of cases, tragic headlines about violence in the TTC over the last few months. And there has been this idea of what's the best way to fix it? Is the answer hiring more police? Obviously, Mark Saunders is thinking that's the way to go.

Sure. Once a cop, always a cop. Yeah, exactly. Brad Bradford has generally jumped on that bandwagon as well. Anna Bailao has been a bit more sort of in the middle on it, but is talking about, you know, making sure that we both, you know, give the police the resources they need, but also fund community supports. On the other side, you have Chow and Matlow.

Hunter, we're still sort of waiting to see where she comes down on it, but Chow and Matlow are talking more about, the answer is not just giving the police all the money that they could ever need or ask for or desire, but are there alternatives, you know, community crisis responses, these kinds of things where instead of a cop showing up, if somebody's having a mental breakdown, you send somebody who's been trained specifically in how to deescalate that situation. There's been some good success for some pilot projects in that area. So it would be interesting

to see those expanded. This has been awesome. We're not quite done yet. Don't want you to get excited. Don't jump up and hit your head. But this has been so thorough. And I just want to remind everybody that Matt Elliott is watching City Hall. So you don't have to. No, go to. Yeah, maybe that's true. Go to cityhallwatcher.com to subscribe to. So how often is that newsletter put out? Weekly. So every, around five o'clock PM, you get a, uh, summary of what's coming up at city hall that week.

Uh, some interesting analysis, lots of charts. If you're into visuals about, uh, the big issues that people are talking about. Um, and yeah,

it's, it's, it's a lot of fun. Um, it's very, it's more than like sort of nerdy policy side than the politics side. So if you're into like getting to the nuts and bolts of issues and less concerned about the personalities at City Hall, I would recommend you give it a shot.

And Matt Elliott, you're very good at what you do. Well, thank you. And that's why I'm giving you a measuring tape from Ridley Funeral Home. Oh. And you're still, you're still teaching at Humber? I am still teaching at Humber, yeah. Okay. Well, you know, in that neck of the woods is Ridley Funeral Home, their 14th in Lakeshore.

That's right, yeah. I go by there when I'm out on campus. And I've got to shout them out. Absolutely. Thank you, Ridley. Brad Jones is visiting later today to record a new episode of his podcast, Life's Undertaking, and I look forward to that. And you've got your measuring tape.

Measure what you wish and keep that on you. You never know when you got to measure something, but shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. And just before I get to the very last issue, which we've actually almost addressed, and then we'll get your prediction and then we'll get you out of here. I love this. I said,

do you have an hour? I'm like, no, I'm taking 90 minutes. This is too good here. But I do want to shout out the good people at The Moment Lab. The Moment Lab specialize in public relations and they have a team of experienced professionals who know how to craft stories that resonate with

your audience and generate positive media coverage. So whether you're launching a new product or building your reputation or managing a crisis or running for government, okay, they've got you covered. So I'm happy to introduce anyone listening to Matt and Jared at the moment lab today, and they can tell you more about how they can help you achieve your public relations goals.

Last issue, which we kind of addressed, was bike lanes. Like, I'm just curious about the big six. Where do they all stand on bike lanes? This one is near and dear to my heart because my kids all bike, and I bike, and it's all over the place. And there was, was like pretty recent development just literally like in this neck of the woods between First Street and Norris Crescent where they built in separated bike lanes.

It was like a missing link in the waterfront trail that they kind of closed up. And it's made such a big difference just in terms of my kids cycling. Like I'm comfortable biking on Lakeshore, but not everybody is comfortable biking on Lakeshore and little things like that that just make it like you know we can now get to the dome so much easier or whatever to bemo field or wherever but where do the big six candidates where do they all uh fall in when it comes to bike lanes in toronto i think it's fair to say that mark Saunders is the only one that's come out

as like the anti-bike lane, rip them up kind of candidate. The others, I would like to see some more detailed bike plans from. I haven't seen anybody come out with like a map, for example, which I think would be useful of the bike lanes that they might like to build. There are more missing links, I'll say.

I can help anyone out if they want to know. Exactly, exactly. It'd be nice to see some of that out soon. I did take a look at a plan from Josh Matlow recently, which was less about a specific, I'm going to build these kinds of bike lanes, but more about increasing the amount of spending on road safety, especially on the capital side.

So not just hiring crossing guards, but spending money to like redesign our roads. So they're more safe for cyclists and pedestrians, which makes a ton of sense to me. Like that's the kind of permanent improvements that we need. So I think generally, if you're a cyclist, the only candidate that you have to worry about of the big six is Mark Saunders. But I also think like a lot of it is like the speed of implementation. Right. So you look at like,

when has Toronto built like the, the most bike lanes, the fastest, it was actually like during COVID when instead of it, right. Instead of it, I would have guessed for the Pan Am games. If you had put,

like you said, my guess, I would have guessed like for 2015, I think if you were looking at like a sort of off street trails and stuff like that, the Pan Am games led to some really nice improvements. Big time. But like if you look at the on street stuff, University, Dundas, East, Blur East, Danforth, huge, obviously.

Those were pandemic projects. And what worked there is instead of being like, OK, we're going to have like a consultation meeting, then a report, then another consultation meeting, then a report. We're going to have a consultation meeting, then a report, then another consultation meeting, then a report. We're just going to put some bollards up on the street, some posts, basically, and make these bike lanes. And they're not great. They need some concrete and some actual permanent infrastructure. But it really showed the value in let's just do it. Let's not take forever.

Processes don't need to be as bureaucratic and as long-lasting as know, long lasting as they have been like, let's just get it done. Let's just get it done. Matt Elliott from the city hall watcher with that was a very thorough primer. Again, we have a month to go and if things do go sideways and then we, we sound ridiculous in retrospect, you got to come back and give us a revised interpretation of everything before June 26th. If you're a Torontonian listening to Toronto Mic'd, and many of you are, get out and vote.

I'm not going to tell you how to vote. You vote the way that's best for you, but make sure you vote. I think it's important we all get to the polls before June 26th or on June 26th. And before I say goodbye to Matt Elliott, I did threaten to force a prediction out of him. Remember, I'm recording this, Matt. Absolutely, yeah. Who will

win this by-election for mayor of Toronto on June 26th? Giorgio Mammoliti. No, Olivia Chow. I think it's going to be Olivia Chow. You made me laugh out loud i was michael i thought you were there or frank d'angelo i wasn't sure which one uh yeah that

would have been a good answer too but i got the laugh well yeah i hear about frank all the time on the the sherman all the sherman billionaire uh murder uh references he was uh financed by barry sherman all those those movies and all those operations. Yeah, and now he's running for mayor. Now he's running for mayor. Okay, so from the big six, you think Olivia Chow will win. Way to go out on a ledge there, considering that headline from David Ryder said she was untouchable. But stay tuned.

Lots will change in the next month. Maybe we'll get Matt back if things change dramatically. Regardless, you will be back on Toronto Mic. You're a great FOTM. Thank you for doing what you do, Matt Elliott. Thank you. Always happy to be in this basement. And that brings us to the end of our 1,259th

show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Matt, how can people follow you on Twitter? I'm at Graphic Matt on Twitter. You get good graphics at City Hall watching. I do my best. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery. They're at Great Lakes

Beer. Palma Pasta's at Palma Pasta. I've got one in the freezer for you. Maneris is at Maneris. Recycle My Electronics are at EPR8 underscore Canada. The Moment Lab are at The Moment Lab. And Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley F-H. Going to my calendar in real time to tell you who is up next on Toronto Mic.

Oh, it looks like Ivor Hamilton visits tomorrow. He's from CFNY. And then Monday, Stephen Brunt in the TMDS basement here. Can't wait to find out what's happening with FOTM, Stephen Brunt. See you all then. I know it's true, yeah I know it's true How about you? All that picking up trash and then putting down roads