Toronto Mayoral By Election

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It's a pity Toronto has such tightly drawn municipal boundaries; the city would be much better off it had boundaries more like Ottawa.

Why so?

[DL]

Anyway, has Toronto moved to the left over the last 20 years? It's hard to say, really. When it comes to mayoral elections, I would say it hasn't. The 2010 mayoral race was a direct repudiation of Miller, and probably contributed to Chow's defeat in 2014. As time goes by, the memory of Miller fades, making progressive candidates palpable again, but his ghost still lingers. People certainly don't want the Ford chaos again either, of course. Toronto still wants a moderate, which is why polls show John Tory would win if he were running. As a progressive, it's a sad prospect, but such is reality. If Chow wins, and is a competent mayor though, then the city will be more comfortable electing progressives in the future.

You may have a point but I think there is also a huge incumbency bias in these non-partisan mayoral contests. While one can argue that the 2010 election was a repudiation of Miller - and yet polls in 2010 indicated that had he run again he would have won! Similarly with Tory, its just that "better the devil you know" attitude. Contrary to popular belief Chow is very pragmatic and worked effectively with Mel Lastman when he was mayor 1997-2003. If people are expecting a leftwing firebrand as mayor they may be disappointed. Usually the knock against leftwingers in municipal elections is that they will be in the pocket of municipal public sector unions - but this time CUPE locals 79 and 416 which represent everyone who works for the city have both inexplicably endorsed Ana Bailao for mayor - even though she championed contracting out garbage collection in the early years of the Ford regime. 

[adma]

It's a pity Toronto has such tightly drawn municipal boundaries; the city would be much better off it had boundaries more like Ottawa.

That's like saying that it's a pity the CN Tower is only as tall as it is, when it could have been as tall as the Burj Khalifa.

In fact, an awful lot of municipal experts would argue the reverse: that amalgamated urban-rural city-county entities like present-day Ottawa are inane and simplistic forced marriages.  That is, to claim that 1000+ square miles extending well into farm and rural territory is an "ideal" size and setup for a city is like a 13-year-old boy viewing virtual sexbots as an "ideal" barometer for femininity...

[adma]

Anyway, has Toronto moved to the left over the last 20 years? It's hard to say, really. When it comes to mayoral elections, I would say it hasn't. The 2010 mayoral race was a direct repudiation of Miller, and probably contributed to Chow's defeat in 2014. As time goes by, the memory of Miller fades, making progressive candidates palpable again, but his ghost still lingers. People certainly don't want the Ford chaos again either, of course. Toronto still wants a moderate, which is why polls show John Tory would win if he were running. As a progressive, it's a sad prospect, but such is reality. If Chow wins, and is a competent mayor though, then the city will be more comfortable electing progressives in the future.

You may have a point but I think there is also a huge incumbency bias in these non-partisan mayoral contests. While one can argue that the 2010 election was a repudiation of Miller - and yet polls in 2010 indicated that had he run again he would have won! Similarly with Tory, its just that "better the devil you know" attitude. Contrary to popular belief Chow is very pragmatic and worked effectively with Mel Lastman when he was mayor 1997-2003. If people are expecting a leftwing firebrand as mayor they may be disappointed. Usually the knock against leftwingers in municipal elections is that they will be in the pocket of municipal public sector unions - but this time CUPE locals 79 and 416 which represent everyone who works for the city have both inexplicably endorsed Ana Bailao for mayor - even though she championed contracting out garbage collection in the early years of the Ford regime. 

And in fact, a subliminal factor to Chow's lead might be that she is, indeed, not viewed as much "scary left" by the populace as the media pundits would have it.  Sort of like how John Tory proved to not be as "terminal loser" in '14 as media pundits would have had it.  Any red-baiting is, this time, falling flat on its face (so far)--much like Miller in '03, she's even matured into a certain "establishment appeal".  Or even if she's not everyone's electoral cup of tea, that 2023-model-Olivia un-scariness isn't really the stuff to truly galvanize any but the most half-hearted "stop Olivia" movement.  And both Saunders and Bradford (the likeliest "stop Olivia" totems) have so far shown too much negative energy.  Sadly for the right, Olivia Chow in '23 doesn't "scare" the way the Fords did in '10 and '14...

And even if she was 3rd in '14, she had the best 3rd place finish of any Toronto mayoral candidate since 1978.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

It's a pity Toronto has such tightly drawn municipal boundaries; the city would be much better off it had boundaries more like Ottawa.

Like Ottawa? Like it should include all the suburbs AND some rural areas?

Well as a right-winger, I wouldn't mind elections under those boundaries but no, it would be a terrible idea. I'd argue the City of Toronto is too big as is, expanding it FURTHER would be a case study for what NOT to do in future public administration courses. I'm not flat-out anti-amalgamation, it can be a good idea in some cases. But there's absolutely no reason why Newmarket should be governed by the same mayor and council as downtown Toronto.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Skipping tonight's debate is yet another amateur hour decision by the Saunders campaign. You skip debates when you're ahead and have more to lose than gain. You DON'T skip debates when there's a billion candidates and you're trying to pull ahead.

[Sol]

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

I don't mean this to be dismissive, but this reads like you're really not familiar with Toronto or the GTA, and applying the issues of US cities to a completely different context.

Toronto is an amalgamation of six pre-existing municipalities, and much of it is suburbia. Sure, Newmarket and Oshawa are considered Toronto suburbs now (debatable for Oshawa), but there are like seventeen more layers of suburbs before you get to "urban" Toronto, so it's not such a logical expansion. If all of the GTA were amalgamated into Toronto, you would get an area larger than New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philly combined.

Additionally, the non-Toronto parts of the GTA, by and large, aren't just Toronto's bedroom communities. Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Oshawa, Ajax, Oakville etc all have significant economic activity happening within them. Oftentimes, they have their own bedroom communities, like people living in Stouffville and working in Markham. More than half of the GTA's population lives outside of Toronto. Amalgamating the GTA into Toronto would be like putting all of LA, Orange, Riverside counties into LA.

As for racial and economic segregation, ditto. GTA suburbs aren't sundown towns formed by 1960s white flight - to the contrary, many of them are immigrant towns. Toronto itself is very ethnically diverse too (and I'm not using diverse to mean not white, I mean genuinely diverse in a way that very few American cities can top). As for social/economic inequality, there's plenty of that within Toronto's borders, but it's really not a "rich suburbs/broke city" dynamic like in many US cities.

[Holmes]

I would probably cry if Chow won.

[adma]

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

I don't mean this to be dismissive, but this reads like you're really not familiar with Toronto or the GTA, and applying the issues of US cities to a completely different context.

Toronto is an amalgamation of six pre-existing municipalities, and much of it is suburbia. Sure, Newmarket and Oshawa are considered Toronto suburbs now (debatable for Oshawa), but there are like seventeen more layers of suburbs before you get to "urban" Toronto, so it's not such a logical expansion. If all of the GTA were amalgamated into Toronto, you would get an area larger than New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philly combined.

Additionally, the non-Toronto parts of the GTA, by and large, aren't just Toronto's bedroom communities. Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Oshawa, Ajax, Oakville etc all have significant economic activity happening within them. Oftentimes, they have their own bedroom communities, like people living in Stouffville and working in Markham. More than half of the GTA's population lives outside of Toronto. Amalgamating the GTA into Toronto would be like putting all of LA, Orange, Riverside counties into LA.

As for racial and economic segregation, ditto. GTA suburbs aren't sundown towns formed by 1960s white flight - to the contrary, many of them are immigrant towns. Toronto itself is very ethnically diverse too (and I'm not using diverse to mean not white, I mean genuinely diverse in a way that very few American cities can top). As for social/economic inequality, there's plenty of that within Toronto's borders, but it's really not a "rich suburbs/broke city" dynamic like in many US cities.

Exactly.  We're not dealing w/St Louis City vs St Louis County here, not at all.

And in practice, all too often the professed "social/economic inequality" being combatted by these amalgamations is more of a *political* inequality; that is, it's a means by which suburban and rural populists can beat up on the political left's "inconvenient" vice grip on urban centres.  If anything, it's more kinfolk to conservative gerrymandering than an authentic means of "addressing inequalities".  (And besides, a lot of those so-called "inequalities" were already reasonably addressed through earlier forms of two-tier unitary government: Metro Toronto, the regional municipalities, etc.  Which "megacities" like Ottawa are a dumbed-down version of.)

[adma]

If anything, the solution for Toronto (with tinges of Montreal's political structure) might be to go in the *other* direction: to give each municipal ward its own "council"--thus sort of going back to a Metro-like setup, now with *25* "boroughs"...

[EastAnglianLefty]

That seems absurd, given that the wards aren't large enough to form economic units of their own. I could see a case for returning to something resembling pre-amalgamation structure, but if you were doing that then you might as well as make Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan and Markham boroughs, since whilst somewhere like Oshawa is clearly distinct from the core of Metro Toronto, there isn't the same degree of discontinuity for those four units.

[Sol]

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

I don't mean this to be dismissive, but this reads like you're really not familiar with Toronto or the GTA, and applying the issues of US cities to a completely different context.

Toronto is an amalgamation of six pre-existing municipalities, and much of it is suburbia. Sure, Newmarket and Oshawa are considered Toronto suburbs now (debatable for Oshawa), but there are like seventeen more layers of suburbs before you get to "urban" Toronto, so it's not such a logical expansion. If all of the GTA were amalgamated into Toronto, you would get an area larger than New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philly combined.

Additionally, the non-Toronto parts of the GTA, by and large, aren't just Toronto's bedroom communities. Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Oshawa, Ajax, Oakville etc all have significant economic activity happening within them. Oftentimes, they have their own bedroom communities, like people living in Stouffville and working in Markham. More than half of the GTA's population lives outside of Toronto. Amalgamating the GTA into Toronto would be like putting all of LA, Orange, Riverside counties into LA.

I support that too--I think all metropolitan areas should be under one local government, though of course I'm open to a district-type structure that gives some local power.

As for racial and economic segregation, ditto. GTA suburbs aren't sundown towns formed by 1960s white flight - to the contrary, many of them are immigrant towns. Toronto itself is very ethnically diverse too (and I'm not using diverse to mean not white, I mean genuinely diverse in a way that very few American cities can top). As for social/economic inequality, there's plenty of that within Toronto's borders, but it's really not a "rich suburbs/broke city" dynamic like in many US cities.

Nevertheless, balkanized urban areas like Toronto allow for that dynamic to potentially emerge. And it's not like there are no gaps in income between municipalities; compare Oakville and Toronto for instance.

And in practice, all too often the professed "social/economic inequality" being combatted by these amalgamations is more of a *political* inequality; that is, it's a means by which suburban and rural populists can beat up on the political left's "inconvenient" vice grip on urban centres.  If anything, it's more kinfolk to conservative gerrymandering than an authentic means of "addressing inequalities".  (And besides, a lot of those so-called "inequalities" were already reasonably addressed through earlier forms of two-tier unitary government: Metro Toronto, the regional municipalities, etc.  Which "megacities" like Ottawa are a dumbed-down version of.)

I'm not sure if we should be making local government boundary decisions based on politics. If there's a logical and beneficial reform, it should be done no matter who it benefits.

Regardless, it seems to me that the harmful effects of amalgamation on the left are blaming the wrong thing. The left in Toronto has struggled in recent mayoral elections because it can't seem to win in highly diverse inner suburban neighborhoods, often quite working class places. Winning somewhere like this should be the left's bread and butter!

In any case, the Liberals won basically everywhere in the GTA in 2021--there's no reason why at least a center-left couldn't win in a unified Toronto.

[MaxQue]

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

It would not be. Central city revenue would be spend in the new suburbs, as the suburbs would outvote the core areas.

[DL]

How's about we get back to talking about the mayoral election and save discussion of merging Toronto with all the surrounding municipalities for another thread.

The first quasi-real debate was last night at the Daily Bread Food Bank and featured Chow, Bailao, Matlow, Hunter and Bradford. Saunders refused to attend.

Not sure there was any real news or any game changing performances. Bradford came across as a condescending, mansplaining asshole. The others were all OK. Chow was questioned by all the other candidates when each had a turn to grill another candidate. She handled it well enough and I just gave her more time to get out her points. The rightwing press is starting to panic about Chow winning but they still can't figure out who is the alternative and all the non-Chow candidates are very weak. 

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

How's about we get back to talking about the mayoral election and save discussion of merging Toronto with all the surrounding municipalities for another thread.

The first quasi-real debate was last night at the Daily Bread Food Bank and featured Chow, Bailao, Matlow, Hunter and Bradford. Saunders refused to attend.

Not sure there was any real news or any game changing performances. Bradford came across as a condescending, mansplaining asshole. The others were all OK. Chow was questioned by all the other candidates when each had a turn to grill another candidate. She handled it well enough and I just gave her more time to get out her points. The rightwing press is starting to panic about Chow winning but they still can't figure out who is the alternative and all the non-Chow candidates are very weak. 

There's been like zero coverage of the debate lol. I don't think it will change anything, which is good news for Olivia Chow.

[DL]

There's been like zero coverage of the debate lol. I don't think it will change anything, which is good news for Olivia Chow.

It was not on network television, you had to stream it on CP24 so only diehard political junkies would have watched. Still it was a good preview of how all the candidates will come across in later more important debates.

The news coverage was mostly about how a lunatic stormed the stage and had to wrestled to the ground by security guards. From Chow's POV its all good. She has never been a great debater so the more distracted people are from the debate itself the better.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/video-shows-protester-storming-toronto-mayoral-debate-stage-1.6399999

[Upper Canada Tory]

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

I don't mean this to be dismissive, but this reads like you're really not familiar with Toronto or the GTA, and applying the issues of US cities to a completely different context.

Toronto is an amalgamation of six pre-existing municipalities, and much of it is suburbia. Sure, Newmarket and Oshawa are considered Toronto suburbs now (debatable for Oshawa), but there are like seventeen more layers of suburbs before you get to "urban" Toronto, so it's not such a logical expansion. If all of the GTA were amalgamated into Toronto, you would get an area larger than New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philly combined.

Additionally, the non-Toronto parts of the GTA, by and large, aren't just Toronto's bedroom communities. Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Oshawa, Ajax, Oakville etc all have significant economic activity happening within them. Oftentimes, they have their own bedroom communities, like people living in Stouffville and working in Markham. More than half of the GTA's population lives outside of Toronto. Amalgamating the GTA into Toronto would be like putting all of LA, Orange, Riverside counties into LA.

As for racial and economic segregation, ditto. GTA suburbs aren't sundown towns formed by 1960s white flight - to the contrary, many of them are immigrant towns. Toronto itself is very ethnically diverse too (and I'm not using diverse to mean not white, I mean genuinely diverse in a way that very few American cities can top). As for social/economic inequality, there's plenty of that within Toronto's borders, but it's really not a "rich suburbs/broke city" dynamic like in many US cities.

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

Also, to Sol's original argument, if you ask me, the 1998 amalgamation made Toronto more unequal. Prior to that, Toronto city proper was a much smaller city of 700,000 people and the surrounding municipalities tended to have more inequality than Metropolitan Toronto itself, due to more poverty in certain neighbourhoods and much wealthier populations in others (think of North York and Jane & Finch vs Forest Hill, for example). You put all of these neighbourhoods together under one municipal government overnight that has to govern over 2 million people and distribute tax renevue equitably across all these people while ensuring everyone has roughly the same services in terms of infrastructure, transit, etc., what do you think is going to happen?

Apparently, there is a bit of evidence lending support to my hypothesis. In fact, there is a report by the Toronto Foundation that concludes that divisions between pre-amalgamation cities have made Toronto more unequal. According to the president of the foundation, policy discussion around issues tends to leave some parts of the city behind.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/divisions-between-pre-amalgamation-cities-making-rich-poor-gap-worse-report/article26676956/

[Hatman 🍁]

Amalgamation has been a disaster and was purely conceived to keep progressives from running cities. In municipal politics, Liberals are rarely progressives, so save me the discussion about Liberals winning in the suburbs meaning a mega GTA would somehow vote in progressives.  And if you're bringing up racial segregation, then you've already lost the argument. This is not the US.

Ok, now back to the topic on hand...

[Sol]

I don't think we'll ever agree, unfortunately, and it honestly flummoxes me that people could not want the wonders of amalgamation. Regardless, we should probably stop derailing the thread.

[Hatman 🍁]

flummoxes me that people could not want the wonders of amalgamation.

Even if you disagree with someone, it should not "flummox" you why someone may not agree with you, especially when presented with loads of evidence plus lived-in experience.

[adma]

flummoxes me that people could not want the wonders of amalgamation.

Even if you disagree with someone, it should not "flummox" you why someone may not agree with you, especially when presented with loads of evidence plus lived-in experience.

And frankly, the phrase "the wonders of amalgamation" sounds like a very unseasoned, naive-adolescent-idealism way of advancing an idea.  The jurisdictional-politics version of a "fantasy rendering".

[Upper Canada Tory]

I don't think we'll ever agree, unfortunately, and it honestly flummoxes me that people could not want the wonders of amalgamation. Regardless, we should probably stop derailing the thread.

Just wondering, why is a discussion regarding the merits and drawbacks of amalgamation considered to be derailing the thread? A thread about a Toronto mayoral election is inevitably going to have some degree of discussion about issues that affect Toronto and amalgamation is one of them.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I don't think we'll ever agree, unfortunately, and it honestly flummoxes me that people could not want the wonders of amalgamation. Regardless, we should probably stop derailing the thread.

Just wondering, why is a discussion regarding the merits and drawbacks of amalgamation considered to be derailing the thread? A thread about a Toronto mayoral election is inevitably going to have some degree of discussion about issues that affect Toronto and amalgamation is one of them.

Well it's not an issue in this particular campaign, which is what the thread is about. Amalgamation of Toronto in its current form is a done deal, and further expansion of the City of Toronto isn't being proposed by anyone. There are ongoing discussions about municipal re-organization in Peel Region, but that's a whole another topic.

Anyway, if amalgamation was meant to stop left-wing candidates from winning Toronto's mayoralty, the seemingly inevitable election of Chow will disprove that (wouldn't even be the first time, David Miller won under current boundaries too). Amalgamation was part of a neoliberal efficiency craze that took place in the 1990s, and while I'm sympathetic to a lot of the moves made as part of that era, the amalgamation of Toronto and the sale of the 407 are examples of how some of the Harris-era measures went too far (on the 407 I would argue the problem wasn't privatization, the problem was that only the 407 was privatized and ETR doesn't have any competition...but Ontario's not ready for that discussion lol).

Can't blame the derailing though. This election has been a total snooze-fest.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Amalgamation was perfectly logical given the massive expansion of Toronto since the 1970s and I've never seen a credible argument against the general principle, but it would have been a good idea to have converted the old municipalities into borough councils (effective just swapping around the power balance of what where then existing arrangements). It is also quite ridiculous to have such a large city with so few councillors: that's a state of affairs that positively encourages alienation from the electorate, though the public choice calculation amongst existing local politicians to prefer there to be very few of them is obvious enough.