The race to replace Toronto’s mayor is getting more crowded as the June byelection nears.
John Tory, who was elected to his third term last fall, ran against 30 candidates. Tory resigned in February over revelations he had an affair with a former staffer.
So far, an even dozen have confirmed their candidacy to replace him and a couple more have said they are considering a run. The city will start officially accepting candidate nominations on April 3.
Those who have publicly confirmed their intention to run include Blake Acton, Ana Bailão, Brad Bradford, Chloe Brown, Rob Davis, Anthony Furey, Mitzie Hunter, Giorgio Mammoliti, Josh Matlow, Gil Peñalosa, Chris ‘Sky’ Saccoccia, and Mark Saunders.
Blake Acton
Blake Acton is a retired police officer who says he plans to make the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) a free public service. “The TTC should be an Essential Service,” he
said on Twitter.
He said he’s eyeing TTC CEO Richard Leary’s salary as a place to start finding the money. Leary’s salary was a little over $473,000 in 2022, according to newly released
government data. That represents an 8 percent raise over 2021, “Yet citizens are being burned alive, stabbed to death, the TTC is bleeding money,” Acton
said, referring to the recent spate of violence on the TTC.
He said he will build mental health facilities to “assist those in crisis and protect the public.”
The 30-year police veteran retired in 2019 and also ran for mayor in October. Acton came in fourth last election, with about
9,000 votes. Tory had about 340,000.
Ana Bailão
Ana Bailão is a three-term Toronto city councillor. She is a former deputy mayor and served as the city’s housing advocate.
“I’m running with a plan to fix our city’s services, build housing, and make life more affordable,” she
said on Twitter.
As mayor, Bailão says she would create a seniors’ public health program to bring services to their doorstep. She would pivot the use of 600 community ambassadors who conducted outreach to boost COVID vaccination rates and have them “help seniors stay healthy, at home, for longer,” she
said on Twitter.
“I managed Toronto’s housing portfolio through a period of enormous restructuring, championing millions in new funding for affordable housing construction and repairs,” she
said on her website. “During my tenure, I succeeded in growing the affordable housing capital budget from $96 million to over $4 billion, a funding increase of over 4,000%, and delivered the 2020-2030 Toronto Housing Plan, a $24 billion housing strategy.”
Brad Bradford
City Councillor Brad Bradford was an ally of Tory’s. He
said on Twitter March 29, “I’m running to be a strong mayor of action.”
He said he will “make the city safer, make life more affordable, and make it easier to get around.” On his
website, he lists the same priorities, along with revitalizing the city’s main streets.
Being a “mayor of action” means speeding up the long debates, preventing delays in council on pressing issues, and not being afraid to use strong-mayor powers to push decisions through, he told the
Toronto Star and
Globe and Mail. He declined to elaborate on his platform further for now.Following the recent murder of a 16-year-old boy on the TTC, Bradford
said on Twitter, “The TTC has $15 million to spend on safety measures. This money needs to be put to work. Now.” In a video message, he said, “We need less talk about this, we need more action.”
Bradford is chair of the city’s planning and housing committee and has experience as an urban planner.
Chloe Brown
Policy analyst Chloe Brown came third in the last mayoral race, with about 35,000 votes. She looks to cities around the world for inspiration on policy.Her recipe for a new Toronto, she
said in a March 28 tweet, is: “Japanese zoning and universal design, Dutch street design and care systems, Singapore’s Housing and Development Board, Portugal’s decriminalization and rehabilitation strategy, Germany’s co-determination corporate governance model.”
The German co-determination model was one of the three
“big ideas” in her platform last year. It includes reforming City Hall to create a different leadership structure. She seeks to decentralize power.
Her other two “big ideas” are promoting the public benefit corporation model (for-profit companies receive some government funding for prioritizing the public good) and making the city’s services more accessible.
She calls for a shift from the city’s current property tax system to a model based on land value, she recently
told real estate publication Storeys.
Rob Davis
Former City Councillor Rob Davis
said in his campaign announcement video on Twitter that he would stop the changing of Toronto’s street names.
He gave the example of Dundas street, which was renamed because Scotland’s Henry Dundas is said to be responsible for delaying a vote to abolish the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Davis said the cost of proposed name changes would be $21 million, which he would rather spend on the homeless living on Dundas.
“Toronto City Council has sort of lost its way,” he said.
He also said he would not raise taxes. “Toronto taxes are too high already,” he
said on Twitter.
Davis started his political career in 1991 when he was elected to the city council in the former city of York. He has served as vice-chairman of the TTC, budget chief, and co-chairman of the city’s crime prevention task force, among other roles.
Anthony Furey
Journalist Anthony Furey
said in a video announcing his campaign that he has talked to people all over the city and, “The one thing more and more people are saying is that Toronto feels like it’s in decline.”
“I don’t believe that the status quo people who got us to this point are the ones who get us out of it.”
Before announcing his intention to run for mayor, Furey was the vice president of editorial and content at the True North Centre and a regular contributor to The Epoch Times.
He will do “spring cleaning” if elected, he
said in another video posted on Twitter. He would conduct a 90-day review of all City Hall’s activities. If it’s not “laser focused” on delivering services and value to taxpayers, Furey said, “we’re going to be getting rid of it—bye bye.”
He said an efficiency review should come before raising taxes.
Furey also said he would focus on a treatment-oriented approach to addiction in the city.
Mitzie Hunter
Mitzie Hunter, the Liberal MPP representing Scarborough, is the most recent to officially throw her hat in the ring. She had previously announced she was preparing to run, but confirmed it on March 30 in a news release.She has been an MPP for ten years, and served as the minister of education under former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne. To run, she must resign her seat at Queen’s Park, which she has said she will do.
Hunter will make “gun violence a public health issue,” she said on CP24. She said she will also focus on the rising cost of living.
“Toronto needs to be a city where all its people are included and have an opportunity to fulfill its greatest dreams,” she
said in a members’ statement in early March. Her family came from Jamaica when she was a child, and now she’s an MPP now living the “dream,” she said.
Before entering politics she was the chief administrative officer of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.
Giorgio Mammoliti
Giorgio Mammoliti served on Toronto’s city council for 18 years, starting in 2000. He ran for mayor in 2010, but backed out a day before the election.He ran for mayor of Wasaga Beach last year, but came in third.
If elected in Toronto, he will focus on safety in public spaces, including the TTC, he
told the Toronto Star.
Mammoliti was known for controversy and theatrics as a city councillor. In 1999, he took his shirt off at a council meeting to protest a nude beach at Hanlan’s Point. In the 2018 council election he lost, he was criticised for saying that evicting criminals living in social housing buildings is like “like spraying down a building full of cockroaches.”
“It was the tone that hurt me the most,” he said in his recent interview with the Toronto Star. He said he would take a different approach as mayor, and he will focus on homelessness and affordable housing.
Josh Matlow
Josh Matlow has been a city councillor since 2010 and has been an outspoken critic of Tory and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.He
said in an open letter announcing his candidacy that past leadership has starved services, keeping taxes “artificially low.” He said snow isn’t cleared on time, public waste bins are neglected, and the TTC is too expensive and crowded.
He would launch a City Works Fund, a dedicated property tax that would cost the average homeowner $67 a year, he said. It would go to transit, libraries, shelters for the homeless, snow clearing on streets and sidewalks, parks, and more.
A few days after he announced his bid, the city’s integrity commissioner
recommended a 10-day suspension for breaking the council’s code of conduct by criticizing city staff on Twitter.
Before becoming a city councillor for the downtown Toronto–St. Paul’s ward, Matlow was a Toronto District School Board trustee.
Gil Peñalosa
Gil Peñalosa came second to Tory in the last election, with just under 100,000 votes against Tory’s approximately 340,000.He is an urbanist who has advised decision-makers in various cities on the design of parks, streets, sidewalks and other matters related to public spaces. He is founder and chair of the non-profit 8 80 Cities, which envisions city planning as aiming at what is great for 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds, according to his
website.
Regarding crime on the TTC, he speaks of the
broken-window theory which holds that visible deterioration in an environment perpetuates crime in that area. TTC stations are dirty, the walls are deteriorating, the lighting is dim, he said on Twitter.
He advocates for more bikeable streets with neighborhood speed limits
at or below 30 km/h and calls on the province to
double mental health funding for Toronto.
Chris ‘Sky’ Saccoccia
Chris Saccoccia, who goes by Chris Sky, has been a regular speaker at protests against COVID-related mandates, particularly vaccines.
Tom Beyer, a long-time former member of Premier Rob Ford’s staff, has
joined Sky’s campaign.
“The mayor controls law enforcement. Fire officers who gave out the most covid fines. Foster a new approach to policing … That’s Chris Sky’s Toronto,” he
said on Twitter.
“I uncover massive corruption you need to hear about that you won’t hear anywhere else,” he
said. He spoke of taking care of corruption when he’s mayor.
Sky recently appeared in court related to allegations that he threatened to kill all of Canada’s premiers and that he resisted arrest. On March 28, he posted a
video saying he was found not-guilty of all charges.
Mark Saunders
Mark Saunders served as Toronto’s police chief from 2015 to his resignation in 2020. In his nearly 40 years as an officer, he has “never experienced this level of fear creep across the city,” he told the CBC.
“I don’t want to see any more lockdowns of elementary schools. Not another story of a woman getting attacked on a streetcar. No more gangs shooting up townhouses where children are sleeping. Enough,” he said. His priority would be restoring a sense of community safety.
He said the city needs to offer better services to address mental health and homelessness.
When he resigned in 2020, he did not give a specific reason.
He received some criticism from the LGBTQ community for alleged delays in investigating serial killer Bruce McArthur who targeted men in Toronto’s village neighbourhood.
Saunders told The Canadian Press that he is willing to listen to criticism and he launched an independent review of how the police handled the McArthur case.
Others ‘Considering’ a Run
City Councillor Steven Holyday said in an
open letter March 7 that he is considering running.
He said his priorities would include road repair and other maintenance, holding public service and contractors accountable for services such as snow clearing, stopping the “squandering [of] scarce resources” on street renaming and similar initiatives, and funding the police to uphold law and order.
Former NDP MP Olivia Chow has said she is considering running. “I love this city and I know it can be so much better—for everyone,” she
said in a tweet on March 27.
Matthew Horwood and The Canadian Press and contributed to this report.
