Three More Candidates Enter Toronto Mayoral Race

Nathan Phillips Square and Toronto City Hall is seen on April 23, 2020 in Toronto. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

Three more candidates have joined the already crowded race to become Toronto’s next mayor: city councillor Josh Matlow, former Toronto police chief Mark Saunders, and journalist Anthony Furey.

The three candidates announced their intentions to run for mayor of Toronto within hours of each other on March 21. The mayoral byelection, slated for June 26, is subject to the Toronto city council’s approval to be decided at its meeting next week.

On Feb. 10, Toronto Mayor John Tory announced he would step down after admitting to a relationship with a former staffer that he said did “not meet the standards to which I hold myself as mayor and as a family man.” Tory, who was first elected in 2014 and won re-election twice, officially left office on Feb. 17.

In an open letter, Matlow, a councillor for Ward 12 Toronto—St. Paul’s, said he was running for mayor because for too long, Toronto’s municipal leadership “has held this city back from reaching its full potential.”

“We have all seen the decline. The snow is not cleared on time, public washrooms are dirty, if they’re even open, and garbage bins are broken and overflowing,” Matlow wrote in the letter released March 21.

Matlow, who has served at Toronto City Hall since 2010, accused the city’s past leadership of keeping taxes “artificially low by starving the services that made Toronto the incredible city I grew up in.” Matlow said if elected, he would launch the City Works Fund—a property tax to raise $390 million over the next five years to improve city services such as transit, public libraries, warming centres, and road and park maintenance.

Councillor Josh Matlow enters the council chamber in Toronto ahead of a Budget meeting on February 15, 2023. The Canadian Press/Chris Young

Saunders, who served as Toronto’s police chief from 2015 until his resignation in 2020, announced he would run for mayor yesterday evening. Saunders said that during his nearly four decades as a police officer, he had “never experienced this level of fear creep across the city.”

“The citizens of Toronto need to be safe and feel safe, in every neighbourhood,” he told CBC News. “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.”

Then Toronto police chief Mark Saunders delivers remarks and takes questions from reporters at a press conference in Toronto, on Friday, Aug. 9, 2019. The Canadian Press/Christopher Katsarov

Saunders told CP24 on March 21 that public safety, housing, and affordability would be his top priorities. He also said the city needs to offer better services for those suffering from mental health issues and homelessness.

Furey, who is the vice president of editorial and content at the True North Centre, a former Toronto Sun columnist, and a regular contributor to The Epoch Times, said his experience as a reporter has led him to speak with many Torontonians that feel the city is 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. It’s time for a fresh perspective,” he said in a video posted on Youtube on March 21.

Furey suggested that Toronto is run by the “lobbyists and the big corporations who think they call the shots” and by “fringe activists who show up kicking and screaming, and City Hall caves to their demands.”

Anthony Furey in an undated file photo. Courtesy Anthony Furey

Furey said he would deal with the city’s drug crisis by focusing on “treatment, treatment, treatment,” and promised to start a 90-day review of all city services.

“If something isn’t focused on providing what you expect as residents and taxpayers, then bye-bye,” he said.

Other Candidates

On March 15, former Toronto city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti announced his candidacy for mayor. He said he “dreaded” seeing the city decline over the last few years, arguing “we’ve lost our personality.”

Mammoliti told CP24 he wants to run for mayor to “use my 30 years of experience to dramatically change things for the better.”

After serving as an MPP in Ontario’s NDP government, Mammoliti was elected to Toronto City Council in 2000, where he sat for 18 years until being defeated at the ballot box. Mammoliti ran for mayor of Toronto in 2010, but backed out a day before the election.

Other Toronto city councillors—like Brad Bradford and Stephen Holydad—have indicated they are preparing for a mayoral run, but haven’t definitively thrown their hats in the ring. Former city councillor Ana Bailão said back in February that she was “strongly considering” a run.

Three politicians who ran in the 2022 Toronto Mayoral election, Gil Penalosa, Chloe Brown and Blake Acton, have also said they will run again. Mitzie Jacquelin Hunter, a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, has also said she is “thinking about it.”

Candidate nominations officially open on April 3 at 8:30 a.m. and close on May 12 at 2 p.m.