Will Canada’s largest city take a hard left turn?
Posted June 23, 2023 7:14 am.
In today’s Big Story Podcast, for a while now, Toronto has been run by conservative mayors. But all the polls indicate that will change on Monday, with former NDP MP and long-time progressive, Olivia Chow, holding a commanding lead. If she does win the job, she’ll have to work with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said this week that Chow would be an “unmitigated disaster” as mayor.
Ben Spurr, a reporter with the Toronto Star’s City Hall Bureau, says that whoever wins the mayoral seat has a tough job ahead of them.
“The city government has a 1.5 billion dollar operating deficit that it needs to figure out how to fix immediately… and housing of course is a hugely urgent issue,” says Spurr, “whoever is mayor, pretty much on day one, has to get started on addressing those really pressing issues.”
So will Toronto see its first left-leaning mayor in more than 12 years? And if it does, will they be able to work with the conservatives in Queen’s Park to fix a crumbling city?
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