A woman who arrived in Canada as a 13-year-old immigrant has been elected as the first Chinese-Canadian mayor of Toronto, vowing to pursue a more progressive approach in Canada’s largest city after ending more than a decade of conservative rule.
Olivia Chow, 66, emerged victorious from a record field of 102 candidates after promising to raise the city’s low property taxes and do more to support tenants facing a housing affordability crisis.
She takes office facing strong opposition from the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, whose brother Rob was the mayor of Toronto until a video of him smoking crack cocaine drew global attention and a cancer diagnosis saw him drop out of the 2014 race.
The premier had warned during the race that a Chow victory would be an “unmitigated disaster”.
The previous mayor, John Tory, also left office in disgrace in February after admitting he had an affair with a staffer. Despite pledging not to get involved in the race, at the last minute he endorsed Ana Bailão, his protege.
Chow had previously run for mayor in 2014, placing third behind Tory and Ford.
In her acceptance speech on Monday evening, Chow highlighted “the mandate for change” voters in Canada’s economic capital had given her.
“If you ever doubted what’s possible together, if you ever questioned your faith in a better future and what we can do with each other, for each other, tonight is your answer,” she told supporters.
Chow won with 37.2% of the vote, ahead of Bailão with 32.5%. The former city police chief Mark Saunders came in third with 8.6%.
The newly elected mayor’s previous roles include serving as a member of parliament for the New Democratic party, a city councillor in Toronto and as a school board trustee.
As well as her second time running for mayor, she had also campaigned alongside her late husband, Jack Layton, who ran for the office in 1991 and who later became Canada’s leader of the opposition before his death. Layton remains a beloved figure for many Canadian progressives, with a statue of him on the Toronto waterfront.
Chow takes charge of Toronto at a time when the city of 2.7 million people, the core of a wider metropolitan area of nearly 7 million, is struggling with surging rents and a budget deficit of approximately $1.5bn (£895m).
There are also growing concerns around public safety, particularly after a spate of violent attacks on people using the public transit system, which has itself come under fire for overcrowding and deteriorating service.
Chow is expected to be a champion for transit, as well as for walking and cycling – she does not have a driving licence – and has promised to turn the tide on years of low-tax austerity politics enacted by her conservative predecessors.
The city has struggled to advance progressive policies for its downtown core since its 1998 amalgamation with five neighbouring boroughs that tend to vote for more conservative candidates.
One of the key takeaways from both the '22 and '23 municipal elections in Toronto is that the old divide between the inner suburbs and downtown is breaking apart.
— How-Sen (@HowSenChong) June 27, 2023
And that makes sense. It’s been *26 years* since Toronto was amalgamated with its inner suburbs.
Chow said she would raise Toronto’s notably low property taxes, currently less than 0.6% on residential properties, to help fund investment, which Tory had promised to do in the 2023 budget with a pledge to raise property taxes by 5.5%.
Despite his fervent opposition to Chow’s candidacy, Premier Ford congratulated her on Monday evening. “Throughout Olivia’s life, she has proven her desire and dedication to serving the city that many of us call home,” he said.
“While we’re not always going to agree on everything, what we can agree on is our shared commitment to making Toronto a place where businesses, families, and workers can thrive.”
#topoli Two morning-after thoughts. 1. Elections matter. 2. The candidates who didn’t win accepted the outcome readily, and, to a person, welcomed the new mayor and wished her the best. Seems so ordinary, but we should never take those democratic moments for granted.
— John Lorinc (@JohnLorinc) June 27, 2023
The city’s last progressive mayor, David Miller, tweeted his congratulations: “You earned this. People overwhelmingly voted for change. And that’s a powerful mandate indeed.”
