It’s like the tale of two cities.
One city — as espoused by Mayor Olivia Chow — is said to be happily ticking along as she claims to be bringing in more investment, more affordable housing, more jobs and promoting Toronto globally.
One city — as more accurately described by her opponent Brad Bradford — is rife with problems: out-of-control violence and Jew hatred, high property taxes with not even effective litter pickup and street maintenance in return and unrelenting congestion and chaotic roads (made worse by the lax rules for e-bikes with motors and scooters).
Thankfully, the ringer in the race — Chris Alexander — dropped out Tuesday, although his name will still be on the ballot.
The city, as described by Chow and her supporters, has no issues with vagrants downtown, no problems with fentanyl-addicted drug users roaming our streets, no decline in the quality of life, no violence or carjackings or terrorist sympathizers targeting Jews.
I’ve never heard her address these problems, as if ignoring them, they will go away.
Her campaign slogan is that she will build on a “safe, caring and affordable” city.
The city is definitely not safe, and a 20% property tax hike and other increases over three years have ensured it is not affordable.
As for caring, she has shown not to care one bit about the harassment, violence, and shootings targeted at my community for three long years.
Whether she’s incredibly out of her depth, or doesn’t like Jews (and is manipulated by advisors who hate Jews), or both, she has allowed the violence to get out of control.
Just like our traffic congestion.
In fact, if you listen to her, she feels all she needs to do over the next term is expand library hours and the already wasteful duplicate breakfast programs to lunch (!) along with youth programs to tackle escalating violence.
Then Toronto will be perfect.
She’ll throw 1,000 free attraction passes in for good measure.
I might note that Chow was yapping non-stop about youth programs when I covered her in 2000 as a City Hall columnist for the Toronto Sun.
Her narrative has not changed.
But what has changed — and tremendously so — are the demographics of our city.
We have had an influx of refugees and immigrants who bring in all the conflicts they were supposed to have left behind.
They refuse to assimilate.
Chow and our federal government pander to them with freebies, from generous accommodation to grants to live.
She refuses to put a halt to our Sanctuary City policy, which welcomes refugee claimants no questions asked. They now pack our shelters, driving out the homeless.
But they’re potential voters!
Instead of sending the refugees and recent immigrants a strong message that they need to adapt to Canadian ways and fit in with the rest of us, she turns up at their festivals dressed in their costumes and headscarves.
They lap it up, not knowing, or more decidedly not caring, about the city’s deteriorated state, the many drug addicts around the city or her foolish, seemingly inebriated behaviour.
They agree to vote for her, thinking she’s one of them.
At some point, I suspect when they get what they want, they will toss her away like used trash.
Her disdain for Jews and her support of terrorist sympathizers, plus her use of the trendy “Free Palestine” narrative, are clear — as is that of the Hamas wing of council.
I know it’s trendy to blame the Jews for everything, but Chow and her puppeteers should be reminded that they’re not running for a seat on council in Gaza.
The underbelly of Toronto is celebrated by Chow and her puppeteers with the unfortunately named Progress Toronto.
For honing in on the real city — one in a terribly deteriorated state and which families with common sense are starting to leave — her opponent Brad Bradford has been accused of running a highly negative campaign.
One legacy media writer put together a hit piece recently trashing Bradford for allegedly not being well-liked, weird and intense. Why, he even wears black suits and drinks black coffee, the writer claimed.
There was not a word in his hit piece about the deteriorated state of the city and why Toronto is what I’ve come to call a shithole.
Not a word about what Bradford would do to make our quality of life better.
Not a word about his plan to fight crime by hiring 1,000 more officers, the technology he’ll use to fix congestion and how he plans to reduce our costs.
Perhaps fed propaganda from the Progress Toronto zealots — who I believe want to ruin this city and hate that he supports my community — Bradford’s detractors repeat the same tiresome narrative that he’s changed his mind on bike lanes and the renaming of Sankofa Square.
My goodness, heaven forbid someone should realize that they got their vote wrong and understand the damage it has done to the city instead of digging their heels in and doing what is politically expedient and not best for the city.
I covered City Hall for 25 years, and I saw many politicians flip-flop on many things. But even worse, I saw politicians who voted with the pack for fear they’d be ostracized or not be put in positions of power, even though it was the exact wrong thing to do.
One perfect example is Frances Nunziata, who’s running for another term at age 75, even though she’s well past her prime. Ditto for Shelley Carroll, who wins the prize for the biggest opportunist on council.
Somehow, in our city, it has become acceptable to aspire to the lowest standards and to vote for an incompetent, immature, attention-seeking, financially challenged politician who can only drive our city to ruin — just like L.A., Seattle and Chicago. As long as they get freebies, they don’t care.
Somehow it has become acceptable to focus on geopolitics instead of the rot close to home.
There are three weeks to go until election day, and I hope voters wake up and come to grips with reality.
I don’t want to imagine what the city will look like in four more years under Chow.