Olivia Chow... will she be good for TO? (apartment, rent)

[HodgePodge]

Personally I welcome a woman of ethnicity to represent Toronto and maybe steer it in a different direction.

However I really wonder if her platform to raise property taxes bodes well for homeowners. That was the one aspect of her pledge that put me off on electing her.

For those who aren't familiar, the property taxes in Toronto has very steadily increased almost twofold in the last 20 yrs. I consider them high, ontop of the other taxes a homeowner is faced with.

I do understand any mayor coming in is facing a huge budget deficit and either we raise revenues or decrease expenses.

I argue that so many costs has been pushed onto the city by the Provincial and Federal governments that it's about time our mayor argues for our tax dollars back to reinvest into the city.

Plus the massive inefficiencies of even our municipal government has to be addressed. That includes the sinkhole that is the public transit (definitely necessary but guaranteed a pit hole of inefficiency). Huge budgets for the police (historically always got big budget increases).

Then you have stories like the bore driller to got stuck in the westend and the city tax payers are footing the bill (ballooned to 25 million dollars) to get it unstuck. It got tangled in some developer's wiring, etc. How come they aren't footing the bill? Who was in charge of this operation?

I would love to hear what others think.

Please keep it civil and polite

[MickIlhenney]

I live elsewhere in the GTA so I don't have a dog in this fight, but I am old enough to remember when Olivia Chow and her late husband Jack Layton were exposed in 1990 for living in a subsidized apartment while making over a combined six figures:

From: https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/...onen_n_4958628

"The couple had been living in the Hazelburn Co-operative, which is federally subsidized and meant to be affordable for low-income families, but is open to mid- and high-income families to create mixed neighbourhoods and prevent ghettoization.

Layton initially paid $800 per month for the three-bedroom apartment but prior to the controversy he voluntarily upped his rent by $325 a month to avoid getting subsidy benefits he didn’t need.

In other words, it was only after it was made public that Layton "voluntarily" upped thier rent by $325 to avoid being "penalized" (aka charged with fraud) for collecting subsidy benefits they didn't need nor qualify for.

Despite the revisionist history claiming a "smear campaign" 33 years later, this was a major story in the GTA and was widely reported by various media outlets as they were caught red-handed. IIRC, Layton's excuse was that "he needed to live among the people he stood up for" or some other such nonsense.

So no, I don't think a hypocritical, virtue-signaling fraud with a history of appropriating social benefits for her own gain will make a good mayor for Toronto. YMMV.

[fusion2]

Hard to say. I think she should be given a fair shot. People learn and grow so making assumptions about them based on their past isn't necessarily a good predictor of how they will perform when they are in 'the' seat. Tory was certainly competent but less than inspiring. She is already rattling the chains of the Federal Government to give more support to Toronto to accommodate an influx of refugees into the city and she is 100 percent right to do so.

[Urban Peasant]

Congratulations to Mayor Chow! I am happy for her. Her tenure remains to be seen but I think she has the ability to step up to the plate. Boston, my home city, recently elected our first ever Asian American (and female) mayor in the form of Michelle Wu and Mayor Wu is already looking at problems through a different lens than her predecessors. I can foresee Mayor Chow doing the same.

To run for office in a major city, you have to admit, one has to be a little dirty. I don't think any of us commenting on CDF can ever win a major election because we are all too honest. We see things the way they appear and tell others that. If lying, cheating, stealing, hiding, gambling, and exaggerating are not your thing, then don't become a politician. I don't mean that politicians ought to be extremely corrupt to the point of adversely harming others, but to run for office to win, I'd think a candidate cannot always keep a straight face or be as pure as distilled water. Conversely, people might look up to such a candidate and say that he/she has charm, intelligence, and courage to be able to lie, cheat, or hide while maintaining a poker face. It's politics after all, nothing personal.