Chow (Toronto) vs Mamdani (NYC)
I’m making this post because I’m utterly exhausted and annoyed by the sheer number of people who compare Olivia Chow unfairly to Zohran Mamdani. To be fair, a lot of this comes from admiration of an amazing American politician — I’m absolutely a fan of his. But unless the City of Toronto, and other Canadian municipalities, run by the same rules, the comparison is frankly unfair. Toronto is NOT New York City. Toronto is in an entirely different country. 🇨🇦 Can Toronto learn from other municipalities? Absolutely. But here are the reasons why it would be unfair to compare a mayor of a Canadian city to an American one.
“STRONG MAYOR” SYSTEM
As mayor of NYC, Mamdani holds executive power and does NOT require council approval to pass city policies. Toronto, on the other hand, is governed by the City of Toronto Act which dictates that the mayor requires a council majority, making Chow’s position inherently more collaborative and accommodating than Mamdani’s. She does have some limited “strong mayor powers”, as granted by the province, but this only applies to certain bylaws and budget proposals. So just remember that Olivia Chow is just ONE VOTE on City Council and that there are 25 other city councillors who get to vote.
BUDGETARY SCALE AND AGENCY
This year, NYC’s city budget was $110 billion USD. Unlike Toronto, they directly control education, the city housing authority, public health (including hospitals), and the police force. This is why Mamdani has been able to introduce city-funded universal childcare and rent control. NYC also has the ability to levy both personal and corporate income taxes. Toronto’s budget, on the other hand, is only $17 billion CAD. The city’s largest tax revenue is generated through property taxes, as they are not legally allowed to levy personal income or business taxes. Toronto has ZERO jurisdiction over education and rent control, and very limited authority over healthcare, daycare and other social services (near none, basically). What Chow and City Council have done is propose a number of adjacent programs and funding to try and help parents of school age children and renters (eg, the rollout of the universal school lunch program at all publicly funded schools and renoviction bylaws). But by and large, these are all provincial items and Toronto has very little control over them.
RENT AND AFFORDABILITY
The NYC mayor can directly influence local housing costs through the city-appointed Rent Guidelines Board, which votes on rent increases for rent-stabilized apartments. The City of Toronto, on the other hand, has no legislative mechanism to freeze or cap rents in Toronto. Rent control laws are entirely determined and dictated by the Province of Ontario. Chow's primary housing tools are limited to property tax incentives, municipal zoning, and leveraging city-owned land.
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All in all, saying Mamdani is "better" often stems from his inherit ability as NYC mayor to execute systemic progressive policies. However, it ignores the fact that Olivia Chow, as a Canadian mayor, lacks the legal jurisdiction to enact identical policies. Despite the barriers, Chow has in fact done quite a bit for Toronto. Here are some of her more progressive policies at play:
- Worked in conjunction with the federal and provincial governments to build thousands of rent-controlled homes.
- Uploaded the Gardiner Expressway and DVP highways to Ontario to free up billions of $$ for local city services.
- Introduced a luxury land transfer tax and tripled the Vacant Home Tax to curb real estate speculation.
- Froze TTC transit fares and restored pandemic-era transit service cuts.
- Introduced monthly TTC fare caps to a max of 47 rides per month, with the eventual goal of capping fares to 40 rides per month by 2027 (monthly pass replacement).
- Expanded funding for eviction prevention and legal aid to fight bad-faith renovictions.
- Increased non-police community crisis teams to handle emergency mental health calls instead of police.
- Increased municipal funding for universal student lunch (and eventually breakfast) programs across Toronto schools.
- Significantly reduced homeless encampments by deploying Streets to Homes outreach workers and social services teams to transition residents into shelters and housing (instead of using police force as the province wanted).
- Approved the opening of city-run, non-profit grocery stores in low-income neighbourhoods.
Sorry if this post violates any rules. It got taken down in /toronto and I’m not entirely sure why (too political)? But we have a municipal election coming up and I think people need to be well informed about how their city is run before they go into vote.