‘Hope is not a plan,’ Hunter says

Former Liberal MPP tells the Star’s editorial board her policies will help her overcome Chow

Mayoral candidate Mitzie Hunter has a message for Torontonians planning to vote for former NDP MP Olivia Chow — “hope is not a plan.”

The former Scarborough-Guildwood Liberal MPP made the comment to the Star’s editorial board Friday when asked how she plans to beat Chow, who has led the mayoral race in every opinion poll since April, including a new one.

“Yes, I believe that I can” beat Chow, Hunter said, saying her rival’s high name recognition from decades in local and federal politics is helping her in polls with just over two weeks until June 26 election day.

Hunter urged voters to contrast her own detailed 70-page “Fix the Six” election platform with Chow’s promises. Opponents touting their policies in the crowded race are accusing Chow of being short on specifics, including her position on property taxes.

“I would say to the people: ‘Hope is not a plan,’ ” Hunter said. “We need real solutions because we have real challenges … Let’s talk about how we get there: I can actually show you that path.”

Hunter, who prior to a decade at Queen’s Park held such jobs as executive at Toronto Community Housing Corporation and head of non-profit CivicAction, called her housing plan the best on offer to voters.

Noting that the city’s Housing Now program to entice private developers to build affordable units on leased city land has yet to get a shovel in the ground, Hunter wants the city to get directly involved in homebuilding via a new agency.

She is promising 108 new midrise buildings on city land with 22,700 units, including more than 16,500 purpose-built rentals.

Almost 70 per cent of those rentals would be at or below the going market rate and all those on city land would be subject to rent controls.

Hunter would not cancel Housing Now projects already in the pipeline, letting them proceed alongside her program. Launched in 2019, Housing Now has 21 sites, six with “completed market offerings” with private developers.

Ripping up contracts would “chill” developers’ willingness to work with the city, Hunter said, while risking costly litigation.

Hunter, an unabashed Scarborough booster, said as mayor she would widen her focus to include a downtown still struggling to recover from the pandemic and citywide services such as the TTC that have been allowed to deteriorate.

Hunter said she decided to quit Queen’s Park and run for mayor after John Tory resigned in February in his ninth year in office, triggering the byelection.

Looking around, she said, she saw a city in decline. “What happened to the city in the last decade? Why are we visibly seeing crumbling infrastructure?”

Asked why she didn’t raise the alarm about that decline earlier, including during her friendly public appearances with Tory, Hunter said she challenged him on some transit policy and, as mayor, would constructively challenge Premier Doug Ford.

“I know how to work with the province” to get better treatment for Toronto, said Hunter, whose plan to fix the city’s pandemic-ravaged finances includes trying to convince the federal and provincial governments to give cities one point of the harmonized sales tax. “I will work with Doug Ford,” she said.

A Mainstreet Research poll released Friday gave Chow the support of 29 per cent of decided voters, followed by former city councillor Ana Bailão at 20 per cent, former police chief Mark Saunders at 13 per cent, Hunter and former Toronto Sun columnist Anthony Furey tied at nine per cent, Coun. Brad Bradford at four per cent and policy analyst Chloe Brown at three per cent.

The automated telephone survey of 706 Torontonians last Wednesday and Thursday has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

Other recent polls have given Chow a larger lead and put Bailão in fourth or fifth place. The Star’s poll tracker, which crunches various surveys, on Friday gave Chow 34.8 per cent support of decided voters, with Saunders in second at 12.8 per cent.