Chow and Bradford neck-and-neck with days left in Toronto mayoral election campaign

With less than a week until election day, the race to become Toronto’s next mayor has narrowed into a tight match-up between Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford.

As the race is in its final stretch, Bradford and Chow are shoring up their main talking points with the goal of moving the needle to their benefit, while taking shots at each other’s records.

For Chow, that meant returning to 500 Dawes Road on Tuesday, an apartment building in Bradford’s Beaches-East York ward that had been notorious for derelict conditions and severe pest issues.

In May, Chow sent city by-law officers to the site to complete emergency repairs. Residents in the building had long advocated that their landlord refused to maintain basic living conditions and that the city needed to step in to help. Chow told reporters in May that $200,000 in fines were issued at the building.

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Speaking outside the building Tuesday, flanked by renters, Chow criticized Bradford for not doing enough to help the tenants as their city councilor.

“For years, they asked for help,” she said.

“I came here, I listened and I took action. People of Toronto, renters of Toronto, need someone to back them up,” she said. She said her phone is “buzzing” with requests from tenants daily, looking for help in fighting negligent landlords.

“My office has really intervened and brings together all the city staff to make sure their needs are dealt with,” she said.

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Chow also took the opportunity to level criticism against Bradford.

“If you cannot represent your own people in your own ward, and do your job properly as councilor, you don’t deserve to be mayor of the city of Toronto,” she said. Helping tenants in his ward is Bradford’s job and “he’s not doing it,” she said.

Chow has promised that if re-elected, she will create a task force within the RentSafeTO bylaw enforcement program to go after bad landlords who perpetually violate basic maintenance standards.

Bradford’s team was quick to fire back against Chow’s claims at 500 Dawes Road, stating that she waited until an election year to take real action. He’s said he’s used municipal tools at his disposal for years to tackle building violations prior to Chow stepping in as mayor.

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Several tenants and advocacy groups have disputed Bradford’s telling of the 500 Dawes saga, as some have told media that he failed to meet with them or connect with tenants’ rights groups like ACORN.

Transit and congestion were Bradford’s focus on Tuesday, with the candidate promising to get rid of reduced speed zones on the TTC if elected.

Known as TTC slow zones, the measure has trains travel at slower speeds, sometimes at 15 km an hour, while track maintenance is complete. The TTC currently caps its slow zones to 12.

“As mayor, I’m going to set the target at zero. I am going to raise our standards and I am going to hold the city and the TTC to account,” he said.

Any slow zones would have to be justified with a published reason and a published repair date, he said.  Bradford also announced that he would implement an independent track condition audit and a track renewal program for the subway.

“If you want a city that respects your time, respects your commute, then you have to vote for it,” he said. He said Chow has “made her peace” with less and “business as usual.”

Chow’s team published a news release responding to Bradford’s announcement Tuesday. Her campaign said that as a TTC Commissioner, Bradford supported budgets that allowed the TTC to age and preventative maintenance to stop, leading to the track work being done now.

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“As I’ve said, even one slow zone is too many and I will eliminate them,” said Chow in the release. “Bradford helped create the maintenance challenges the TTC is fixing now. Of course we must do more; I will keep working to make critical repairs,” she said.

A new Mainstreet Research poll published Tuesday indicated a very narrow race. The firm placed Bradford with 48.9 per cent support and Chow at a “nearly equal” 47.5 per cent, Mainstreet said in a statement.

Quito Maggi, president and CEO of Mainstreet, said in a news release that Bradford leads in Etobicoke and North York while Chow is ahead in Scarborough and downtown.

Research firm Pollara Strategic Insights has Chow in a much firmer lead in its new polling also published Tuesday. It found incumbent Olivia Chow ahead of Brad Bradford by seven points among decided voters, 53 per cent to 46 per cent.

That polling also found a strong gender gap in voting intentions. Chow leads among decided women (60 per cent compared to 39 per cent of women for Bradford), while slightly more men are leaning towards Bradford (52 per cent to 45 per cent).