É«É«À²

Chow and her apologetic staff arrived at her interview with the Star’s editorial board about 15 minutes behind schedule, and jokes about the city’s notorious gridlock aside — the mayor says she’s striving to fix it — her delayed arrival was fitting.

As Chow marks her second year in office, she’s relying on É«É«À²nians’ patience while she works to deliver on the promise of her administration.

Her mayoralty, which began two years ago Saturday, is entering a critical phase. The excitement she generated as the progressive change candidate in 2023’s byelection is fading, and while she justified the heavy tax increases in her first two budgets by saying they would allow her to invest in neglected public services, many É«É«À²nians who spend their days stuck in traffic, searching for an affordable place to live, or waiting for sidewalks to be cleared of snow feel they have yet to see those investments pay off.

A new poll by Liaison Strategies for the Star found that as of this month 51 per cent of respondents approve of the job the mayor is doing. That’s a healthy number, but a drop from the 59 per cent Liaison recorded this time last year, and well below the 75 per cent Chow hit in the fall of 2023. Forty-two per cent now say they disapprove of her performance, a significant increase from the 18 per cent who said the same two years ago.

Chow doesn’t have long to convince her doubters. Most mayors enjoy four-year terms, but her first will last a little more than three after she took office in a special byelection prompted by her predecessor John Tory’s sudden resignation. With next October’s mayor’s race is around the corner, candidates are already mobilizing to unseat her, and she could face a strong challenge from Tory, who is considering a comeback.ÌýÌý

The mayor stands by her record, which she says includes putting the city’s finances in order, repairing deteriorating infrastructure andÌýimproving services gutted by years of underspending. She’s doing the hard work of addressing É«É«À²’s systemic problems, she insists, even if not everybody in the city appreciates it yet.

“Can the citizens see it immediately?” she said at the Star editorial board. “It takes time to fix the issues.”Ìý

As Chow marks her second year in office, the Star spoke to city hall watchers about the highs and lows of her second year, and what she will have to do in her third if she hopes to have a shot at re-election.

The highs: TTC fare freezes, renter relief and kids meals

In her second year, Chow, a lifelong NDPer, continued the work she started after she was elected of forging partnerships with the provincial Conservatives and federal Liberals to advance her agenda.

She struck theÌý“new deal” with Premier Doug FordÌýmonths after she took office, but it wasn’t until her second budget, which council approved in February, that much of the money from that agreement was allocated. The province’s pledge to upload the Gardiner and Don Valley Parkway as part of the deal freed up funding the city put towards repairing its roads, subway system and other aging assets, and contributed to an $8-billion reduction in É«É«À²’s state-of-good-repair backlog.Ìý

Chow told the Star her 2025Ìý spending plan — funded through a 6.9 per cent property tax increase, on the heels of 2024’s 9.5 per cent hike — included a “historic” $500-million investment in the TTC’s state-of-good repair plan, which will go to overhauling buses, streetcars and subway trains. There was also a $2.3-billion purchase of 55 new Line 2 subway trains, paid for with help from the provincial and federal governments.

The mayor says those investments mark a course correction from the years the city spent underfunding its transit system and other infrastructure, a situation she said reached dangerous levels with the 2023 derailment of the Scarborough RT.

“When you don’t fix things, it’s a huge problem,”Ìýshe said.Ìý

Those fixes can be painful and take longer than residents would like, Chow acknowledged. Upgrading the subway system has required regular service shutdowns, andÌýprolonged lane closures during work to maintain the Gardiner have caused daily traffic headaches.

Last July, Chow and the Ontario government announced the Gardiner workÌýwould be sped up by a year, thanks to a funding injection from the province. While critics said Chow should have found a way to accelerate the repairs earlier, she took credit for brokering the eventual solution.ÌýÌý

“It’s now opening early next year. So we’re able to do all that because of my relationship” with higher levels of government, she said, noting her administration is also hiring more traffic wardens to fight gridlock.

Chow also claims credit for improving services that support the city’s most vulnerable. In her second year, she continued the expansion of library hours, made nutrition programs accessible to thousands more kids, spent $2 million to keep pools open longer and increased bus service while freezing TTC fares for the second year in a row.

Chow’s supporters say those policies show the mayor is delivering on her priorities, which is all the more impressive given she got them approved by a council whose members have historically beenÌýreluctant to raise taxes and pay for more services.

“The city of É«É«À² is a massive ship — it’s very hard to turn it around after more than a decade of conservative neglect,” said Saman Tabasinejad, executive director of left-wing advocacy group Progress É«É«À².ÌýÌý

On housing, the mayor says she’s also made significant advancements. In March, Ottawa announced $2.5 billion in low-cost loans for É«É«À² rental housingÌýin exchange for the city providing relief on development charges, and her office points to more than 100 city-supportedÌýprojects that were either completed in the past 12 months, are already under construction or are scheduled to break ground in the next year, which together will create more than 25,000 units — more than 11,000 of which will be rent controlled or designated affordable.

Chow has also continued her focus on the roughly 50 per cent of É«É«À²nians who rent. In this year’s budget, she increased funding for rent banks that help tenants stay in their homes by $1 million, and last fall she and council approved a bylaw aimed at preventing “renovictions.” Chow says those policies are already making a “huge difference.” Ìý

Still, few would claim that the mayor has tamed É«É«À²’s housing crisis. A recent city report found that as of last fall, there were more than 15,000 homeless people in É«É«À², a 77 per cent increase from 2018.Ìý

Eric Lombardi, a housing advocate and founder of More Neighbours É«É«À², cautioned that many of the developments Chow touts as progress were underway before she took office, and the city will have to do more to avert what recent housing start numbers show could be a “major slow down in the pace of construction.”

The lows: snow snafus, leadership lapses and bothersome bubbles

There were at least two incidents in Chow’s second year when the basic services she has promised to get right seemed to fail just as residents needed them most.

In February, É«É«À²nians were left fuming — and in some cases, confined to their homes — when it took the city weeks to dig out from a series of heavy snowstorms. Then, last month, the mayor who had boasted about extending public pool hours was forced to explain to residents why more than a dozen of the facilities suddenly closed on the hottest day of the year.Ìý

Chow told the Star the city is reviewing its poor snow response, which she has blamed in part on winter maintenance contracts signed under former mayor John Tory and inaccurate information provided by city staff.

She said she moved quickly to reopen the pools, which had been temporarily closed over concerns about staff safety, and argued that some of them wouldn’t have been open in the first place if she hadn’t invested more money in them this year.ÌýBut she has also incorrectly blamed the provincial ministry of labour for shutting them down.

To the mayor’s critics, the two episodes are proofÌýthat the bargain she has presented to residents — higher taxes in exchange for improved services — is broken.Ìý

“These are basics that the city should be offering and it’s not getting done,” said Ariella Kimmel, executive director of A Better City (ABC) É«É«À², a centre-right advocacy group that is critical of Chow, who asserted she’s seen little improvement in other day-to-day priorities like the cleanliness of streets and parks.

Kimmel said the mayor has shown a pattern of blaming others whenever a problem arises, “whether it’s city staff or the past administration.”

“But two years in you can’t consistently blame the other guy and the last administration. You have to take some responsibility.”Ìý

The snow and pool incidents have the potential to do lasting political damage to Chow. Political strategist Kim Wright said they’re “the things that attack ads are made on.”Ìý

Wright said while all mayors face unexpected problems, in both instances Chow could have done better by quickly communicating to the public what she was doing to fix the problem “and how it went pear-shaped in the first place.”Ìý

Chow also faced criticism over her approach to a pair of thorny council debates this year.Ìý

In May, she lost her first major vote when she was on the losing side of an attempt to shelve debate on a controversial plan to limit protests around places of worship, daycares and schools.

She ultimately voted for a version of the so-called “bubble zone” proposal. But the bylaw’s supporters, which included members of É«É«À²’s Jewish community who said the zones were necessary to protect their institutions amid a rise in antisemitism, accused her of only backing it reluctantly. It didn’t help that some were still smarting over Chow’s failure to attend a vigil last year marking the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, an oversight the mayor blamed on a miscommunication and apologized for.

Meanwhile, progressive opponents of the bylaw, which included pro-Palestinian advocates and labour unions who argued bubble zones would unfairly limit Charter rights to protest, felt let down.ÌýTabasinejad said Progress É«É«À² was “disappointed” Chow supported the protest exclusion zones.

The mayor was in a similar position last month over a plan to legalize sixplexes citywide, which staff had put forward as an important measure to increase density and help alleviate É«É«À²’s housing crisis. Most councillors opposed the idea, however, and they and the mayor ultimately voted to only allow the multiplex developments in É«É«À², East York and part of Scarborough.Ìý

After the vote, Chow praised the compromise as a “path forward” for that would allow more housing, butÌýshe didn’t speak in support of the citywide proposal at council and did little in the lead-up to publicly pressure members to vote for it.Ìý

For Lombardi, the housing advocate, that amounted to a “failure of leadership” thatÌýcould put at risk federal funding tied to loosening zoning rules. He said Chow had the opportunity before the vote to spend her political capital “making that case (for sixplexes) across the city. And I didn’t see any of that.”

Yet voting for a compromise on the sixplex plan was typical of Chow, who on issues ranging from Ford’s pledge to rip out bikes lanes to controversial new tax proposals has favoured finding agreements over fighting battles, especially ones she might not be able to win. She doesn’t see that as a failure of leadership.

“There are many ways to show strength,” she told the Star. “Empathy is strength, hearing each other, finding common ground is strength.”

A peek at what might be nextÌý

Chow hasn’t publicly said whether she plans to seek re-election next year, although sources close to her say she’s likely to.Ìý

Whether she secures a second term could largely depend on who runs against her. Her main threat appears to be Tory. According to the Liaison poll, 35 per cent of decided voters would pick him in a hypothetical crowded field that included 2023’s runner-up Ana Bailão, Beaches-East York Coun. Brad Bradford, pundit Anthony Furey and former MP Marco Mendicino. Still, slightly more, or 39 per cent, would vote for Chow.Ìý

Her path gets easier if Tory doesn’t run, with 49 per cent of decided voters saying they would opt for Chow if he’s not in the field. Bradford was a distant second with 19 per cent. The poll’s margin of error for its full sample is plus or minus 3.09 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Some commentators have argued that headed into election season Chow needs to put forward a big idea to capture voters’ imaginations and reverse her slipping approval.

But Joe Mihevc, a left-leaning former city councillor who now sits on Chow’s TTC board, said he believesÌýthe mayor’s brand ofÌý“progressive incrementalism” will be enough to convince voters to give her another shot. While residents might sometimes be frustrated by the pace of change, Chow has made significant improvements to services like libraries and transit, and has so far avoided major scandals and unproductive political fights, he said.ÌýÌý

“It’s a kind of steady-as-you-go government.”Ìý