For a while there we were doing these live podcast recording sessions at the Munk School in Toronto.
My relationship with Toronto is better than many Canadians’: I’ve never lived there, but I’ve often worked for Toronto-based organizations and I always look forward to visiting. But Toronto has become increasingly ungovernable, a place where it’s easier to find gridlock than a home, and where there’s no wholly satisfactory way to travel more than a dozen or so blocks in any direction.
This turn of events is chronicled in Michael Healey’s astonishing play The Master Plan, which ran forever at Crow’s Theatre and Soulpepper and can’t seem to get staged anywhere outside Toronto, which is a shame; and in the often wistful columns of Toronto Star columnists, of which this is a representative example:
Into this mess rode Olivia Chow, who was a Toronto city councillor, then a federal NDP MP, then an unsuccessful mayoral candidate (she finished third in 2014, and that seemed to be that) — then the successful candidate in a 2023 election nobody expected. Very much including the incumbent.
On the fall night in 2023 when Chow joined me and a live audience to talk about her job, much of the contradiction and disappointment in the mayor’s job still lay ahead. “There will be problems and setbacks aplenty for her as there is for anyone in public life,” I wrote the first time this episode went out, hedging my bets mightily. But “for this one night, it was a pleasure to meet a pro at the top of her game.”
To oversimplify, what’s happened since 2023 is that Chow has been reluctant to realize that housing construction has to be a top priority. This has led to large missteps. It’s not clear that she can win re-election, although in Toronto as in most local races, much will depend on who runs against her. This episode of The Paul Wells Show, more than most, has fermented a bit in the vault, but a reminder that political honeymoons can end is always timely.
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