Mayoral candidate Brad Bradford is promising to overhaul the way the city handles its budgets, telling reporters that he would end the practice of setting aside money for future capital projects .
But opponent Olivia Chow is calling his proposal “reckless,” with her campaign warning that the bill will eventually “come due.”
Bradford made the announcement during a news conference on Thursday on what was the first day that municipal election candidates in Toronto were permitted to put up signs.
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His campaign said Toronto’s 2026 operating budget ”earmarks” about $256 million in operating transfers for capital projects in 2027 and roughly $369 million for 2028.
Bradford says that he wants to end that practice and introduce “real separation of the operating and capital budgets.”
“No more shipping hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the operating budget to pre-pay the capital budget, which Mayor Chow doesn’t actually deliver on. That money goes back to the people who paid it by eliminating the double land transfer tax on the value of a principal home below the average Toronto price,” a news release states.
Bradford said in the release that the federal and Ontario governments have already stopped “pre-financing infrastructure” and that Toronto is currently “the outlier among major governments.”
He told reporters that the new approach would allow him to eliminate the municipal land transfer tax on the portion of a principal residence below $1.1 million
He also reiterated his previous pledges to introduce a first-year property tax freeze and launch an independent, line-by-line review of city spending.
“You don’t pay cash for the whole house the day that you move in. Nobody does that. You don’t pay cash for (a) 100-year watermain, either you borrow responsibly, and you pay it off over the decades that you’re going to use it,” he said.
Chow’s team responds, ‘painting the city purple’
Elsewhere on the campaign trail on Thursday, Olivia Chow’s team installed thousands of signs overnight in an effort to “paint the city purple”
In a separate news release, Chow’s campaign pointed to nearly 300 volunteers that stayed up past midnight to deliver more than 4,000 lawn signs, with roughly 7,000 expected to be installed by the end of the day.
“This election is a choice between going back to cutting and slashing the services people count on, or moving forward and building Toronto that is more caring, affordable and safer for everyone,” Chow said.
Chow also reiterated affordability measures she says her campaign will pursue, including a transit plan where riders would travel for free after 10 paid rides in a week, grocery support for families with school-age children and efforts to address, what she described as, price gouging.
Chow calls Bradford’s plan ‘reckless’
In a statement to CTV News, Chow’s campaign team argues that Bradford’s proposed $6 billion in promises would put city services at risk by increasing borrowing and interest costs.
Bradford, for his part, acknowledged today that his plan “means that the city will borrow more than it does today.”
“But it also means we can build a lot more than we build today to invest in the projects that are going to pay back in the long term with significant benefits for Torontonians,” he said.
Chow’s team calls his debt proposal “reckless,” warning that “the bill will come due,” and says he has reversed his earlier position on using reserves.
Her team also says over the past three years, her government improved Toronto’s credit rating for the first time in 23 years.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail
Also on Thursday, mayoral candidate Chris Alexander, joined reporters from his campaign headquarters (1425 Yonge St.), to “respond directly to criticism” from Chow’s campaign this week.
Alexander argues Chow has not offered concrete solutions to Toronto’s problems, saying “being a nice person is not the same as having a plan.”
He says she lacks credible plans for affordable housing, homelessness, TTC recovery, public safety, hate crimes, and small businesses.
On Wednesday, while discussing Toronto’s homeless population, Chow’s campaign told CTV News that Alexander “doesn’t understand the challenges we face.”
Today, he pushed back, citing his past work as a UN deputy head in Afghanistan, where he said that he helped resettle millions of Afghans, and as Canada’s immigration minister.
“We took their settlement very seriously, making sure they had housing, making sure they had private sponsorship or state support,” he said, adding that Chow had “a lot of nerve” to question his understanding.
“In my time as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, there were almost no asylum seekers or refugees in the shelter system in Toronto or other Canadian cities,” he said.
Outside of criticisms, Alexander says he plans to announce an affordable-housing plan in Thorncliffe Park Friday, focused on accelerating construction of “units that are truly affordable.”
Torontonians head to the polls on Oct. 26.
