A longtime city councillor in the city’s east end has announced that she will not seek re-election in the fall and will instead endorse the candidacy of a community member who works for a social services agency in her ward.
Ward 31-Beaches-East York Coun. Janet Davis announced on Wednesday that she will not run in October’s municipal election, bringing an end to a 15-year career as a city councillor.
Instead, Davis said that she plans to campaign on behalf of Diane Dyson, who is currently employed as the director of research and public policy at WoodGreen Community Services.
“There are too many people – I am afraid – who see politics as a career choice. I never saw it that way and neither does Diane Dyson,” Davis told CP24. “You have to be there because you want to achieve something and you have to be solid in what it is you believe in and what you are there for.”
Davis served as president of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care prior to first being elected to city council in 2003.
She is a past chair of the Toronto and East York Community Council (2005-2008) and currently sits on the government management and tenant issues committees, among others.
She told CP24 that she has decided to step aside for largely personal reasons, including a desire to spend more time with her 91-year-old mother.
Though she said that she has no specific plans for her professional life after the end of this current term of council, she said that she will be “at the ready” if things like the need for more affordable childcare spaces are not properly addressed by premier-designate Doug Ford once he is sworn in.
“I am waiting to see what is going to happen at Queen’s Park because I do think that sometimes political action on the outside is as or more effective than on the inside,” she said. “I am not going to stand by and let either our city or our province be devastated by very retrograde changes that we fought in 1995 (under Premier Mike Harris) and are unfortunately probably facing again in the next few years.”
Dyson will be running in Ward 35, which has inherited most of Ward 31 due to the redrawing of some boundaries in advance of October’s election.
So far, only one other candidate, Brenda MacDondald, has registered to run.
The election is scheduled for Oct. 22.
