Incumbent councillors Norm Kelly and Jim Karygiannis got into a heated exchange over transit in a side-by-side interview on CP24 Wednesday.
Kelly and Karygiannis are both veteran councillors who are running to represent the new, enlarged Ward 22 Scarborough-Agincourt after the provincial government imposed a new ward structure on the city.
They each took turns talking about their achievements and priorities in the ward, but things got testy when the issue of the Sheppard subway came up.
Karygiannis said the number one issue he hears about from residents is that they would like to see the Sheppard subway, which currently ends at Don Mills Road, extend into Scarborough.
Kelly said that he moved a motion during Rob Ford’s tenure as mayor to have the Sheppard subway extended to Scarborough Town Centre, as originally envisioned. He then pointed to Karygiannis and accused him of not fighting for federal funds to do so years earlier when Karygiannis was an MP.
“I have to say that all during these years when we’ve been hoping for funding from our federal and provincial partners, Jim was the parliamentary secretary to the minister of transportation,” Kelly said, pointing a finger at his rival.
“It was your responsibility to reach out,” Karygiannis countered, pointing back.
“I was the MP when Norm was the councilor for 21 years. I was the parliamentary secretary from 2003 to 2006. We had regular meetings. Never once, never once did Norm reach out and say ‘is there funding there for us to build the subway,’” Karygiannis said.
He said it was up to the municipality to request the federal money that was needed.
“We built the subway up to Don Mills but it never got continued. It never got continued because we never got asked.”
Kelly rebutted that if Karygiannis knew the area as well as he claims, he would have known that the subway needed to go further.
The back-and-forth continued for several minutes before the interview ended.
Aside from their tussle on transit, both candidates raised growing gun violence as a concern in the ward.
Karygiannis said he’d like to see third-party gun repositories in the city so that legal guns can’t be stolen and used to commit crimes.
Five other non-incumbents are also running for the chance to represent the new ward.
Voters across the city go to the polls on Monday.
