The seven top candidates vying to lead Toronto as the city’s new mayor got heated as they squared off in a primetime debate on CP24 Thursday night, making their case to Torontonians with less than two weeks to go before Election Day.
The format for the final televised debate before Election Day saw candidates face off on various topics one-on-one before the floor was opened up to wider debate on each question.
Ana Bailao, Brad Bradford, Olivia Chow, Anthony Furey, Mitzie Hunter, Josh Matlow and Mark Saunders took part. They squared off on housing and affordability, homelessness and encampments, transit and safety on the TTC, crime and policing, gridlock, property taxes and city services, and livability and the state of the city.
Fireworks flew on a number of topics, particularly housing and encampments.
Furey, who was excluded from many earlier debates because of low polling in early surveys, had an opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the other leading candidates for the first time in a widely-watched debate.
He sparred with Chow over his plan to phase out harm reduction sites.
“The city has done nothing. We need a change in leadership. And I'm the leader who's going to say we're going to phase out those drugs sites and replace them with treatment centres,” Furey said.
Chow shot back that people who are addicted to drugs need a variety of supports, including mental health support and housing.
“It's hard for the doctors to provide the treatment that you're talking about until they have a roof over their head,” Chow told Furey, saying the issue is more complex than he describes.
Furey also said he’d hire 500 more police officers to deal with public safety and shorten 911 wait times.
Bradford pointed out city council recently approved 200 more officers.
“But we also need other supports that help respond to the types of challenges that we're seeing out there on the streets,” he said. “And that is folks that are dealing with mental health crisis, folks who are dealing with homelessness.”
Things got heated at times, with moderators Leena Latafat and John Moore threatening to cut candidates’ microphones if they continued to talk over one another.
Josh Matlow and Mitzie Hunter squared off in one exchange where he described her transit plan as “unicorns in the streets paved with gold” and said “It is not real.”
Hunter shot back: “Have you read it? Have you read the 70 pages?”
Candidates also had an opportunity to answer very quick ‘lightning round’ questions on topics like AI (artificial intelligence), their last vacation, and the Toronto figure they most admire, living or dead.
Mark Saunders said his wife Stacey, who gave him a kidney, is the person he admires most and other candidates also mentioned family members.
However Anthony Furey invoked former mayor Rob Ford, saying the customer service ethos has been missing from city hall since his time, while Mitzie Hunter named Raptors President Masai Ujiri, who oversaw Toronto’s 2019 NBA Championship win.
Candidates also fielded a question on whether they or their campaigns have used artificial intelligence (AI) to craft messages or images for voters.
Anthoney Furey was the only one who said yes to crafting images using AI (his campaign recently was caught using the technology when people noticed a person in a campaign image had three arms). Mitzie Hunter said a staff member on her campaign used the technology for research, but not to “replicate people.”
Matlow used the question for a moment of levity, saying his campaign was using pictures of “real people” and pulling out a picture of his family.
Chow continues to lead in the polls with 11 days left, but her rivals have been fighting to break away.
As in past debates, they hammered her for not setting an upper limit on how much she would raise property taxes (Chow has maintained that it makes no sense to set a number before first assessing the city’s needs).
Saunders also took aim at her on policing, claiming that while he was police chief, she was voting to defund the Toronto Police Service.
“I wasn’t on council when you were chief,” Chow shot back, adding that she has not said she would defund the police.
Several of them arrived to fanfare, with crowds of supporters cheering them on.
Voters are set to go to the polls on June 26.
