Meet the people challenging Premier Doug Ford’s Toronto ward cuts in court

Thestar.com
August 27, 2018
Jennifer Pagliaro

When a small army of lawyers meet in a courtroom on Friday to challenge Premier Doug Ford’s new legislation cutting the size of Toronto council, there will be several individual names on the stacks of spiral-bound paperwork in front of them listed as “applicants.”

These are the individuals who have sought legal representation to fight Bill 5, known as the Better Local Government Act, along with the City of Toronto and the Toronto District School Board.

Chris Moise, a gay Black Toronto District School Board trustee who was running for council in the 47-ward race, is one of the named applicants fighting Premier Doug Ford's council cuts in court.

Their stories represent candidates, electors, community organizations and residents: A gay, Black school trustee who now plans to withdraw his candidacy; campaign volunteers drawn to a political cause for the first time; and several diverse and progressive-minded women encouraged to run by a grassroots group pushing to see better representation on a largely white, male council.

Their stories will be central to the narrative told by lawyers when they argue that marginalized groups will be further disadvantaged by the provincial legislation, that it violates rights of free expression and freedom of association, and that changing the rules of the election in the middle of a campaign is an unconstitutional breach of democratic principles.

The Star interviewed most of the applicants and read hundreds of pages of records filed in court, including sworn affidavits from each person. This is why they’re challenging the province.

Chris Moise, Ward 25 candidate

Moise had been preparing to be a candidate since learning the city would adjust its ward boundaries, a process that led to the city settling on a 47-ward system. He registered the first day nominations were open this May.

The current Toronto District School Board trustee, a gay, Black man, said he chose to run in the open race in a new downtown Ward 25 that includes that Gay Village because that’s where he had connections and wanted to serve. He sold his home in Cabbagetown, which was part of the school board ward he was elected to in 2016 and which was almost mortgage-free, he said, and bought a condo in Yorkville in the new ward.

Moise, a 25-year resident of the city who previously worked as a counsellor at St. Michael’s Hospital and briefly as a police officer in Waterloo, hoped to liaise with residents on the tensions between police and the Black and LGBTQ communities and other issues that are important to locals and businesses.

“I have a different perspective that I can bring the table and I was really looking forward to doing that in an open and transparent race,” Moise said. Now, he says: “I feel that my voice, my community’s voice, has been stifled in the process.”

Moise plans to not run in a 25-ward race, which would pit him against friend, mentor and fellow LGBTQ community member Kristyn Wong-Tam, one of the incumbent councillors for the area. His work to date, his affidavit notes, would be “rendered futile.”

Without knowing how the court challenge will end, Moise says he’s still dropping campaign literature that states he’s running in “Ward 25.” He has spent $20,000 on his campaign so far and still has 6,000 handouts left, he said.

“I think it’s important to stand up for the community by putting my name forward in this court challenge.”

Ish Aderonmu, campaign volunteer

It was Premier Doug Ford that first got Aderonmu interested in municipal politics.

The 34-year-old Nigerian immigrant and Cabbagetown resident said he was struck by a video showing Walied Khogali -- who would become a candidate for Ward 23 in the 47-ward system, which encompassed Cabbagetown -- challenge Ford on the provincial campaign trail about community mistrust of policing, including the controversial and now-disbanded Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy.

Aderonmu said in his affidavit that he was impressed with the way Khogali stood up to Ford on behalf of diverse communities. He connected began working on the candidate’s campaign.

“Through volunteering with Khogali and serving his campaign, I have discovered my political voice,” Aderonmu’s affidavit says, adding he does not think he would have been motivated to volunteer for a candidate who does not better reflect the city’s diversity.

He’s learned how hard it is for non-incumbents to win and believes the cut to council will lead to worse representation on council.

“This is deeply disappointing to me as an elector who has been working to advance one of these campaigns, expressing myself politically for the first time.”

Prabha Khosla, adviser to Women Win TO

Helping women get elected to public office has been central to Khosla’s work for decades.

The downtown resident, who earned a master’s degree in urban planning and has worked with international organizations on gender equality and other issues, is founding member of the Toronto Women’s City Alliance and adviser to the group Women Win TO, which has encouraged and trained women to run politically.

“Not only were women excluded from public office because city council is overwhelmingly comprised of white, male councillors, the city’s policies and programs were also not gender inclusive in a city that is 50 per cent racialized, and where women represent 52 per cent of the population,” her affidavit says about the decision to launch those groups.

Changing the ward structure in the middle of an election, she said, would disadvantage candidates who are women, trans and part of racialized groups -- people who have less financial resources and who now have to campaign in a much larger area with thousands more potential constituents. The women they have been working to support have greater domestic responsibilities for things like child care, her affidavit said, and will have a harder time campaigning in these new “mega-wards.”

“This will compound the silencing of women in public life on the municipal level,” she said, “and reinforce the structural barriers that obstruct women from accessing positions in local governance.”

Rocco Achampong, Ward 13 candidate

Achampong, a former provincial PC candidate and 2010 mayoral candidate, was the first to apply in court to fight Ford’s Bill 5.

In his affidavit, Achampong says he learned about the rules of the election which he believed would be in place and which “informed whether or not I can be a viable candidate with the necessary resources to contest effectively.”

The Ward 13 boundaries in the 47-ward system encompassed an area Achampong -- a 39-year-old son of immigrant parents from Ghana, according to a Black Canadian Network profile -- said he grew up in and where he has built connections. But in the now much larger Eglinton-Lawrence ward, he said he lacks “historical connections” that would have impacted that decision.

As a practising lawyer who was the students’ union president at the University of Toronto before attending York University’s Osgoode Hall, Achampong said he has also had to make professional decisions to accommodate his campaigning against an incumbent and slate of other candidates.

Lily Cheng, Ward 29 candidate

 “It’s kind of like living in two realities at the same time,” Cheng tells the Star about her life now. “One of my friends called it ‘Schrodinger’s election.’ You don’t know if the cat is dead or not.”

Fighting for a spot on council as a first-time candidate makes it difficult to adjust to an entirely new election covering a much larger geographic area and needing to raise much more in donations, the Willowdale-area candidate said.

Cheng, the daughter of Taiwanese parents, signed up to run in the 47-ward system in Ward 29, a newly created North York district with no incumbent. The community organizer and mother of two young children decided to put her name on the ballot after the van attack on Yonge St. led her to speak at a vigil encouraging others to give back to their community. She felt she should do the same.

In the 25-ward system, the Willowdale ward for the area now combines two open races with a slew of candidates. Nine have already re-registered and Cheng expects there will be about 20 people in the race. As a woman, a mom and a visible minority, Cheng said she feels voices from those groups are under-represented on council, so she still plans to run.

“There’s been moments where I’ve thought, ‘Can I do this?’ And I think what has given me the courage to persevere is firstly the narrative of what I tell my children.”

Susan Dexter, residents association board member

 

Representing the Harbord Village Residents’ Association as a board member has become a full-time role for Dexter, who knows the only way for residents to get traction at city hall is through their councillor.

“We have no power with the bureaucracy,” she said.

Considering the projected population for the new University-Rosedale ward the association will be in -- with the Harbord Village area stretching from Bloor St. W. to College St. and from Bathurst St. to Spadina Ave. -- and their current councillor’s “considerable workload” in their area alone, the retired journalist and journalism instructor said in an affidavit that “we seriously doubt that he, or any successor, would be able to continue to engage with our concerns under a 25-ward system.”

“We worry that we will lose connection with our elected representative, and that our concerns will not be heard at council,” her affidavit says. “The government’s direct intervention in the election has made our municipal democracy feel uncertain and unstable.”

Jennifer Hollett, Ward 21 candidate

Hollett heard the rumours about the cut as her campaign launch wrapped up on July 26.

“I am taking it day by day,” the 42-year-old St. Lawrence resident told the Star, having not yet signed up for the 25-ward race.

“I am still out in the community attending events, speaking with voters and we’ve just been trying to do our best in the middle of what is a very chaotic time,” said the candidate who was previously running in an open race in the downtown Ward 21 in the 47-ward system, with boundaries encompassing a small geographic area that includes Moss Park, Corktown and St. Lawrence.

The former MuchMusic VJ and journalist quit her job as the head of news at Twitter Canada, a position that now no longer exists, to campaign. She finds herself living in an area where parts of four wards have been merged and a long list of potential candidates, including two incumbents, is expected.

“Like other candidates, you make sacrifices, but you do so in calculated way,” she said. “If I knew we were going to be in a 25-ward race I would have made a different decision.”

Geoffrey Kettel, residents association co-chair

Kettel knows there is a cynical opinion in communities that you “can’t fight city hall.”

The longtime community advocate and retired land use planner can often be seen in committee and hearing rooms managing development, heritage, traffic and other midtown files as co-chair of the Federation of North Toronto Residents’ Associations, an umbrella group for more than 30 residents’ organizations, as well as co-president of the Leaside Property Owners’ Association.

The cynicism, he fears, will only deepen with the changing wards.

“When you remove the politician from the people as you’re going to do . . . then they become more of a bureaucrat. They become a king and queen, I guess, within their boundaries and the average person is going to have less access to them,” he said.

“Having worked on municipal issues, the premier’s comments on there being too many councillors confused me,” his affidavit says. “Councillors have always had a significant burden in keeping up with local demands . . . I worry that my community will not be properly represented on city council.”

Dyanoosh Youssefi, Ward 14 candidate

“It’s certainly been a lot more chaotic,” Youssefi said of life lately.

The Jewish-Iranian immigrant, who was running in Ward 14 in the 47-ward system against incumbent Christin Carmichael Greb, said she believed she was gaining momentum to be a top contender.

Youssefi, a single mother of two daughters, lawyer and legal studies professor at Humber College, placed a close third in the 2014 race.

The area is now part of the Eglinton-Lawrence ward where she plans to still run but will be facing off against not just Carmichael Greb, but former Liberal MPP Mike Colle and likely many others.

“All of my planning had focused on the concerns and the needs of approximately 55,000 residents of Ward 14,” she says in her affidavit. “With the population of the ward doubling under the 25-ward model, I did not know how I would be able to re-orient my campaign, or reach so many more residents.”