John Filion shelves retirement plan, seeks re-election to Toronto city council

Thestar.com
September 7, 2018
David Rider

In late June, veteran city councillor John Filion announced his pending retirement from politics and endorsed rookie candidates in the two Willowdale wards created by a 47-ward election.

On Thursday, after watching turmoil in the race unleashed by Premier Doug Ford’s midelection cut to the size of council, Filion registered for re-election after all. But he says he’ll campaign only if Ford’s 25-member council survives an ongoing court challenge.

John Filion announced he would re-enter a 25-ward council race while his executive assistant Markus O’Brien Fehr, standing next to him at a press conference at city hall, would bow out of the race.

His change of heart is an example of the calculations happening in Toronto’s unprecedented political limbo, spurred by a shock move the premier says will save money and increase council efficiency and derided by others as a potentially unconstitutional abuse of power.

“It's the oddest of situations,” Filion said in an interview with the Star, sitting beside his executive assistant Markus O’Brien Fehr, who since mid-June has been on unpaid leave campaigning for the Ward 28 council seat but plans to stop and endorse Filion if the 25-seat election prevails.

If the city of Toronto and others are successful in their court challenge to be decided Tuesday, and the 47-seat election is back on, they’ll revert to the original plan with O’Brien Fehr seeking the seat.

Filion had said he was looking forward to writing a second book after the Oct. 22 civic election. He was confident that fellow progressives O’Brien Fehr and Lily Cheng would have won, in Wards 28 and 29 respectively, and stood up to land speculators and developers in the booming north Yonge area.

But expanding the ward boundaries to create a sprawling new Ward 18 Willowdale ward, matching provincial and federal riding borders, invites political parties to become more involved and makes it virtually impossible for a community activist, known within one area, to get elected, Filion said.

He expects failed provincial candidates could repurpose their name recognition and maybe even campaign signs to win council races with the same boundaries only months later.

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“Doug Ford has made it practically impossible for grassroots community candidates and there was a large number of them ready to run in the 47-ward scenario,” and inject diverse ideas and backgrounds into a council currently older and whiter than the city it serves, Filion said.

“The 25-ward situation does create a situation where the ward could go to somebody reprehensible, in it for themselves, not for the community, and we have so many issues like a crisis in overdevelopment in York Centre, speculation going crazy on Sheppard Ave., people moving into condos where kids look at schools they can’t attend because the school is full ...

“I feel if I didn't run I would be letting the ward be turned over to private interests and there's no part of the city where those private interests could wreak more havoc than in Willowdale.”

In much of the rest of Toronto, veteran councillors are expected to face off against each other if the 25-ward election survives. The other incumbent with Willowdale support, David Shiner, told the Star on Wednesday that “at this time I haven’t decided,” if he’ll register for re-election. Nominations close Sept. 14.

For O’Brien Fehr, the prospect of abandoning a campaign that has tapped his family’s finances, and consumed his days and nights for almost three months, is “emotionally jarring.” But voters are confused and his chances of winning in the bigger ward are reduced, he said.

Voters have become increasingly confused since the Progressive Conservatives passed council-cutting legislation, as new candidates jump in and others expand their campaigning area to fit the new boundaries, he said.

“As a responsible community member I have to do the math, and ask what is the worst-case scenario and it's that we get somebody representing the community who has interests that aren't just the community's well-being,” said O’Brien Fehr, who lives west of Yonge and Sheppard Ave.

“When it became clear that John (Filion) was willing to put his personal interests aside for the next four years and come back and serve again, at that point I felt I needed to give way and stand down and recognize that sometimes good public service is doing what's in the public's best interest.”

He has foregone about $12,000 in wages and estimates his campaign donors, including family and friends, would be out a total of between $7,000 and $10,000 even after contribution rebates.

Cheng said in an email: “I am still actively campaigning and awaiting the court decision to make my final decision. In other words I’m really torn about this.”

As of Thursday afternoon, 11 candidates were registered to run in the new Ward 18, which in the 2016 census had 118,801 residents. Under the 47-seat race, the two Willowdale wards would each have slightly less than half that many constituents.