Incoming Scarborough councillors looking to make their mark on city hall
Thestar.com
November 5, 2018
Mike Alder
They were just second-place finishers last time.
Today, Cynthia Lai and Jennifer McKelvie are Scarborough’s new faces at Toronto City Hall, and as incoming councillors from two of the city’s most distant wards, they’re bringing ambitious goals with them.
Jennifer McKelvie, left, represents Ward 25, Scarborough--Rouge Park while Cynthia Lai represents Ward 23, Scarborough North.
Both women are confident enough in their skills, and in their friendships with Mayor John Tory to carry these plans forward.
“A lot of people respect me because I deliver; I’m responsive,” Lai said recently.
Her 35 years in real estate built a good reputation, sharpened her negotiating skills, and the future Ward 23 (Scarborough North) councillor added, taught her when to fight and when to collaborate.
On one subject, Lai will have to fight: she wants the Sheppard Subway extended along Sheppard Ave. in Scarborough.
Apart from Jim Karygiannis, who controls the neighbouring Scarborough-Agincourt ward, many won’t like Lai’s plan. Such an extension has been labelled folly because of low projected ridership and what riders it has would add to crowding on the Yonge-University line.
But with Doug Ford as Ontario’s premier, and a new, smaller city council, Lai said she’ll urge downtown councillors “to put all politics aside,” and see a Sheppard Subway as necessary for Toronto’s future as a world-class city.
“I’m going to have to sell to them,” said Lai, who considers Sheppard the Yonge St. of her ward, a major artery in need of revitalization and redevelopment a subway can bring.
The downtown has enough subways, and the now-shelved plan to build a light-rail-transit line on Sheppard won’t work, “because businesses will hurt,” said Lai, a past president of the Toronto Real Estate Board.
Tory isn’t supporting a Sheppard extension. Instead, the mayor backs a Bloor-Danforth extension to Scarborough Town Centre, an Eglinton East LRT line and the relief line subway; he’s insisting those projects remain his priorities.
“Leave that to me,” responded Lai, who ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Scarborough while Tory was that party’s leader.
Lai was runner-up against Ward 41 incumbent Chin Lee in 2014. Lee retired this year, and Lai beat his former constituency assistant, Maggie Chi, who came second.
Lai got only 27 per cent of votes (as opposed to 23 in 2014). She acknowledged “I have a huge job” to earn the support of other ward residents.
In Ward 25 (Scarborough--Rouge Park), Jennifer McKelvie beat Neethan Shan -- an incumbent who had been councillor for the wards’s northern neighbourhoods since February 2017 -- by a margin of 154 votes.
She lost to Ron Moeser in 2014, but only by 572 votes; she came second after Moeser registered on the last day possible.
A scientist and past president of the Centennial Community Recreation Association, McKelvie in 2016 became interim leader of Scarborough Community Renewal Organization, a group bent on finding a “common vision” for Scarborough and fighting for improvements.
The group supported the mayor’s transit plan, but also demanded Tory move 3,000 municipal jobs up to Scarborough, spend $2 million studying a Scarborough arts centre, create a Scarborough-specific economic development plan and establish a Scarborough centre for teaching trades.
McKelvie left her SCRO post this year, but said she will “absolutely” embrace the group’s goals, still unfulfilled, as her own at city hall.
She expects to be a strong ally for Tory, but is she confident she can get construction started this term on the Eglinton East LRT, which would run through her ward?
“Well, I’m a pretty persistent person,” McKelvie replied.
