Above all else, Toronto council rookie Cynthia Lai believes in herself

Thestar.com
December 4, 2018
Francine Kopun

Cynthia Lai believes in Cynthia Lai.

There are other things the realtor and first-term councillor for Ward 23 (Scarborough North) believes in -- like subways.

Cynthia Lai's belief in her own abilities and energy has propelled her from poverty to prosperity, and now, to Toronto City Hall.

Perched at a bistro table by the window of her small office with dark violet walls, in a Markham commercial building across the street from a plaza populated by Chinese merchants selling food, she leans forward conspiratorially, inviting her listener to lean in, too, over a WeChat message glowing brightly on her mobile phone. She translates a text written in Chinese, beneath a photo of a map of the Tokyo subway.

The message is from a constituent, travelling in Asia.

“I’m counting on you,” Lai translates. “I want the Sheppard subway to be extended and I want this type of subway to be in Toronto.”

Lai laughs. The Tokyo subway is so far ahead of Toronto’s, it seems like a fairy tale.

“I’m a subway champion. Any world-class city, the first thing they do is build transit,” says Lai, adding that she has been told that potential ridership is not sufficient to support a subway extension along the Sheppard line.

“We have to be visionary. With the population growth, you don’t wait for the ridership.”

She believes it’s possible to create ridership, although she is, for now, not specific about the details.

“I’m not inside yet.”

Soon, she will be. Lai was one of four new faces elected to Toronto city council in the Oct. 22 election. The first council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday.

Yes, Cynthia Lai believes in subways.

But her foundational belief -- the one that has driven her from poverty to prosperity, from a rooming house in Toronto’s Chinatown, populated by cockroaches and rats, to ownership of Global Link Realty Group Inc., a firm with 30 realtors -- is that Cynthia Lai has the energy and drive and people skills to get things done.

“If people like you, they trust you and you can sell them anything,” she says, leaning back in her chair, a hint of triumph in her smile.

And her ability to find common ground with voters is what got her elected, she believes.

“I can connect with people. I enjoy people. I am a people person.”

Cynthia Lai is indeed, likable. And like nothing Toronto City Hall has seen in a while. She is not the kind of councillor one associates with a city that spent centuries steeped in white Anglo-Saxon Protestant beliefs and behaviours.

Even now, in a city where more than 50 per cent of the population is foreign-born, Toronto’s city councillors are mostly white and skew toward a dress code and public comportment that echoes the city’s early British ruling class.

During the election campaign, Lai says she was encouraged to tone it down -- maybe she shouldn’t drive a bright red Audi in a riding where so many of her constituents struggle financially. Maybe carrying a designer Louis Vuitton purse isn’t a good idea.

She decided to give up her jewelled manicures while campaigning, although on a short, dark, dreary day in November, a month after the election, they sparkle against the gloom.

She chafes at the advice.

She was born in Hong Kong and her family hails from adjacent Shenzhen, which mushroomed from a small market town to a city of nearly 12 million in less than 50 years. Lai, who travels often to Asia, points to how quickly transportation has been developed in major cities there.

When she left Hong Kong in 1972 to join her sister in Toronto, Hong Kong had yet to begin construction on its subway network. Today, it has 91 stations.

“Every year, there’s extension of different lines. That’s what we should be doing,” says Lai, raising her hands and squeezing them open and shut to pantomime a creature with tentacles.

“It’s like an octopus.”

Lai speaks Hakka, Mandarin and Cantonese. She says she is good with languages.

In 1972, she lived in a rooming house on Huron St., sharing a single room with her sister for $50 a month. She worked as a bank teller by day and took the Carlton streetcar to finish Grade 13 at Jarvis Collegiate at night. It took a year.

She got a degree in medical technology and worked at St. Michael’s Hospital, where she met her husband, but she says that when her father was diagnosed with cancer, she no longer wanted to work in a medical setting. She took French lessons and was hired as an air hostess by CP Air before being laid off in an economic downswing a year later.

She began leading tourists from Hong Kong on visits to Niagara Falls. When they asked her if she knew a good real estate agent, she told them to hang on, and she became one, in 1983.

“I never looked back,” she says.

Lai also believes in development -- she was special assistant to the chairman and vice-president of public relations for GR (CAN) Investment Co. Ltd., the company behind a controversial development adjacent to wetlands in Niagara Falls.

While she continues to consult on the project, Lai is not sure whether she will continue. She says she has a meeting scheduled with Toronto’s integrity commissioner to seek guidance.

The integrity commissioner told the Star she is unable to discuss individual councillor matters publicly.

The development would include 879 dwelling units, 238 seniors units and 500 hotel units; it would create 1,800 to 2,800 jobs.

The company bills itself as a capital management firm that invests in leisure and senior health care real estate development, and says it has a proven history of working with community wetlands, including the protection and revitalization of the Qilihai National Wetland Park in Tianjin, China.

“If we don’t do anything about maintaining the wetlands, they are going to die, they are going to degrade, they are going to degenerate,” says Lai.

“This developer is an expert.”

Environmentalists remain concerned that endangered species that live in the development area will be at risk if the project goes ahead.

“The fact that they’re even in that area, with salt in the wintertime and runoff -- it’s eventually going to destroy those wetlands,” says Niagara Falls city councillor Wayne Campbell, who has voted against the project.

The matter has been appealed to the Local Planning Appeals Tribunal.

Lai wants to encourage the right kind of development in her ward.

“I think the status quo isn’t always the right thing. I will be open to sustainable development in my ward, meaning that they have to be sustained and balanced and progressive.”

Lai said she developed an interest in politics while watching her cousin, the late MPP Tony Wong, at work. She ran provincially in 2005 when John Tory was leader of the provincial Progressive Conservative party. She also ran in the 2014 municipal election.

Lai won on Oct. 22 with just 27 per cent of the vote.

She also claims a connection to Premier Doug Ford -- she campaigned alongside him, before he was premier, in support of Raymond Cho, now minister for seniors and accessibility.

Cynthia Lai believes in affordable housing and in giving back.

The walls of her office are covered in awards and plaques from the real estate industry, including a “top producer” award. She was the first Chinese-Canadian president of the Toronto Real Estate Board. She has been active in fundraising for a variety of causes.

“I have compassion, too,” says Lai. “I worked hard to get to where I am. I really wanted to do something for Toronto to leave a legacy. I’m a hard-working person.”

Nestled in her bookcase is a picture of her two sons, both of whom were featured in Forbes’s “30 under 30.” Derrick Fung made the list in 2014 for founding Tunezy, which allows fans to pay for unique music experiences and both Derrick and Darren Fung made the 2019 list for a startup called Drop, a mobile rewards platform for debit and credit cards, targeting millennials.

Her sons live in Toronto. She is proud of them, and they of her, she says. They know how hard she worked to get elected. She has her eye on the job of chair of the economic development committee.

“I think Toronto has to change. I think I can bring a lot of positive energy to city council,” Lai says.

“We need somebody like me. I have a reputation for getting stuff done.”