After years of trying to push city hall to the political left, advocacy group Progress Toronto breaks through

Thestar.com
July 17, 2023

Progress Toronto grew up in opposition with petitions and protests, banging on the doors of city hall. Now, to the surprise of many, including some in the political advocacy group, those city hall doors have swung wide open.

Former NDP MP Olivia Chow is mayor. Former Progress Toronto executive director Michal Hay is her chief of staff.

Chow’s council, while far from socialist, includes members with strong ties to, and sympathetic ears for, the non-profit dedicated to a “more democratic, socially just and progressive city.”

But the fight continues, said Saman Tabasinejad, Progress Toronto’s acting executive director, appointed after Hay left to run Chow’s mayoral campaign following John Tory’s surprise mayoral resignation in February.

“I think it is important to hold progressives accountable,” Tabasinejad said.

“But I think what is really Progress Toronto’s role is creating space on the outside,” of city hall, she said, so that “if Olivia went out on a limb on something that is very progressive, she’ll have (public) support in making sure that happens without it being a giant political cost.”

Inside city hall, the group will continue lobbying councillors of all political stripes to help Chow -- who won office saying she won’t use “strong mayor” powers to overrule her colleagues -- get majority votes on issues including housing, help for homeless people including refugees, the city budget, and public safety.

Would a group closely aligned with Chow, which endorsed her in the June 26 byelection, criticize her publicly, as it did Tory on many issues? Progress Toronto can hit hard, dubbing some conservative councillors “villains” and using attack ads to get them replaced at election time.

Yes, says Tabasinejad, adding that five-year-old Progress Toronto is community driven so the views of the public and volunteers will guide the group’s responses to Chow during a term that ends in October 2026.

“Our power doesn’t come because our family sits on the board of the Rogers Corporation or access to millions of dollars to hire lobbyists to push forward the issues we care about at city hall,” she said.

“But we do have access to our people -- friends, families, community members, colleagues, neighbours who we can get involved, get them organized to push forward the progressive agenda at city hall.”

Right-leaning councillors approached by the Star were loathe to discuss Progress Toronto on the record for fear of alienating Chow and her supporters.

One, speaking on background, said: “Progress Toronto’s voice, I think, outweighs their actual support among Torontonians.

“They have an expensive agenda and haven’t yet reconciled where the money is coming from -- you can’t raise property taxes enough to get that agenda done, so we’re curious how they work with the new mayor and what she proposes.”

Hay, whose past work includes Toronto Environmental Alliance campaigner, aide to Mike Layton when he was city councillor, and national campaign director for Jagmeet Singh’s successful NDP leadership bid, was a driving force in the 2018 founding of Progress Toronto.

Stressing that she was speaking for herself, and not for Chow, Hay said the idea came from past campaigns, including a successful one to halt plans for a downtown casino and a failed one to get Chow elected mayor in 2014, where people organized into powerful structures that later fell apart “like a pile of sand.”

And advocacy groups like TEA would push for change but then, at election time, could not campaign for particular candidates without risking their charitable status.

“That seems like a really big deficit,” so Progress Toronto was set up, she said, to lobby for and against specific candidates at election time and, in between, for council initiatives such as supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness, protections for renters, elimination of library fines and the vacant home tax.

A group of young, diverse progressives led by political organizer Michal Hay (foreground), pose at Nathan Phillips Square, March 19, 2018.

Prior to Chow’s victory, Progress Toronto suffered two significant setbacks, both at the hands of Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford.

The first was before the 2018 election when council was supposed to grow from 44 seats to 47. Progress Toronto had a slate of progressive candidates, many of them racialized women, ready to run until Ford’s government cut the number of seats, midelection, to 25, pitting incumbents against each other.

Then, after the 2022 election that saw Progress Toronto’s three paid staff members and hundreds of volunteers help get five progressive councillors elected, Ford announced strong mayor powers.

While Tory vowed to impose minority rule only if necessary to get housing and transit built, the powers he requested in private seemed to dash progressives’ hopes of tilting the new council to the political left.

Hay noted Progress Toronto joined forces with Tory in 2019 to successfully get Ford to cancel deep cuts to public health funding, saying issues, not political parties or teams, are the important thing at city hall.

“The municipal level is beautiful,” she said, thanks to the absence of political parties like those at Queen’s Park or Parliament Hill -- one in power making policy behind closed doors, others in opposition trying to tear them down.

“City hall is a place where you have to find common ground.”

Chow has huge challenges ahead of her, including a $1.5 billion budget gap and political foes eager to see her fail. But Tabasinejad sees an “opportunity to build something special” after 13 years of centre- and right-leaning rule.

Progress Toronto and other groups pushing progressive solutions can, she said, “create a pretty cohesive demand on the outside to help empower everyone on the inside to do that work.”