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Chow welcomed Doug Ford's help for Toronto in 2023, wants the feds to step up in 2024

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says Toronto made progress on housing and transit during her seven months as mayor in 2023, but in 2024 the city needs help from the federal government.

Thestar.com
Dec. 20, 2023
David Rider

Olivia Chow's most treasured and tortured moments of 2023 both revolve around the city's affordable housing crisis.

Chow, Toronto's mayor since July, cherishes the memory of an autumn visit to a Keele Street building turned into bright, clean homes by Indigenous not-for-profit Wigwamen with money from a city multi-unit acquisition program.

She was shown an original dirty, old unit, then a resident's new home one floor above. The woman "was so proud of it, she had decorated and the transformation from really horrible living conditions to beautiful conditions, with help from the city wow!," Chow said Tuesday in a year-end interview with the Star.

But while the city made progress in 2023 on a multi-pronged housing strategy made more ambitious under Chow's watch, she cites as a lowlight her inability, so far, to improve life for refugees arriving without anywhere to stay, a crisis within a crisis that has had newcomers sleeping on Toronto streets.

Chow says that when she visited refugee claimants at a church in late July "I promised them I would do my best to deal with the issue in a way that's satisfactory. We're not there," she says, her almost constant smile slipping as she notes Toronto is still waiting on full payment of $103 million in this year's refugee costs and has no promise of any federal dollars for 2024, when the city estimates those costs will surge to $250 million.

Under the city and provincial "new deal" to rescue Toronto's pandemic-shredded finances, the province promises Toronto $217.2 million annually for homelessness prevention for three years if the federal government provides more funding support for refugees and asylum seekers.

It's a theme that comes up more than once that the former NDP MP's surprisingly productive partnership with Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford made big strides toward getting Toronto back on track in 2023 but, heading into 2024 and February passage of a city budget that still has a shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it's time for Ottawa to step up for Canada's biggest city.

Chow gave the interview on an aging subway car sitting in the TTC's Greenwood yard to highlight the city's need for federal help replacing Bloor-Danforth cars reaching the end of their lives. The province has promised $758 million for 55 new trains but only if Ottawa and the city match the contribution.

"I'm still hopeful," Chow says, adding: "I think we can work with the Prime Minister (Justin Trudeau) and the federal government." She is hopeful that Trudeau will soon make official that Toronto is getting $471 million over three years from the national $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund.

"It's early days," building a relationship with the federal Liberals, Chow says, noting Ottawa has been occupied with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, climate change initiatives and more. "I don't have as good, close a working relationship with the federal govt but I can develop that, it's not that hard." With Parliament in recess, she says: "We are now able to spend more time together."

Chow admits that, without a major commitment for federal money soon, she doesn't know how city council can on Feb. 14 pass a balanced budget, as required by law.

"If we don't get the refugee dollars, we're in trouble. Where are we going to find the money? I don't know!"

When the Star suggests that Chow has scored wins including the new deal for Toronto by governing as a centrist, rather than the radical socialist about which some of her opponents warned voters before the June byelection to replace John Tory, Chow seems incredulous: "Centralist? I've never been called that before."

She prefers social democrat always looking for common ground. "I am very practical. I like to fix things," she says. "I want to work with people, bring them together, because I believe the government has a role to play for the social good."

Asked what she will do when city hall closes for a holiday break, Chow pantomimes falling asleep back into her subway seat. But the 66-year-old exercise buff jumps forward and decides she shouldn't sleep away her time off after all.

"I need to get back to the gym," she says with a laugh. "I have not been this out of shape for 10, 20 years or even longer."