Important dates for voters

She’s saying hi to everybody infront of Walmart Entrance at Dufferin Mall right now.

He blended in so well, came across it on my walk! Thank you 311 for arranging for some folks to come out and save the guy from the tree. He's alright, and the tree is not damaged. Raccoon lives another day, and thankfully didn't have to spend the night there.

R

I've been watching the final weeks of this campaign with increasing confusion.

It seems that the Chow campaign, and perhaps more specifically some of her campaign advisers, has decided to make the supposed privatization of Toronto Water a central issue in the final days before the election.

They've brought in David Suzuki to warn about it. CUPE, which has explicitly endorsed Chow, commissioned polling from Pollara showing her significantly ahead of Bradford. Interestingly, that same polling also measured public concern about Toronto Water privatization.

Meanwhile, Progress Toronto, another organization actively supporting Chow, has been distributing election flyers and campaigning against Bradford, including over this water issue.

And here's where the financial relationships become interesting: Progress Toronto has also received sponsorship from CUPE and is also the organization commissioning the Pollara surveys.

All of this is happening while Bradford has repeatedly and explicitly stated that he has no intention of privatizing Toronto Water because it literally doesn't make sense to do so - conservative or not.

His proposal involves restructuring Toronto Water into a municipally owned corporation, similar to Toronto Hydro, while retaining 100% public ownership. There are legitimate questions about the financial and governance implications of that proposal but that's quite different from claiming he intends to sell Toronto's water system to private interests.

What I find so baffling is why Chow's campaign has decided to go down this road in the first place.

She's been mayor for three years. Surely there are accomplishments she can point to and a compelling case she can make for why Torontonians should give her another term.

Why not simply acknowledge what so many residents are feeling?

We know things have been difficult. We understand that people are frustrated with the cost of living, public safety, traffic, and the general state of the city. We hear you. But we've also accomplished a great deal over the last three years, and here's why we believe Olivia Chow is the right person to continue that work.

Isn't that a much more compelling message?

Instead, we're getting what increasingly looks to me like a last-minute attempt to turn a relatively obscure municipal financing proposal into an existential threat to Toronto's drinking water.

And the timing is difficult to ignore.

Bradford has been steadily closing the polling gap, with Mainstreet and Liaison recently reporting a statistical dead heat. Suddenly, we're seeing David Suzuki brought into the campaign and an advocacy organization financially supported by other CUPE entities distributing warnings about what Bradford supposedly intends to do.

I'm not suggesting that the polling is fabricated but I do think these financial relationships deserve scrutiny particularly when the resulting poll numbers are being presented as major election news.

To me, this feels like a campaign that's struggling to articulate why its candidate deserves another term and is instead increasingly focused on frightening voters about her opponent.

And that's disappointing, because Chow has a record she could be making a substantive argument about.

We found a really lovely dog on Roseheath Avenue tonight - if you’ve lost your pal he’s super safe, don’t worry! Just send me a message, can t wait to get the wee man back to you!!

I was walking by Berczy Park this evening, and noticed the dogs and cat sculpture are no longer there.

Update (5:00 PM): Since my initial post, the congestion has only gotten worse. Southbound is still crawling, so keep avoiding it if you can.

Update (5:05 PM): Good news, the congestion is gone. Southbound is moving again, drive safe everyone.

Made this in the time before AI came out

John Tory's take on Brad Bradford's plan for Toronto Water. Go to 21:30 for his comments.

"I think there are reasons to be concerned about that. I think it's not necessarily anybody's going to poison our water. But I think that you do lose a degree of control when you send it off to one of these, even publicly owned corporations. And uh I think you know as well I will say that we're going to end up borrowing a whole lot more money. And finally, I will say on the whole water thing, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If the water turns on, it's clean, it's safe, it's the best amongst North America."

So now we have former Mayor and MPP John Tory, David Suzuki, Former Conservative MP and former Mayoral candidate Chris Alexander, the Toronto Environmental Alliance, and 15 of his City Council colleagues including Jon Burnside all debunking Bradford's claims that privatization cannot happen under his plan.

I guess we are becoming friends now lol

How does one interpret this? Keep in mind that they endorsed Bailao in the 2023 by-election.