Brad Bradford for Mayor? Ward 19 Has Some Thoughts
The residents of Ward 19 – aka “Beaches East York”, and presently represented by councillor Brad Bradford, were universally delighted that he elected to run for Mayor. Not because we wanted him to be mayor, of course – we considered that an impossible dream on his part. We are now – universally – equal parts both shocked – and horrified – that “Bad Bad” (his local nickname) has – despite his use of AI to spread lies and fake support, his blocking of all dissenters on line, his slick slimy ways and his flip flops on everything from bike lanes (used to be good and he voted for them – now bad) and the airport (also voted for expansion just weeks ago – now changed his tune) s- despite ALL of that – has somehow seemed to have persuaded a bunch of Torontonians that he might be a good mayor.
Please let us – his present constituents – disabuse you of that notion.
While Oliva Chow has been far from the champion for the environment and climate action we would have wanted, he would be much worse. And sadly – the choices we now have.
Back to “Bad Bad”… As several councillors and one former mayor have told me (all off the record): “The man has absolutely no moral compass nor any vision: He will literally say anything to anyone and flip sides on a dime – sometimes within the hour – if he thinks it will help his personal agenda”. He is known to side with developers at every turn – and has actively marketed himself to them as “their guy” – including in a fundraising pitch in Vaughan with a hefty buy in that led to a censure by the ethics commissioner. Not his first – won’t be his last)
So why were BEY residents delighted he decided to run for mayor? Because this meant for certain we would have a new councillor, one who might perhaps listen to constituents, once in a blue moon take their views into account when voting, or approving massive developments, ar maybe, just maybe, someone who might respond to requests in less than 18 months, or after fewer than a dozen emails.
The newly elected MP for BEY formerly ran the MP’s constituency office for BEY for the 8 years Bad Bad has “represented” this ward. He went public earlier this week, speaking frankly about just how many calls he got from ward residents looking for help on city matters – because they couldn’t get any help at all from Brad or his staff. For an MP to trash a one mayoralty candidate and endorse another is extraordinary – so you know it must have been bad.
Bradford’s campaign for the last 3 years has been to trash the mayor at every possible turn, look for wedge issues, and spread out and out lies. When he did so repeatedly on Linked In and I politely refuted his claims with fact, he blocked me. Blocking a Toronto voter – bad enough. Blocking one of his constituents for calling him out on lies? Not exactly democratic.
Let’s be clear – however bad he wants you to believe things are in Toronto – three things are true: First – things are not where they should be. But second, the dog whistles Brad is blowing and the things he’s lying about are nowhere near as bad as Brad is trying to have you believe – and third. when it comes to fixing them, he not only doesn’t have a clue – the residents of Ward 19 / BEY know he will make things far worse.
Let’s start with a few facts about his biggest issue – crime. In 8 years on council the only thing Brad did on that file – the sole vote – was to support having more police on the subway.
But now, Brad and his army of AI bots are papering the city with misinformation about crime in Toronto, and how Brad will make a difference. He claims we have fewer police officer per 1,000 residents than a variety of other cities, and to instantly solve all our problems with homelessness and addicts, he plans to hire 1,000 new police officers to impose order. Let’s look at both.
First: Crime. According to StatsCan – who independently monitor these things, crime in Toronto is down 3.5 points since the present mayor took office – despite the Province undoing a lot of the things the city had done to reduce crime. In fact, crime in Toronto is lower than it is in every other major city in Canada – and a full 20 points lower (on a scale of 100) than the national average.
Where problems arise, it is usually from issues caused by other levels of government being downloaded with the cash to manage them – or lack of investment. Case in point: The province has under-invested in jails – and they are so overcrowded and conditions are so inhumane, judges are reluctant to incarcerate even drug dealers or those caught dead to rights on serious weapons charges before they have been convicted – and so TPS arrestrs them but they’re back out on bail still causing problems 24 hours later. That is not something the mayor can control. Lay that one on the Premier.
Ditto the complaints about people shooting up in public. And again – the province shut down safe injection sites, the province has under-invested in healthcare and mental health care, (while spending $200 million building a parking lot for the new spa operator at Ontario Place) and the city is left to deal with the actual issues. Many smaller cities in Ontario have even fewer resources, so Toronto attracts people that the province has essentially abandoned elsewhere. Net – many of the quality-of-life issues that Bradford and his AI bots have been complaining about are well beyond the control of the city – or the Mayor.
Brad’s answer – a poorly thought out and uncosted flashy plan to hire 1000 new officers.
First – the police chief doesn’t want them. Second, even if he did, just as ICE in the USA had to drastically lower the bar to find new hires, finding 1,000 new, well-qualified and actually desirable officers would be damn near impossible.
Thirdly, doing so would cost the city over $153 MILLION in the first year to hire and outfit 1,000 new officers – representing at least a 10.8% bump in the police budget for salaries and CapEx – and a 0.81% increase in the overall city budget just for those 1,000 officers – before we put gas in their cars or bought them a PC. (see Figure 2 at conclusion of article for details of calculations). All this – when the police chief isn’t asking for 1,000 new officers – and doesn’t think they’re helpful.
It’s also highly debatable what impact they would have in driving Toronto’s crime rate even lower. As with many things, hiring more police follows the law of diminishing returns.
Bumping the police budget by 10.8 percent will absolutely not drop Toronto’s crime severity index under a score of 50 from it’s present 55.1 (score relative to 100 as the index in 2006)
What might help more, would be a similar investment in improved housing, and drug treatment. And of course, the province providing basic resources.
Sadly, there’s equal challenges with all of Brad’s soundbite-friendly easy-fix ideas.
I urge all Torontonians to consider carefully their choices: Brad is a proven liar, chooses developers over residents every time, and has demonstrated a complete lack of interest in doing the hard work for his constituents in Ward 19 – or in putting together a serious campaign that offers helpful and thought out policy choices that go beyond sound bites.
Smart people on city issues have called these out (his “plan” for water the most recent) – but still the public remains blissfully unaware of just how bad his “solutions” would be for Toronto. Putting him in charge would be a nightmare.
Instead, let’s demand more of Olivia Chow on the environmental front. She’s far from perfect – but by far the better of the two flawed alternatives.
PS: BEY / Ward 19 residents: Brad personally recruited Natalie Johnston to be his replacement, and support him on council when he became Mayor.
Instead – Our support is clearly behind Clean50 member Nate Erskine-Smith as someone who understand the issues, who does the hard work, and has long been an active supporter of stronger environment policy.
And I have great personal faith in Dianne Saxe doing the right and principled thing on the environment each and every time.
Fig 2. Police number calculations
