True Patriot Love - September 23, 2026


Toronto’s Quiet Mayoral Race and the Incumbency Factor ft. Anthony Furey

Topics
incumbent advantage in toronto mayoral race
Hosted by
Shara Micucci Mike Wixson
Guests
Anthony Furey
Mentioned
Mark Carney John Tory Anthony Fury Anthony
Canada’s $500B Bet： Can It Rebuild the Economy？ Is Your Home Ready for the Next Extreme Storm？ ft. Tony Romanelli

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

192.62

Word count

4,246

Sentence count

—

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 in toronto and this is a truism everywhere but particularly in toronto incumbents stay in so
00:00:05.680 we've had mel lastman who was the first real mayor of toronto the first mega city mayor mel lastman
00:00:10.160 david miller and then john tory they all had cakewalk re-elections with no real major
00:00:15.280 challengers it never came close for any of them maybe we're going to be in a similar situation
00:00:19.360 here where where olivia chow just has such a strong incumbent advantage
00:00:23.360 well it's election time all across the nation and i'm lucky to have anthony fury with me today
00:00:34.400 anthony i want to talk about toronto because it's very interesting uh the mayor the the current
00:00:41.200 mayor olivia chow came out the other day and announced her candidacy late in the game um
00:00:46.720 and so now you know what really has been a very quiet election period or run up to the election
00:00:53.360 is now full tilt yeah it's interesting paul that olivia chow only just announced the other day
00:00:59.880 after labor day that that her campaign has started so you could register for toronto mayor starting
00:01:05.260 may 1st and the main challengers did uh right around that time she did register for mayor at
00:01:11.420 the end of may but she just did it to make it clear like yeah i'm gonna be running again but 0.89
00:01:15.560 she didn't launch until a couple days ago waiting after labor day so now we're only at about a seven
00:01:20.460 week campaign which is kind of interesting because in the past uh they've been very competitive for
00:01:25.820 many months the mayoral election i was a candidate in a few years ago that was three months of every
00:01:31.100 day hard work a three-month campaign she's looking at just a seven-week campaign the one that rob
00:01:36.940 ford won uh back in 2010 it started the day after new year's it went from january to october it was
00:01:44.300 a 10-month campaign i remember it was a very competitive there was a bunch of people they
00:01:48.940 thought george smitherman the liberal deputy premier would win he did not win it was a big
00:01:53.340 upset 10 months of these people's lives campaigning non-stop here we are only a seven-week campaign
00:01:59.660 and olivia i guess to her credit has been able to hold it off until now it's it's a really
00:02:05.900 interesting situation do you think anthony people have just i hate to say it given up because you
00:02:12.300 You know, I did a quick overview
00:02:15.840 of the recent federal by-elections
00:02:19.280 of the provincial by-elections
00:02:21.400 and the voter turnout was abysmal, right?
00:02:24.100 And so, and those were really, you know,
00:02:26.160 the federal election was to decide the majority
00:02:28.560 of the country, right?
00:02:29.520 That it was actually to get the liberals
00:02:31.020 their majority back.
00:02:32.340 And, you know, interesting ridings,
00:02:35.220 interesting areas that they went off at, no turnout.
00:02:38.380 Now, you know, we had debate on whether that was the summer,
00:02:42.220 People didn't want to come back off vacation.
00:02:44.840 But these elections, those elections were pivotable
00:02:48.240 in deciding kind of the future and the direction of the country
00:02:52.020 based on a majority government.
00:02:54.200 Here we are now talking municipal elections.
00:02:56.640 I think there's across the nation,
00:02:58.560 there's 100 politicians or areas, ridings will be up for vote,
00:03:05.380 multiple mayors across Canada.
00:03:08.920 And here we are in Toronto,
00:03:10.200 and there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest it's interesting you don't hear a lot about it
00:03:14.360 no one's talking about it um you know they're not happy with a lot of things going on
00:03:19.640 so you do hear you know people are unhappy with property tax over the last few years
00:03:24.440 the increase people are really unhappy about bylaw changes the crazy bylaw changes that
00:03:30.920 now allow these developments all over the city diminishing residents property values
00:03:36.600 so you hear a lot about these things so you hear factions but it's interesting you're not
00:03:41.240 really hearing a lot about it and is it just people have people disconnected because
00:03:46.440 they're burned out yeah i think there's a bit of that absolutely i think the the political class
00:03:51.080 people who are really into politics they're talking about this stuff non-stop and the
00:03:54.680 toronto mayor's race has been going on for like two years kind of the ramp up to it
00:03:58.680 uh sort of in the way that that they approach it but you're right the general public no they're
00:04:02.680 just tuning in now and how tuned in are they actually going to be i i don't believe this is
00:04:09.000 a change election in toronto for a number of reasons uh do i think toronto is going in the
00:04:13.720 wrong direction of of course i do there's a reason i i ran uh for the mayoral team myself but i i
00:04:19.480 think ultimately uh it's you know in in toronto and this is a truism everywhere but particular
00:04:25.560 in toronto incumbents stay in so we've had mel lastman who was the first real mayor of toronto
00:04:31.160 the first megacity mayor mel lastman david miller and then john torrey they all had cakewalk
00:04:35.720 re-elections with no real major challengers it never came close for any of them maybe we're
00:04:40.680 going to be in a similar situation here where where olivia chow just has such a strong incumbent
00:04:45.480 advantage yeah maybe well you know i i did watch the announcement so the other night i think i
00:04:51.240 mentioned to you i actually sat and i watched the announcement and i watched her speech and
00:04:55.960 how much did they pay you to watch that no you know it was very interesting because
00:05:00.920 it was it was a lot of discussion about social programs social support so you know one of the
00:05:07.080 things i think is on her side right now or you know number of things being the incumbent but
00:05:12.200 one of the things i think she does have her side on on her side right now is people are having a 0.83
00:05:17.320 lot of discussion about the safety nets that are there given the u.s terrace you know and in her
00:05:23.240 speech she did allude to that multiple times you know she did allude to trump she did allude to
00:05:28.360 you know being there to support people and being there to prop them up and being there
00:05:33.160 so there was a lot of that going which is kind of her wheelhouse right like you know coming from an
00:05:37.240 ndp background it has a very socialist feel to it as far as you know i'm going to make sure the
00:05:42.680 programs are there for your rent i'm going to make sure the programs are there for your housing
00:05:47.160 i'm going to make sure you know the job supports are there so like there's there was a lot of that
00:05:51.720 discussion and and it was interesting because right after it was done you know there was a
00:05:55.800 bunch of interviews i was joking with you you know there was a half an hour of interviews and i don't
00:06:01.080 know if they were planned it looked like they were planned quite frankly one after another people got
00:06:05.480 up and said you know we have to support olivia because you know she's going to provide us you
00:06:12.200 know subsidized housing she's going to provide us affordable food she's going to you know there was
00:06:17.000 just like one thing after another of things that she needed to be the reason she needed to be
00:06:22.520 supported for were because people were going to get something but it was interesting there wasn't
00:06:28.520 a conversation about uh you know bringing new businesses and new um economic trade and new
00:06:39.960 you know exporting development there was none of that discussion it didn't really play into
00:06:45.720 the communication that was going on so i was interested because i started watching it and
00:06:50.120 as a business owner i'm thinking okay are they going to talk about me in this conversation
00:06:55.000 like are we going to get our is a our small short answer is no our small yeah yeah it really is our
00:07:00.280 small to medium businesses are going to be are going to enter now developers let's talk about
00:07:05.640 that for a minute developers were talked about now developers were talked about from a perspective
00:07:11.800 of getting money from the government to do affordable housing right so that's that was the
00:07:18.040 perspective they took on doing that but you know it didn't talk about actually non-subsidized
00:07:24.760 developers getting anything to enhance building uh residential or industrial we didn't talk about
00:07:32.440 that but we did talk about affordable housing or she did talk about affordable housing in her speech
00:07:37.480 quite a bit which i don't know anthony am i a big proponent of no right i think i think the market
00:07:46.520 especially when it comes to residential and development you should let the market play out
00:07:50.680 on its own i think the more government dips their fingers in and gets involved in uh subsidizing
00:07:57.640 housing and homes and condos and apartments it just makes a mess of the marketplace and i you
00:08:03.400 know i've said that on multiple shows well and every new housing program further distorts the
00:08:07.640 market and then it gets us away from coming back to a normalcy where we can have have prices make
00:08:13.960 sense i mean rents uh should be falling in some degree they have yeah it's an original
00:08:19.560 not an original example but kovid's a great example that supply and demand is actually a
00:08:23.240 thing right because we had people uh we had no more international students went home a lot of
00:08:28.120 them we had no travelers so units weren't airbnbs anymore rents plummeted right i know i have a
00:08:33.640 rental property and we were like oh wow right like the rent we can get has massively dropped
00:08:38.280 so it was a great renter's market that like supply and demand happens so there's a lot going on right
00:08:42.280 now the feds decreasing the international student intake so that is softening rents as well it's
00:08:47.880 also softening developer housing so i think maybe that's why developers want to pivot from the free
00:08:53.160 market builds they have to getting the government to pay them to do you know social housing and so
00:08:58.600 forth but uh yeah it's all i mean i know you know uh all about you know appropriate capital allocation
00:09:05.080 and if you're allocating money to government housing you know that's that's disincentivizing
00:09:11.080 other things like the well for working people right for middle-class housing exactly so now
00:09:16.600 you've now you're starting to prop up one level of society and you're doing that through and
00:09:21.400 you're actually taking care of one level of developer right so this is a developer who
00:09:26.440 probably not a lot of them quite frankly either new developers or not savvy developers who get
00:09:32.280 into the marketplace to build these properties um and off they go because they're doing it all
00:09:38.200 the only reason their business model works is that you're propping it up to work it's not or
00:09:43.960 it's not organically or naturally a business model that's sustainable it's sustainable because
00:09:48.600 government is sustaining it and you can't how much of that can you do and that but that was the you
00:09:54.760 know the whole speech really did uh uh evolve or revolve around the fact that quite frankly
00:10:02.280 people were getting something and that's what concerned me now okay so you know what she's
00:10:07.960 confident right you know and a lot of the new the incumbent mayors across canada are right
00:10:14.440 but it's interesting because we're going through this no one seems to really want to step up
00:10:21.000 and call it out in a big way no one wants to step up and start to say
00:10:25.000 you know let's look at the track record let's look and and really make noise we're very polite the
00:10:30.280 way we're our politics behind the scenes can be very nasty that's the canadian way right we're
00:10:36.440 but in front of the cameras and everything no one's really coming off and really starting to
00:10:41.640 scream and yell and get excited about like you know and uh running as a candidate um you know
00:10:49.560 you've had brad bradford you hear a little bit from him he kind of comes and goes he kind of
00:10:54.280 cherry picks the issues you know is there uh and there's that other gentleman sorry i'm his name
00:11:00.280 is escaping me who announced his candidacy yeah chris alexander the former federal conservative
00:11:05.240 minister exactly so he came out in the middle of summer and but again you know she's pretty
00:11:10.760 confident right so brad bradford's dipping in alexander's kind of on the but they're not really
00:11:16.920 are they out there you know banging that drum you know saying look at this look at that i think brad
00:11:22.440 would say he is he's he's out there pretty fierce but but if your impression is that he's not making
00:11:27.160 an impact then i think that's that that's uh something that that tells you something anyway
00:11:32.120 exactly what coverage are they getting you don't you know again it's a very calm so far i know
00:11:38.520 there's still time to go and they can still throw issues on the table but if they're really passionate
00:11:44.120 about winning this election you think they would be not only knocking on the doors they'd be in
00:11:49.800 the media every day saying look at the results of this this this and this you my platform is this
00:11:55.400 this and this and you don't want this to happen well i think they're trying to because you know
00:11:59.480 i've had the experience where you call a press conference and you really gotta fight tooth and
00:12:03.240 nail to get people to show up right uh sometimes for legitimate reasons because they're all there's
00:12:07.800 a big event that they're at as well but other times they're they're making an editorial choice
00:12:12.680 to not not necessarily give you the attention you deserve so there's there's a bit of oh yeah that
00:12:17.880 going on in the mix for sure oh yeah there's well listen uh media's media does have their favorites
00:12:23.800 and you know they do pick them you know i the funny thing is you know you look at what we're
00:12:29.480 doing right now we're podcasting right you go up and you actually start your own podcasting or you
00:12:37.080 do your own channel or you do your own you know you get out there and you start to tell people
00:12:42.200 what you believe in what your policies are we've never even been contacted so and now we're one
00:12:48.280 we're one uh media network but quite frankly you know i don't see him out there every day
00:12:55.240 doing interviews with any of the other ones and maybe they don't want to do interviews with them
00:12:59.080 because he's definitely not getting the coverage but a lot of it may be anthony in my mind is
00:13:04.440 because people are disengaged if only 20 of the people are going to vote so the sad part is no
00:13:10.040 matter what even i guess how much effort all these candidates would put into this are they really just
00:13:15.000 going to get similar to what we've just seen in toronto we just saw the by-election it was 20
00:13:21.160 of that right very you know 80 000 plus people 20 of the people came out and voted that's what they
00:13:27.640 got so they're there so they're like okay you know so now they're playing a numbers game is this just
00:13:33.160 come down to the fact that you can win you know and i remember i you remember hazel mccallion
00:13:39.560 hazel mccallion quite frankly near the end of her career she had been and she was the incumbent but
00:13:44.360 she understood the numbers game right she had 75 000 votes they were compiled of the following
00:13:49.720 people that always support her um and quite frankly she knew no one else could probably get it like
00:13:56.120 she didn't campaign a lot you know she went out and she knocked on doors and spoke to people but
00:14:00.920 But quite frankly, it got to the point where the numbers game they knew, they knew the numbers game was so low.
00:14:06.840 800,000 people in that case were in Mississauga.
00:14:10.260 You needed 70,000 to win because no one else could beat you at 70,000, which seems bizarre.
00:14:17.320 Like it really is, does seem how bad this is.
00:14:20.140 Based on the 800,000.
00:14:21.440 Well, I think you put upon an interesting point.
00:14:24.240 Politics, even though it affects all of our lives, everybody over 18 has a vote.
00:14:29.000 It's actually a niche interest.
00:14:30.480 It should be an interest for everyone, and everyone has the right to have an interest,
00:14:35.180 and everyone is a shareholder by each having their own vote.
00:14:38.660 But yet, as a media organization, what are you going to do?
00:14:42.060 Cover a political press conference or cover the new Blue Jays trade or the Maple Leafs trade?
00:14:46.340 Because you've got more people engaged in the metric of turning up to watch the game
00:14:51.460 than you do voting in the election in terms of a percentage.
00:14:54.440 So as a business choice, as just giving the people what they want,
00:14:58.480 you're going to be doing that you're going to be doing the deep dives on on on the draft season and
00:15:03.440 the trades more so than you do the deep dives on how your tax dollars are spent even though they
00:15:07.460 are your tax dollars but there's just not as much of an interest in that conversation okay a lot in
00:15:12.020 that sentence right so i want to unfold a little bit so just and and for the viewers who probably
00:15:16.740 are engaged and i i'm i'm happy you are but quite frankly i want you to share this with each of you
00:15:22.740 share with one neighbor that's my new thing you know when i want something as a group i say ask
00:15:27.740 people to do me a favor, share this with one person. And that is get one additional person
00:15:34.660 to vote and explain to them what Anthony just said is because your vote is your shareholdings
00:15:40.700 in Toronto, right? In this case. So yeah, it is your shareholdings, you know, whether it be the
00:15:47.440 province, whether it be the federal government, your vote is your shareholdings in that entity.
00:15:52.340 And in this case, you know, if you're living in the greater Toronto area, right, frankly,
00:15:57.380 this is your opportunity to actually make your vote for your share only count a lot of people
00:16:03.660 don't get that i find that bizarre and and you know it's interesting because a lot of people who
00:16:08.540 come from different you know we're you know travel around there's no there's no secret you just got
00:16:13.880 to travel around toronto right now you meet a lot of people from a lot of places like i you know i'm
00:16:19.660 this morning quite frankly i've been uh etobicoke vaughn mississauga and i'll probably finish today
00:16:27.040 somewhere else i'm in five four or five different uh munis uh areas uh of toronto uh vaughn is
00:16:36.400 outside toronto but i'll probably be in four or five areas of toronto and i'll meet people from
00:16:41.600 probably 15 countries right on my travels you know because it's different people in the meetings
00:16:50.320 so you look at it and you think to yourself okay they're coming from countries where they didn't
00:16:54.800 have the right or the ability to vote in this manner and now they have it but they surrender
00:17:01.840 it so easy and i find it like and olivia who quite frankly you know she's from another country she
00:17:08.800 she understands right her you know immigrated here from hong kong yeah from hong kong she
00:17:14.240 understands you know and quite frankly one i think the advantage is probably is where she's resonating
00:17:20.320 in the polls is she's explaining to people and the people who are understanding what she's talking
00:17:26.200 about are valuing the ability to vote right so that's how she's getting her people out right
00:17:32.260 that's how she's drawing you know she's put it yeah you know she's culminating the fact that
00:17:36.380 they have the right to vote they have the right to get social services they have the right to get
00:17:40.340 supports so she's pulling that into a message if i'm a candidate on the other side or against her
00:17:46.840 quite frankly i'm doing the same thing explaining people the importance of voting and then i'm
00:17:52.440 talking about how to grow because that message isn't happening but yet they're not taking the
00:17:58.600 podium and actually presenting that which is interesting and i think that's where they're
00:18:02.680 leaving they might be complaining about things she's doing but they're not giving people a plan
00:18:08.120 of hope and prosperity and growth and employment and you know their kids getting uh having a home
00:18:15.960 and better things they're they're not sharing their ideas on that front no no absolutely and
00:18:22.860 you know to your point about people not appreciating the shareholders they need to
00:18:26.700 get involved in it people will say no i'm not a politics guy i'm a sports guy as if they're all
00:18:30.680 kind of on the same ledger and look hey i'm i'm a big jays fan and love love watching the games
00:18:35.020 with the kids but if if you're not if if you're saying i'm actually not going to pay attention to
00:18:39.680 baseball or soccer or or you know any or some other thing or comedy shows or whatnot nothing's
00:18:45.700 to happen to you like that's that's fine you're just saying here's a whole subculture or an
00:18:49.140 entity that i'm not participating in but the thing about politics i always say paul you may
00:18:53.780 not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you you and because you you are a
00:18:59.140 shareholder in that if you aren't exercising your your vote your proxy someone else is exercising
00:19:06.340 theirs and taking your space and making a decision about your life about your money about your street
00:19:12.660 about the the laws in your life what you and your family can and can't do and they're basically
00:19:19.380 take by you not voting you're giving double space to a person who is right no no you you're bang on
00:19:25.940 i i said this in a show uh recently it was an interesting uh i love that comment anthony the
00:19:32.020 i said listen whether i like the result of the by-elections or not and whether i like the fact
00:19:39.780 that only 20 percent of the people came out to vote in it they came out and they made that vote
00:19:45.220 they took their democratic right and they used it to their advantage so good on them right so now
00:19:52.660 you have to abide by that you have to uh whatever the outcome is and whatever happens next you can't
00:19:59.220 complain you can't say oh i wasn't part of that you were part of it it happened you didn't engage
00:20:04.180 in it in any fashion or form so quite frankly you've surrendered that and that that's yeah we've
00:20:09.860 done so i say that a lot about mark carney i always found it a little odd that he's he remains
00:20:14.900 very popular yeah you know he won the leadership but then he won the general election people love
00:20:20.420 him he was not living in canada like very shortly before he became prime minister he's never been an
00:20:26.180 mp i think he was out of the country for quite a while it's i think it's a little odd the whole
00:20:31.140 situation yeah but but he did it and he became prime minister so i say well you did it you're
00:20:35.940 the leader other people could have done it they didn't and there you go so you know to your point
00:20:40.900 even if one is thinks the situation's odd you gotta say well congratulations to the person who
00:20:45.860 stepped forward and entered the arena and and figured out how to navigate it all because there's
00:20:49.780 a lot of people who could get into the mix and could be in the game participating and choose
00:20:54.820 not to so mark carney says well there's a vacuum i'm going to fill the vacuum yeah yeah no no and
00:20:59.540 in this case what we're seeing on the municipal level is kind of this and and that's where i'm
00:21:03.780 going with this i think we're seeing kind of the same thing anthony you know the vacuum that's
00:21:08.260 created i know it's the it's hard to beat the incumbent but i think quite frankly you got to
00:21:12.100 fight 10 times harder to get over that hump but can't do it by just pitching out an issue here
00:21:18.100 and there doing a press conference right there i think they got to stand up and they got to really
00:21:22.500 really uh be um more active more in the media uh more out there if they have a chance if they don't
00:21:30.340 i think you're probably right it probably is uh easy for her um i think she's kind of acknowledged
00:21:36.500 that by her actions that she thinks it is yeah and therefore she's just going to walk into the seat
00:21:43.060 again i think you're right yeah well let's wait and see we're going to keep you updated on more
00:21:48.180 shows as anthony and i will keep doing this as we get closer all right thanks paul thanks