"Olivia Chow’s victory in Toronto Mayoral race is not about her leftist “progressive policies”, but of voter frustration..." June 28, 2023 Canadian News Update + Commentary

We’re in a housing crisis, and an affordability crisis, so let’s lean toward an NDP candidate who continually preaches about more affordable housing and better health

Olivia Chow’s decisive victory to become the next Mayor of Toronto is not so much an endorsement of her hard left “progressive policies”, but more an expression of frustration and exasperation with the existing political leadership and direction that voters feel are at least partly responsible for our economic woes and totally responsible for their inability to find solutions.

Mayor-Elect of Toronto, Olivia Chow. Source: The Toronto Sun

When voters are desperate for solutions, they tend to swing to the political polar opposite from the status quo; it’s happened before when Ontario elected an NDP government in the 1990’s and more recently, when historically conservative Alberta elected an NDP government just a few years ago.

We’re in a housing crisis, and an affordability crisis, so let’s lean toward an NDP candidate who continually preaches about more affordable housing and better health; after all, when we’re in crisis mode, we tend to look to a politician who tells us what we want to hear.

The problem is, that there is a huge gap between political ideology and realistic and affordable solutions to those problems.

Mayor-Elect Chow is long on the former and woefully lacking on the latter.

And that’s a big problem.

For instance, many ideological NDP’ers, like Chow, have tended to vilify  private sector developers as money-hungry profiteers who are part of the problem in this affordable housing crisis.

In fact, most of those developers are community-oriented advocates who have a vested interest in building and enhancing the communities in which we and they  reside.

If Mayor-Elect Chow, and other left leaning politicians want to be part of the housing solution, they need to understand that private sector developers are not the enemy, they’re part of the solution!