Clash of Toronto’s progressive titans: Olivia Chow hopes to win back old riding, but Liberal MP ready for a fight
Philip Cheung for National Post // Justin Tang / The Canadian PressOpposing NDP Candidate Olivia Chow in Spadina Fort York is another local star of left-of-centre politics, Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, his own footings sunk deep into the bedrock of Toronto’s fastest-growing enclave.
- The first to buttonhole Olivia Chow is a friend whose husband works for the Royal Ontario Museum. Then, a few doors down, comes the actors-union official — another acquaintance — followed by an anti-poverty activist who warmly discusses past battles.
And that’s not to mention the succession of Chinese Canadians who hail the politician like a long-lost cousin.
In just three blocks of electioneering in Spadina Fort York, it quickly becomes clear that Chow is still intimately tied to this downtown Toronto riding.
Olivia Chow (left) and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, pose for a photo after announcing that she will be seeking the NDP nomination for the Spadina-Fort York riding in Toronto.
That kind of bond has helped the New Democrat to three decades of election victories here — for school board, then city council and finally Parliament. But this time is different.
Opposing Chow in Spadina Fort York is another local star of left-of-centre politics, his own footings sunk deep into the bedrock of Toronto’s fastest-growing enclave.
As a former television reporter, scion of another political family and prime political nemesis of notorious ex-mayor Rob Ford, Liberal Adam Vaughan is giving Chow one of the fights of her political life — in the constituency he captured after she quit to run for mayor herself.
A recent Mainstreet/Postmedia poll suggests the contest between the two fiftysomethings is tight, underlined by Justin Trudeau’s appearance in the constituency Monday, the Liberal leader’s fourth visit there since the election began.
“It’s really a clash of the political titans here in Toronto,” says Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research. “This is going to be one of the big political battles of the election, probably among the top two or three in the country.”
Yet it’s not just the collision between a pair of high-profile, progressive candidates that makes the campaign in Spadina Fort York so intriguing.
Conservative candidate Sabrina Zuniga (left) and Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan (right) look on while NDP candidate Olivia Chow speaks during an all-candidates meeting for Spadina Fort York riding at the Radisson Hotel in Toronto, Ontario, Thursday September 16, 2015.
Hived off from the old Trinity Spadina constituency, the new district is dominated by an expanse of condominium towers that has more than doubled the area’s population since 2009.
Chow may hold sway in the blocks of small, single-family homes, low-rise apartments and public housing complexes north of Queen Street West, a haven for immigrants, students and arty-minded young people.
But similar neighbourhoods to the north — like the Annex and Little Italy — belong to another riding now, and 70% of Spadina Fort York’s 82,000 residents reside in high-rises south of Queen West.
“I think the condos are the X factor,” Maggi says.
Vaughan clearly sees the creation of “the tallest riding in Canada” as an opportunity. He says many of its relatively affluent young residents have migrated from the suburbs, where voting Liberal — or Conservative — is much more of a habit than supporting the NDP.
“That changes the conversation at the door,” Vaughan says, munching on a Starbucks breakfast sandwich steps from the Air Canada Centre and a looming cluster of those skyscrapers. “The economy comes up more than it used to, international trade policy, copyright law.”
But Chow says the old riding boundaries already contained lots of condos, and their younger-skewing demographic would tend to be NDP-friendly anyway.
“There are a lot of young people and young people are pretty progressive,” she said. “It’s a different demographic, but a lot of people living in condos, they’re paying off their student debt … a good portion of the income goes to housing costs, and they don’t have a lot left at the end of the month.”
he says one of her party’s main anti-Liberal cudgels — criticism of Trudeau’s support for Conservative anti-terror legislation — is playing well among the condos’ well-educated inhabitants.Vaughan says those condo dwellers care most about improving transit in a chronically gridlocked city, and touts his party’s promise of massive investment as the answer.Meanwhile, past results and current polls suggest neither the Conservatives — represented by Sabrina Zuniga — nor the Greens’ Sharon Danley stand much chance. Chow lost her first two federal elections here, then broke through in 2006 and won twice more after that, alongside her late husband, Jack Layton, as he brought the NDP to new heights as federal leader. Chow quit the seat, though, and entered the mayoral race in 2014 as the early favourite. She wound up in third place.
Olivia Chow, centre right, looks on as Sarah Layton and her daughter Beatrice sit on a bronze statue of Jack Layton, the former NDP leader after it's unveiled at Toronto's ferry terminal on Thursday August 22, 2013.
Chow says the party tried repeatedly in the weeks after the mayoral election to lure her back. She wasn’t biting, until a personal appeal from leader Tom Mulcair helped convince her that, with the NDP enjoying a historic chance to rise to power, she owed it to the memory of Layton, who died in 2011.
“It’s a goal that he wanted to see happen — an NDP federal government. If I have an opportunity to help make that happen, why wouldn’t I do that?”
Vaughan has politics in his blood, too, his late father, architect Colin Vaughan, having been a city councillor. The son built a TV career, then ran for council in Chow’s old ward, staking out a similar position on the left. Vaughan’s profile grew larger as Ford’s downward spiral accelerated, the councillor quick to blast the mayor’s drug- and alcohol-fueled exploits.
That conflict has apparently not been forgotten, with Ford recently telling the Toronto Sun “I can’t stand Adam Vaughan,” and promising to donate to Chow’s campaign.
Liberal Adam Vaughan celebrates his by-election win in the Trinity-Spadina riding with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau at the Steam Whistle Brewery in Toronto on Monday June 30, 2014.
Vaughan won Trinity Spadina handily after Chow vacated it last year. He says he is not surprised to see her back there.
“She’s a career politician,” Vaughan notes drily. “She’s run for just about everything.”
A Forum poll released last month showed Chow ahead 57% to 28%. But Mainstreet’s survey, released last week, had a sample size twice as big, and suggested the New Democrat’s lead was much smaller — 34% to 30%.
What’s more, the survey hints at a possible future advantage for Vaughan: almost one in five of the large chunk of undecided voters say they’re leaning toward the Liberals.
A smattering of voters, all determined to oust the Conservatives, told the National Post they are waiting to see what happens across the country before deciding how to vote.
“I’ve tended to vote Liberal in the past but now I think maybe I’ll vote strategically for a change,” noted Dwayne Proctor, 45, after an all-candidates meeting. “So I’ll have to watch things very closely as we get closer to election day.”
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