WATCH: Working with you and for you! That’s mayoral candidate Olivia Chow’s new campaign slogan. She released the slogan and the final part of her platform on Friday.
TORONTO – Mayoral candidate Olivia Chow reannounced many of her platform points Friday morning, including increasing bus services, building light rail transit and creating more affordable housing units.
“For me this election comes down to one basic question, a question that has inspired all my years of leadership and activism and it’s this: what can we do with each other, for each other?” Chow said.
Chow’s platform includes cancelling the Bloor-Danforth subway extension championed by Mayor Rob Ford and now supported by Doug Ford and John Tory and replacing it with the originally planned – and provincially funded – LRT.
She said she’d start building LRT in the city “right away” as well as build the downtown relief line.
Chow would “take action on the TTC’s number one priority which is the downtown subway relief line, right now.”
But her major transit promise, and the first reannounced Friday, was to increase bus service by 10 per cent.
She plans to pay for that increase by increasing the land transfer tax by one per cent on homes worth more than $2 million.
Her other promises include lowering speed limits on residential streets, pursue open streets initiatives, enforce anti-gridlock rules, fine companies that block lanes during road work, build 200 kilometres of bike lanes in the city, expand breakfast programs and build 15,000 additional affordable housing units.
WATCH: Toronto mayoral candidate Olivia Chow held a press conference for Friday morning to release her complete election campaign platform. Chow highlighted her positions on transit, building more affordable housing, and addressing the issue of child poverty in the city.
Chow also took a shot at rivals Tory and Doug Ford saying they only cared about cutting programs and bettering the city’s bottom line.
“Now don’t get me wrong, that’s important. But to me the bottom line is where good government starts, not where it ends,” she said. “It’s about balancing the needs of all the people of this city, their hopes, their dreams, and I’m talking about the entire city, not just part of it.”
Tory’s taken a commanding lead in most opinion polls leading anywhere between seven and 22 percentage points. Chow ranks second in most polls but does trail Ford in others.
Liveblog from Global News City Hall Bureau Chief Dave Trafford.
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