Pragmatic Chow focuses on fixing

Ontario Premier Doug Ford predicted she’d be an “unmitigated disaster” as mayor. The National Post ran a headline calling her a “regressive politician who will oversee Toronto’s downfall.” The Financial Post said she’d push Toronto to “poverty and decay.” Former mayoral candidate Mark Saunders characterized her as “an activist, only listening to her special interest groups and the loudest voices.” Detractors across the board warned she would raise taxes to infinity and beyond. Few thought she’d be able to work with a Conservative premier. The Toronto Sun claimed she’d steer Toronto in the “wrong direction.”

And yet here we all are — alive and kicking — and headed toward a notso-catastrophic future in Mayor Olivia Chow’s Toronto. The Conservative premier who predicted she’d be a disaster is now an enthusiastic ally of Chow’s and a major benefactor of Toronto. Those who believed Chow would turn the city into a radical leftist hellscape find themselves instead applauding the mayor’s “new deal” making skills. Those who hoped she’d turn the city into a radical leftist hellscape are furious with Chow for allegedly not living up to her progressive image.

This is because of campaign promises to the contrary, Chow will let Ford have his way with Ontario Place — luxury spa and all; meanwhile the province has agreed to take on the costs of the Gardiner Expressway and DVP in a deal that will put at least $9 billion into the city’s coffers. Chow will not be pursuing an expensive and controversial campaign to rename all of Dundas Street — precisely the kind of anti-racist project her lovers and haters alike would have expected her to champion.

Instead, a consolation prize: this month it was decided that city council will remove the Dundas name from two subway stations and a library next year. As well, Yonge-Dundas Square will be renamed “Sankofa Square,” a Ghanian word referring to the act of reflecting on the past and moving forward together.

Many Torontonians are rolling their eyes at this outcome. Those on the right who are opposed to any renaming efforts argue this one is an empty “woke” gesture — that no one will ever call Yonge-Dundas Square by its new name, except maybe a tourist using a newly updated city guidebook to ask for directions (To which a Torontonian would likely respond, “Sorry never heard of it”).

Those on the left who are opposed to the renaming decision are disappointed the mayor didn’t work harder to scrub Dundas’s name from the city entirely — even though doing so would have cost Toronto roughly $12 million at a time when it faces a $1.5-billion budget hole and a $46.5-billion budget deficit over the next decade. What’s more, they are extremely disappointed that the mayor supported the renaming of an Etobicoke stadium after the late mayor Rob Ford. It seems Chow can’t win with either group.

Remind you of someone? Caucasian, male, 69 years old, stepped down from his seat as mayor amid a workplace scandal earlier this year?

It seems the political moment has revealed Chow to be a bit of a centrist — albeit a more effective one than her predecessor.

In a recent interview with the Star’s David Rider, the mayor seemed to balk at this suggestion. “Centralist? I’ve never been called that before,” she told him about the suggestion that she governs from the middle. “I am very practical. I like to fix things.”

It isn’t desperate times that call for desperate measures. It is low stakes. That is, it is easy for a leader to vow to rename a major street or to preserve public space at all costs, or to fight the power when they are not actually in power staring into a financial chasm. In reality, in Toronto, desperate times call for practical solutions and compromises with people we don’t like whose values we loathe.

It’s to all of our benefits that Mayor Olivia Chow seems to be pretty good at delivering them.