On June 26, Olivia Chow was elected as the new mayor of Toronto. She is the first visible minority & first female mayor, along with being an immigrant.
She & her family came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1970 when she was just 13 years old. She has lived in Toronto her entire adult life.
Being 67 years old, Chow was first elected in her position in 1985 when she served the Toronto Board Of Education for six years. In the year 1991, she became the Metro Toronto Councillor, thus being the first Asian-born woman to do so. She remained in this position for over 14 years until she was elected as a Parliament member for the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 2006.
In addition, she also served as NDP’s immigration critic from 2006-2011. In this role, she was responsible for highlighting the shortcomings in immigration policy, thus holding the governing party to account.
Moreover, in 2012, Olivia Chow was honored as one of the top 25 immigrants in Canada. After that, in the year 2014, she returned to municipal politics in Toronto & applied to be a mayor but lost against John Tory. Tory held the mayor’s position for three elections consecutively until he resigned last February, just a few months after his third term.
Following the resignation of John Tory, over 100 applicants ran to replace him. Among them, Ana Bailao was the main competitor against Olivia Chow. In the elections, Chow won 37% of the votes, thus becoming the new mayor of Toronto. In addition, voter turnover was also higher than usual at 40%. However, the election of October 2022 witnessed only 29% of eligible voters heading to the polls.
Housing: The Top Priority
Upon becoming the new mayor of Toronto, Olivio Chow asserted on taking office in two weeks instead of six. She says that housing is her top priority.
In addition, she asserted that her plan would create over 25,000 rent-controlled houses on property owned by the city in the next eight years. Building more housing will ease the pressure on the city’s housing crisis, thus making it more affordable for newcomers to reside.
The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto is around $2,400 every month. Moreover, an average single detached home costs over $1,270,000in the first quarter of 2023.
Finally, she also plans to revise the current service cuts in order to improve transit service, including cell service for every citizen on TTC, thus expanding transit options in the city.
Toronto: The City Of Immigrants
Olivia Chow is the representative of Toronto’s present demographics. In addition, this city houses the highest number of immigrants in Canada. As per Census 2021, 46.6% of the people living in Toronto are immigrants. Moreover, a census report offered by the city of Toronto reveals that women make up almost 53.9% of Toronto immigrants.
Also, 15.7% of Canada’s NPRs, i.e., non-permanent residents & 17.6% of immigrants in Toronto, arrived as refugees.
Furthermore, over 55% of the immigrants were born in Asia. The Census information shows that the top three birth countries of immigrants residing in Toronto are India, China, & Philippines.