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You have to give credit where credit is due.
And what re-elected Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow achieved in her significant election win against a formidable candidate, Brad Bradford, is deserving of much credit.
Chow also did something no Canadian politician from Confederation until today had ever done. She had some 533,000 people vote directly for her. This is a Toronto record. And a Canadian record. By a longshot.
The previous record was held by Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman, who had 483,277 in 2000. Bradford did well with 404,000 votes, but Chow is the champ in this contest, and there is no trophy for second place.
While many of Bradford’s supporters see this result as Toronto about to die as a city, Chow’s more than half-a-million supporters don’t see it that way. They want breakfast and lunch programs for kids and more community housing, and more library and social welfare programs.
Of course, there are always tough questions reporters must ask elected leaders, and that will not change with this impressive win. But not on this day. There will be plenty of time for that between now and 2030. Sometimes you need to put the politics away and just acknowledge what a remarkable accomplishment this was for this longtime, complicated political figure.
Mayor Chow’s day
Her comeback from her years as an MP in Ottawa, health challenges and personal loss in the death of her legendary husband, Opposition Leader Jack Layton, were already noteworthy in the mayoral by-election of 2023 — a significant feather in her cap after a long career in public life.
But winning this election to gain her own full, four-year term is a validation of Chow by the public. Whether her detractors, opponents, or adversaries like it or not, this is something she earned fair and square.
This was her day. The people have spoken. Loud and clear.
When she came out to face her first media scrum as the newly re-elected mayor, she showed an impressive amount of humility and humbleness. When I started to ask my question, one man I didn’t recognize tried to stop me from talking. But Chow didn’t dodge the question.
It was interesting because just moments before, there was another unidentified man telling myself and other media photographers not to stand in front of the main city hall doors to capture pictures and video of Chow walking out to the media scrum. Odd, since, under Chow’s leadership these past few years, if we were ingesting fentanyl in this same location, there would be no intervention.
Was this a show of extra swagger from Chow’s insiders as a result of the massive victory?
There will be time to ask about the rats, needles and homeless
Or, maybe, they thought I was going to ask about the rats that run around Nathan Phillips Square at will , the homeless people on the benches behind her or the used syringes noticeable in a parking underground stairwell, and that’s why they tried to shut me down. But my question was strictly about her big win and her reaction to it. I thought that was the story of the day. Chow has done something her late husband was not able to do — be voted in as mayor — twice.
She also saw her stepson, Mike Layton, be elected back to council.
I was hoping she would talk about Jack Layton and how she grew up in an apartment in St. James Town and went on to not only become the city’s mayor, but Canada’s most directly voted-for political candidate, which could, one day, make for a great movie. Chow, however, was not interested in taking a vanity victory lap, even though she certainly could have. She was very classy in her answers. No anger. No attitude. Just courteous and professional. Gracious in victory.
“It is not the numbers,” Chow said in response to my question. “I represent as the mayor of Toronto every single Torontonian, whether they voted for whoever it is or didn’t have the time to come out to vote.”
Even though an unidentified rudely man tried to stop me from asking my question in respect of the remarkable election victory by @MayorOliviaChow , the Mayor still answered it in a gracious and classy way pic.twitter.com/iPd4jQgJW7
— Joe Warmington (@joe_warmington) October 27, 2026
Chow says she’s everyone’s mayor
Chow added, “I am here to serve everyone. That has always been how I work. Yes, I want to thank the people who voted for me, but whether you did or didn’t, it does not matter.”
She said all the right things in her victory speech and in her first news conference since being re-elected, and also started her new mandate off on a positive note by vowing that she won’t bring in massive tax increases like she did in her first two budgets. She said she would keep it at the “rate of inflation.”
If Chow can begin to take genuine action against antisemitism in the city (her stance on this issue has been been viewed by many as disgraceful in her first term), get the drugs and homeless crisis under control, attract small business and keep the neighbourhoods from looking like a Zombieland and bring the crime rate down, she could one day be a historical figure.
Either way, no matter what happens going forward, nobody will be able to take that big election win from her.