On October 25, Torontonians will cast their ballots to elect a new mayor. In the midst of debate about fiscal responsibility and the future of public services, student issues have largely remained invisible. This may be the result of provincial governments in Canada having responsibility for post-secondary education and health coverage, which directly impact post-secondary students. A municipality like Toronto has more of an indirect impact with its responsibility for public transportation and environmental sustainability – two issues that students have been particularly vocal about. An analysis of the mayoral candidates and their stance on these municipal responsibilities is required to show how students will be impacted by the results of the election.
Thus far, the debate over public transit has been receiving the bulk of the media’s attention. The central questions – how to keep operating costs low, whether or not to expand, and how to pay for expansion – remain the same as in years past, though candidates this time around have to consider all of that in light of an increasingly fractured city budget.
Rocco Rossi offers a bold strategy for the TTC with “Transit City Plus.” His plan of “continuous tunnelling” is intended to sidestep start-stop construction costs and provide for significant expansion. The cost of such a venture – which Rossi wants to pay for through the privatization of city services like Toronto Hydro – is high, and virtually impossible without a significant reduction in the city’s debt. His plan also lacks details about the locations of the proposed expansion. His counterpart at the forefront of the race, George Smitherman, is offering a more comprehensive, 10-year transit strategy that includes maps for light-rail transportation, expanding bike lanes, and extending subway lines east of Kennedy station.
Where Rossi’s transit plan seems to ignore commuter students, Smitherman’s strategy includes an offer to have LRT service post-secondary campuses yet to be reached by TTC subways, like Humber College in the west end and UTSC and Centennial College in the east. Veteran city councillor and Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone is championing incumbent David Miller’s Transit City plans, which includes cautious subway expansion and the addition of LRT services connecting Pearson airport with Kennedy station.
In his environment platform George Smitherman has highlighted that 30,000 tonnes of recyclable material still heads to the Green Lane landfill site near London, Ontario. He plans to bring RecycleBank to Toronto, an organization that assigns loyalty points to good recyclers, which can then be used to shop for goods at local businesses. Rocco Rossi has pushed for closing bike lanes on arterial roadways and to halt existing plans to build new ones. Additionally Rossi, along with Rob Ford, have pushed for privatizing garbage collection services. Both Rossi and Ford seem to forget that in 2007 the city council voted in favour of replacing York Region’s privatized garbage collection with unionized workers, saving York Region $4 million a year. Pantalone’s platform consists in continuing the Tree Planting Advocacy Program he started in 2000. He claims that it has lead to over 500,000 trees being planted since its inception. Smitherman’s platform may be a boon for environmentally-conscious post-secondary students who could use the loyalty points to pay for much needed groceries. Rossi’s bike lane proposal would be harmful to those students who use cycling as means of healthy, inexpensive transport.
Rossi and Ford’s planned privatization of garbage disposal is short-sighted. A private collection company would not venture far past its mandate to examine a less wasteful means of disposal. Smitherman plans to hire a technical advisor to look at sustainable methods of disposal that could save the city millions of dollars. Pantalone, the current chair of the city’s Roundtable on the Environment, is still keeping the status quo with his tree-planting program. While it’s a good program, Smitherman is more ambitious with his plan to add fifteen more parks to the city. This may be a plus for environmentally conscious students, though the same students could take issue with his plan to add twelve more showers to the Toronto beaches, a project that could prove quite wasteful.
Overall, George Smitherman has the most fleshed out platform in response to issues such as public transportation and environmental sustainability. This may give Smitherman an advantage in appealing to the concerns of post-secondary students. However, he still has not directly addressed the issue of token prices or just how many bike lanes he would like to see in the city. Rossi’s and Ford’s platforms will not be popular among post-secondary students and may even prove to be detrimental to securing any of their votes. Pantalone offers an agenda that stays the course, but may not be ambitious enough to spark the imaginations of young voters. The race is far from over, but the mayoral candidates are still struggling to define themselves in the minds of student voters.
