Chris Selley: What does Olivia Chow’s ‘progressive base’ think it’s defending?

Toronto mayoral opponents Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford during their election night speeches on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026. Photo by Peter Power/Postmedia News; Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia

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Olivia Chow was re-elected mayor of Toronto Monday night after what can at best be called three years of ineffectual leadership.

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Certainly on issues that tend to preoccupy National Post readers: the cost of living, traffic, crime and disorder, the Jewish community’s safety, collapsing public transit, the opioid disaster. But most of those issues are among the leading concerns for everyone in this city.

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On finding people an affordable place to live, Chow’s only real competitor, Brad Bradford, championed more inclusive residential zoning in his years on council, and promised to scrap the municipal land-transfer tax.

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Meanwhile, Chow’s solutions were very … Chow-ish. In pursuit of cheaper groceries, she said she would offer tax breaks to independent and “mom-and-pop” stores opening shop in priority neighbourhoods. This is just a (thankfully) less ambitious bad idea than Zohran Mamdani’s government grocery stores in New York City. “Small,” “mom-and-pop” and “independent” are not bywords for cheaper groceries — rather for the opposite.

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That’s not because the proprietors live under Galen Weston Jr.’s thumb; it’s simple economies of scale. But it sure seems to sound nice to people who don’t live in those neighbourhoods and have never been to a discount grocery store in their lives. Of course we would be much better off luring No Frills or FreshCo to under-groceried areas; better still to eliminate obstacles to every kind of business that wants to open shop in Toronto. Bradford was less obsessed with grocery price manipulation, and quite rightly so.

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On the situation facing Toronto’s Jewish community: Chow, the mayor who loves to be seen, is completely missing in action — physically, policy-wise, and in dealing with the feckless police (last seen removing Bradford campaign signs in a Jewish neighbourhood so as to keep the peace at a protest by the you-know-whos).

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It almost doesn’t matter what her problem is with the Jewish community. There are no bridges left to burn. But she and her campaign clearly don’t see it as a liability, and unfortunately, they seem to have been right. (Bradford has been very vocal in his support for the Jewish community. Chow wouldn’t even show up at the annual Walk for Israel.)

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On housing, Chow was the mayor who blinked in the face of opposition to legalizing sixplexes city-wide, declining to use her “strong mayor powers” to overrule NIMBY opponents on council. This was on principle, she said, because “I don’t believe a top-down way of doing things will mean that people are going to rush out and build housing,” and because “we need to work with the homeowners so that they feel comfortable doing it” — and more of the same status quo-preserving nonsense that never goes anywhere useful.