The City of Toronto is once again quietly pushing the idea of a municipal sales tax in advance of next spring’s budget. Anyone who doesn’t want to see an extra tax layered on top of every purchase they make within the city limits needs to make their voices heard now, before this plan is put into further motion.
Another tax increase is coming in Toronto, in part because they won’t fix some of the obvious and expensive problems they have.
Toronto budget chief Shelley Carroll was on The Deb Hutton Show on Newstalk 1010. The topic was the upcoming budget and a caller asked why the city doesn’t drop its sole-source contracting policy. The city works with a small number of contractors who are allowed to bid.
Saying she is not thinking about the civic election one year away, Mayor Olivia Chow declined to confirm Monday she is planning to run for re-election, instead touting her record on housing, transit, improving city services and helping small business.
“I didn’t even know that (election) is one year” away, Chow told reporters with a chuckle. “I’m focused on cutting red tape and supporting small businesses so they are successful.”
A year out from the next municipal election, Mayor Olivia Chow is in trouble with a majority of voters saying it’s time for her to go. A new poll of more than 800 residents — commissioned by ABC Toronto and carried out by Hamish Marshall of One Persuasion — shows even a third of those who voted for Chow want her to be replaced next October.
LIMOS! LIQUOR! Inside Mayor Chow’s posh movie trip to Europe
Olivia Chow and her crew from City Hall racked up thousands of dollars in travel expenses on their film industry trip to London and Dublin, including more than $11,000 for a boozy reception and $720 for a limo ride, the Toronto Sun has learned.
City Hall’s economic and community development committee will receive a final report on Chow’s film mission on Tuesday. However, there are glaring inconsistencies between the details in that report and documents the Sun has seen, such as the money spent and even the number of City of Toronto employees on the July trip.
Chow knows nothing about anything a crushed beer can would have done better.
Six in 10 Torontonians say the city is headed in the wrong direction, with a similar majority placing the blame squarely at the feet of Mayor Olivia Chow, according to results of a new poll.
A survey conducted by Canada Pulse Insights on behalf of CityNews finds 64 per cent of Torontonians asked believe the city is on the wrong track, with 68 per cent saying the mayor and city council are out of touch with what residents want.
Affordability and the cost of living are the most important issues facing the city, according to 49 per cent of respondents. Home ownership (34 per cent), gridlock (29 per cent), crime (29 per cent) and homelessness (21 per cent) round out the top five concerns.
Toronto is a “world-class city,” says its mayor Olivia Chow. But for a growing number of its residents, the city is unrecognizable from decades ago, whether it’s the homelessness, open drug use, empty storefronts, or crumbling infrastructure.
OFFS. @fancypants_s https://t.co/P5xvecsVG1
— Auntie Polly (@auntie_polly) October 19, 2025
h/t Auntie Polly
Mayor Olivia Chow needs to stop dancing, stop talking tacos, stop doing bat flips and calls to the Blue Jays and get to work turning this city around.
If she can’t do that, she needs to get out of the way and let someone else take the helm at City Hall to do what needs to be done. Of course, the same could be said of those filling the council seats as well.
Toronto city hall is looking to hire a “traffic czar.” But like Toronto traffic itself, the hiring process has been agonizingly, painfully slow.
The Star’s Ben Spurr reported last week that after Mayor Olivia Chow and Toronto council voted in April to create the car czar position — formally known as the Chief Congestion Officer — the job posting finally went up last month.
The delay in getting someone into this role is frustrating. The concept actually came from Coun. Brad Bradford, as a platform plank in his 2023 run for mayor, so it’s been more than two years since the idea was first floated. But the foot-dragging is not really surprising. Because deep down, I think even those doing the hiring know that this is a sucker gig.
The solution? Ban cars without saying you want to ban cars! Toronto sucks now it will suck worse forever.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow recently threatened to increase property taxes by two per cent to cover the increasing costs associated with housing asylum claimants in the city’s shelter system, if she doesn’t first get the funds from the federal government. This would be over and above whatever tax rate increase she was already planning.
This isn’t the right way to go about solving the crisis of so many asylum claimants residing in our shelters, motels and streets. It’s not the taxpayers’ fault.
FIFA is requiring Toronto’s government, as a World Cup host city, to adopt a “non-interference” policy toward human rights advocates – a group that apparently includes protesters – the Toronto Sun has learned.
A 27-page list of “sustainability and human rights tournament requirements,” released to the Sun after a freedom-of-information request, is dated June 2023. The document says “protection of human rights defenders,” as well as freedom of the press, “is essential to a successful and rights-respecting delivery of the competition.”
Ridiculous.
Metrolinx is on its way to missing another deadline.
They said they wanted to start full testing this week of the Eglinton Crosstown and as of Thursday afternoon it hadn’t started. The “revenue-service demonstration,” which runs the system at the same level as if passengers were on, takes at least 30 days.
14 Years and it’s still not open.
Residents near an injection site in the west Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale have been raising concerns for years about illegal drug activity around the perimeter of the site. They were hoping some solutions would be tabled when the executive director of the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, Angela Robertson, called a meeting on July 17 to address the community’s escalating concerns, including a disturbing video of a fight in an adjoining park while a member of the site’s controversial security firm looked on.
Mayor Olivia Chow has not offered to trim any of her salary to pay for people without residency status in Toronto.
Or vowed to no longer go on expensive trade missions abroad or pledge millions to pay for soccer games featuring millionaire soccer players inside a business worth billions.
Chow wants you to pay.
Mayor Olivia Chow eats tacos while Toronto burns, bleeds, starves and overdoses.
Mayor Olivia Chow lists her favourite taco ingredients while on stage at the Latin Fall Fiesta.
Sep 27, 2025#Toronto #ProtestMania pic.twitter.com/YUSchH7ljo
— Caryma Sa'd – Lawyer + Political Satirist (@CarymaRules) September 28, 2025
