Jamaal Myers can’t help himself. He’s supposed to be out canvassing, but everywhere he looks he seems to find something else to fix. Broken bollards at a pedestrian crossing, garbage strewn outside a resident’s home, an unlucky raccoon in the middle of the road—it all goes on the list.

“If you ask people what they want, it’s basics,” says Myers, who is serving his first term as Toronto city councillor for Ward 23 — Scarborough North. Stretching east from Midland Avenue to Neilson Road, and north from Highway 401 to the Markham city border, it’s a part of the city known for its sprawl—a place where Amazon warehouses coexist alongside delicious plaza dim sum and tree-lined residential streets.

Nearly 80 percent of residents here own their home (versus 52 percent for the city overall) and nearly two-thirds live in a house. They want their neighbourhoods to look good and feel safe, and it’s a responsibility Myers hasn’t taken lightly. “If we can get the basic things right, they will trust us to do other, bigger things,” he says.

But as ever, not everyone agrees on what “bigger things” are reasonable for a suburban ward like Scarborough North, where everything from transit to housing can look quite different than it does downtown. It’s a divide perhaps best exemplified by the issue of so-called sixplex housing. In early 2025, city council approved a pilot in the ward allowing for the construction of residential buildings with up to six units “as-of-right”, or without special permission. A few months later, city staff recommended expanding the pilot city-wide. But after much debate, council voted to limit the buildings to eight predominantly downtown wards—and a single one in the suburbs, Scarborough North.

When Myers first ran for council in 2022, he felt there was a lot of talk about what people were going to do—but little progress on the ground to show for it. His primary challenger was the incumbent councillor Cynthia Lai. But just days before the election, Lai unexpectedly died. Myers, who campaigned under the slogan “results matter,” convinced residents he could do the job.

I meet Myers at his campaign office on McCowan Road. It’s on the second floor of a low-slung office building, above the Toronto Firefighters Toy Drive; it doesn’t officially open for a few more days, but already there are notes of support stuck to one of the walls.

With his first term nearly behind him, Myers believes the results speak for themselves. He touts the opening of the Scarborough Busway as something he pushed for to fill the gap left by Line 3, and takes credit for reversing service cuts to bus routes in the ward—for now, the only mode of public transit in Scarborough North. He says auto thefts are down significantly since 2023—Milliken, Agincourt North, and Agincourt South combined have seen a 41 percent drop—and they’ve opened three new youth hubs, up from none. There are speed humps in neighbourhoods that have never had them before, and Myers says they’ve fixed over 2,700 potholes—more than triple the previous term.

But this election, Myers will be facing off against two candidates who argue they’ve delivered plenty of results of their own. Dong was a Liberal MPP from 2014 to 2018 for Trinity-Spadina, and represented Don Valley North as Liberal MP from 2019 to 2023. He sat as an independent until 2025, following allegations—later disproven—that he was involved in Chinese foreign interference efforts.

And then there is Shaun Chen, another former Liberal MP who, until recently, represented Scarborough North federally for more than a decade, and is well-known within the ward. Chen was involved in a car crash while commuting to Ottawa last fall, and said the lingering effects of his injuries made it difficult to keep travelling as often as required. Chen resigned as MP in August, and registered to run for councillor later that month. (The Local was unable to reach Chen for an interview.)

The difference, Myers believes, is that he’s actually spent time in the community, putting in the work in a way that Dong or Chen—despite their name recognition—have not. “When you’re serving federally, the issues are national,” says Myers. “But when you’re serving as a city councillor…the issues change literally street by street.”

With a population of 94,000, Scarborough North is the smallest ward in the city, and also one of the most diverse. More than 90 percent are part of a racialized group; 42 percent of residents identify as Chinese and 27 percent as South Asian. Half of residents don’t speak English at home, which makes targeted outreach even more important than in other wards. When I meet Dong at a fundraiser in mid-September—a white table-clothed affair at the Casa Deluz Banquet Hall featuring live music and martial arts—he addresses the crowd in both English and Cantonese.