Ward 11 — University-Rosedale

Axel Arvizu is a Toronto Metropolitan University alumni who manages a home building company specializing in making custom homes. He also co-founded La Tortillería, a Mexican restaurant, alongside Juan Román and the two were runners up for the 2011 Canadian Youth Business Foundation’s Entrepreneur of the Year competition. He describes himself as a “business oriented person”. His platform prioritizes continuing expansion and increased service for transit riders, implementing mandatory recycling programs, increasing green spaces, and creating designated bike lanes. Arvizu also wants to make housing affordable by working with building departments to ease basement apartment conversions and improve alternative housing options such as laneway and garden suites. Arvizu opposes privatized healthcare and supports increasing fines for aggressive and stunt driving.

Little information is available online about Michael Borrelli. He previously ran in the 2018 municipal elections where he placed fifth with 671 votes.

Robin Buxton Potts has been the interim councillor for Ward 13 — Toronto Centre since June 2022, after Kristyn Wong-Tam was elected as MPP for the riding and vacated her seat. She has a background in communications, public affairs, and government relations. Buxton Potts previously worked as the community relations advisor and chief of staff for Wong-Tam, as well as a community outreach and engagement manager for MP Chrystia Freeland. As part of her campaign, she wants to advocate for housing access and affordability, improved city services, and climate action and mitigation. Buxton Potts has been endorsed by the Toronto Star.

Norm Di Pasquale is the incumbent TDCSB trustee for Ward 9 since being elected in 2018, as well as a senior consultant at Avanade, an IT services company established in part by Microsoft. In 2021, he ran for MP in Spadina-Fort York as an NDP candidate, coming in second with 16,834 votes. While trustee, Di Pasquale voted in favour of motions to amend the TCDSB’s code of conduct to include LGBTQ-inclusive language (gender identity, gender expression, family status and marital status). He also voted in favour of a motion for the TCDSB to recognize June as Pride month and fly the pride flag at TCDSB headquarters and every Catholic school during it. Di Pasquale voiced support to reinstate former premier Kathleen Wynne’s sex education curriculum, and collected letters from across the GTA’s school boards to voice students’ concerns about COVID-19 and safety in January of this year. Di Pasquale’s platform prioritizes housing for all, which he plans to achieve by adding density to allow for more affordable housing, combining rent supplements with existing city housing initiatives to create homes that are “truly affordable for Toronto’s lowest income earners,” expanding Toronto’s Multi-Unit Residential Acquisitions Program to keep more rental properties affordable in the long-term, and end Exclusionary Zoning. He has also proposed mandatory tenant groups in every building, expanding the city’s eviction prevention programs and rent supports, and building as much affordable and supportive housing as possible. He has detailed plans to make Toronto’s food and utilities more affordable, build healthy neighbourhoods, and take climate action. He has been endorsed by the Toronto & York Labour Council, and by outgoing ward councillor Mike Layton.

Information about this candidate could not be found at time of publication.

Adam Golding is a community organizer. In 2021, Golding attended the encampment evictions to support the unhoused people being evicted by the city, where he was arrested and harmed—though his charges were later dropped. Golding then co-founded the Toronto Coalition for Housing. He describes himself as having worked on federal and provincial NDP campaigns. Golding is running as a candidate from the Municipal Socialist Alliance, an organization whose collective platform prioritizes providing immediate support for unhoused people through repealing the no camping by-law, and improving rent control, zoning and tax practices. The organization also prioritizes defunding the police by at least 50 percent, implementing ranked ballots, providing municipal shelter and food subsidies, improving road safety and accessibility, and implementing free childcare and transit. In survey responses to The Local, Golding added that transit should be free and paid through income tax, unlike a proposed motion to increase property tax for TTC funding, because the potential for property tax increases to worsen the housing crisis if landlords “pass on the cost to tenants.” In an email to The Local, Golding said he has a “relative preference for testing mandates over vaccine mandates, and positive cash incentives for getting vaccinated over punitive approaches.”

Andrew Layman is a human resources professional who has worked at Starbucks Canada as a talent acquisition specialist and has been at the company in various roles since 2009. Layman’s platform prioritizes affordable housing, which he will achieve by ending Exclusionary Zoning, developing more supportive and affordable housing complexes, and leasing city-owned land for developments where half of the units will be affordable. His platform also focuses on improving public infrastructure, which includes more green space, public washrooms, off-leash areas for pets, biking lanes, street lights and cleaner and safer sidewalks and roads. In survey responses to The Local, Layman wrote he would redistribute funding from the police budget to hire mental health experts that could partner with police for de-escalation in mental health situations, although he says he does not believe in defunding the police.

Peter Lovering is a graphic designer and the founder and owner of Parliament Street News—which he has published for 12 years—and Sumach Designs. He worked as a constituency assistant to Ward 28 Councillor Lucy Troisi, who served from 2017-2018. Lovering’s platform includes creating a safer and cleaner city by improving city services like parks, waste, bylaw enforcement, safety, and transportation, promoting sustainable development and affordable housing, and growing commercial and retail viability.

According to her campaign website, Alison Pang is a Toronto resident who grew up in University-Rosedale. Her platform priorities include advocating for affordable housing, livability and community. In an interview with CJRU (a Toronto Metropolitan University campus multimedia hub), she said she agrees with the TransformTO plan but believes the projected deadlines are too far away.

While this candidate will appear on your ballot, they have withdrawn from the race.

Dianne Saxe is an award-winning environmental lawyer and the former environmental commissioner of Ontario from 2015 to 2019. Saxe won a lawsuit in which she represented the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, making companies that make packaged goods and printed paper contribute $115 million to the operating of the blue box recycling program. She served on various boards including the City of Toronto’s Climate Advisory Committee. She is the daughter of Morton Shulman, a high-profile coroner who was later served as NDP MPP for High Park from 1967 to 1975. Saxe ran in the 2022 provincial elections as a Green Party candidate, placing fourth with 6,092 votes. Saxe’s platform prioritizes ensuring climate health by tying the City’s financial budget to a binding carbon budget consistent with TransformTO; creating affordable housing by filling in missing middle housing, improving tenants’ rights, implementing inclusionary zoning and taxing vacant homes and speculators; improving transportation by widening sidewalks, offering increased transit service, and furthering the city’s Vision Zero plan; and ensuring community safety by finding policing alternatives, decriminalizing drug use, and expanding safe consumption sites.

Information about this candidate could not be found at time of publication.

Pierre Therrien is, according to his website, a retired nuclear operator. His platform lists his run for Ward 11 councillor as part of a larger plan to become leader of the provincial Liberal party and run for premier. His platform includes implementing carbon taxes on on all CO2 sources such as crude oil, natural gas, coal, or cement production, using the taxes to fund both free transit and a “housing first and harm reduction” strategy for unhoused people, outlawing new landfills, ensuring pedestrian and biker safety, improving roads, and creating an intercity rail from Windsor to Quebec City. Therrien has stated on Twitter that he believes, “Everyone is Indigenous. Every Canadian, born in Canada, is Indigenous to Canada,” and that Indigenous people “all came from Asia [and] can go back if they want.”

While this candidate will appear on your ballot, they have withdrawn from the race.