Ward 14 — Toronto-Danforth

Biography: Little information is available online about Maqsood Ahmad. An individual with the same name works as a real estate broker.

Platform: This candidate had not published a platform at the time of publication.

Biography: Susan Chapelle is a massage therapist and former municipal councillor in Squamish, B.C., where she also ran for mayor. In Squamish, she says she worked on a transit overhaul that increased ridership by 24 per cent, developed a community health plan, and increased access to specialized nursing services. She says she previously worked as an audio engineer in Toronto.

Platform: Chapelle advocates for a mix of new housing, including co-ops, supportive housing, seniors’ homes, laneway houses, and other forms of “gentle density,” supported with new infrastructure like sewers, transit, health care and waste collection. She wants the city to facilitate better access to health and mental-health clinics, child care, and crisis response programs through good planning. On public safety, Chapelle’s platform focuses on preventing crime with mental health care, crisis response, and harm reduction programs. She says the city does not need new revenue, but rather it should do better on execution.

Biography: No information could be found online about this candidate at the time of publishing.

Platform: This candidate does not have a platform available online at the time of publication.

Biography: No information could be found online about this candidate at the time of publishing.

Platform: This candidate does not have a platform available online at the time of publication.

Robb Dagenais announced on Sept. 7 that he is withdrawing from the race. His name will still appear on the ballot.

Biography: Little information is available online about Peter De Marco. An individual by the same name ran for the People’s Party of Canada in Don Valley East in the 2021 federal election, placing last out of four candidates in the riding. At the time, he listed his occupation as “concierge/security guard.”

Platform: This candidate does not have a platform available online at the time of publication.

Biography: Sara Ehrhardt served as the elected Toronto District School Board trustee for Toronto-Danforth before the Ford government eliminated all trustee roles as part of its takeover of the TDSB, among select other boards. Erhardt is currently on leave from a job as a policy advisor in the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, according to her LinkedIn. She’s also worked in the Ministry of Infrastructure and in the office of a former NDP premier of Nova Scotia.

Ehrhardt says she was mentored by Paula Fletcher, the outgoing Toronto-Danforth councillor who withdrew from her bid for re-election just two days after registering. As a trustee, Ehrhardt used her letters to parents to draw attention to Premier Doug Ford’s cuts to education. She advocated against the closure of school pools and helped deliver the Truck Safety Plan for Ontario Line construction after a pedestrian was struck by a Metrolinx-affiliated truck in February 2025. Ehrhardt also moved a motion that required the TDSB’s director to produce a report on ventilation in schools, and called on the Ontario government to better fund infrastructure mitigating the spread of respiratory illness like COVID-19 in schools.

Ehrhardt has the endorsement of Peter Tabuns, the NDP MPP for Toronto-Danforth, Progress Toronto, and the Toronto & York Region Labour Council.

Platform: Ehrhardt has four priorities: safe roads, affordability, protecting the waterfront, and “promoting vibrant neighbourhoods and businesses.” She says she’ll hire more crossing guards, install traffic calming measures near all schools, fight for affordable housing, protect tenants and invest in community spaces like pools. She is opposed to expanding the Billy Bishop airport and wants a green-energy alternative to the Portlands gas plant.

Biography: George Fawcett has a background in finance. He describes himself as an analyst at TD Bank and a small business owner.

Platform: Fawcett wants to restore trust and engagement at city hall by moving to impose term limits on mayors and councillors and requiring councillors to live in the ward they represent. He wants to advocate to the province for a return to Toronto’s larger, 47-seat city council, and an end to Strong Mayor powers, both decisions made by the Ford government. He also wants to encourage the province to end above-guideline rent increases.

He says Danforth’s main commercial streets need more accessible sidewalks, permanent patio and display spaces for restaurants and shops, and more green spaces and benches. To support local businesses, he says he’ll remove fees for signs and marketing displays, audit all “red tape” and fees, expand sidewalks, and lobby for commercial rent control. He also wants to install more speed bumps on roads, enforce speed limits in a way that “prioritizes safety over revenue”, and put benches at every bus and streetcar stop. He aims to overhaul the city’s snow-clearing program, which he describes as “disastrous”. Fawcett proposes an increase to the city’s RentSafeTO program, including inspections of rental housing.

Fawcett is opposed to Ford’s decision to remove bike lanes from Toronto streets, saying he supports bike lanes with stronger bollards for Ward 14.

Biography: Mary Fragedakis served as city councillor for the old Ward 29 Toronto—Danforth from 2010-2018. A newcomer to politics in 2010, she ran on an environmental platform and defeated former city councillor Jane Pitfield in a surprise victory. She was decisively re-elected in 2014 and sat on the Economic Development Committee, the Toronto Public Library board, and the board of the TTC, where she argued for time-based transfers.

At Council, she passed motions to look into creating an urban farm in the Lower Don Lands and to support a private member’s bill at Queen’s Park that would have established rent control for buildings built after 1991.

Formerly affiliated with the NDP, Fragedakis ran for the provincial Liberals in 2022. More recently she headed the Greektown BIA, overseeing the troubled return of the Taste of the Danforth festival. She is currently suing the BIA, which suddenly fired her as Executive Director in 2025.

Platform: On her campaign website, Fragedakis says her years away from Council have given her “a different perspective on how decisions at City Hall actually affect people on the ground.” Her priorities include safer neighbourhoods, including more investment in and maintenance of public space, “responsive policing”, and infrastructure for more than just cars. She is in favour of increasing affordable housing; she believes in “development near transit that fits the neighbourhood.” She also wants to support local businesses, cultural organizations, and industries via economic development.

Biography: Little information is available online about John Kladitis. He ran for federal office in 2019, when he said his goal was “to sue the government to save the planet” from climate change. Kladitis also ran for council in 2017 in Ward 42, a former ward in Scarborough, when he placed 18th out of 29 candidates.

Platform: This candidate does not have a platform available online at the time of publication.

Biography: Michael Mitchell says he has a background in law and a passion for the environment.

Platform: Mitchell wants to support small businesses through reducing permit and licensing costs and retaining talent in the city. He prioritizes support for people experiencing addiction and homelessness.

Biography: Caryma Sa’d is a lawyer and social media influencer who rose to prominence by covering demonstrations against COVID-19 health measures, and now largely makes videos at pro-Palestine demonstrations for her website, “Protest Mania.” Critics of Sa’d have described her actions at these protests as provoking or baiting people into emotional confrontations for her videos, which she denies.

In 2024, Sa’d was found by the Law Society of Ontario to have “failed to act with honour and integrity” and to have engaged in harassing or discriminatory conduct for sharing a video in which she confronted a founding member of an anti-hate organization outside his home. The organization, Canadian Anti-Hate Network, later said Sa’d had “doctored” a letter from their lawyer and posted it online in order to remove evidence of her bad behaviour. In their opinion, her “years-long conduct is unprofessional to the standards that lawyers are supposed to uphold.” The organization also said it believes Sa’d “is not a journalist and is not acting in any journalistic public interest.’

She was also arrested outside a Hamilton rally for Premier Doug Ford in 2022 when police said she’d blocked access to the venue, a charge she denied.

Sa’d is critical of Mayor Olivia Chow’s ties to progressive advocacy organizations Progress Toronto and the Broadbent Institute.

Platform: Sa’d says her candidacy is focused on creating a ward where “nobody openly defecates on public transit”, “addicts aren’t folded over on the sidewalk” and garbage bins aren’t overflowing. She also says affordability, accessibility and accountability are central pillars.

Biography: Dianne Saxe is the current councillor for Ward 11 — University-Rosedale. She withdrew from a re-election bid in that ward to run in Ward 14 — Toronto-Danforth after former city councillor Mike Layton announced he would run again in University-Rosedale. Saxe, a lawyer specializing in environmental issues, served as Environmental Commissioner of Ontario from 2015 until the office was eliminated by Doug Ford’s provincial government in 2019. She was appointed Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Ontario in 2020 and unsuccessfully ran in University—Rosedale in the 2022 provincial election. She stepped down from the party to run for city council in the 2022 municipal election.

Throughout the term she has kept an eye on environment- and climate-related items, like the City’s faltering progress on its zero-emissions goals and the transfer of the blue box program. She has also voted in favour of planning changes that would permit more densification, like multiplexes and low-rise housing on major streets, and advocated for extending flood protection subsidies to fourplexes. She also made a Hail Mary attempt to protect Sneaky Dee’s by motioning the City to consider designating the establishment a heritage site.

Saxe’s attempt to find a compromise for the Bathurst RapidTO bus lane, by eliminating the planned priority lane north of Bloor Street, has yielded criticism from some transit advocates. She has also been accused, by advocates for the unhoused, of leveraging environmentalism to clear encampments from her ward. She was supportive of the “bubble zone” bylaw that restricts certain acts of protests within 50 metres of a place of worship, child care centres, and schools.

Platform: Saxe describes herself as a “pragmatic progressive” and touts her history of standing up to Doug Ford. Her campaign website mentions protecting bike lanes, limiting the impact of Ontario Line construction, and creating affordable housing while “maintaining the character, heritage and green spaces that make them special.”

Biography: Devyn Stackhouse’s website lists them as an artist and writer. They run their own diversity, equity, and inclusion micro-consultancy, “Cancel Proofed.” They are the author of an unpublished autobiographical book in which they say they will put forward a “very convincing Grand Unifying Theory.”

Platform: Stackhouse proposes four key policy ideas: installing “shade sails” on the Danforth; adjusting municipal fines, such as for off-leash dogs, on a sliding scale according to income; creating a new $15,000 fine for animal abuse; and better balancing accessibility needs with heritage conservation in older buildings. On their website, they detail additional proposals relating to expanding revenue streams, improving transit, and expanding non-market housing.

Biography: Jason Stevens describes himself as an animal rights activist. In a Facebook post, he mentions being previously unhoused. This is Stevens’ third run for Toronto city council, most recently coming 12th out of 16 candidates in a Ward 15 by-election in 2024.

In an April TikTok video that went viral, Stevens was filmed in an altercation with a Black business owner at a home show: when the business owner told him he’d spilled hummus on the floor, Stevens mimed putting his foot down on it and said, “I’ll just put my foot, like, you remember what happened to George Floyd?” (Floyd was a Black man killed by a police officer in 2020 after the officer put his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes during an arrest). The business owner called Stevens’ comment “incredibly racist and disparaging.” In an email to The Local, Stevens said he apologized for the comment the day after the incident and doesn’t condone police brutality.

Platform: Stevens says he supports “a broad agenda of social action and change.” He has written on Instagram that he wants to freeze property taxes at 2 per cent (which would require approval by a majority of council) as well as fight antisemitism and Islamophobia, rename Sankofa Square, which he calls “Sanka Coffee Square” to Terry Fox square, and install bike lanes “where non congestive.”

Biography: Christiane Tetreault is the chair of the board of the Leslieville Business Improvement Area (BIA) and the owner of an event space and a “pop-up container market.”

Tetreault was critical of a safe consumption site in Leslieville which closed in 2025, arguing it had created “traumatic” situations for staff at local small businesses.

She has pushed for Metrolinx to do more to coordinate traffic in areas around its construction sites, arguing in 2023 that congestion had driven shoppers away from Leslieville.

Platform: Tetreault says her campaign commitments are to give the east end access to the Gardiner Expressway, address the affordability crisis, and create clean and safe neighbourhoods.

Biography: Maria Voutsinas has been the executive director of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada for 20 years. The council is a non-profit that works out of an office at City Hall, and represents hundreds of media partners publishing in languages other than English or French. Under Voutsinas, the Media Council advocated for the Canadian government to set aside 25 percent of its advertising budget for Canadian media, rather than for U.S.-based social media companies.

Voutsinas says she is also a contributor and editor at a Greek-language publication.

She has previously run for school board trustee in 2014, coming third out of five candidates. At the time, as a member of the parent council at Jackman Avenue Junior Public School, she supported efforts to raise money for a less affluent school in the area.

Platform: Voutsinas says her top issues are affordability, safety, and responsible use of taxpayers’ money. As councillor, she says she would be responsive, push for faster answers on damaged roads and streetlights, and challenge wasteful spending. She wants to see safer crosswalks, a connected network of bike lanes, and reliable TTC service. While the Ontario Line is being built, Voutsinas says the community cannot be “abandoned.” She would create one central place for construction updates; hold public Q & As with Metrolinx and its contractors; help residents document and resolve problems with noise, dust and property damage; and push for local jobs. On housing, Voutsinas says “growth must make the community more affordable and livable.” She says she’ll fight for affordable homes, including in co-ops and non-profit housing; defend renters; and help seniors age in place.

Biography: There is little information available online about Denise Walcott. She says she is a business owner and condo board president, and mentions experience in marketing. Walcott ran for council in Ward 14 in 2022, placing fourth out of five candidates.

Platform: Walcott says she would advocate for businesses and residents affected by Ontario Line construction, enforce noise bylaws, push for plain-language updates from city hall about its budget, and protect essential services while addressing wasteful spending. She wants to expand Toronto’s Home Ownership Assistance Program, which provides loans to home-buyers but only through non-profit builders like Habitat for Humanity. She also wants to see public reporting on how many affordable housing units are currently under construction (this information is already available from the city). On safety, Walcott says she would create a Toronto-Danforth Community Safety Table and advocate for evidence-based safety programs. She also wants to pilot free and low-cost after-school programs (Toronto’s current program costs $623 for the school year, or $3.46 per day).

Walcott opposes the provincial government’s proposal to expand Billy Bishop airport.