Ward 18 — Willowdale

Biography: Lily Cheng has been councillor for Ward 18 — Willowdale since 2022. She currently sits on the General Government Committee, Budget Committee, the Toronto Police Services Board, and the Board of Health.

During her 2022 campaign, she took a stance against a new modular supportive housing project at a seniors’ home at 175 Cummer Ave. At Council, she made a failed attempt to stipulate that the shelter would not have supervised consumption services and would be limited to seniors. She has also tried to shrink the shelter’s footprint and have a separate entrance and driveway or, failing that, relocate it somewhere else.

Cheng has passed a plethora of motions about local issues at Council, including livening up Mel Lastman Square; looking into creating a seasonal dog off-leash area at Glendora Park; creating a memorial for the 2018 Yonge St. van attack; finding potential new park sites; asking the Province to reinstate the planned Cummer subway station; keeping an extra car lane on Yonge.

She has also successfully requested an intimate partner violence public awareness campaign, and asking the City to conduct research on how intergovernmental funding works for other municipalities around the world.

Platform: On Facebook, Cheng advocates for improved regulations for e-bikes. On her website, Cheng advocates for a multi-year police hiring plan that includes a localized police patron on Yonge Street, piloting microtransit options, pushing for platform edge doors across the TTC, adding traffic calming solutions, reviewing the impact of multiplexes, and increasing in flood prevention in the ward.

Biography: Nicole Daneshvar is a licensed paralegal. Daneshvar says on her website that she’s chair of Heritage Beyond Borders, and on Instagram, she says that she is a public relations representative for the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada.

Platform: If elected, Daneshvar says that she will publish a ward dashboard tracking spending, requests and commitments, hold quarterly town halls, and respond to every constituent within 48 hours. Daneshvar says that she will proactively address failing infrastructure, expand green spaces in the ward, support affordable housing solutions that do not sacrifice neighbourhood character, support local small businesses along Yonge Street in Willowdale, and ensure that newcomer services are accessible and well-funded.

Biography: David Magazzinich describes himself as a small business owner on Instagram. On LinkedIn, he is listed as the general manager of a restaurant and says he owned a deal-finding website called Dealathons.com and sold it to nCrowd, which he says combined “2 of the best run companies in North America” (nCrowd is now out of business and was fined $100,000 for sending unsolicited emails to Canadians).

Magazzinich is critical of Mayor Olivia Chow’s TTC fare-capping program, which he says won’t solve the fact that the TTC “still doubles as social housing and an open drug market.” He is critical of people who are homeless or use drugs in public, calling them “drug-addled derelicts” who “deprive our residents of enjoying the parks and recreational facilities our city provides.” He is also critical of increases to property taxes.

Platform: Magazzinich says he’ll restore “safety, sanity and financial responsibility” to city hall. He lists his values as “fiscal responsibility and transparent budgeting,” “community safety as a fundamental right” and being accountable to residents instead of special interests. He suggests he’s opposed to a planned homeless shelter for Indigenous women and children at 68 Sheppard Ave. West because it is “smack dab” in a residential neighbourhood and will host harm-reduction programming.

Biography: Hamid Shakeri has a background in materials engineering, and according to LinkedIn is a freelance engineering materials consultant and failure analyst. He also says that he is a research scientist at the University of Toronto.

Platform: Shakeri says he would personally answer phone calls 24/7 and always use public transportation to attend council meetings, if elected. He also pledges to improve TTC infrastructure, advocate for smarter traffic signal timings along major corridors, and enhance bus reliability. He wants to push for a line-by-line financial oversight at the City, expand affordable housing options while maintaining single-family neighbourhoods, invest in well-lit public infrastructure, and repair damaged sidewalks. He supports “community-led security networks,” though he doesn’t specify what those are. He also is against reducing lanes on Yonge Street.

On his campaign social media, Shakeri often posts content, some of which is AI-generated, about a variety of timely political topics, like an edit of President Donald Trump with a pacifier holding up a sign of “Lake America.”

Biography: Nathan Yusifov says he is an IT professional who has worked for companies like AT&T and IBM.

Yusifov appears to be the distributor of a website and flyers attacking incumbent councillor Lily Cheng with potentially misleading statements about a drug decriminalization strategy. In 2023, Toronto’s medical officer of health asked the federal government to decriminalize all drugs in the city, but the request was rejected and never came into force—however, in materials promoting Yusifov’s candidacy, the request is characterized as “official drug policy,” which Yusifov argues will “destroy minds and destroy families.” He links the policy to Councillor Lily Cheng, who spoke at a Board of Health meeting where the idea was considered in 2023. The website promoting Yusifov shows a screenshot of a CBC News article about the decriminalization request with its real headline, but the broadcaster’s photo has been replaced by a more salacious image that shows a person using drugs. Yusifov did not reply to The Local’s request for comment.

Platform: Yusifov’s official website does not mention drugs or decriminalization at all. On housing, Yusifov says density must come with proper planning and argues that developers must pay their fair share towards parks, child-care centres, roads, and other infrastructure. He says Toronto has approved development projects too quickly. Likewise, to ease crowding on the TTC, Yusifov says the city needs to better plan ahead for a growing population. He says he supports priority transit lanes, which Mayor Olivia Chow has started installing, and improved scheduling for public transit. He says tax increases have become the city’s default answer to budget pressure, but a better route is to prioritize core services first and spend more efficiently. He says safety issues can be addressed through preventative measures like better lighting, responsive city services, and active communities spaces.

Biography: Ardeshir Zarezade is a licensed paralegal and runs his own legal firm.

Platform: Zarezade proposes tackling safety in the city by hiring 1,000 police officers. He wants to lower property taxes in the city and freeze them for two years. Zarezade is opposed to what he calls a “drug-injection homeless shelter” at Sheppard Avenue W. and Yonge Street. He is referring to the proposed shelter being built by the city at 68 Sheppard Ave. W. to serve Indigenous women and children; it is not a safe consumption site. He says the shelter “raises serious concerns” about potential drug use, and its central location makes it “inappropriate”; however, he says he believes “no one should be without safety, shelter, and dignity.”