Chow and Bradford clash over Toronto water plan

Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford entered the final day before Toronto’s mayoral election with sharply different accounts of the race and a dispute over the future of the city’s water system. Polls released in the campaign’s closing stretch offered conflicting indications of who held the advantage; none of the reports available before voting gave an election result. At their final debate on Oct. 22, the candidates clashed over Bradford’s proposal to reorganize Toronto Water as a publicly owned utility and reduce water bills by 25 per cent. Bradford said the plan would keep the service public, while Chow argued that the restructuring and Ontario legislation could shift control away from the city and open a path to privatization. Bradford said a municipal bylaw would prohibit private investment. He also pledged to resign if water were privatized under his administration. Chow said the province’s legislation could allow the municipal affairs minister to create public corporations to manage municipal water systems, giving the province influence over control and rates. The candidates’ statements establish their competing positions; the legal consequences of the proposal were not...