🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Mark Saunders’ plan to STOP OLIVIA CHOW

🔗 LINK: stopchow.ca

🔧 DOABLE? Heck No.

💰 COSTED? Hell No.

✨ OVERALL: ⚫️ (Zero out of five)

I considered expanding my rating scale to allow for negative star ratings for this policy. It’s not just bad. It’s incomprehensible and bad.

Mark Saunders starts with the premise that he is the only candidate who can stop Olivia Chow. This is belied by the fact that he is not the obvious second-place candidate, but rather stuck in a glut of a morass with a bunch of other candidates who are all generally running 20 points behind Chow in public polls. The case for Saunders as the Chow alternative is about as solid as the case for Ana Bailão or Josh Matlow.

Second, Saunders is promising two entirely separate things on property taxes. First, on his regular campaign site, he promises “I will freeze taxes” but on his new special site, stopchow.ca, he promises to “lock the tax rate to the rate of inflation.”

These are very different things. The latter is bad policy because it generally works out a net reduction in real revenue for City Hall each year. At a time when the population is growing, that means less money for services that need to be available to more people. The former isn’t just bad — it’s fiscal suicide. A tax freeze would lock city revenues from property taxes to current levels, at a time when the City is facing a combined $1.5 billion shortfall.

It’s desperate, unworkable policy. The sign of a campaign that’s all out of serious ideas. The Saunders has campaign has taken Bradford’s fictional 20% property tax hike number for Chow and raised it to 25%. That appears to be based on… nothing. They just took Bradford’s number and made it bigger. Amazing.

I’m not sure why the Saunders campaign is simultaneously making two different bad tax promises, but, hey, I do want to give some credit for the FAQ section on the StopChow site, which answers questions like “I like Brad Bradford, what do I do?” with “You can still like Brad and vote for Saunders to STOP OLIVIA CHOW.” Uh, helpful, I guess? I guess some voters could be under the impression that can’t like a candidate and not vote for them.

Another example: “I told Josh Matlow I'd vote for him. What do I do?” That question is answered with, “Don't worry, he won't know that you voted for Mark Saunders to STOP OLIVIA CHOW.” Good news for people who are worried about the wrath of Josh Matlow, I guess?

This is all silliness. Just pure silliness. Good for a laugh and nothing else. Some of the worst campaign policy I’ve seen so far.

PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.