🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Brad Bradford’s Plan “To Get People Out of Shelters and Into Homes”

🔗 LINK: votebradford.ca/gettingpeopleintohomesnr

🔧 DOABLE? Maybe?

💰 COSTED? No.

✨ OVERALL: ⭐️½ (1.5 out of five)

For each of the last several budget years, the City has had to chase down Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal governments for funds to offset some of the costs of the asylum seekers in Toronto’s shelter system.

That ask accounts for a $97 million gap in this year’s operating budget.

It is ridiculous and unacceptable that the federal government makes Toronto City Hall go through this process every year and hasn’t at least committed to a permanent funding share based on the number of asylum seekers using the shelter system.

Even that would be shortchanging their responsibilities. Ideally, people fleeing war and persecution shouldn’t be sent to homeless shelters at all.

So let’s give Councillor Brad Bradford some credit for rightly raising this as an issue.

But I am confused as to what his policy actually is. Bradford’s news release says he will “force the federal government to the table to do its job and fund refugee support programs, including housing options.”

But, like, how? “Force” is a strong word. It usually requires some kind of leverage, and City Hall doesn’t really have much of that these days. Unless he intends to put Trudeau in a headlock and physically bring him to some sort of negotiating table, I’m not seeing how this will work.

Bradford’s release goes on to talk about how Quebec gets a better deal than Toronto when it comes to programs like this. That’s true, but how’s he going to change that?

Bradford has branded his campaign “Less Talk, More Action” but a little more talk about how he intends to take action, specifically, to address problems like these would be nice to see.

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.