Introducing the City Council Buddy System
City Hall Watcher #361: The Council Scorecard gets updated with a look at the various friends & factions at City Hall, plus fare capping, a luxury land transfer tax hike, parking passes, and more!
Hey there! It was nice seeing everyone at the Press Gallery party on Friday. Thanks to Mahdis Habibinia, Dave Rider and others at the Star who put it together. It took me a very long time to find my coat, but that’s my own fault.
Anyway, enough of this gooey show of emotion. We’ve got a newsletter to do. This week, I’ve got the first major update to my n…
ew-and-improved Council Scorecard. I’ve fed a bunch of data into the machine and produced a visual look at how councillors vote together on major issues. Also, on a lark, I’ve assigned each councillor a VOTE BUDDY and a VOTE NEMESIS. We’ll have fun.
Beyond that, it’s a big week on the City Hall calendar. Mayor Olivia Chow’s Executive Committee is set to ponder a tax hike for the high-value properties, the TTC Board will look at whether there should be ads in their tunnels, and the General Government Committee will hear about the City’s biggest tax deadbeats.
Let’s get into it.
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— Matt Elliott
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The Toronto Council Buddy System
I’ve updated the new-and-improved Council Scorecard with some new votes and new features. Subscribers can access it at CouncilScorecard.ca with this month’s code:
LONGDECEMBERBecause there’s reason to believe this update will be even better than the last.
I’ve put together a neat visual representation of how councillors vote — a Vote Similarity Map. It uses multi-dimensional scaling to arrange councillors by distance based on how often they’ve voted together. Votes are weighted so that votes that passed by a smaller margin are worth more in the algorithm than votes that carried with 25-1 margins.
It creates a visual representation of the votes across this term — since Mayor Olivia Chow’s election in 2023 — that looks like this:
The neat thing about this approach is that it’s purely based on the data. I didn’t dictate what either axis should represent. But the data took shape in a way where the x-axis can be read as a simple progressive-to-conservative measurement, with the political left on the actual left and the right on the right.
The y-axis is a bit harder to define, but it could be seen as a pretty good proxy for pragmatism versus ideology. It seems fair to say that the councillors at the bottom are somewhat more willing to embrace compromise than those at the top.
Based on our overlaps, the various factions on Toronto Council become very clear, in some surprising ways.
Council’s crews
CHOW’S DOWNTOWN CORE: A squad of five progressive Toronto & East York councillors often hangs together on votes. The group includes Councillor Gord Perks, Councillor Paula Fletcher, Councillor Alejandra Bravo, Councillor Chris Moise and Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik.
All except for Moise are on Chow’s Executive Committee, which I am bound by journalistic law to describe as “cabinet-like.”
The ties that bind this group are strong. Malik and Bravo are the only two councillors to have a perfect 100% vote similarity score.
SUBURBAN & MIDTOWN PROGRESSIVES: A quartet made up of Councillor Amber Morley, Councillor Paul Ainslie, Councillor Jamaal Myers and Councillor Josh Matlow is positioned very close to the Downtown Squad, but votes just differently enough to define their own faction.
Still, these first two groups alone comprise nine of the 13 votes Chow needs to command a majority. But getting the second group on side is a heavier lift than the first group.
THE PRAGMATISTS: A group comprised of Councillor Michael Thompson, Councillor Frances Nunziata, Councillor Mike Colle and former councillor Jennifer McKelvie have tended to support Chow this term on big items, but their support has never been a sure thing. They tend to love a compromise.
Dynamic dyads
Some councillors ended up overlapping with just one other member.
Councillor Dianne Saxe & Councillor Shelley Carroll: These two ending up paired together was one of the surprises for me, but it does make some sense. Both have a bit of a maverick streak.
Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin & Councillor Lily Cheng: Chernos Lin’s data is a bit skewed because, as a mid-term replacement, she has fewer votes than her peers. Still, it’s notable that she’s overlapping with Cheng and hanging closer to the pragmatists than the two progressive groups.
Councillor Jon Burnside & Councillor James Pasternak: Two conservative-leaning suburban reps who have been drifting further away from the mayor as the term goes on.
Councillor Brad Bradford & Councillor Vince Crisanti: On paper, you wouldn’t expect a 39-year-old councillor for the Beaches to have much in common with a North Etobicoke representative in his early 70s, but Council makes for some strange alliances. Both Bradford and Crisanti have staked out strong anti-Chow positions, and it shows up on the chart.
The loners
SOLO WILDCARDS: Councillor Nick Mantas, Councillor Anthony Perruzza and Councillor Parthi Kandavel are hard to pin down, sticking close to the pragmatists but with voting patterns that don’t really align with anyone else.
THE LONE WOLF: Councillor Stephen Holyday tests the literal bounds of this kind of visualization. At one point in my testing, he was causing it to look like nearly every other member of the Council was ideologically united — against him. I had to code in a cap on how far away any one councillor could be from their peers. Without the cap, Holyday would be on a whole other planet.
Note that there’s not yet enough voting data to put Councillor Neethan Shan on this graphic.
Vote Buddies & Nemeses
In addition to the Vote Similarity chart, each councillor’s profile page now includes a section comparing their voting record with their colleagues. Effectively, each councillor gets a Vote Buddy and a Vote Nemesis.
Here are the buddies and nemeses across the 24 current members of Council with enough voting history to merit inclusion:
Vote Similarity scores can also be displayed on the Leaderboard page for easy access. And the data exists for historical terms, too.
Updates
I have added nine votes from the October and November Council meetings to the Scorecard. They are:
IE24.13, Motion 4: A vote to reject Councillor Brad Bradford’s motion to support speed cameras in school zones only.
IE24.13, Recommendation 7: A vote to inform the provincial government that Council still likes speed cameras and would like to keep them.
CC33.1: A vote to put crisis workers in downtown subway stations.
TE25.41: A vote to speed up the Bathurst bus north of Bloor — a compromise reached after a previous plan to install dedicated transit lanes ran into opposition.
EX27.2, Motion 2: A motion to raise the fines for drivers who block streetcar tracks following snowstorms to $500.
EX27.1: A vote to oppose the changes affecting tenants in Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 60, along with a reiteration of Council’s support for strong rent controls.
MM34.17: A vote to disband the board of the Toronto Parking Authority.
PH25.3, Motion 4: A vote to reject Councillor Stephen Holyday’s motion to restrict commercial zoning on a long list of major streets in his ward.
PH25.3, Motion 1a: The compromise motion to allow corner stores in streets in Toronto & East York only.
Click on any of the links above for a shareable voting record, complete with a ward map showing how councillors voted.
Other changes to the Scorecard:
The Leaderboard gained a new category. Councillors who vote with Chow between 70% and 84% of the time are now classified as “Lean Chow.” They’re still generally reliable votes for the mayor, but less so.
For the nerds, RSS feeds are now available for every councillor — past and present — listing their complete voting history. Find it on their profile pages.
What’s next?
I’m still working on integrating data from the Housing Dashboard to help keep tabs on how each ward is doing when it comes to meeting housing targets. I’ve also got some exciting election-year features planned.
Let me know if you have any feedback or thoughts. As a City Hall Watcher subscriber, you can access the Scorecard with the subscriber code:
LONGDECEMBER In other news
Mayor Olivia Chow was out today with a pre-budget announcement. Starting next September, the TTC will begin offering fare capping. Instead of having to decide whether you should buy a monthly fare pass in advance, trips will just become free after 47 rides. Chow’s announcement also indicated she’ll be asking the TTC to plan to drop the threshold to 40 rides starting in 2027, but, of course, there’s the not-so-small matter of an election to get through first. A 47-ride threshold offers riders some convenience and flexibility versus the current pass model, but doesn’t save much money. The 40-ride threshold would represent real savings.
It’s always a bit dangerous to go back and look at old columns, but I thought this piece I wrote for Metro way back in 2012 holds up pretty well as Toronto finally marks the opening of a Transit City LRT line on Finch West:
LRT proponents – including me – spent a lot of time during the transit debate shouting down those who claimed the proposed light rail lines were just fancy streetcars. But the dirty little secret is that there certainly are some similarities between the two modes, particularly when it comes to providing good service.
The TTC’s daily track record with streetcar service should make us nervous about their ability to effectively operate these new LRT lines.
For a report on yesterday’s LRT opening on Finch West that seems to confirm a lot of those worries, Reece Martin has a recap of the highs and lows at Urban Toronto.
More from Matt: on the risk with election-year budgeting, another Big Tech battle, and a wrong turn for Bike Share
📰 For the Toronto Star last week, I wrote about what we know so far about Mayor Olivia Chow’s 2026 budget. The looming election is having an influence — and that’s not really a good thing.
📰 Also for the Star last week — it was a double dip week — I wrote about Waymo’s appearance on the lobbyist registry, and what Council should have learned from the other Big Tech entries into the city.
🗞️ In the Star this week, I write about the growth plan for Bike Share Toronto put together by the Toronto Parking Authority. It’s a plan that seems a bit too focused on revenue.
Look for it in your favourite newspaper.
The week at Toronto City Hall
MONDAY: 🗂️ The General Government Committee met this morning.
Much of their meeting was devoted to the question of whether to put Capital Sewer Services into the penalty box for five years, after an investigation concluded that the company overbilled the City for work performed by subcontractors.
In a letter to Chief Purchasing Officer Geneviève Sharkey, Capital President Dave Beswick portrayed the overbilling as an isolated incident. “The misconduct that led to the City’s interim suspension has been definitively traced to the actions of one individual at CSS, a former Vice-President of Infrastructure,” Beswick wrote. (Tyler Leeming, who previously held the title of Capital’s VP of Infrastructure, had his name removed from the company’s website over the summer.)
The International Union of Operating Engineers also called for leniency in a letter, citing “the devastating impact this loss of work will have on real hard-working skilled tradespersons.”
But the committee, chaired by Councillor Paul Ainslie, was not convinced. Rejecting a motion from committee member Councillor Lily Cheng to withhold from making a decision, they voted to endorse the ban. Council will have the final say next week.
Also on the agenda:
The committee approved a project delivery model for the long-in-the-works George Street Revitalization Project, which will replace the Seaton House shelter with a multi-use facility that’ll feature a shelter, a long-term care home, some supportive housing and a community hub. Recently filed information on the City’s Application Information Centre also reveals the project will have 161 parking spaces for unclear reasons. Given the high cost of parking, it might be worth asking about.
Woodbine Mall remains the largest corporately-owned property tax deadbeat. The Etobicoke shopping centre owes City Hall $13.5 million in overdue property taxes. The owners of the mall put the property into receivership in 2023 and continue to seek a sale, if you know anybody who is interested in a mall with some carnival rides.
🤝 The Corporations Nominating Panel meets. They finally approved some new appointments to the CreateTO and Convention Centre boards. We’ll find out the names of the appointees after they’re confirmed by Council.
🚨 The Police Service Board’s Budget Committee meets tonight. They’ll ponder a draft operating budget plan that increases operating spending by 7% in 2026 — a $93.8 million increase. I’ll have more on this in a future edition.
TUESDAY: 🗄️ Mayor Olivia Chow’s Executive Committee meets.
As she continues to assemble pieces of her expected re-election platform, Chow has put a motion on the agenda calling for an increase to the municipal land transfer tax collected on sales worth more than $3 million.
The move would hike the tax rate for homes over that threshold from 3.5% to 4.4%. The rate escalates from there.
Chow says these rates will affect a small number of home transactions but bring in significant revenue. “Those who can afford five or ten million dollar homes can afford to pay their fair share,” she says.
Land transfer tax revenue isn’t what it used to be, though. Another report on the committee agenda provides an update on this year’s operating budget, and projects a year-over-year decline in revenue from the real estate tax. With revenue coming in $185 million under budget, the City is executing a “contingency strategy” that will pause planned contributions to reserve funds and capital financing plans.
There’s some good news in the budget report, though. There have been some “positive negotiations” between the City and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal government, and the City now anticipates restoration of the Interim Housing Assistant Program that covers costs related to refugees in the shelter system. The expected detente means City Hall is now projecting a year-end surplus of about $97 million.
Also on the agenda:
The still-pretty-new Housing Rights Advisory Committee has a major presence on this agenda, having submitted several recommendations for Executive Committee consideration. The most newsworthy is probably an item asking councillors to reconsider their recent changes to the encampment protocol. They’re particularly concerned about the provisions that cap the number of shelter offers someone in an encampment can receive before they are evicted.
A staff report recommends Council hold off — for now — on establishing a maximum indoor temperature standard that’d require landlords to keep indoor temperatures below 26 degrees, citing “implementation costs and burdens to rental housing providers that do not currently provide air conditioning.” But Mayor Olivia Chow doesn’t want to wait. She’s submitted a motion asking staff to speed up their analysis and come back with a draft bylaw next summer.
A separate report on the impact of climate change in Toronto underscores the need to keep indoor spaces cool. An included projection says the average number of days per year warmer than 30 degrees could increase from about 18 today to as many as 78 days in the 2080s. Yikes.
WEDNESDAY: 🚇 The TTC Board meets. They’ll consider a recommendation to sign a 15-year deal with adtrackmedia that’ll see TTC tunnels outfitted with digital advertisements. The value of the deal is being kept secret in a confidential attachment. The report says that by making a deal, the ads “enhance the commuter experience with engaging content.” Sure, okay.
Another report reveals that the deployment of cell service in parts of the subway system has been delayed by a requirement to remove some asbestos discovered between Eglinton & York Mills and Dundas West & Lansdowne.
The same report tells us that the cost of TTC’s upgraded Hillcrest streetcar storage facility at Davenport & Bathurst is going up because the transit agency would like to add more parking spaces for its employees and other support vehicles. The lot will cost at least $7.95 million more than the budget.
🏚️ The Preservation Board meets. Ten years (!) after the study was first approved, an analysis of whether Bloor West Village should be designated as a Heritage Conservation District is finally complete. And — drumroll please — the answer is, well, no, apparently.
🚔 The Police Service Board meets. They’ll hear that the police would like to more than double the value of their five-year contract with Paladin for AV services, from $4.1 million to $9.9 million. They cite the need to “upgrade technology across the Service” and establish a new Major Incident Command Centre.
THURSDAY: ♿️ The Accessibility Advisory Committee meets. They’ll hear from staff about work to establish new guidelines for on-street accessible parking spaces, and promises to improve snow clearing this winter so everybody can get around.
🎭 The TO Live Board meets. They’ll consider a report recommending renewal of the naming rights deal for the Meridian Arts Centre. The company requesting a renewal is not named in the public report, but I’ve got a hunch.
🏢 The TCHC Board meets. They’ll be asked to approve a 2026 operating budget that’s actually down 2.6% versus 2025. TCHC says they found $7.6 million in efficiencies. They’ll also hear about a new safety strategy for TCHC properties. A related report features a look at crime stats at various locations.
FRIDAY: 🅿️ The Parking Authority Board meets. It’s the first meeting of the new-look interim board, after Mayor Olivia Chow got Council to dissolve the previous board last month. City Manager Paul Johnson is listed as the new chair.
One of their first orders of business will be to consider a growth strategy for Toronto Bike Share. The plan calls for $41.7 million in new capital spending.
The board will also review a list of the 264 people who currently have a pass entitling them to free parking at Green P lots. Eighteen members of Council are on the list.
Councillors who aren’t taking advantage of the free-parking perk are Councillor Stephen Holyday, Councillor Gord Perks, Councillor Alejandra Bravo, Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik, Councillor Vince Crisanti, Councillor Frances Nunziata and Councillor Dianne Saxe.
💰 The Investment Board meets. They’ll hear that investment returns in Q3, both for the City’s $3.1 billion Sinking Fund and $6.6 billion Long-Term Fund, came in below benchmark. Investment managers were hoping for a 2.9% return on the Sinking Fund and a 2.7% return on the Long-Term Fund. Both targets were missed by 0.5%.
NEXT WEEK: Council meets for the final time in 2025, starting on Tuesday.
City Hall Watcher #361
📊 Council Scorecard access code: LONGDECEMBER Thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week to get you ready for the December Council meeting. See you then.