In a post on his website, <\/a>the 57-year-old father of three explained that he is running because \u201cToronto has been standing still for three years.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cA city with this much talent, strength and potential should not be under-performing. We need to work together to make Toronto better \u2013 the best it can be,\u201d Alexander said in the post titled \u201cWhy Am I Running?\u201d<\/p>\n
The former Ajax-Pickering MP will face current mayor Olivia Chow and Coun. Brad Bradford, the top two contenders, in the Oct. 26 municipal election. As of Tuesday, there are 32 candidates vying for the city\u2019s top job.<\/p>\n
On his website, Alexander laid out his priorities as mayor, which includes better public transit and affordable housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spent most of my career in public service \u2013 from Afghanistan to the federal cabinet table in Ottawa. Now I want to put that experience at the service of my city,\u201d Alexander said in his post.<\/p>\n
He was Canada\u2019s citizenship and immigration minister from 2013 to 2015. He also served as Canada\u2019s ambassador to Afghanistan between 2003 and 2005.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt our best, we are a city of great achievements. With a bit of vision and teamwork, we can get back on that track.\u201d<\/p>\n
With files from Siobhan Morris and Phil Tsekouras<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Conservative cabinet minister is throwing his name in the hat to be Toronto\u2019s mayor. Chris Alexander…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[712,49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-832857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}