{"id":834302,"date":"2026-07-29T19:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/834302\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T19:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:23:13","slug":"former-conservative-cabinet-minister-chris-alexander-enters-torontos-mayoral-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/834302\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander enters Toronto\u2019s mayoral race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Alexander registered on Wednesday at city hall as a mayoral candidate for the Toronto municipal election, scheduled for Oct. 26.MATTHEW FRANK\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Former federal Conservative citizenship and immigration minister Chris Alexander has registered as a mayoral candidate in Toronto\u2019s fall election as he pitched himself as someone who brings an outside perspective to civic politics.<\/p>\n

Mr. Alexander, a one-term federal MP who represented the eastern suburb of Ajax-Pickering, served in former prime minister Stephen Harper\u2019s cabinet from 2013 to 2015. <\/p>\n

His candidacy has the potential to shift the dynamics of the campaign, as Mayor Olivia Chow seeks re-election<\/a> against Councillor Brad Bradford, a centre-right municipal politician who lost to Ms. Chow in 2023 and has widely been viewed as her strongest challenger.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Mr. Alexander arrived at Toronto city hall with his wife and three children to sign candidate registration papers for the election, which is slated for Oct. 26. Despite his previous Tory party ties, he told reporters during a Wednesday scrum he\u2019s past partisan politics, and Toronto needs centrist leadership to succeed. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs democracy in Canada has always shown, it doesn\u2019t hurt and it usually helps when people from outside of a given political arena bring their expertise and their experience to bear,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m one of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to his stint in federal politics, Mr. Alexander severed as ambassador to Afghanistan and lived in the country for six years while Canadian troops were deployed. <\/p>\n

His time in federal politics was coloured by an incident during the 2015 federal campaign, when his party proposed a \u201cbarbaric cultural practices\u201d tip line to report incidents of honour killings, forced marriages and polygamy. Mr. Alexander lost his seat to the Liberals in that election.<\/p>\n

Mr. Alexander has since described the proposal as a \u201cmistake.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Chris Alexander registered on Wednesday at city hall as a mayoral candidate for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,3302,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-834302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-toronto","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834302","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=834302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}