Councillor says he\u2019s made progress\u00a0<\/p>\n
On a late September morning, the grounds of Allan Gardens were peaceful. People walked their dogs along paths between the bright green grass, and the sun sparkled off the dome of the historic conservatory.<\/p>\n
It was a much different scene than three years ago, when the park at Sherbourne and and Gerrard Streets was the site of one of Toronto\u2019s largest encampments. Chris Moise, a former health-care worker and police officer, said its transformation is proof of the good work he\u2019s done to address homelessness since he was elected Toronto Centre councillor in 2022.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Toronto councillor Chris Moise is running for re-election in Toronto Centre.<\/p>\n
Andrew Francis Wallace Toronto Star<\/p>\n
In 2023, he supported a resource-intensive strategy<\/a> that involved the city setting up a help centre in Allan Gardens, and offering people living there mental and physical health care, harm reduction programs, income supports,\u00a0and referrals to housing and shelter. Although some questioned the cost of the approach, the city reported that by May 2024, 97 people had been housed and 314 referred to shelters.<\/p>\n Moise said he has also increased cleaning in local parks, and backed a downtown outreach team that pairs public health nurses with police to distribute food, clothing and harm-reduction supplies, and connect homeless people to shelters.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are using a compassionate, humanistic approach,\u201d said Moise,\u00a0who Mayor Olivia Chow tapped as health board chair this term.<\/p>\n Despite what Moise sees as progress, while door-knocking at a condo building near Allan Gardens last month, some residents still had complaints about the state of the ward\u2019s green spaces. One woman, a former TTC worker, said she planned to vote for him. But another accused him of providing \u201cunsatisfactory\u201d responses to messages she sent to his office, and practically slammed the door on his canvassers.<\/p>\n The councillor acknowledged that it can be difficult to get across the message that progress is being made when constituents still see problems on their street. He argued the city can only do so much, and provincial policies such as the closure of supervised consumption sites have caused drug users to consume in public, or overwhelm the remaining service providers in the ward, such as Street Health at Sherbourne and Dundas Street<\/a>s.\u00a0<\/p>\n Residents \u201conly see what\u2019s in front of them,\u201d not \u201cthe work behind the scenes and some of the successes that we\u2019ve had,\u201d Moise said. If it weren\u2019t for the measures he\u2019s put in place, \u201cthings would have been a lot worse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Challenger filed ethics complaint against Moise<\/p>\n At 4 p.m. on a recent Wednesday afternoon, more than a dozen people sat in Barbara Hall Park<\/a> off of Church Street. Some talked and laughed, others slumped motionless on a bench. One man smoked from a glass pipe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Daniel Tate, one of the 10 candidates hoping to oust Moise, pointed out the garbage strewn around a storefront next to the park, which he says the incumbent councillor has allowed to become a no-go zone for locals.<\/p>\n Daniel Tate is running for council in Toronto Centre.\u00a0<\/p>\n Richard Lautens Toronto Star<\/p>\n Tate\u00a0runs the divisive IntegrityTO online advocacy that has gained popularity by posting graphic\u00a0\u2014 and critics say dehumanizing\u00a0\u2014 videos of homeless people and drug users on Toronto\u2019s streets. The account has also reposted\u00a0a video of a comedian performing a racist caricature of Chow.<\/p>\n Tate has clashed with Moise before, and was a vocal critic of the councillor\u2019s support in 2023 for renaming Yonge-Dundas Square. Tate filed a complaint with the city integrity commissioner after a January 2025 exchange in which Moise accused him of harbouring \u201ca white supremacy view.\u201d The commissioner found Moise breached council\u2019s code of conduct<\/a>, but didn\u2019t recommend any penalty. Tate denies holding racist beliefs.<\/p>\n Tate advocates\u00a0a \u201czero-tolerance approach to criminal behaviour in public spaces,\u201d and supports police patrols on transit, mandatory addiction treatment for some drug users, and \u201cmeaningful consequences\u201d for vandalism, public defecation and other petty offences.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He has called for\u00a0an end to\u00a0the distribution of drug paraphernalia, which organizations such as the Canadian Mental Health Association say is a harm reduction measure that can reduce illness and overdoses, but which Tate argues is a \u201cfailed\u201d policy taxpayers shouldn\u2019t foot the bill for.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As he knocked on doors at a condo building on Gloucester Street just north of Barbara Hall, he vowed to \u201cfight back\u201d on behalf of residents fed up with the state of their neighbourhood. At least one resident said he followed Tate online and was happy to meet him in person.<\/p>\n Toronto Centre – Ward 13<\/p>\n The dense ward in the heart of Toronto is home to some of the city\u2019s most distinctive districts, from the tenant neighbourhood of Regent Park in the southeast, to the LGBTQ bars of the Church-Wellesley Village in the northwest. It also features the bustling campus of Toronto Metropolitan University, and important landmarks such as St. Lawrence Market and Riverdale Farm. It\u2019s a young and booming part of downtown, where the population jumped more than 17 per cent in five years, rising to 117,000 by 2021, and the median age is under 35.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Tate acknowledged his online popularity won\u2019t necessarily translate into electoral success. But he said he\u2019s has dozens of volunteers, and has raised more than $75,000 for his campaign. As of Friday, Moise said he\u2019d raised about $50,000, while\u00a0candidate Curran Stikuts said he had netted more than $60,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tate\u2019s opponents charge he\u2019s adept at stirring up anger about Toronto\u2019s problems, but it\u2019s unrealistic to think the city can\u00a0arrest its way out of complex issues like addiction and homelessness.<\/p>\n He conceded that there are no overnight fixes, but disagreed that he\u2019s merely getting people fired up.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are already angry,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t need Daniel Tate to show them what they see every single day when they go to the grocery store.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Prominent progressive now backing a new candidate<\/p>\n The race in Toronto Centre took a twist in August when Kristyn Wong-Tam, the area\u2019s popular former councillor and now the local NDP MPP, announced they were endorsing Stikuts instead of Moise. Wong-Tam backed Moise four years ago, but said that since then had heard that residents were \u201cdisappointed\u201d with his leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n While only 36, Stikuts has done advocacy around community housing, education policy and missing men in the Church and Wellesley Village, and his \u201ccompassionate\u201d and \u201chardworking\u201d approach would make him an effective councillor, Wong-Tam said.<\/p>\n According to Moise, his relationship with Wong-Tam broke down because after he took office the MPP \u201ctried to tell me how to do my job,\u201d and bombarded him with \u201cconstant\u201d phone calls and texts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Wong-Tam refuted that account. They said they gave Moise space and only reached out to warn him that constituents were complaining he was \u201cunresponsive.\u201d<\/p>\n The former director of advocacy at the 519 Community Centre,\u00a0Ward 10 council candidate Curran Stikuts has also been endorsed by the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, and says he\u2019s running a \u201cstrong progressive campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n Lance McMillan Toronto Star<\/p>\n The former director of advocacy at the 519 Community Centre, Stikuts has also been endorsed by the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, and says he\u2019s running a \u201cstrong progressive campaign.\u201d On a recent evening, he posed for a photo with more than a half-dozen volunteers before the group split up to blitz a tower at Wellesley and Sherbourne Streets.<\/p>\n At the doors Stikuts told residents there \u201cwill always be a role\u201d for law enforcement to play in combating public disorder. But he said the policies that would provide stability to homeless people \u201care the same things we need to do in order make sure that you feel safe walking home at night.\u201d That includes making investments in affordable and supportive housing, treatment options, cleaner public spaces and the community crisis service that provides a non-police response to some mental health calls.<\/p>\n In an interview, Stikuts accused Moise of failing to broker difficult conversations between residents, service providers and city staff to get everyone on the same page about the ward\u2019s problems. \u201cIt\u2019s an important job of the councillor to help facilitate that, and I haven\u2019t seen that over the past four years,\u201d he said, claiming residents have told him calls to the councillor\u2019s office have gone unanswered.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moise called accusations he is not responsive \u201cnot accurate.\u201d He said his office keeps close track of constituents\u2019 messages and he prides himself on returning them. \u201cI\u2019m always engaged with the public,\u201d he said, pointing to 18 town halls over his term, and weekly meetings with residents.<\/p>\n The councillor said losing Wong-Tam\u2019s backing won\u2019t make it harder for him to win. \u201cI have a record, people know what I\u2019ve been doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Other candidates include tenant advocate Walied Khogali Ali<\/a>, and Nicki Ward<\/a>, who finished a distant second to Moise in 2022 and would be Toronto\u2019s first openly trans councillor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the run-up to this month\u2019s municipal election, the Star is profiling several key battleground races, offering intimate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-927500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927500","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=927500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n