To the Point for the Week of July 26, 2026
To the Point for the Week of July 26, 2026
We’re touching on every level of government this week. A new fighter has entered the ring of the Toronto Mayoral Race. Ford’s airport aspirations are grounded while the Prime Minister’s high-speed rail is at risk of derailing.
TORONTO MAYORAL RACE
Spoiler Alert!
Not to worry. This week's edition of To the Point won't include a review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Instead, the focus here is to talk about political spoilers.
What's a political spoiler, you might ask? A political spoiler is a candidate who objectively has little to no chance of winning an election but whose presence in the race siphons votes from a similarly politically aligned opponent and almost certainly has a critical impact on the outcome of the election. These types of candidates either truly believe in their longshot chances of winning or have a team of political strategists who are confident in a novel path to victory. The result is often that a candidate from an opposing ideological and policy position secures victory due to a vote split.
Enter Chris Alexander into the Toronto Mayoral race. The former Ajax-Pickering MP and Harper government cabinet minister formally filed his mayoral nomination papers this week. A surprise to many, but not all, as many insiders anticipated Alexander's entrance after his team put out feelers. Before entering federal politics, Alexander served as Canada's Ambassador to Afghanistan. His time in politics was marred with controversies, most notably his support for a "barbaric cultural practices" tip line. In a culturally, racially and religiously diverse city like Toronto, it's exceptionally difficult to imagine a scenario in which his candidacy draws broad support.
Before and after polls released this week signal Alexander's already sizable impact on the race. Liaison Strategies conducted a poll between July 24th and 26th that showed a tight and competitive race between Mayor Chow and Brad Bradford. Although the poll continues to show Bradford trailing Chow 49% to 41%, the conditions still favour Bradford since Chow's ceiling of support remains low while Bradford has room to grow as he chips away at Chow's lead. A two-way race was looking like the most favourable conditions to unseat Chow.
With Chris Alexander in the picture, that scenario has changed, although we caution on drawing a firm conclusion that this snapshot of the mayor's race is entirely predictive of the outcome. Forum Research's poll on July 30 has Bradford dropping to 32%, fifteen points back of Chow, with Chris Alexander trailing way back of the pack at 11%. The poll is an early signal that the movement is clearly occurring in the anti-Chow lane and presents a conundrum for Bradford's ability to consolidate that vote.
The question on every politico's mind that isn't on the Chris Alexander campaign is: why? Despite being a Toronto city councillor since 2018, a chief challenge to overcome for Brad Bradford's campaign is his low name recognition. His campaign has done a good job at increasing his profile that we anticipate will continue to grow as we get closer to September. It's a challenge, but not impossible to overcome given the issues in this election and Chow's downward trending approval, not to mention Torontonians' views on the direction in which the city is heading.
Chris Alexander has no prior record in Toronto municipal politics, not even as a known observer and commentator of the dynamics at Toronto City Hall, or any city hall for that matter. He has held various executive and advisory roles, including as a director of United Corporations Ltd. and an executive with UK-based strategic advisory firm Hakluyt & Company after opening a Toronto office.
Again, why is Chris Alexander, who on paper has no political connection to the City of Toronto or City Hall, running for mayor? It's not to say that Chris Alexander does not have a resume befitting of an effective elected official but entering the race as an outsider with presumably lower name recognition than Bradford with such a short runway to improve on that metric is befuddling. A political cynic may view his entrance into the race as one of campaign viability versus strategic incentives. Maybe Chris Alexander truly believes he can win. Maybe there are other factors at play.
The strategic implications facing the Bradford campaign are significant. Bradford now has a dual-track campaign, one highlighting the perceived failures of Chow's administration and the other focused on fending off a seemingly weak challenger whose strength is acting as a potential spoiler for those seeking a change at City Hall. If his campaign fails to do either, then Chris Alexander's campaign will have succeeded in spoiling the race and helping Chow get re-elected.
ONTARIO & FEDERAL
Trust Issues
Under Canadian federalism, trust between levels of government is never set in stone. Trust is built privately between first ministers and senior officials, but it breaks down in public. Trust is malleable and shifts with the ebbs and flows of public opinion, caucus nerves, and electoral prospects. Agreements made in private, particularly those sealed with a handshake, can quickly unravel and weaken the next deal before it’s even made. That is the risk now hanging over future relations and agreements between Ontario and the federal government.
The fallout over the federal government’s decision to block Premier Doug Ford’s vision of extending the runway at Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport to allow for larger commercial jets is a case study in how quickly federal-provincial trust can evaporate. Multiple outlets, citing senior government sources, have reported that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Ford had a handshake agreement that would see the federal government support Ford’s airport expansion plans for the Premier’s support of the Alto project that is intended to connect Toronto to Quebec City via a high-speed rail corridor.
Internal sources have also said that the Premier was genuinely blindsided by the decision, and there’s little to suggest that Ford was given the courtesy of a heads up prior to federal Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon’s announcement pulling the feds’ tacit support. Ford allegedly expressed his displeasure and disappointment with the government’s decision directly to Carney via phone call.
MacKinnon cited overwhelming opposition to the project via public consultation, environmental impacts, noise impacts, and housing and development conflicts. However, the more likely reason is based on cold political math and lends credibility to the idea that the Prime Minister’s position isn’t as stable as it appears on paper. That is not to say that the federal Liberals are at risk of losing their majority even if the worst-case scenario of losing all three upcoming byelections came to fruition. What we mean is the Prime Minister is beginning to reveal vulnerabilities, particularly around his environmental policies, as noted by Angus Reid whose poll this week found that Carney voters are leaning to the NDP over the government’s reversal or loosening of Trudeau’s climate change policies and its support of large-scale natural resource projects.
The federal government’s decision to block Ford’s Billy Bishop vision is intended to protect their progressive flank in seat-rich GTA and across the country. The Prime Minister had no interest in giving Ford a win in Toronto ridings that intensely dislike the Premier’s plans for the airport, his party, and him personally. Carney did not want to have to campaign in three by-elections defending a decision that is unpopular with his caucus and base of supporters and be seen as facilitating a project that would threaten planned housing units that would run counter to his promise to build more affordable housing.
The federal decision recast what Ford thought was a done deal as merely conditional on Ottawa’s polling, issues management, and keeping caucus onside. It fundamentally shifts the foundation upon which the Prime Minister and the Premier’s relationship was based: mutual trust and a shared desire to see things built. The Premier now has reason to view every issue and agreement – both formal and informal – between both levels of government with skepticism and question how much weight he should place upon the Prime Minister’s word moving forward.
The episode has already altered deal-making behaviour moving forward. Ontario’s Transport Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria stated that fringe groups were responsible for the blocking of the project and insisted the province would consider all options to move forward. Moreover, sources say the province is now rethinking its support for Alto after the decision to block the airport expansion, which faces intense local opposition along the Kingston-Ottawa corridor. Expect the province to take a hard-lined “trust but verify” approach to future discussions around housing, infrastructure, and other policy areas where the province and federal government intersect.
The Billy Bishop-Alto fallout won’t immediately end federal-provincial cooperation. We don’t anticipate intense publicly facing tension or a war of words between the Prime Minister and the Premier. At the end of the day, they both need each other to lend political legitimacy to intergovernmental policy decisions and cooperation, but it will certainly change the terms upon which future agreements are made. From Ontario’s perspective, trust is now something to be verified first and believed later.
Christopher Mourtos, writing on behalf of ONpoint Strategy Group
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