The government can play a role in making life more affordable for everyone.

That a kid can grow up with full potential and not be held back.

[music] Mayor, I was asking you, when was the first time you kayaked?

Ah.

I was a junior forest ranger, so I started hanging out on the water in a canoe, when I was 16.

And I haven't stopped since.

Were you on these waters?

No.

It's up north, in a north area.

It's a very wild wilderness, it's the first time -I saw stars -Wow.

because I grew up in the high rises.

Right.

First time I saw the boreal forest, the stars, and the water.

I just fell in love.

So ever since I'm a kayaker, whitewater canoeists, and hiker, that's what I do.

You go out here with constituents sometimes?

-No, -No?

-sometimes I take my staff out.

-Uh huh.

I usually come out at 7 or 8:00 when the sun's about to set, watch the sunset, it's absolutely gorgeous and beautiful.

So you bike too.

What do you prefer, kayaking or biking?

I like to do both.

I sometimes take my paddle board, those stand up paddle board.

Uh-huh.

I have inflatable ones, put it in the back of my bike and, take it down to the water and pump it up and play.

This is St.

Jamestown, and we have a forest of high rises here, they are renting.

And this is where I grew up, Rose Avenue, lived here growing up as a teenager.

And, for a long time, the tenants needs are being ignored by the city, and they represent 50% of people that live in the city.

When I became the mayor, I wanted to make sure that the renters needs are dealt with by City Hall.

You've dedicated yourself to being the mayor, not just for homeowners, but for renters.

Right.

Why?

And what are you doing to help renters?

Yeah.

For far too long, the City Hall have not listened to their needs.

So I want, because I grew up here, I want to make sure what they need are heard and, they are taxpayers as much as anybody else.

So it's important to protect their rights, also.

And one of the key things we've done is, and you may have experience, where if the hot water doesn't work, the heat doesn't work, or the elevator's broken, and the landlord's not fixing it or taking far too long to fix it, what we have is by law enforcement officer to come and inspect the building and say to them, you have to fix this, right?

So these are city officials.

So, the landlord will need to do so.

Another policy that we've done is to, you know, some of these folks may be sick, or they might be laid off a bit, we have a rent bank that help them through the rough patches.

They have to pay it back.

But we give them a bit of support so they don't get evicted.

If they get evicted, we end up, having them in shelters, which is even more expensive anyway.

So is that also part of your agenda?

Preventing exorbitant increases year-to-year?

Rent control is a provincial, legislative responsibility, so we can't do anything about that.

But what we can do is, landlord using renovation as an excuse to jack up your rent, or that they claim that they are, renovating and therefore they evict you, and then the next person come in, they'll get your rent up by, say, 20%, which happens quite a lot.

We, in fact, have a term "reno-viction" it's so often that that happens.

So the city of Toronto now has a law that we would not allow that, to evict people.

So since every, landlord or every person that renovate has to get a building permit anyway, we look at the building permit and say, well, there's no reason why you have to evict people.

You're putting in a new counter, a new toilet, for example.

The person can still live there while you install these things.

So that would make the eviction illegal.

The other thing is that if that landlord is saying 15% rent increase, but if it's illegal, we provide legal support and we provide organizers to organize the tenants in a building to have a tenant association, because it's probably not happening just to you, but to all your neighbors.

And when your neighbors come together and fight them to court, you better chance you're going to win.

Especially those are the rent increases that are illegal.

Mayor, thank you for inviting me to dim sum with you and to live the Toronto life.

I really appreciate your time, thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You told me on a Saturday you had seven events in the community.

And you said you have the little frog in your throat because you speak so much probably.

Yeaeh.

By last night at 10:30, I finished the last event, I was talking so much by the end of the night.

It's, yeah, so this morning... What's the goal of talking as mayor?

You're speaking to constituents, and stakeholders, and investors.

Do you feel like you have a certain mission when you're talking, you seem, like a very improvizational, organic speaker, like you don't come with a script.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

Yeah.

The last two events were fundraisers for a Tamil Community Center, and a Chinese Culture Center and Asian Garden.

So they're community events where they there raising funds, but both of them are on city land.

So their relationship with the city has to be very connected.

And I'll use the Asian Garden, for example.

Seattle has one.

And, you know, they've been dreaming of an Asian Garden for several decades, actually.

They finally, raised quite a bit of funds.

And we're about to sign a lease for them, with them.

So all the activities are connected to the city.

So this block party was filled with local residents, people visiting, and, all the businesses showing their, Greek food, Souvlaki, Thai food, or any number of food.

And there were 3 or 4 stations where they were playing music of local performers, and anyone can come.

If you want to buy food, you buy food, you don't have to.

All the entertainment is free and there's a bouncy castle for kids.

So this city has, oh, 65 to 85 street festivals the entire summer.

Some are huge, like the Pride parades or the Caribana Festival.

It's sort of one of the biggest in North America, outside Trinidad.

So as the mayor of the city, I show support for the volunteers.

The hundreds of volunteers that usually work for months coming together, bringing all the people together.

That sense of belonging is phenomenal.

It doesn't matter, skin color, where you came from, how much money you have or don't have, how old, young or old.

There were 95 years old, there were babies, yesterday.

So I do a lot of that on the weekends just to show support and appreciation for the businesses and the volunteers that put these things together, which is one of the reason why I do so many activities.

And then we have all these charity runs that are so important for people to show they care I always call it a "caring city."

And if the mayor is not there, the mayor really not caring much.

So that's why I do all the events.

It's also a testament to you that you have kids and grandkids growing up here five minutes away from you.

Mm hmm.

Often posterity kind of gets exported to new and different places.

But in your case, you kept your roots right here in Toronto.

Right here.

I was a city councilor for quite a while, I always represented downtown, the financial district, the universities, and the waterfront.

The whole area, whole downtown that you're looking at.

I represented for three decades, almost four.

Are there some things that are most memorable from your tenure in public service?

One is, my late husband and I on a Christmas Eve came up with the idea, four decades ago, that every child should not be hungry.

So we started a, at that time, called School Nutrition Programs.

When you're hungry, you can't focus, you can't learn.

And if you have good food, you lower the obesity rate.

So better academic performance, better health, better energy.

Less bullying, like, you know, let's just do it.

So we started that program, and it took a long, long time to grow it.

And every step of the way, it was not easy, it's not cheap.

And finally, now, as a mayor, I could actually make it happen.

It only took several decades.

So that's quite memorable that we came of the idea of it, Christmas Eve, in fact, we wrote a letter and you would see the date on it.

That letter went to, all the people that needs to be involved to make it happen.

[music] This thing about Chinese food.

-Yes, tell me.

-You don't wait.

-You don't wait, okay let's eat!

-You should eat while it's hot.

Okay, let's eat!

[music] Help yourself.

And this is shrimp.

There's soy sauce, and, do you like hot sauce?

Yeah, I like hot sauce.

Do you want me to get a fork?

Oh, no.

You're okay.

I'm good, I'm managing!

I stab them just like you do.

And you use, you like the soy sauce?

No, I'm okay.

Yeah.

Plain?

Yeah, I'll do the same.

You know, that'll get messy anyway.

One of the things that I found interesting about your proposals for Toronto is that you seem to have adopted an American idea, the New Deal.

And those who are sympathetic with progressive causes would say it's an inexplicable tragedy that the New Deal in the United States is essentially dead.

It's creating prosperity, the green economy, while no one is left behind.

That has always been, equality, equal opportunity.

Everyone, you rise up together.

So that has always been the, whether it's the Martin Luther King or the, you know, successive government and it's called New Deal then, and this one, partially because of city.

The gap between the rich and poor is tremendously... Oh!

Thank you.

Here we go.

Stronger together!

Teamwork.

The gap between the rich and poor was severe, and... -Mm!

It's good.

-It's good?

You ordered that, well done.

We have very old infrastructure of subway falling apart, and, if I want to create more affordable housing, make life affordable for more people, extend library hours, community centers, not make the public... I'm going to cheat for this one.

Yeah, go for it.

Make the public transit more affordable, more reliable.

All of that costs money, which is where the New Deal comes from.

Right.

And at the core of it is how do we have the financial means to do all those things, right?

Feed more kids, build more homes that people can afford faster, have public transit that is reliable and affordable.

All those three elements require more financial support, which is where the New Deal comes from.

I want to share one of these... And your colleague said, you have to get both the shrimp and the pork because they look so different.

She said the pork ones are quite beautiful.

Ah, okay.

Right.

Okay.

You prefer shrimp versus?

I eat everything.

Yeah.

I hear you snack chronically.

-You're a chronic snacker.

-Mm hmm.

You bring snacks everywhere you go when you have seven meetings in a day that's understandable.

I eat all the time.

-This is a lot of food.

Whoa!

-I know, I know, it is.

That's what I said to your colleague.

Thank you.

This is kind of like egg drop soup, from what I gather, right?

Something like that.

Thank you.

You've had this idea of your whole life.

But I'm just wondering if you replicated the idea in history because of the New Deal in the United States.

I mean, the New Deal that... -That's the ideal.

-Yeah.

The ideal that no one is left behind.

That you, the public, the government can play a role in making life more affordable for everyone.

That a kid can grow up with full potential and not be held back, even if they grow up in poverty, if there is good public services around them, more libraries.

Community centers where they could learn to be best basketball player.

All of that is what the public can do.

Having a decent meal in school, that's possible.

You told me that you've recently gained some powers?

Or you're seeking to gain some powers?

I think you said you recently gained some powers as mayor.

In Ontario, they're copying the American style of mayors power.

Previously the city of Toronto, would have a mayor and the mayor is one vote among the lot of councilors.

And it doesn't have necessary control over the budget.

So the budget would be put together by council under the guidance of the mayor.

But New York mayor, for example, would have control over the budget, the structure, it's like a CEO or COO.

So the Ontario government, who Premier Doug Ford, have introduced a system where a strong mayor power, which allows you to, of course, hire and fire the top folks, administrator.

It's my budget.

I could exercise strong mayor power over, provincially, important matters like housing, for example, and public transit.

And it would require two thirds votes from council to overturn my decision.

So having that strong mayor power allowed me to, for example, make sure that every kid under 18 in school by September of next year would have a decent, good meal.

It's not a full lunch.

It's middle of the morning, mid-morning at least.

And it's pay what you can also, right?

But it's universal, so we don't segregate, poor kids you have them, other kids don't like Yeah.

you know, you don't want to stigmatize.

So it allowed me to do things like that, but I've not needed to use it.

-No?

-No, because I've had council support for every one of my budget by at least overwhelming majority, two thirds of councils.

So I don't really need to say my way or the highway, this is what I want.

So there are elements in the budget that everybody agrees with.

What do people disagree about in Toronto?

How to pay for it, sometimes.

I came in with a big budget deficit before I arrived.

It's about 1.8 billion.

Our budget is 18 billion.

1.8 billion is not small.

It was a deficit.

We're not allowed to run deficits, so you keep just borrowing more money.

With a capital budget of 60 billion, if you keep borrowing more.

The interest rate was quite high at that time.

I thought, I don't think we need to, we could do this any longer.

So I had a, I had to substantially, after finding money from every pocket, including people that buy new homes that are 5, 10, $12 million.

Those are expensive mansion.

It just touched 2% of people buying homes.

I'm asking them to pay more.

So we've done, people that leave mostly speculators homes vacant.

We are asking them to pay more because they have vacant homes.

Yeah.

That's one of the most irritating and damaging forces.

-Leaving place empty.

Uh huh.

-Right.

After I raised the, I call it, mansion tax.

Now, remember, it's only 2% of people buying houses.

Right.

Last year, there was a dramatic increase of people buying houses that are very expensive.

-Yeah.

-Why?

Because they want to buy these expensive homes and they have no trouble paying.

No trouble paying the taxes, or paying for the homes.

Yeah.

It didn't stop them.

Like there wasn't a boom.

People stopped buying expensive homes.

No.

It was a dramatic increase because... So, your case study is a validation of this, the veracity of this proposition that people want to and will patriotically pay more when they are those top earners.

Because, it's not a huge amount.

And if you look at the income level of the top 1 or 2%.

The dramatic increase in the last several decades, has been incredible.

They can afford it.

They're not going to take the money.

If they want to buy this beautiful house that is 12 million that have squash courts, swimming pools, and all that, they'll go buy it.

And just because you say that, you know, this land transfer tax is going to be a bit higher.

Didn't stop them from buying beautiful homes.

It didn't stop the transaction.

It didn't kill the market of that 2%.

Not whatsoever.

And the vacancy home tax.

What we want is less vacancy.

-Right.

-Right?

So the less we get the better it is because then people are actually renting those places.

It's no longer empty.

You mentioned vacancy taxes.

Is that a significant part of a pro housing?

Yes.

Pro accessible affordable housing agenda?

Yes.

Now there are over there.

-A condominium.

Okay.

-Yeah.

Right.

Now some of the people buying the units could be just investors.

They just want to make some money, which is fine.

-Yeah.

-Rent it out.

-You shouldn't leave it vacant.

-Right.

And some of them leave it vacant for any number of reasons.

Then you have to pay more.

So it's called a vacancy home levy tax, what they call it.

So we've expanded 3%.

So the money that we raised from that is used to build housing that people can afford.

Does that bring in significant revenue?

Yes.

Close to 100 million.

-That's significant.

-It's significant.

Yeah.

So we then turn around, use that money to help tenants to secure their buildings, turn it into a cooperative.

So kayaking is really good for your posture.

-Well.

-Right?

Because you're sitting here.

A lot of it is the core.

Because when you reach out you're extending your shoulder and your core, the strength come from the core, not just from the arm muscles.

So if your arm is tired, you're probably not using your core enough.

How does this compare on the spectrum of windiness right now?

How much windier would you go out in conditions?

I can tackle a lot of the wind.

I have a spray skirt.

Which means that it can, I can get bounce around with the spray, and it's covered.

So it won't get into the water.

So I've tackled some... -Big waves.

-Some waves.

Yeah.

Comes with experience, and I've been doing it for so long that it becomes second nature.

There's the three C's: Cool, calm, -Collected.

-and collected.

-Just steady paddling.

Yeah.

-Absolutely.

I also have an advantage over you.

What's that?

You're fit?

-My kayak has, no.

-And agile.

-No, my kayak has a rudder.

-Okay.

Which means I can use my leg to change the direction of the boat.

I see, because we've been spinning out here for a while, I'm glad it hasn't exhausted you -as much as it's exhausted me.

-No, not at all.

And this is very Canadian.

Being in the water, renting a kayak, or a canoe or a stand up paddle board.

You can see how busy it is.

And this is in mid-September.

It's so busy.

And so many people are just having fun.

One thing that I dream of doing is to train newcomers to Canada how to swim, how to kayak, and how to canoe, because some tragedy have taken places when newcomers don't know about the water, they don't know how to, swim.

Yeah.

This water can get very cold very quickly, if you don't.

And what's the cutoff date for you when you're going out here?

I hear you go out here in December.

I have a dry suit.

So never, no cut off date.

If there is no ice, I can kayak.

For what duration of time does it freeze over?

Not much depends with the climate change happening.

Yeah.

It doesn't freeze over as much.

Which is unfortunate.

So you can almost kayak throughout most of the year, which is beautiful.

It is beautiful.

And the jet ski folks are gone by that time.

Yeah.

And they, yeah, they a bit of a, yeah, a challenge.

So on the ineptness meter, how inept have I been out here?

You're totally fine, you look great with the level six jacket.

You look marvelous!

Color coordinated.

Ten out of ten, for my apparel.

But, how about for my athleticism?

-You didn't.

-Decent.

-You didn't fall in.

-Seven out of ten.

I didn't fall.

So you didn't fall in, which is, you know, it's a key thing.

You can get stuck in the shoreline.

And so you told me what is the waters that are tracked daily and our swimmable?

What's this bay?

What's the... This is called Cherry Beach, -Cherry Beach.

-it's a beautiful place where people love to come, they hike.

There's a big dog park, and people love to come and watch sunset.

And lovers like to hold hands watching sunset together.

It's a beautiful city park.

And, it's our service to the people of Toronto.

So, you come out here to rescue people?

I don't mean to rescue people.

But you have!

But I because I have, a throw bag, tow rope and all that... Were there any desperate people out here?

There were last, few days ago, one of the sailing person, is a novice.

She fell in the water, went to shore.

But her boat is in the middle of somewhere.

So I was coming in, it was also dark.

I have lights and all that.

So I towed the boat back for her.

So it's not.

I didn't rescue anyone, I rescued the boat.

Ahhh, time to relax.

All right.

It's lovely being with you.

Thank you so much.

And I really appreciated hearing about your New Deal, and your advocacy for rent, faring people, the rent, renters.

Renters and the fact that we could, make sure the parks are beautiful, clean.

It's part of the New Deal that we unlock some of the funds that we can then, get all the city services, in better shape.

Fixed and decades of neglect and it's getting better.

It's not perfect at all, still lots to do.

[music] Continuing production of The Open Mind has been made possible by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Angelson Family Foundation, Robert and Kate Niehaus, Robert S. Kaplan Foundation, Grateful American Foundation, Draper Foundation, and Lawrence B. Benenson.