Why don’t people care about the Toronto election?

It’s hard to get excited about a fight when you don’t know the combatants.

That’s why The Toronto Star’s city hall bureau chief, David Rider, thinks John Tory will likely cruise to an easy victory on election night, despite the plethora of woes that currently plague Toronto after a lengthy, revenue-obliterating pandemic.

But Rider said it’s not just the lingering economic and psychological effects of COVID that’s sapped the energy from the municipal election.

Unlike federal and provincial elections, where candidates are aligned with their respective parties and well-known platforms and positions on critical topics, municipal elections can be an abyss of unrecognizable names, alienating voters.

“We pay way more attention to federal and provincial races than we do to city council, and that’s reflected in voter turnout,” Rider told The Big Story Podcast in a recent interview.

“With municipal elections, they are handed a list of names and really, if it’s not a celebrity or potentially the incumbent … they probably have almost no idea who this person is.”

“I think it does make it harder for people to get interested when it isn’t the same kind of party horserace that gets so much attention at the federal and provincial levels.”

And while mayoral candidate and urban planner Gil Penalosa has unveiled intriguing policies, including his recent Green Loop urban trail network plan, Rider says it’s likely not enough to derail Tory’s bid for a third term.

“I think Tory has found a kind of centrist political groove … he hasn’t angered people too much.”

“The drumbeat from the progressive side of the city is that Toronto is a city in decline and that it’s largely due to John Tory’s insistence that property taxes in the past be kept at or below the rate of inflation,” Rider said.

But Rider says that can also be a feather in his cap.

“He can claim that property taxes remained low.”

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What about some of Tory’s previous election promises?

“He promised the Housing Now program … using underutilized city land…and getting developers to build housing on it with …various kinds of low-income housing.”

“That has happened. There are lots of projects approved or underway in various stages, but critics can point out that none of the units have actually opened — that it’s kind of still in the works, and we haven’t seen the proof in the pudding.”

Tory’s visionary SmartTrack plan from 2018 largely remained just that — a vision — Rider said.

“It only exists as a concept anymore, the Ontario government unveiled its transit expansion policy, including for Toronto, and SmartTrack … is being subsumed into the Ontario government plan. It’s hard to point a finger and say SmartTrack is here or there; it barely exists, if at all.”

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In the end, Rider thinks the public’s apathy will benefit Tory and other well-known incumbents in various ridings but could hurt the city in the long run.

“I think the significant danger is if you have a low energy kind of disaffected voter election essentially, the threat is the politician wins and kind of thinks they can do whatever they want because people didn’t care before, so they are going to continue not caring.

“We should pay more attention because municipal races touch our lives way more often and in a more impactful way than federal and provincial policy. I mean, how much property tax you pay, whether your garbage gets collected, whether you have a park where the washroom will be open — all those things affect you every day, whereas a lot of provincial and federal policy doesn’t in the same way.”

He advises the public to do homework and learn about the candidates before voting.

“It’s an investment,” he said. “But it’s an investment that will pay off.”