Meet the millennials vying to unseat incumbents in Toronto

“Hi, I'm Kevin Vuong and I'm running to represent our community in the upcoming municipal election. I wanted to come by and say hello!”

Vuong delivered this cheery message while standing in the corridor of a downtown Toronto condo that was paralyzed by another one of the city’s flash storms this summer.

Some 72 mm of rain fell in the span of two to three hours on August 7, causing widespread power outages, turning streets into rivers, stranding cars and flooding Union Station. The heavy rainfall threw the condo where Vuong lives into chaos, debilitating three out of five elevators, resulting in ridiculously long wait times for people coming in and out.

For Vuong, a 29-year-old son of Vietnamese refugees, the situation is indicative of a larger issue: he says the city has simply not kept pace with the services and infrastructure that is needed to accommodate a booming downtown condo and apartment population.

“The city’s discussions of flood protection are centred around houses and townhouses,” he noted, but rarely are condos and apartments discussed. “I don’t think many of our city councillors actually live in a building.”

To change this, he's running for office, on a platform that that calls on the city to redesign its infrastructure around crisis response, public space usage and road safety to accommodate dense vertical communities. As the president of his condo board, he mandated first aid training for his building staff in case of medical emergencies, and he is pushing for stricter elevator maintenance contracts in the city.

Vuong is also deeply concerned about the environmental challenges that will disproportionately impact future generations. “Climate change requires urgent action. We need to aggressively reduce emissions and wastes. As a starting point, we need to invest in buildings and older communities so that they can support composting and extreme weather retrofits.” he emphasized.

Vuong is among a new crop of millennials across North America who are dipping their toes into the political arena, challenging what they consider to be the establishment’s sluggish progress and lack of diverse representation. In the United States, a wave of millennial Democratic socialists are shifting the political terrain by scoring victories in the midterm Democratic primaries, ousting incumbents with their progressive platforms that promote universal medicare, tenant rights, and the end of fossil fuel dependency.

Echoes of this broader political movement can be found in Toronto’s municipal election, where generational and demographic changes in the city have spawned young candidates who are not only trumpeting progressive politics suited to the needs of their times, but are also pushing for a more diverse and representative council. 51.5 percent of Toronto’s population identify as racialized, making it one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Yet, Toronto’s city council is 90 percent white, with power asymmetrically concentrated in the hands of middle-aged men and political dynasties.

Vuong wants to change the situation. He and his young team have knocked on more than 30,000 doors. But like other newcomers, Vuong is fighting an uphill battle against the incumbent, Joe Cressy, also a progressive millennial. All the political novices face the added pressure of campaigning in wards that almost doubled in size, after Premier Doug Ford slashed the number of city wards from 47 to 25. The election is October 22.

In North York region, Saman Tabasinejad is a 25-year old Iranian-Canadian campaigning to represent her ward Willowdale. Tabasinejad is proud that she lives in one of the most diverse neighborhoods of Toronto, where Chinese, Korean, Iranian and Russian communities co-exist in a cultural mosaic. A champion of local ethnic restaurants and cultural festivals, she wants to transform her neighborhood into a vibrant cultural hub that attracts visitors from all around the city. To achieve better accessibility, she is advocating for increased transit to and from her area.

While studying political science at Carleton University, Tabasinejad (pictured above) worked at a nonprofit that aimed to provide housing for refugees. She witnessed the organization hitting a brick wall in how much it could accomplish due to larger systemic policies. The desire to enact changes at the policy level galvanized her to get involved with politics. She is determined to bring progressive politics into a historically conservative neighborhood.

“Young people are the greatest assets of the city. We propel entrepreneurship and innovation. However, we can’t thrive when we are impeded by barriers such as housing affordability and long commute times. The city needs to help us.”

In stark contrast to Tabasinejad who is running in one of Toronto’s most affluent wards, Tiffany Ford is a school trustee running for city council in York West — a ward traditionally stigmatized in the media as the most dangerous and crime-ridden neighborhood in Toronto, and home to the Jane and Finch intersection.

“Poverty breeds violence, unfortunately,” Ford, 36, said.

An undaunted and eloquent young black woman, Ford (pictured above) is up against incumbent Giorgio Mammoliti, one of Toronto’s most controversial city councillors who has held office for more than twenty years.

While sitting at the back of her canvassing van to go to her sister’s house to pick up campaign materials, Ford pointed to the neighborhood that she grew up in and the school she went to. “My high school was voted as the worst school in Toronto, and that’s what motivated me to run for trustee. I fought for capital funding in these schools so that students can have access to better education and facilities.”

Ford is vowing to change the narrative surrounding her ward through youth programs and local business development. She sees tremendous untapped potential for economic and employment opportunities.

Ford has received ample support from her community, but she has also received doubt.

“One lady asked me if I was ready to take a man’s job. This is not a man’s job,” she said.

While Ford decided to run for office out of frustration and dissatisfaction with the status quo, another young black woman full of enthusiasm, 29-year old Amber Morley, decided to run because she wanted to give back to the community that helped her succeed, by helping other youths succeed.

Morley is running in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, where incumbent Mark Grimes has been reigning for fifteen years.

Growing up in a racialized and low-income community, Morley (pictured above, on the right) and her friends were met with suspicion by the police when they were merely hanging out on the stoop.

“I felt uncomfortable. It was hard for us to find places to hang out,” she said. “I wanted to create safe spaces for kids to hang out so we didn’t have to be out on the streets.”

Since then, Morley became heavily involved with the South Etobicoke Youth Assembly, a local youth-led and youth-run organization. Together with her peers, they filled in gaps in services, providing capacity building and leadership programs to help youths develop social skills, and talent shows to showcase the creativity of emerging artists in her community. She mobilized youths to engage in conversations around community decisions, and proved to them that their voices did matter.

Morley is passionate about the fight against structural inequality, and the fight for environmental justice.

“I want to amplify the voices of young people on council. I want to be a role model to other young people in my community, and show them that they too can do it.”

Photos of Saman Tabasinejad, Kevin Vuong and Tiffany Ford by Lilly Tong. Photo of Amber Morley provided by candidate.