The candidate for mayor of Toronto, Ana Bailão, said this Saturday that “it is a product of the Portuguese community” and wants to bring that brand to the management of the city.
“I am not a person who got into politics because I like politics. I got in because of my community work, what I’ve done and learned, the values I’ve acquired through my community work. product of this community, I am an active member of this community and I hope that the community sees itself in my project, that it sees the services that are intended to be improved”, he said, in an interview with Agência Lusa.
Born in Vila Franca de Xira (Lisbon), Ana Bailão has lived in Canada since she was 15 years old.
All this means that “he can contribute his life and professional experience for the benefit of the city and the class that suffers today,” he explained, promising concrete policies.
People “are feeling the impact of inflation, with more and more expensive house prices, with more expensive prices for services. We have to have a very strong focus on providing good services and making sure that people receive the value they are due for what that they are paying”. ” she added.
The Portuguese-Canadian was a councilor from 2010 to 2022, representing the Davenport electoral district, and more recently the 18th ward, due to the redrawing of electoral districts, he obtained about 84 percent of the votes.
About 50 percent of Toronto’s population, who were not born in Canada, are people who come to the country in search of “opportunities, security, a perfectly functioning city,” he recalled.
“Many feel this, I felt it when I came here to this city. But today, after this great pandemic, the city is having difficulties to return to normality, and to provide the services that the residents and those who pay for it deserve, ”he justified. .
Graduated from the University of Toronto in Sociology and European Studies, since 2010 she was responsible for the municipal affordable housing commission, having also been vice president of the municipality for five years, until 2022.
The Portuguese-Canadian also promised to focus on “providing services”, especially in “housing”, an area in which many people today “feel the difficulty of buying or renting a house in Toronto”.
By 2031, the Canadian municipality expects to build around 281,000 new homes, an insufficient number due to immigration.
“We have a difficult financial situation, the federal and provincial governments have helped us a lot during the pandemic with subsidies, but we need a sustainable solution,” he stressed.
One of Ana Bailão’s priorities in her electoral program is to ‘return’ the management of the Don Valley Parkway (DVP) and Gardiner Expressway to the Ontario provincial government led by the conservative Doug Ford.
The candidate also points out that the municipality will have to come up with a smarter solution since Toronto residents “are paying for the maintenance of these roads through property taxes,” which is not the case in other cities in the region where they are managed. by the government.
“The city of Toronto spends around 200 million Canadian dollars (134 million euros) a year on the maintenance and reconstruction of the Gardiner Expressway,” he lamented.
Another of the issues defended by Ana Bailão is public security, regretting that other candidates defend a cut in the budget of the Toronto police, managed by the municipality, wanting that security force “more trained, well financed”, and even with support programs. mental health and for the homeless.
The city of Toronto is expected to elect a new mayor on June 26.
The midterm elections were scheduled after the resignation last month of ‘mayor’ John Tory, following a scandal, after the mayor confirmed that he had been in an intimate relationship with a former employee during the pandemic.
Source: TSF
