Maple Express | October 27, 2026: Olivia Chow wins a second term as Toronto mayor

1. Olivia Chow wins a second term as Toronto mayor

Source: CP24

Olivia Chow has been re-elected mayor of Toronto. The CP24-CTV Election Desk declared her victory at 9:59 p.m. Monday, the first outlet to make the call. With 99.2 per cent of polls reporting, Chow held 54.2 per cent of the vote to Brad Bradford's 41.1 per cent, a margin of roughly 127,627 votes.

Speaking at her campaign headquarters Monday night, Chow said "the people of Toronto have spoken." She told residents who could not vote, or chose not to, that she is their mayor too. Her campaign centred on affordability, with pledges to freeze TTC fares, make transit free after 10 paid rides a week, and add lunch to an existing school nutrition program.

Bradford called Chow to concede and congratulate her, saying the result was undisputed. The win gives Chow her first full term in the mayor's office, which she first entered through a 2023 byelection.

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2. Mississauga turns the page: Tedjo defeats Parrish and Crombie

Source: CP24

Mississauga has a new mayor. With all polls reporting, city councillor Alvin Tedjo took 39.2 per cent of the vote and 74,479 ballots, beating incumbent Carolyn Parrish by more than 22,600 votes. Parrish finished at 27.3 per cent, while former mayor Bonnie Crombie was third at 22.7 per cent.

"Mississauga has voted for change," Tedjo told cheering supporters, calling it a historic choice. He thanked Parrish, Crombie and fellow contender Dipika Damerla, acknowledging a tough race.

Tedjo, 41 and a father of three, came to Canada at age four and has sat on council since 2022. He campaigned on a two-year freeze of the city's portion of residential property taxes and a larger seniors' tax rebate. Parrish, conceding, said her mistake was not simplifying her message. Tedjo becomes Mississauga's eighth mayor and the first man to hold the job since 1978.

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3. Horwath defeated in Hamilton as Loomis completes a four-year comeback

Source: CP24

Hamilton voters have replaced incumbent mayor Andrea Horwath, who finished a distant third. Business leader Keanin Loomis held about 41 per cent of the vote with more than 88 per cent of polls reporting. City councillor Rob Cooper was second at roughly 32 per cent, while Horwath sat near 14 per cent.

Loomis is the former head of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce and most recently served as president and CEO of the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction. Horwath beat him by about 1,600 votes in the 2022 mayoral race; on Monday he led her by nearly 40,000. "Four years ago, I stood in front of Hamilton and gave a very different speech," he told supporters. "We lost by 1,663 votes. We didn't quit."

Loomis pledged to bring business, labour and other levels of government together to protect steel jobs during the trade war with the United States, saying the win belongs to the people of Hamilton and that hope only matters if it becomes action.

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4. How Chow won: a Scarborough sweep and a record vote count

Source: CP24

Chow's winning map was clear. She took all five Scarborough wards with between 51 per cent and 56.7 per cent of the vote, an area where she spent much of the campaign. She also ran far ahead in several downtown wards, including Parkdale-High Park at 69 per cent, Davenport at 69.3 per cent and Toronto-Danforth at 71.1 per cent.

Bradford led in parts of Etobicoke and North York, taking Etobicoke Centre with 59 per cent and York Centre with 64.2 per cent. But Chow edged him by 0.9 percentage points in Etobicoke North, 5.1 points in Toronto-St. Paul's, 4.9 points in York South-Weston and just 0.7 points in Don Valley North.

Turnout climbed sharply. With 99.2 per cent of polls reporting, about 976,550 votes had been cast for mayor, up from 563,124 in the 2022 municipal election. Chow took 529,042 votes to Bradford's 401,415. Pollster Nick Nanos called the result a "crushing victory" for her campaign team.

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5. A reshaped Toronto council: several incumbents fall

Source: CP24

Toronto elected 25 councillors on Monday, and the next council will include a long list of newcomers. Former MP and cabinet minister Nate Erskine-Smith took his ward with 46.8 per cent, ahead of journalist Natalie Johnson, who is on leave from CTV News, at 24.4 per cent.

Several incumbents lost. Toronto's longest-serving councillor, Frances Nunziata, finished third at 21.7 per cent behind Chiara Padovani's 39 per cent; Nunziata had beaten Padovani by just 94 votes in 2022. Former Liberal MP Shaun Chen defeated incumbent Jamaal Myers, 35.9 per cent to 25.3 per cent.

Elsewhere, Chris Moise lost his seat to Curran Stikuts, 28.6 per cent to 23.3 per cent. Amber Morley held her ward with 48.3 per cent against former Conservative MP Ted Opitz's 37.1 per cent. Parthi Kandavel was re-elected with 36 per cent despite an Ontario Provincial Police investigation into allegations he sought bribes to advance two housing developments.

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6. What Chow has promised for her second term

Source: CP24

With the campaign over, Chow's platform now moves toward implementation. On taxes, she has vowed to keep future property tax increases at or around the rate of inflation. A centrepiece promise is expanding the school nutrition program to include free lunches for children across the city, which she says could save families as much as $1,800.

On transit, she has pledged to cap fares after 10 rides in a week so further trips are free, and to freeze TTC fares for a fourth year. She also made the Scarborough East LRT a priority: an 18.6-kilometre line from Kennedy Station to Kingston Road that would turn north and run west on Sheppard Avenue, with stops at U of T Scarborough, Malvern Town Centre and a future subway stop at McCowan Road.

Her other commitments include a four-year, $28-million youth safety plan, reopening 54 Division in a new $120-million facility in 2030, 10,000 new rental home starts in 2027 with at least 20 per cent affordable, a "bad landlords taskforce" doing proactive inspections, free homemaking services for at least 5,000 seniors, and 1,000 more families added to the city's Museum and Attractions Pass.

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7. VIA Rail cuts trains on the Ottawa-Toronto corridor

Source: CP24

VIA Rail is running fewer trains between Ottawa and Toronto under fall schedule changes that took effect Oct. 25. The adjustments were announced in September, with the company saying they would better align service with passenger demand, strengthen network resilience and support more reliable, predictable service.

The early-morning Train 641 from Ottawa to Toronto has been cancelled. It used to leave Ottawa at 4:13 a.m., stop in Kingston at 6:16 a.m. and arrive in Toronto at 8:48 a.m. Train 41 now departs 25 minutes earlier, at 4:56 a.m., and a new daily Train 55 has been added on the route.

Eastern Ontario mayors have pushed back. Kingston Mayor Bryan Patterson said his city will see trains drop from 187 to 179 a week, "eight less VIA trains coming into and out of our community each week." He argued that with the community growing and highways congested, service should be expanded, not cut. The Town of Cobourg also raised concerns that the changes could make passenger rail less accessible and convenient.

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8. Ontario legislature returns after 147 days, with OSAP in focus

Source: CP24

Ontario politicians return to Queen's Park today after a 147-day break. The house is expected to sit for 23 days in a short but intense session, a pattern under Premier Doug Ford's government since he won his third election in February 2025. The government's handling of the Ontario Student Assistance Program is expected to dominate question period.

The province paused OSAP payments to all students at career colleges for the next few months as it tries to contain a growing scandal. It had already overhauled student aid by sharply cutting grants in favour of loans, arguing the program was unsustainable. Data obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom-of-information request shows larger-than-usual increases at some schools: seven career colleges received $385 million in OSAP grants in 2024-25, matching the amount that went to students at all publicly funded colleges in the province.

Career Colleges Ontario warned the province as early as 2023 about what it alleged was suspicious use of OSAP funds at a small number of schools. Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn cut off six schools in May. This month he said KPMG began an audit in August and that he referred the matter to the Ontario Provincial Police based on "serious concerns" in the preliminary findings, without naming the colleges.

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9. Carney says U.S. is 'coming closer to our position' on trade

Source: CP24

Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Trump administration is "coming closer to our position" as Canada-U.S. trade talks gain momentum. He made the remark to reporters Monday in Ottawa after a meeting between First Nation leaders and First Ministers.

Carney also conceded he cannot guarantee U.S. President Donald Trump will respect anything the two countries sign. Asked how he knows the president will sign "in pen," he replied: "I don't know that." He said Canada is ready to sign an agreement in the interests of all Canadians with clear bottom lines and red lines, which is why it would not accept what was offered in August.

Carney said the more the U.S. moves toward accepting those conditions, the greater the prospect of a deal, but that any agreement would be judged as a whole. When talks broke down in August, he said the administration's "signature was written in pencil." CTV News reported Sunday, citing government and industry sources, that the White House has considerable appetite for a deal, partly because of Trump's political vulnerabilities ahead of next week's midterm elections.

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10. Advance voting is up across Canada, but turnout may not follow

Source: CP24

Advance voting is rising across Canada, and some elections have set records. Winnipeg recorded 50,767 advance ballots in its municipal election, a 21.2 per cent increase over the previous record set in 2022. Toronto nearly doubled its advance turnout: 225,550 eligible voters cast ballots over six days, up from about 130,000 in the 2023 mayoral byelection and roughly 116,000 in the 2022 general municipal election.

The trend extends to provincial contests. Advance voting in Quebec's provincial election earlier this month reached 25.59 per cent, or 1.6 million electors, up from 24.8 per cent four years earlier. Malcolm Bird, a political studies professor at the University of Winnipeg, said part of the rise reflects efforts by parties and election organizations to promote early voting in the hope of lifting overall turnout.

Experts caution that record advance numbers do not guarantee higher turnout. Curtis Brown, vice-president of Abacus Data, noted Winnipeg set an advance record last time yet turnout was only 37 per cent. Christopher Adams of the University of Manitoba said early voting is simply easier and campaigns push harder to lock in supporters during advance polls. In British Columbia, preliminary turnout for the 2026 election sits at 48.12 per cent, lower than every general election listed on the Elections BC website going back to 1996, when it was 71.5 per cent; it was 58.45 per cent in 2024.

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