Cheryl Hawkes on Brad Bradford
Uber victim’s mother questions Bradford’s record
Photo: Facebook
There seems to be an excess of magical thinking over what Brad Bradford would be like as mayor. In less than a full term, Olivia Chow has managed to clean up just part of the mess – budgetary, social and congestive – her male predecessors (plural) left behind. One – John Tory – simply threw in the towel after years of ceremonial ribbon cutting and keeping property taxes frozen in the last century.
Chow had more than a few attempts to kneecap her – Doug Ford shut down and cut funding to safe drug consumption sites. The good people of Toronto, revolted by addicts shooting up in parks and passed out on the street, protested loudly and placed the blame squarely on Chow. Her opponent has billed himself as the Change candidate (didn’t they elect a guy in the States who did that?) and even took to social media to complain about people making fun of his double decker name (sound familiar?). His constituents have taken to begging the rest of us to give our heads a shake before voting him in. Seems he’s had EIGHT years as a councillor to prove himself star material and failed miserably. The reviews are terrible.
Then there’s his voting record. All sorts of examples of flipping and flopping. But there’s one issue personal to me on which he has been consistent. He has consistently voted against any cap on the number of Rideshare vehicles – despite multiple international studies affirming that hired cars cruising for rides or transporting single passengers contribute to congestion. Then there’s that safety thing – Brad has regularly opposed any and all attempts to regulate the likes of the Rideshare giants, even when it comes to making life more just for the people they employ. This is where it gets personal.
In March 2018, early in the year Bradford was first elected, my son Nicholas was killed in the back seat of an Uber when his untrained neophyte driver stopped on the Gardiner Expressway to retrieve his phone from the floor of the vehicle. The guy texting in the vehicle behind them didn’t get the message. Nick died instantly. What followed were a few years of fighting for safety training and looking into the eyes of Uber lobbyists, its lawyers, its “safety experts” and the mealy mouthed politicians whipped by John Tory to oppose any changes to the way Uber ran our city. Along came Chow, who had some success in reining them in, but Brad stood firm in voting against her key proposals. Standup guy, that pro-bike/anti-bikelane, pro-data centre, tax- cutting, debt-supported spending, public utility handing-over, boy-who-would-be-king.
So I read with interest Dave Bidini’s op-ed on the current pickle we find ourselves in. Dave speaks for me. I’m voting for Olivia Chow, as a lifelong Torontonian, in memory of Nick.
