Oshawa’s mayoral race is wide open. CBC’s Durham team gives you a primer

Elections are ramping up across the GTA and that includes the wide open mayoral race right here in Oshawa, where voters are preparing to elect a brand new mayor. I'm Chris Glover and tonight, this is Oshawa. For this special taping of our podcast, we are at the Bond Street Event Centre in downtown Oshawa, a building that is critical to this city's history. originally opening in 1951 for GM employees, the United Auto Workers, Local 222. This building is now a hub for arts and culture. And tonight, a podcast taping where we will be unpacking the municipal election with our Durham reporters, Rochelle Ravendran and Christian Davino. Hello, everyone, and welcome to a special evening taping of your favorite morning show, Metro Morning. I am Chris Glover. Let's dive right into it. And I want to introduce Rochelle Ravendran and Christian Davino, our CBC Durham Region reporters. Welcome to the conversation. All right, Christian, I want to start with you. When an incumbent mayor is not running, the election always feels a little bit more intense, a little bit more exciting. So how is the race here in Oshawa shaping up so far? It's been really fascinating to see how this is all unfolded. I mean, earlier into the start of this election, it was a slow build, right? We only had one candidate declare on the first day. We didn't start seeing candidates start to come out until a month later, a month and a half later. And now we're at a point where there's nine candidates all running for mayor, right? Which is a good thing for discourse, for, you know, it's always, we want to see people running. That's a good thing to see how many people are actually putting their names in the hats, of course. They're all obviously going to have to, they're running to be the new leader of Oshawa to replace outgoing Mayor Dan Carter. That's an important legacy here to build upon. Obviously, a two-term mayor who's had to deal with a lot of changes here within the city. He ran famously, of course, on the fact that he was previously homeless in Anaheim. Of course, he thought he can best handle the situation that we see here in the downtown in Oshawa, as well as across Durham region and many parts across this country. In addition to that, there's also been challenges with the auto sector. General Motors, not only we saw cuts that happened this year as a result of tariffs that have been going on, of course, but even right after Dan Carter started here in Oshawa, that GM factory was slated to close down. He had to go through right at the beginning a really tough challenge to the city. So the next mayor is going to have to really tackle an issue here within the city that's really going through transition right now. All right. Well, let's dig into some of those solutions that the different candidates are presenting. And, Rochelle, as we shift into talking actually about the nine candidates, why don't you talk first about who you're watching closely in the race? Yeah, absolutely. So there are three candidates for mayor who are currently sitting on the city council. And so one of them is Tito Dante Marion Pietri, and he is the Ward 2 regional and city councillor. So it is notable that he's the only regional councillor who is running for mayor because Oshawa is a two-tier municipality. And what that means is it relies on the region, the regional council, for funding for major projects, infrastructure and things like that. So Marion Pietri is also the chair of the city's economic development services. And in that role, he's pitched what he's called his blueprint for national security in Oshawa. And that kind of links various assets in Oshawa that he says would really make the city a leader in Canada's national defense strategy. And one of those assets is the GM plant and its potential in the manufacturing sector. And, you know, speaking of GM, Unifor Local 222, which is the union that represents workers at the plant, has actually endorsed Marion Pietri for mayor. And another candidate is also a Ward 2 candidate. That's Councillor Jim Lee, who represents Ward 2. So he was elected in 2022. And he actually said repeatedly that he was planning on retiring this year. But other residents of the city asked him to run. And so that's why he's running for mayor. And he's a retired firefighter. And he's really been leaning on his history as a labor leader for various firefighter unions, including an international firefighter union that represented workers across North America. and so he's been presenting himself as sort of the opposite of a career politician candidate and he's been endorsed by the Oshawa Firefighters Association and also by John Henry who is the previous mayor of Oshawa and he's the current chair of a Durham region and then I'll also touch on Councillor Derek Guyberson so he represents Ward 4 and that's the ward we're in right now it includes downtown Oshawa and he was previously the president of Backdoor Mission and that's one of the major social service hubs that is in the city and he has experience in non-profit housing as well so recently he actually commented on this situation that happened at the Canadian automotive museum so they were fined a three thousand dollars upwards of 3k from the city bylaw officials because of nuisance on the property and this and the city specifically pointed to unhoused people who are on the museum's property and Guy Bisson said that the city is choosing punishment over assistance. And one of the things he says in his platform is that he'll actually pause those fines and he'll look at ways of working with businesses in downtown Oshawa and figuring out how they can, you know, best survive here. And Guy Bisson has been endorsed by the Durham Region Labour Council, which is composed of 25 different councils across the region. Okay. And we've had an opportunity to see these candidates in action. Several of them were just at a debate last week. So, Christian, if we can go over to you to start talking about some of these promises and pledges that the candidates are making. Let's start with the drug and homelessness crisis. What have we been hearing on that front? So, I mean, when we talk about some of those candidates that Rochelle just mentioned, we think of Derek Iverson as well as Jim Lee. Both of them have some similarities. For example, Iverson wants to go ahead and meet with a lot of the services here, the social services within Oshawa, see what they need in terms of how can they upscale the funding and how can Oshawa best support those services to continue delivering the work that needs to be done, in his opinion, to help support people who are experiencing homelessness as well as addictions. He also wants to implement social, more housing, supportive housing, transitional housing, especially within his first 100 days in office. That's also something that Jim Lee has also emphasized as well, wanting to really build up those supportive in transitional housing, specifically utilizing surplus city lands in order to do it. Where Jim Lee differs a little bit more is that he really thinks this is a top-down approach from the federal and provincial governments. He wants to start immediately in office by bringing them to the table. Now, I'll transition that to Tito Dante Marampiatri, who was quick to say during that debate last week that he doesn't think there needs to be much talking at all. He can go downtown, see what's happening already. He thinks we already have the tools here in Oshawa to tackle those issues from the get-go, from the jump, specifically leveraging what the region of Durham is already doing. He thinks that the region should be utilizing its services and distributing it in a better way that helps to support Oshawa than right now it's being underutilized in this city, which does share the brunt. The majority of those who are experiencing homelessness throughout Durham region, it certainly has the most, of course. But then we also heard from other candidates as well. Henry Onwanchu, for example, who's a very business-forward mindset, he wants to really tackle this in terms of getting at harm reduction. He thinks open-air drug use is something that is a serious concern for him. And we also heard from Dave Westlake as well, who's another business type. During the debate, when he gets into office, he said he's going to declare a state of emergency. That's how severe he thinks the crisis currently is here within Oshawa. And then we also heard from Jeremy Large, who, quite frankly, you know, his his idea for that was to he's a he's a South End resident here in Oshawa. He wants to and he said abruptly to move all of the homeless people from downtown to the South End, build two facilities where they can live and get the treatment that they need. Yeah, and I know that got a lot of attention in the debate last week and thereafter as well. Affordability and obviously the cost of living is something that's also been an issue right across the region of Durham and frankly the GTHA, right everybody? Yeah, and so I know that the candidates have been speaking about that as well. Rochelle, what are you hearing on that front? So sort of like what Christian touched on, for Guy Bisson, the main thing is really housing. So he's talked about the relationship between if people have affordable housing, then they'll have enough money to spend on the economy. And he's committed that if he becomes mayor, he'll have those conversations that are needed with partners who can create affordable housing. And then when it comes to Tito Dante and Mariam Chiatri, something interesting in his platform is he really highlights that there needs to be more commercial and industrial tax base in order to lower the burden on residents. So what he says that would look like is being really aggressive about pursuing businesses to come to Oshawa and creating new jobs and attracting new businesses as well. And then when it comes to Jim Lee, one of his promises is that he said that he'll promise to hold the city's property taxes so they don't increase with the rate of inflation. And we know from what we've heard from residents that the increasing property taxes are a major concern. And actually, in June, the Durham Regional Council endorsed in principle a $1.1 billion police plan, which if it's approved, it could mean a series of property tax hikes over the next 10 years. And it could mean that next year, property taxes at the regional level increase by nearly over 10%. So that's something that, again, it hasn't been approved yet, but it's definitely something we'll be keeping an eye on once this election is finished. Okay. And another big issue in elections right across the region, voter turnout. It's something that we talk about a lot here in Oshawa, hit an all-time low in the last election. Roughly 18% of eligible voters cast a ballot. I see some mouths dropping on that fact. And so I know that here in the city of Oshawa, officials are taking steps to try to address that. Christian, what are you seeing there? Well, to address it, it's the million dollar question. How do we get voters turnout? It's something that no matter what election you go through it's always a challenge municipal elections typically the worst uh 18 it's abysmal quite frankly that's how the city of oshawa looks at it and then uh last summer what they actually did was uh the the now city council is allowing for for the first time for online voting to take place so people can do so uh from the comfort of their own homes that is starting for this week alongside in-person advanced voting are people doing this are people online voting okay a couple of applause there you know i will say i received my voter card voter information that came to the mail it was quite lovely it's very easy to do uh so that's certainly a good thing that said you know statistically speaking we've seen from studies internet voting is not necessarily the catch-all it doesn't uh drastically increase the amount of people who do vote but it does change the composition of who is voting so we typically see people who are older demographics that will go out to these types of elections if you have younger children it's hard to go to a ballot box But we do typically see that maybe someone will get a chance to vote if they can vote at midnight or early in the morning before they go off to work. So that's what Oshawa is hoping that will help out. But it still remains to be seen how much that will work. They're certainly hoping to boost up the numbers of 18 percent for turnout. I am incredibly curious to see how that turns out. And I know that you two are laser focused on what's going on in Oshawa, obviously, with an open race here. it's very interesting, the dynamics. But you follow news across Durham region, and it's not even the only open race out here. So Rochelle, what other races in Durham are you watching closely? Yeah, so one of them is the race in Pickering, where we have the incumbent mayor, Kevin Ash, and he'll be running one of the candidates he's running against is Councillor Lisa Robinson. And Robinson, she's dealt with multiple misconduct complaints and pay suspensions. I think it's eight or nine misconduct complaints since 2023 and so when you look at some of these reports by the integrity commissioner it really targets a range of issues including harassment of staff and some comments she's made about black history month and residential schools so back also back in january 2025 we actually reported that the ontario provincial police is investigating a criminal harassment complaint that was filed against Robinson by Mayor Ash and several other councillors on Pickering Council. And it's also important to note that Robinson has previously denied all the allegations against her, but we'll definitely be watching to see what kind of support she gets. And I'll also touch on Whitby, where we have another situation of an incumbent mayor, Elizabeth Roy, and one of the candidates opposing her is Councillor Chris Leahy. So Leahy's had, he's dealt with his own pay suspension in April, but what's kind of interesting is Leahy and fellow councillor Steve Yamada actually put forward a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal against the mayor, against the town and a few other councillors and that their complaint was partly alleging discrimination and it was just last month that the Human Rights Tribunal actually dismissed the application and the town put out a news release about it and they said it's already cost them $50,000 to deal with this complaint. So again, another example of a sort of contentious race and we'll definitely be following both. Spicy politics playing out in Durham region and a lot for you both to cover. Thank you, Rochelle Ravindran and Christian DeVino, our new CBC Durham region reporters and another round of applause for them.