Voters are rarely surprised by inconsistency in candidates for political office, even when they change opinions like chameleons. But Toronto’s 2026 mayoral race offers examples of flip-flops so spectacular, they deserve their own three-ring circus.
Here, we’ll look at four whiplash-inducing flip-flops by the two leading candidates for mayor, Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford: police funding, the Dundas name, bike lanes, and Ontario Place.
DEFUND THE POLICE, FUND MORE POLICE OFFICERS… which is it?
With public safety ranking among Toronto voters’ top concerns, the leading candidates’ records on policing deserve a close look.
Bradford’s most notable flip-flop dates to 2020, when he was one of eight councillors who voted for a 10% reduction in the police budget. He also supported a motion to disarm officers of some of their existing equipment.
But his position changed. During the 2023 mayoral campaign, he even argued that the city needed more police officers.
Bradford has since argued that his earlier position was about police reform and improving safety, and has pointed out that he subsequently supported the annual spending plans brought forward by the police chief.
Fast-forward to 2026 and Bradford is making public safety and law enforcement a central plank of his campaign, promising to hire 1,000 additional front-line officers during his first term.
Mayor Chow has been quick to point out Bradford’s 2020 vote.
“He wanted to defund the police … now he said he wants to hire police officers. I don’t know where he’s at,” she said.
Fair enough. But Chow’s own record on policing isn’t exactly a straight line either.
Upon election, she declined to take the mayor’s traditional seat on the Toronto Police Services Board. Instead, she appointed a designate, saying she wanted to focus on other priorities, including the city’s finances.
Her decision was not a violation of any rule, but it was politically significant. The mayor’s relationship with the police service is one of the clearest signals of how an administration approaches public safety.
Chow’s political history includes periods of (ahem) skepticism toward traditional policing, a charge to which she might respond that her emphasis is instead on social services and community-based solutions.
Chow might also point to her support of substantial police budget increases, including more than $93 million in the 2026 budget, but one might wonder: has policing become a central priority for Chow, or is it something her administration supports when public pressure makes it politically unavoidable?
If one were measuring support for police by both candidates, a clear U-shaped curve would appear, with support peaking during election years!
So where does that leave us? Without a candidate who has a consistent position on what Toronto’s approach to policing should be, it seems.
Highways for Ontario Place
Few political flip-flops are as striking as Chow’s position on Ontario Place.
During the 2023 mayoral campaign, Chow strongly opposed the Ford government’s redevelopment plans, including the proposed massive bathing complex – with multiple saunas, huge soaking pools, several waterslides, and an indoor botanical garden (Therme).
Once elected, however, she negotiated with the province. In November 2023, Toronto and Ontario reached a deal under which the province would take control of advancing the Ontario Place redevelopment, while Toronto accepted the province’s authority to proceed. In return, Toronto secured significant financial support, including the provincial takeover of responsibility for two major city highways, the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway.
In other words, the mayor who campaigned against the project ultimately negotiated a deal that allowed it to proceed. But the deal was only the tip of the iceberg.
Chow’s initial opposition wasn’t difficult to understand. For decades, Ontario Place had been a place where ordinary families could enjoy Toronto’s waterfront – a publicly accessible attraction rather than a luxury destination. The European spa concept throws a wrench into that vision.
In April 2025, the New York Times investigated Therme’s claims. The Times reported that Therme had presented itself as having experience with as many as six European facilities, while its investigation found that, at the time it was pursuing the Ontario Place deal, Therme itself had built and operated only one (in Romania).
Ontario’s Auditor General had also raised a related concern. Its 2024 review found that Infrastructure Ontario had not adequately verified Therme’s claimed track record and that five of the six facilities cited by Therme were not owned or operated by Therme Group. (Therme subsequently purchased one of those facilities, reducing the number of facilities it did not own or operate from five to four.)
The Auditor General also criticized aspects of the procurement process, describing it as not fair, transparent or accountable.
Therme disputed the New York Times’ characterization and maintained that it had complied with the bidding requirements, but there are other questionable aspects of the plan.
Therme received a 95-year lease agreement for the Ontario Place West Island as well as a deal that requires the province to provide a parking facility with at least 1,800 spaces, including 1,600 dedicated to Therme and its guests. The price for that was originally estimated at an eye-popping $400 million, but the garage was eventually contracted for (only!) $198 million.
The Ontario Place story isn’t simply about a spa. It’s about a massive public redevelopment, a 95-year private lease, a controversial procurement process and a government assuming substantial infrastructure obligations around a private tenant.
Which brings us back to Chow.
The deal she negotiated with Premier Ford meant abandoning the principled opposition to Ford’s stinky Ontario Place deal that had been a central part of her 2023 mayoral campaign. And much was lost in the bargain.
Toronto no doubt needed the financial relief. But did Ontarians need a privately owned and operated luxury spa occupying a prime piece of publicly owned waterfront?
For those who believed Ontario Place should remain an affordable, accessible destination for families – a place to go, not a place most people could only look at from the outside – Chow’s decision to abandon her original opposition was a huge disappointment.
Sankofa Square: Toronto’s Woke Renaming Circus
The renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square offers another example of Chow’s approach to politically controversial issues: embrace the woke agenda, then retreat when the price tag becomes politically inconvenient.
The campaign to remove the Dundas name gained momentum after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Critics argued that Henry Dundas, the Scottish politician after whom the street and square were named, had delayed the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Historians have disputed aspects of that interpretation, particularly the claim that Dundas opposed abolition itself. Rather, the record suggests that Dundas supported abolition, but through a more gradual approach.
During the 2023 mayoral campaign, Chow supported renaming all city infrastructure named after Dundas.
But when the cost of renaming Dundas Street was estimated at approximately $12-$13 million, she changed tack. Instead of proceeding with the full street renaming, a narrower proposal to rename Yonge-Dundas Square, along with two subway stations and a library, was passed.
Council voted 19–2 in favour of the change. Chow seconded the motion.
The result was Sankofa Square.
A Liaison Strategies poll conducted around the time found that 71% of respondents opposed the renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square.
But the city council, led by Chow, proceeded with a decision that many residents viewed as rushed, expensive and disconnected from their priorities.
Chow’s approach looked like an attempt to split the difference: acknowledge the woke activists’ concerns while avoiding the more controversial aspects of renaming an entire street. In other words, it was virtue-signalling, carefully calibrated to limit the financial and political fallout.
And what exactly was accomplished?
The city still spent money ($700,000 net so far by the city’s own estimates) changing signs, branding and public references. The historical debate surrounding Dundas was not resolved. And residents who opposed the change were left with the impression that their concerns mattered less than the symbolic demands of activist groups – the ones who support Mayor Chow.
Chow’s climbdown is less dramatic than Bradford’s complete about-face on this issue, though.
Bradford was an enthusiastic supporter of all things Dundas-renaming in 2021, indicating a desire to move ahead in the process without delay and positioning the renaming as a step toward confronting systemic racism. As late as December 2023, Bradford was still on board, voting in favour of renaming the square, subways, library (but not the street, as council had backed off on that aspect by this time).
At this stage, Bradford wasn’t merely going along with the process. He was publicly supportive of the underlying principle.
Seven months later, in the summer of 2024, he put forward a motion to pause the entire renaming project, arguing that Toronto was broke and that the change wasn’t something the vast majority of Torontonians were asking for. He proposed redirecting money earmarked for new signage and marketing toward accessibility and safety improvements, but his motion failed.
And then Bradford decided he wanted to undo Sankofa Square altogether.
As a 2026 mayoral candidate, he proposed (in June) renaming it Toronto Square, while promising a major cleanup and a permanent police presence.
So, on one of the most politically charged symbolic issues of the past five years, Bradford has gone from “pretty clearly no” to Dundas, to yes to Sankofa, to stop the spending, to let’s rename it again.
That’s quite a circular journey for one city square and one mayoral candidate!
Bike Lanes: Let Ford Take the Heat
Perhaps the most ironic flip-flops by Chow and Bradford can be found in the debate over bike lanes.
This seemingly simple piece of painted pavement has become one of the biggest political dividing lines in this year’s mayoral race.
An August 2026 Liaison Strategies poll illustrates how geographically divided the issue of bike lanes is in the city: 49% of downtown respondents wanted more bike lanes compared with 13% who wanted some removed; in the suburb of Etobicoke, only 20% wanted more while 40% wanted some removed. Liaison described it as a citywide fault line.
Chow has long been associated with cycling advocacy. During her years as a councillor, her flower-decorated bicycle became something of a trademark.
Yet as mayor, she has largely avoided taking an unequivocal position in the increasingly bitter conflict between cyclists and drivers.
The issue became so contentious that the Ford government passed legislation requiring the removal of certain bike lanes that had eliminated car lanes. The legislation was challenged in court, and the Ontario Superior Court ultimately ruled in the province’s favour.
Chow criticized the legislation as a “big hammer” and argued that removing bike lanes would worsen congestion and waste money. But her stated position has been summarized in this politically neutral, middle-of-the-road phrase:
“Keep the bike lanes, fix the irritants.”
In these words, downtown cyclists hear support for preserving bike infrastructure. Suburban residents frustrated by congestion hear acknowledgement that some problems need to be addressed. And when the province intervenes, Chow can criticize Ford’s approach while avoiding a direct confrontation over the larger question of how much road space should be allocated to cars.
But the bike lane debate is not simply about paint on pavement. It is about transportation priorities, congestion, road capacity, safety, neighbourhood design and the competing needs of different groups of residents.
Through it all, Chow has never clearly articulated her position on the serious concerns of people who rely on their cars to get to work every day – including congestion, commercial access and emergency response times.
What happens when “fixing the irritants” requires choosing between competing uses of the road?
Chow seems to have found a way to avoid owning the most politically contentious parts of the debate and avoid taking a clear position.
For this part, Brad Bradford has been hammering away at the same themes for months: gridlock, traffic congestion, road capacity, transportation planning and the effect of bike lanes on motorists and businesses.
His biggest move came last month, when he promised to remove the Bloor West bike lanes if elected mayor.
There’s an obvious reason this announcement attracted attention: Bradford voted for the lanes in 2023, but he now says he got it wrong back then.
The 4.7-kilometre stretch of Bloor Street West bike lanes was approved by council in 2023, with Bradford among the councillors voting in favour. In August of this year, however, he said the plan looked good “on paper” but had not worked in practice, arguing that congestion had worsened and businesses had suffered. He now wants the space returned to vehicle lanes and says cycling investment should instead focus more on trails and residential streets.
It’s yet another political Bradford flip-flop.
Whether voters see these as sensible changes of mind or opportunistic flip-flops will be one of the more interesting subplots of the campaign.
