One Toronto broker who came sixth gave his all in a bid to become Toronto’s next mayor – but feels he was never given a fair chance to compete.
Rocco Di Paola, president and CEO of Rock Anthony Insurance in Toronto, Ont.,said when he initially threw his hat into the ring back in the early spring, he wasn’t exactly a frontrunner to win.
“Have you seen the movie ‘Rocky’?” asked Di Paola, “I’m really a long shot.”
But on election day, Di Paola spoke to Insurance Business about his disappointment in what he saw as an uneven fight in the race to become mayor of Toronto.
"We are not all playing on the same playing field. It is like the New York Yankees payroll versus the Toronto Blue Jays payroll," said Di Paola. "When I enrolled as a Toronto mayoral candidate, I was told the most I could raise through fund raising was $1.3 million, and corporate donations were not legal. Now I found out that (John) Tory raised $2.4 million and Doug Ford put in $500,000 of his personal money."
Di Paola came in sixth, with a respectable 1,557 votes, behind Ari Goldkind (3,912) and Selina Chan (2,336).
Following a lengthy campaign that had him as the favourite in the public opinion polls, John Tory who took the election with 394,775 votes, brushing aside his two main opponents, Doug Ford and Olivia Chow.
Ford and Chow had 330,610 and 226,879 votes respectively.
But for Di Paola, the campaign has only left him with a sour taste in his mouth for Toronto politics, and many unanswered questions.
"Why did the media only concentrated first on the top five candidates and then only the top three candidates?" he asked. "What about the 62 unknown candidates? And why did the election last 10 months??
Some of Di Paola’s campaign planks included:
- reducing residential and commercial property taxes by 1 per cent per annum;
- improving traffic flow with the introduction of more light rail transit, synchronizing traffic lights and improving the subway system;
- privatizing the Gardiner Expressway; and
- making Toronto a world-class city by attracting foreign investment.
“The only way you can do that is through low property taxes, less red tape, and offering incentives with tax holidays,” Di Paola told Insurance Business. “New York State has no tax rate for 10 years for foreign investment.” (continued.)
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Tory’s campaign centred on his SmartTrack plan – a 22-stop, 53 kilometre surface subway that would utilize existing GO Transit lines to bolster service, with an $8-billion price tag that would use tax increment financing.
Doug Ford – who jumped into the race at the eleventh hour when his brother Rob bowed out following a cancer diagnosis – ran on the same platform of the former mayor, promising to build 32 kilometres of new subway at a cost of $9 billion.
Chow favoured a light-rail plan and an increase in spending of $15 million more a year on expanded bus service, while cancelling the Scarborough subway extension. She also pledged to keep annual property tax increases ‘around’ the rate of inflation, and boost the land transfer tax from 2 to 3 per cent for those purchasing a home valued at more than $2 million.
