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Opinion

The Ballot Has 53 Names. The Debates Have Three.

By Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.

Independent Candidate for Mayor of Toronto

Oct 13, 2026 | 5 min read

More than fifty people are on Toronto’s ballot for mayor on October 26. Most voters will only ever hear from three of them.

That is not because the other candidates have nothing to say. It is because the debate stages, the panel discussions and the nightly analysis have been built around a short list chosen before a single vote was cast. I am one of the candidates outside that list. This is my case for why the way Toronto’s mayoral debates and election coverage are being run falls short of the standard the law and our own city have set, and what should change in the thirteen days we have left.

What the law asks of broadcasters

Canadian broadcasters are not free to treat an election as a contest between whoever they decide is serious. The CRTC, which licenses TV and radio, states that broadcasters are expected to cover elections and must give all candidates, parties and issues equitable treatment. That obligation covers news, public affairs and political debates, and it applies to municipal elections. For a municipal race it formally takes hold two months before election day, which means it has been in force in Toronto since late August.

The CRTC’s guidelines are careful on one point, and I will be too: equitable does not mean equal. No one is asking for 53 podiums. But the same guidelines say that, generally, every candidate is entitled to some coverage, and they warn that it is not the broadcaster’s role to decide in advance which candidates are “worthy” of broadcast time.

The CBC understood this in 2014, when it publicly acknowledged more than 60 mayoral candidates and committed to giving them equitable coverage throughout the campaign. The question this year is whether that commitment is being kept by anyone.

Who decided who gets a microphone

Every major debate this fall has been limited to a handful of candidates, using a rule set by the organizers rather than by voters.

• Sept 14 – Daily Bread Food Bank. Entry rule: top three in polling. On stage: Chow, Bradford, Alexander.
• Sept 15 – Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts. Entry rule: by invitation. On stage: Chow, Alexander, McVie.
• Sept 22 – Toronto Region Board of Trade and the Toronto Star. Entry rule: by invitation. On stage: Chow, Bradford, Alexander.
• Oct 6 – Toronto Metropolitan University, United Way Greater Toronto and the Toronto Star. Entry rule: at least 5% average support in polls taken Sept 7–24. On stage: Chow and Bradford.

The Toronto Star co-hosted two of these four debates. A newspaper is not bound by the CRTC, but when the same outlet sets the stage, reports on the stage and analyses the stage, it is shaping the race, not just covering it.

And the candidates on those stages are not bystanders. Chow and Bradford know the rest of the field is being shut out, and they keep accepting stages that exclude the rest of us. Neither has publicly called for the debates to be opened. Their silence makes them part of the problem.

This is a pattern, not a one-off. In 2022, with 31 candidates running, the two major debates had five candidates each. In 2023, with 102 candidates, CBC Toronto invited six candidates to its debate. Every cycle the field grows and the stage stays the same size.

Toronto already has a fairer rule

The City of Toronto’s policy is that when a candidates’ debate is held on city property, every candidate must be invited. In 2018, a seniors’ forum at Metro Hall was cancelled because its organizers would not invite the full field.

That rule exists for a reason. Public space belongs to all residents, so a public stage cannot pick favourites. The airwaves are public too, licensed by a public regulator. The principle that governs a room at City Hall should not stop at the studio door.

The 5% rule measures the coverage, not the candidate

Polling thresholds sound neutral. They are not. A poll asks voters which name they would choose, and voters can only choose names they have heard. Candidates who are invited to debates get coverage, coverage builds name recognition, and name recognition becomes poll numbers. The threshold then points to those numbers as proof the original choice was right.

In other words, the rule does not find the serious candidates. It manufactures them. An engineer would call that a closed loop: the output is fed back as the input, and the system can only confirm what it started with.

None of this requires anyone to act in bad faith. It only requires everyone to follow the same habit. The result is the same either way: residents are told the choice is already narrowed, long before they have been given the information to narrow it themselves.

What I am asking for

There are thirteen days until election day. These are practical requests, and every one of them can still happen in that time.

1. Broadcasters: meet the CRTC standard in public. Each TV and radio station covering the race should publish how it is giving every mayoral candidate equitable treatment in its news and public-affairs programming.
2. Debate hosts: open a second stage. Where a main debate keeps a threshold, run a companion forum for the remaining candidates, broadcast and streamed with the same promotion, or give every candidate a fixed-length statement within the main event.
3. Media outlets: publish the full field. Every outlet’s election guide should list all certified candidates with a short statement or platform link from each, not only the front-runners.
4. City Hall: extend its own principle. The City should make the all-candidates forum a standard part of every election, with free venue space and a public livestream, so residents can always hear the whole field in one place.
5. Excluded candidates: act together. I invite every candidate shut out of this year’s debates to co-sign a complaint to the CRTC about equitable coverage, and a joint letter to Toronto’s broadcasters and debate hosts.

To the voters of Toronto

The mayor is not chosen on a debate stage, in a newsroom or in a poll. The mayor is chosen at the ballot box, and only there. In 2022, fewer than one in three eligible Torontonians voted. That silent majority has more power than any debate organizer, and it has not spoken yet.

You are entitled to see every name on your ballot and to judge each of us for yourself. Look past the short list you have been handed. Read the platforms. Ask the questions. Then vote on October 26.

Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Candidate for Mayor of Toronto, No. 2 on the ballot
Founder, Be The Change Movement
bahira.ca