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An Honour Not Earned: How Fake Support for Palestine, the Liberal Party Machine, and Non-Profit Gatekeepers Re-Elected Olivia Chow

Oct 27, 2026 | By Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.

Why the real winner of Monday night’s Toronto mayoral election was the federal Liberal Party machine and co-opted non-profit community leaders, and how Olivia Chow’s ballroom rhetoric on Palestine compares with her City Hall record and silence.

The Count vs. the Machine

Olivia Chow won Toronto on Monday night, and by the numbers she won big. By the unofficial count across all 1,431 polls, she took 532,201 votes (54.16 per cent) and carried 19 of the city’s 25 wards. No mayoral candidate in Toronto’s history has received more raw votes.

None of that is in dispute. Voters marked their ballots, and the count stands.

But let us be honest about who actually won this election. It was not Olivia Chow on the strength of her record. The real winner on Monday night was the Liberal Party of Canada and a network of taxpayer-funded non-profits and non-profit community leaders: the same federal party machine whose government permitted millions of dollars in military goods to keep flowing to Israel, whose sitting MPs left their jobs in Ottawa to canvass for Olivia Chow, and whose aligned non-profit gatekeepers mobilized newcomer and Muslim communities across Toronto for the incumbent Mayor.

A mandate is not the same as an honour. A mandate is counted on election night. An honour is earned over years, by keeping faith with the people who trusted you when it cost something. On the question of Palestine, Mayor Chow and her Liberal backers asked for that trust with empty words in friendly rooms. Their record tells the opposite story, and those who allowed themselves to be deceived in the name of the Palestinian cause are failing Palestine.

We do not need empty words and fake promises.
Palestine does not need the very politicians who stabbed Palestine in the back to be rebranded as the champions of Palestine.

What She Said in the Ballroom

On November 1, 2025, Mayor Chow spoke at the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) fundraising gala at the Pearson Convention Centre. She told the room that the genocide in Gaza impacts us all, comparing the hunger and violence facing Palestinian children to her own mother’s childhood during Japan’s invasion of China.

The room applauded. Several pro-Israel organizations demanded an apology, and some called for her resignation.

That single speech came less than a year before she asked Muslim, Arab, and conscience-driven Torontonians for their votes. Many remembered that one sentence. The question is what else they should have remembered.

Who Delivered the Votes: The Liberal Party Machine

• Salma Zahid, Liberal MP, Scarborough Centre-Don Valley East (Sept-Oct 2026): Chair of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group. Jointly endorsed Chow on Sept. 16, 2026, spoke at her Scarborough rally on Sept. 27 declaring “Our government needs a strong partner like Mayor Chow,” and posted on Oct. 9 that she voted for Chow at #9.
• Doly Begum, Liberal MP, Scarborough Southwest (former ONDP MPP) (Oct 6, 2026): Released a campaign endorsement video for Chow on Oct. 6, 2026 calling her a compassionate, caring leader, following her 2023 campaign endorsement.
• Tanveer Shahnawaz, Liberal MP, Beaches-East York (Oct 7, 2026): Campaigned alongside Chow in Beaches-East York and publicly endorsed her re-election on Oct. 7, 2026.
• Rob Oliphant, Liberal MP, Don Valley West (Sept 30, 2026): Publicly endorsed Chow for re-election on Sept. 29-30, 2026, praising her leadership on policing, housing, and transit.
• Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal MP, Scarborough-Guildwood-Rouge Park (Sept 16, 2026): Federal Minister of Public Safety. Jointly endorsed Chow on Sept. 16, 2026 in a coordinated Scarborough Liberal MP video.
• Jean Yip, Liberal MP, Scarborough-Agincourt (Sept-Oct 2026): Endorsed Chow on Sept. 16 and Sept. 24, 2026, and posted during advance voting on Oct. 11 urging residents to mark #9 on the ballot.
• Fatima Shaban, ONDP MPP, Scarborough Southwest (Oct 2026): Formally listed as a Scarborough campaign endorser on Olivia Chow’s official re-election website.

While these Liberal MPs left their parliamentary duties to canvass and rally for Olivia Chow across Toronto, their federal government continued permitting military exports to Israel. Despite claiming a pause on new permits in January 2024, Global Affairs Canada’s own Annual Report on Strategic Goods and Technologies confirms that 164 military export permits to Israel were utilized in 2024 alone, shipping $18.9 million in controlled military goods to Israel after a record $30.6 million in 2023, while Canadian-made components for F-35 fighter jets continued flowing through the United States.

Non-Profits and Non-Profit Community Leaders Mobilized for City Hall

Alongside the federal Liberal caucus stood a second pillar of the establishment machine: leaders inside Toronto’s non-profit organizations, newcomer settlement agencies, and registered charities. Under Canada Revenue Agency rules (Income Tax Act Guidance CG-027) and Section 88.8 of Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act, registered charities and non-profit corporations are strictly prohibited from contributing resources, staff, volunteer networks, or in-kind support to any municipal candidate.

Yet the morning after the election, a senior manager in Toronto’s government-funded non-profit newcomer and employment services sector (having held management roles across major registered charities including WoodGreen Community Services, The Career Foundation, JVS Toronto, and Skills for Change, overseeing unionized staff, volunteers, interns, placement students, and newcomer clients) publicly boasted that he served for the past four months as Lead Volunteer at Olivia Chow’s Scarborough and Downtown campaign offices.

Where did he say he led those canvassing teams for four months? Across Don Valley West, Don Valley East, Scarborough, and North York: my exact home wards and Toronto’s largest newcomer and Muslim corridors, where he explicitly cited connecting with community leaders and residents.

When leaders of taxpayer- and City-funded non-profits and community organizations spend four months running field operations and leveraging community-leader networks for the sitting Mayor who controls municipal grants, the line between non-partisan public service and partisan machine politics is erased. Our non-profits and community organizations exist to serve residents and newcomers equally, not to act as a voter-turnout arm for City Hall while shutting out independent candidates.

The Masjid Door and the Police Double Standard

Nothing exposed that double standard more clearly than what happened on Friday, October 9, 2026 (28 Rabi’ al-Thani 1448 AH) at the Islamic Society of Toronto, Darus Salaam at 20 Overlea Boulevard in Thorncliffe Park, the very masjid where I pray in my own neighbourhood.

In the middle of the advance voting period, during Jumu’ah prayer, Mayor Olivia Chow was welcomed inside the masjid to speak, and her campaign flyers were handed out inside the prayer space.

Meanwhile, as an Arab Muslim hijabi woman, a licensed structural engineer (PhD, P.Eng.), and a certified candidate for Mayor of Toronto (#2 on the ballot), what was my experience at my own community’s mosque? When I previously ran for Mayor, I was insulted, told to leave, and threatened with the police simply for handing out my flyers outside that same masjid. And in this campaign, while Olivia Chow was ushered inside by gatekeepers, I was once again portrayed and treated by the police as the enemy while campaigning to my own Muslim community at Jumu’ah prayer right next to her.

The incident was caught on video and went viral on Instagram (@offdareck, https://www.instagram.com/reel/De92KLByxiy/), showing Toronto Police telling me, a Muslim mayoral candidate at my own mosque during Jumu’ah, to leave the masjid after I attempted to ask Mayor Olivia Chow questions while she campaigned inside.

That was not an accident. It is the exact policing posture Mayor Chow has presided over across Toronto for three years: using the police to portray the pro-Palestinian movement, and an independent Muslim woman who refuses to bow to party establishments, as the enemy outside the gates, while welcoming our community’s votes and donations inside.

Platform & Record Comparison: Bahira Abdulsalam vs. Olivia Chow

What She Did in Office (2023 to 2026)

The Fair Objection, and Why It Fails

Her defenders will say the November 2025 gala speech was brave. Few establishment Canadian politicians have used the word genocide about Gaza, and she took criticism from pro-Israel groups for saying it. They will also say the bubble-zone bylaw is neutral on its face.

But courage is measured by what it costs you, and when. The gala speech came after two years of restricting, policing, and denouncing the people who marched for Gaza in her own streets. It came to a friendly room, eleven months before an election, and was never followed by a single vote, procurement rule, or statement against anti-Palestinian racism. A neutral bylaw passed over the City Solicitor’s Charter warnings still lands hardest on the movement doing most of the protesting. Saying the right word once does not undo the votes.

Words Are Not a Record

The word in the ballroom was genocide. The vote at City Hall was bubble zones.

Olivia Chow and the Liberal Party machine won the count on Monday night. Meanwhile, our 100 per cent independent grassroots campaign nearly doubled our vote total from 2023, climbing five spots to finish 9th out of 53 candidates city-wide (1,696 votes) and 4th in Don Valley West, without a single dollar of corporate or lobbyist money and without bowing to any political party.

Mayor Chow has four more years. Torontonians who care about Palestine should stop settling for empty words from the politicians who stabbed Palestine in the back, and judge City Hall by its votes, its budgets, and its policing, not by what is said at fundraisers.

Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng., is the founder of the Be The Change Movement and Canadian Love 4 Palestine (https://bahira.ca).

Sources

1. If I Get Elected as the Next Toronto Mayor, I Will Call for Netanyahu’s Arrest (bahira.ca, Oct 14, 2026)
2. A Promise Is Not a Policy: Canada Must Act on Illegal Settlements Now (bahira.ca, Oct 15, 2026)
3. Truth in Advertising Is a Toronto Value (Illegal Settlement Real Estate Sales) (bahira.ca, Oct 22, 2026)
4. I Will Repeal Toronto’s Bubble Zone Bylaw (bahira.ca, Oct 15, 2026)
5. Viral Video of the Masjid Incident: Police Tell Muslim Mayoral Candidate Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam to Leave Mosque During Jumu’ah While Mayor Olivia Chow Campaigns Inside (Instagram @offdareck, Oct 2026)
6. On Equal Access to Places of Worship During the 2026 Municipal Election (Darus Salaam Masjid) (bahira.ca, Oct 9, 2026)
7. One Standard Against Hate Must Protect Muslims Too (bahira.ca, Oct 15, 2026)
8. Meet Your Next Mayor (2023 Mayoral Candidates Feature) (CIJA, June 2023)
9. Toronto Mayoral Candidates’ Responses to Community Questions: Olivia Chow (CIJA, Oct 19, 2026)
10. Liberal MP Doly Begum endorses Olivia Chow (with Salma Zahid, Gary Anandasangaree, Jean Yip & Rob Oliphant) (CityNews Toronto, Oct 6, 2026)
11. 2024 Annual Report on Strategic Goods and Technologies ($18.9M Military Exports to Israel) (Global Affairs Canada, 2025)
12. City of Toronto Agenda Item 2025.CC30.5: Bubble Zone Bylaw Vote Record (Passed 16 to 9) (City of Toronto, May 22, 2025)
13. CRA Guidance CG-027: Public Policy Dialogue and Development Activities by Charities (Prohibition on Supporting Candidates) (Canada Revenue Agency, 2019 to 2026)
14. Ontario Municipal Elections Act, 1996, s. 88.8 (Prohibition on Corporate and Non-Profit Contributions) (Government of Ontario, 2026)

Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Independent Candidate for Mayor of Toronto
bahira.ca

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