Article
A Coalition of Gatekeepers Is Not the Working Class: Why “Organizing” Must Mean Every Member and Every Resident
A response to “The Power of the Coalition” on Olivia Chow’s 2026 re-election, union endorsements, and Toronto’s unorganized majority.
After Monday night’s municipal election, defenders of the City Hall establishment have been circulating an essay titled “The Power of the Coalition.” It celebrates Mayor Olivia Chow’s re-election as a triumph of grassroots working-class organizing, pointing to the labour councils, municipal unions, progressive advocacy groups and community networks that canvassed, phoned and turned out voters across Toronto.
On one point, “The Power of the Coalition” and I agree completely: elections are won by organization, not by slogans, and Olivia Chow won because an organized machine knocked on doors and drove voters to the polls (CTV News; CP24). As I wrote in Organized Power and the Unorganized Majority, anyone who claims “a handful of Liberals” produced more than half a million votes is misreading how power in Toronto is built.
Where “The Power of the Coalition” goes wrong is in mistaking a coalition of institutional gatekeepers, party machines and executive boards for the working class of Toronto.
1. An Executive Endorsement Is Not the Voice of the Membership
“The Power of the Coalition” speaks as if an endorsement from a union executive or a labour council is the collective voice of every worker on its roster. It is not.
Unions do essential work defending wages, benefits, pensions and safe workplaces. Union members are the people who drive our buses, maintain our streets, teach our children and care for the sick. They deserve respect.
But when an executive board, a delegates’ council or a political action committee endorses a candidate for mayor without a direct vote of the membership, that endorsement represents the leadership table, not the workers. Canadian academic research published in Labour/Le Travail in 2025 (Brock University) confirms that most union members say a union endorsement does not change their vote, and only a modest fraction are swayed by it. Meanwhile, rank-and-file union reformers across North America have long argued that political endorsements and dues spending lack legitimacy unless they follow a simple democratic rule: one member, one vote, with the full vote totals published in the open (Z Network).
Before any coalition claims to speak for 200,000 unionized workers in Toronto, it should trust those workers enough to let every single one of them vote on the endorsement, after hearing from every candidate on equal terms.
2. Seven in Ten Workers, and the Majority of Toronto, Are Not in the Room
Even if every union member in Toronto agreed with their leadership’s choice, a coalition of unions and City Hall advocacy groups still leaves out the vast majority of working Torontonians.
According to Statistics Canada, only 15.5 per cent of private-sector employees in Canada were covered by a collective agreement in 2023. Across all sectors combined, roughly seven in ten employees have no union contract at all. Add the self-employed, Uber and Lyft drivers, delivery couriers, small-business owners on our main streets, stay-at-home caregivers, students, the unemployed and retirees on fixed pensions, and you are looking at the overwhelming majority of Toronto.
Who knocked on their doors? Which institutional slate spoke for the family-owned grocery store in Thorncliffe Park, the senior living on a fixed pension, or the non-union cleaner working two jobs to pay rent? When City Hall is governed as a partnership between an incumbent mayor and the organized networks that delivered her campaign, the unorganized majority is treated as an afterthought at election time and as a revenue source the morning after.
3. Partisan Machines, Non-Profit Gatekeepers, and the Power of Incumbency
“The Power of the Coalition” also leaves out the parts of the machine that are hardest to defend in a non-partisan municipal election:
- Federal and provincial party interference: Toronto’s ballot has no party labels by design, and Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act bars federal and provincial political parties from funding municipal candidates or registering as third-party advertisers (AMCTO). Yet sitting Members of Parliament and Members of Provincial Parliament brought their partisan networks, staff and resources into a local race to campaign for the incumbent.
- Non-profit and charity gatekeeping: Under the Income Tax Act (CRA Guidance CG-027) and Section 88.8 of Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act, registered charities and non-profits are strictly forbidden from supporting or opposing candidates. When leaders inside taxpayer-funded community organizations and places of worship open the doors for the sitting mayor while shutting independent candidates out, or use Toronto Police to remove a Muslim woman candidate from her own neighbourhood masjid during Jumu’ah prayer, as documented in An Honour Not Earned, that is not “community organizing.” It is gatekeeping backed by state power.
- Running from the seat of office: As I set out in Step Aside to Run Again, an incumbent mayor campaigns with a full-time public salary, City Hall staff, access to City Hall facilities, daily press conferences, and “strong mayor” budget powers. Calling a race “democratic” when one candidate wields the full apparatus of the City against challengers who must fund every flyer and fight for every minute of airtime ignores reality. Any incumbent seeking re-election should be required by law to take an unpaid campaign leave of absence from nomination day to election day.
4. Who Paid the Price for the Coalition’s Bargain
Every political coalition has a balance sheet. Over the past term, Toronto residents paid for City Hall’s governing bargain through cumulative property-tax increases of 9.5 per cent in 2024, 6.9 per cent in 2025 and 2.2 per cent in 2026, the election year (Global News).
Those increases were carried by homeowners on fixed incomes, by small businesses without a lobbyist at City Hall, and by tenants whose housing costs keep rising while 50 other mayoral candidates were treated by media gatekeepers as background noise in a two-person race.
5. Real Organizing Means Organizing the Unorganized Majority
My answer to “The Power of the Coalition” is not to condemn organizing. It is to distinguish between top-down machine mobilization and genuine democratic organizing.
In 2026, our 100 per cent independent campaign took no corporate money, no developer money, no union-executive money and no political-party backing. Even so, we nearly doubled our vote total from 2023 (+86 per cent), climbing five spots to finish #9 of 53 candidates in Toronto’s Top 10 city-wide (1,696 votes) and #4 in Ward 15 (Don Valley West).
That is the seed of a different kind of coalition: one built from the ground up by the unorganized majority of Toronto. To build it before the next election, we must fight for clear rules that put every resident on equal footing:
- One member, one vote on every organizational endorsement, with all candidates invited to speak and full voting results published.
- Strict enforcement of non-partisan and charity rules so that federal and provincial party machines and taxpayer-funded non-profits cannot tilt municipal elections.
- A mandatory City Council motion and provincial law requiring incumbents to step aside on unpaid campaign leave from nomination day to election day.
- Year-round neighbourhood organizing that brings non-union workers, small-business owners, seniors, tenants, gig drivers and newcomers into a movement they control themselves.
A coalition of gatekeepers is not the working class. True democracy in Toronto begins when the unorganized majority organizes for itself.
Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Founder, Be The Change Movement | bahira.ca
Sources & Related Articles
- Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam: Organized Power and the Unorganized Majority: Union Mobilization, Partisan Networks and Democratic Representation in Toronto’s 2026 Mayoral Election (bahira.ca, Oct 27, 2026)
- Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam: Step Aside to Run Again: Why Incumbents Seeking Re-Election to Toronto City Council Should Take a Campaign Leave of Absence (bahira.ca, Oct 27, 2026)
- Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam: An Honour Not Earned: How Fake Support for Palestine, the Liberal Party Machine, and Non-Profit Gatekeepers Re-Elected Olivia Chow (bahira.ca, Oct 27, 2026)
- Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam: Thank You, Toronto! Change Is Coming on the Way: 2026 Mayoral Election Results (bahira.ca, Oct 27, 2026)
- Statistics Canada: 2023 collective bargaining coverage rate (15.5% in the private sector)
- Brock University (Savage & Westlake, Labour/Le Travail Vol. 95, 2025): Union Endorsements and the Voting Intentions of Union Members in Canada
- Z Network: One member, one vote and rank-and-file union endorsement reform
- Global News: 2026 Toronto Mayoral Election & Property-Tax Record (9.5%, 6.9%, 2.2%)
- CTV News: 2026 Toronto Election Night Results
- Ontario: Municipal Elections Act, 1996, s. 88.8 & s. 88.18
Be The Change. Let’s Organize Together.
Stand with Toronto’s unorganized majority to build a truly independent, resident-led movement in every neighbourhood.
Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Founder, Be The Change Movement
bahira.ca
Volunteer with us → | (647) 785-3729 | bethechangeno1@gmail.com
