Article

Organized Power and the Unorganized Majority: Union Mobilization, Partisan Networks and Democratic Representation in Toronto’s 2026 Mayoral Election

Who really elected Olivia Chow, who paid the price, and do the organizations behind her truly represent the people?

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

Typographic graphic: Organized Power and the Unorganized Majority: Union Mobilization, Partisan Networks and Democratic Representation in Toronto's 2026 Mayoral Election. Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, P.Eng., bahira.ca. — Organized Power and the Unorganized Majority. Graphic by Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam campaign.

This piece is an elaboration of my earlier article on who elected Olivia Chow. Here I go further: who built the win, who paid the price, and whether the organizations behind it are democratic themselves.

The claim, and the result

Provincial and federal governments should not interfere in people’s choices for their municipal government, and rallying federal MPs to re-elect a mayor is questionable and suspicious. An MP comes with huge resources, including taxpayer-funded offices, staff, voter databases and communications networks, that do not level the playing field when deployed in a local race. Equally, the incumbent needs to resign before seeking re-election; otherwise, her use of the City’s resources will never result in a democratic process.

At the same time, saying only that “a handful of Liberals elected Olivia Chow” misses the rest of the machine that built this result, and believing it will cost every independent voice in this city. Olivia Chow is a former New Democrat Member of Parliament who ran, like every Toronto mayoral candidate, without a party label on the ballot, and she won with more than half a million votes, about 54 per cent, and a margin of over 125,000 over Brad Bradford (CP24; CTV News). Alongside those partisan networks and the power of incumbency stood a massive coalition of unions, community organizers and progressive groups.

She was elected by voters. But those voters were found, called, canvassed and driven to the polls by an organized army. If we want to change Toronto, we must first be honest about how power in Toronto is actually built.

Who actually built the win

The machine behind Olivia Chow was built over years, not weeks. It is made of unions, community organizers and progressive networks, people who knock on doors in the rain.

Year	Who organized	What they brought
2026	Toronto & York Region Labour Council	Endorsement, and a volunteer drive to talk to union members; the Council says it represents 200,000+ workers
2026	CUPE Local 79	Endorsement from the city’s largest municipal-workers’ local (TorontoToday)
2026	Progress Toronto, ACORN, CUPE 416 and others	Slates of endorsements down the ballot
2023	ETT, OPSEU/SEFPO, CUPE Ontario, ATU Canada, USW	A joint endorsement by unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers
2023	OPSEU/SEFPO members	Phone banks, workplace flyers, canvassing
2023	Progress Toronto	Hundreds of volunteers, tens of thousands of flyers
2023	The Chow campaign itself	2,500+ volunteers on election day, trained by organizers from unions, the NDP and social-justice groups (CBC)

This year, the campaign set out to rebuild that same 2023 coalition (Orillia Matters / TorontoToday), and the city saw a record 222,550 advance votes (City of Toronto / TorontoToday). That is what organization looks like. Provincial and federal governments should never interfere in people’s choices, and alongside that partisan interference and the advantage of incumbency stood this massive union and organizational machine.

Do these organizations represent the people?

They represent real people, their members. A transit operator, a city worker, a teacher, a nurse: these are Torontonians, and their organizations fight for wages, pensions and safe workplaces. That deserves respect, not dismissal.

But an endorsement is not the same as the members’ vote. Canadian research published in Labour/Le Travail in 2025 found that most union members say an endorsement will not change their vote, and only a modest share are swayed by it (Brock University). The organization speaks for its members on the job; it does not automatically speak for them at the ballot box.

And most of Toronto belongs to none of these networks. Seniors on fixed incomes, small-business owners, gig drivers, newcomers, tenants in towers like mine in Thorncliffe Park: no machine knocks on their doors. In 2022, only about 29 per cent of eligible Toronto voters cast a ballot at all (blogTO). A city where seven in ten people stay home is not a city whose majority has spoken.

The people without a union are being dismissed

Most working people in this country have no union at all. In 2023, only 15.5 per cent of private-sector employees in Canada were covered by a collective agreement (Statistics Canada). Across all sectors, roughly seven in ten employees have no union contract.

Those numbers do not even count the self-employed, gig and delivery drivers, small-business owners, caregivers at home, students, the unemployed and retirees. Together, they are the majority of this city.

Yet in a Toronto election, these residents are treated as if they do not exist. Their votes are not “delivered” by anyone, so no slate courts them, no phone bank calls them, and no endorsement speaks for them. When the only voices counted are the organized ones, the unorganized majority is dismissed, and then blamed for not showing up.

A mayor must answer to every resident equally: the union member and the cleaner with no contract, the city worker and the corner-store owner who opens at six every morning. That is my pledge.

Are they democratic themselves?

In choosing their leaders, largely yes: union officers are elected by their members under their own constitutions. That is more democracy than many institutions offer, and it should be said fairly.

The harder question is who decides the endorsement. Too often it is not every member, but an executive board, a delegates’ meeting or a political action committee, a practice that labour’s own reformers have criticized as leaving members without a real say (Z Network). Members are then asked to phone, canvass and donate for a choice they never voted on.

The fix is simple, and I would ask every organization that endorses in Toronto to adopt it:

One member, one vote on every political endorsement.
Publish the result: how many members voted, and how many supported the choice.
Invite every serious candidate to make their case to members before the vote, not only the favourite.

Is it democratic when unions push one candidate against the others?

The answer is: it is legal, and in principle democratic, but whether a particular endorsement is democratic depends on how it was decided and whose money paid for it.

Why it counts as democratic participation. Unions are associations of citizens, and organizing behind a candidate is protected expression and association, just as it is for a business group or a faith community. In Lavigne v. OPSEU (1991), the Supreme Court of Canada upheld unions using members’ dues for political and social causes beyond bargaining. Ontario also sets limits: unions cannot donate to municipal candidates, and they may only spend on advertising as registered third-party advertisers, with capped and publicly reported spending. And a member who canvasses on a Saturday is exercising their own democratic right.

Where it falls short.

Who decided? If an executive or a delegates’ meeting chose the candidate without a membership vote, the union speaks in its members’ name without their consent.
Whose money? Dues are compulsory in a unionized workplace. A member who supports a different candidate can end up funding a campaign against their own choice.
Was there an equal hearing? If only the favourite was invited to address members, it was a coronation, not a contest.
What about scale? When a few large organizations put their full resources behind one candidate, residents with no organization, still the majority, are left with a weaker voice. That is legal, but it is not equal.

The fair conclusion. A union backing a candidate is not undemocratic in itself. It becomes undemocratic when members never chose the candidate, are made to pay for that choice anyway, and other candidates never got a hearing. Toronto deserves endorsements that pass all three tests.

When parties and charities cross the line

Toronto’s ballot carries no party names, and that is by design. A city election is meant to be decided by residents choosing people, not by provincial and federal party machines choosing for them. When party networks quietly run a municipal campaign, they break the spirit of a non-partisan city election, even where the law has not caught up.

In some places, the law is already clear:

Registered charities may not take sides. Under the Income Tax Act, a charity cannot directly or indirectly support or oppose any candidate for public office (CRA). The CRA has named, as examples, inviting candidates in a way that favours one of them and distributing voter guides that promote a candidate by implication (Mondaq).
Unions and corporations cannot fund candidates. Ontario bans their contributions to municipal candidates outright (Ontario).
Federal and provincial parties cannot fund them or advertise for them. Municipal candidates may not accept contributions from federal or provincial parties, their riding associations or their candidates, and parties are not eligible to register as third-party advertisers (AMCTO).
Outside spending must be registered. Any person, corporation or union spending to promote or oppose a candidate must register as a third-party advertiser (City of Toronto).

So when a charity or community organization uses its hall, its staff, its mailing list or its donors’ money to showcase the establishment’s favourite and shut independent candidates out, it is not neutral community service. For a registered charity, it can breach the law it holds its tax status under. For everyone else, it pushes aside the free choice of residents in favour of a choice made for them.

My demands are simple:

Any charity or publicly funded body that hosts candidates must invite every certified candidate on equal terms.
Every organization that campaigns must disclose it: who decided, what resources were used, and how much was spent.
The province should close the loophole that lets money banned from candidates flow through third-party advertisers instead.
Provincial and federal politicians must stay out of municipal elections, and the incumbent must resign before seeking re-election; otherwise, the use of City resources by a sitting incumbent will never result in a democratic process.

If you saw a registered charity favour one candidate this fall, you can report it to the Canada Revenue Agency. Facts, documents and dates, not rumours, are what protect our democracy.

Who paid the price

Organizations win elections; ordinary residents pay the bills. In her first term, the mayor supported property-tax increases of 9.5 per cent in 2024, 6.9 per cent in 2025 and 2.2 per cent in 2026, the smallest rise landing in the election year (Global News).

Homeowners on fixed incomes: seniors who own their homes but live on pensions felt every one of those increases.
Small businesses: the family shop on Thorncliffe Park Drive does not have a union, a lobbyist or a slate.
Tenants: they carry the cost of housing in this city every month, with the least say over how it is governed.
Every voice outside the machine: 50 other mayoral candidates, many with real ideas, were treated as background noise in a two-person story.

The price is also democratic. When a few well-organized networks decide who is “serious”, the rest of Toronto is told there is no alternative. That conditioning, not the voters themselves, is what I am running against.

What it means for Toronto

The voters made their choice on Monday, and I respect it. Brad Bradford conceded, and so should every argument that pretends this result was small or accidental.

The lesson for those of us outside the machine is not to complain about it; it is to build our own. Organization beats slogans. Neighbours beat networks only when neighbours organize.

That is why I stand for a party-free City Hall, ranked ballots, genuine community consultation before decisions, and one-member-one-vote in every organization that claims to speak for working people. Real democracy is not who has the biggest army on election day. It is whether every resident, in a union or not, in a network or not, has an equal voice every day after it.

Toronto will no longer throw its people away. It will be the place that takes care of its people, and I will change the rules of the game.

Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Founder, Be The Change Movement | bahira.ca

Sources

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Dr. Bahira Abdulsalam, PhD, P.Eng.
Founder, Be The Change Movement
bahira.ca

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