Final hours of voting underway as Toronto elects a new mayor

Toronto voters are at the polls Monday to choose a new mayor who will step into the role as the city faces a host of colossal challenges, including a massive budget shortfall, an affordability crisis and public safety concerns.

Most of the 1,445 polling stations across the city opened at 10 a.m. ET and will stay open until 8 p.m. Voting hours were extended at four polling stations due to "earlier interruptions," the city said, delaying the release of results by about 15 to 20 minutes.

CBC Toronto will have full coverage of the byelection results after all polls close. You can watch our live streaming special in the player above, on cbc.ca/toronto or on the CBC News YouTube channel. You can also tune in to CBC Radio or CBC Listen.

It's the second mayoral election for the city since October, after former mayor John Tory admitted to having an affair with a former staffer and resigned just a few months into his third term.

Voting comes after a hotly contested 45-day campaign that saw about seven candidates emerge as the main contenders from a record slate of 102 hopefuls. 

That leading field includes former NDP MP and Toronto city councillor Olivia Chow, ex-police chief Mark Saunders, former city councillor and deputy mayor Ana Bailão, sitting councillors Josh Matlow and Brad Bradford, former Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter and conservative newspaper columnist Anthony Furey.

Public opinion polls showed Chow as the frontrunner throughout the campaign and heading into election day, often with a double-digit lead over her consistently closest rivals Saunders and Bailão. Chow, a longtime fixture of the progressive left in Toronto, previously ran for mayor in 2014 but fell from an early top position to place in a distant third.

Issues such as housing, the cost of living, traffic gridlock and public safety dominated the campaign, with candidates from across the political spectrum offering a wide range of promises to prospective voters.

Looming in the background of all the commitments is a $1.5-billion budget deficit, driven largely by pandemic-related spending, that threatens core city services in the years ahead. 

The next mayor will also inherit largely untested "strong mayor" powers, allowing them to pass budgets with just one-third council support, veto bylaws and unilaterally shape the city's top-level administration. Several leading candidates, including Chow, have vowed not to use those powers to overrule council.

The last week of the campaign saw Tory endorse his former council deputy Bailão. Meanwhile, Premier Doug Ford, who repeatedly insisted he was trying to stay out of the race, all but formally endorsed Saunders, going as far as to record robocalls urging voters to support the former police chief at the polls. 

City hall watchers will be keeping a close eye on voter turnout. Last October's contest saw just 29 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot — the lowest election turnout ever in Toronto. Tory cruised to a third term with 62 per cent of the vote share against a field without any rivals with significant name recognition or experience in public office.

There were early signs, however, that voters may be more engaged this time around with so many critical issues on the table during the campaign and a field that includes a number of established candidates with high profiles in Toronto politics.