Crime and punishment: How are mayoral candidates Chow and Bradford planning to keep Toronto safe?

While shootings and violent crimes are trending downwards in Toronto, statistics don’t necessarily assuage public anxieties surrounding safety.

A Canada Pulse Insights poll for CityNews released on Tuesday found that more than one-third of Torontonians (35 per cent) don’t feel safe walking around their own neighbourhood after dark.

City residents who were surveyed rank crime, policing, and public safety as the second most important issue facing the city, after affordability and the cost of living.

It’s not difficult to see why.

Viral videos document break-ins, car thefts, jewellery store smash-and-grabs, and shootings and arsons targetting vehicles, homes, businesses, and places of worship. Police say teens are frequently recruited by organized crime to commit these crimes.

High-profile incidents like the Salsa on St. Clair Festival shooting leave residents rattled.

Commuters also witness open drug use on the TTC and read headlines about random acts of violence on the transit system.

CEO of Canada Pulse Insights, John Wright, says touting improved crime statistics isn’t enough to make people feel safe. With random attacks on transit and home invasions making headlines, citizens are rightfully on edge.

“If you can’t have a city where you are having a predictable moment, where you can walk onto a subway train and think everything is going to be OK … if you’re anxious about that, this is what makes a city a little more unhinged,” he said.

“It’s not that things happen, it’s that you presuppose they might.”

Add it all up, and it’s clear that public safety is a key election issue and one that candidates Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford have both vowed to prioritize.

Here’s a closer look at their respective plans and promises:

‘It’s working’: Olivia Chow

Chow points to statistical improvements on crime in Toronto as evidence that she’s on the right track, while acknowledging there’s still room for improvement.

“I’ve held the hands of the grieving mothers who have lost their sons to gun violence and promised them I would do everything I can to stop it,” Chow said during the first head-to-head debate with Bradford on October 6.

“For far too long Toronto ignored the root cause of crime,” she added. “Young people had nowhere to go and when you call 911, you waited. So I made a different choice. We hired hundreds of police officers, firefighters, paramedics. We put mental health crisis workers on the streets across the city, on TTC. And we gave young people jobs and after school programs so they have somewhere to go.

“It’s working,” she stressed. “Gun crimes are down, 911 rate times are down, but those grieving mothers need more from us and they expect more. So here’s my promise to them, we will keep our police hiring on track, we will invest $28 million in programs, jobs, and mentorship programs for young people. Safety is a job that never finishes.”

Deeper dive:

5 year hiring plan: Back in August 2025, Chow unveiled a five-year hiring plan that will see the Toronto Police Service grow by 720 new officers in the first two years. She’s also committed to hiring over 150 firefighters, 361 paramedics and staff and 90 new 911 call-takers.

Expanding the mental health crisis response: Chow says she established and expanded the Toronto Community Crisis Service and hired over 100 more crisis workers.

Investing in youth programs: Chow says she’ll invest $28 million over four years toward youth violence prevention and safety programs. She also announced she was expanding Toronto’s school food program.

Safer public transit: Chow’s office has embedded mental health crisis workers and Police Neighbourhood Community Officers on the subway and has hired 420 more frontline safety workers, including TTC staff, social services teams, Provincial Offence Officers and security guards.

‘Public safety is my number one priority’: Brad Bradford

“Right now certainly folks in this city feel a lot less safe than they used to,” Bradford said at the Oct. 6 debate. “Seniors don’t want to take transit, families don’t feel safe in the park, people of faith don’t feel safe going to their place of worship and for good reason because of what’s happened here in the city over the past three years.”

“We have a lot of room for improvement on this file and public safety is my number one priority.”

Deeper dive:

Police hiring: Bradford has promised to eclipse Chow’s police hiring targets if he’s elected, vowing to hire 1,000 new police officers over four years.

TTC and public infrastructure safety: Bradford says if he’s elected he’ll put police officers inside every TTC station. He’s also vowed to establish a police substation at Union Station, and set up a police outpost at Sankofa Square. On top of that, he’s calling for costly platform-edge doors along the transit system, calling the steel barriers being erected by the Chow administration a “waste of money.”

Governance and Oversight: Bradford says if he’s elected he will sit on the Toronto Police Services Board, something he criticized Chow for declining to do. “It’s pretty typical for the mayor to do that, John Tory sat on the board, Mel Lastman, even the last time we had an NDP mayor, David Miller, he sat on the police board but Mayor Chow chose not to,” Bradford said while debating Chow. “I’m not surprised when I meet people on the streets … when they tell me that they feel that Mayor Chow doesn’t take their safety seriously.”

Youth Initiatives and engagment: Bradford has promised that if elected he will launch the Toronto Youth Employment Challenge to ultimately create 15,000 private sector youth jobs by the end of his first term.