This fall's Ontario municipal elections are shaping up as the most compelling in years, thanks to stark left-right battles. Much of the conversation has centred around Toronto, where Councillor Brad Bradford is challenging NDP stalwart Olivia Chow over what he says is a city in quick decline. But TVO's Steve Paikin has declared that Hamilton, Ontario's fifth biggest city, may have the province's best race.
Like in Toronto, the incumbent is a prominent New Democrat – former provincial leader Andrea Horwath – who is facing accusations of allowing rampant crime, homelessness, waste and mismanagement. Among her challengers is Rob Cooper, a longtime business executive who was just elected to city council last fall in a byelection.
Cooper, a former Progressive Conservative Party stalwart, was born and raised in Hamilton. He has held senior roles across some of the country's biggest institutions, including Ernst & Young, Stelco, TD Bank, Manulife, McMaster University and Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Board — experience he argues is directly relevant to a city hall wrestling with its own budget pressures and infrastructure backlog.
He stresses that every line item in the municipal budget should be tied to an outcome residents can see and feel in their daily lives. Dave Gordon interviews him for the National Post.
What convinced you to run as mayor?
I was elected in a by-election in September, and the platform I ran on was tackling violent crime, repairing infrastructure, addressing tax increases, capping the rate of inflation, and confronting the housing crisis. Got to city hall, and the moment that it all became real to me I realized that because of strong mayor powers, I couldn't achieve these goals as a councillor.
The city has no audited statements since 2022. The tax increase process we went through this year, there's no benchmarks, there's no peer data. And I've never seen an organization run like this before. So it became obvious to me that in order for us to make the change, I would have to run for mayor.
Where has Mayor Horwath fallen short?
We have homelessness at a level we've never seen. One of the commercial property owners told me he lost three floors of tenants because their people don't want to be in downtown Hamilton anymore. The city spent $170 million in the last year on housing and homelessness. There are now 2,100 homeless, but in 2022 was 545 [in a single night snapshot]. What we have to do is recognize the fact that this isn't about housing; it's all mental health and drug addiction, and we need to get these people help, and off the streets. For the amount of money that we spent on that whole file, Indwell [a non-profit organization that creates supportive housing communities] said they could solve homelessness in all of Ontario. They do it better than we're doing it.
Crime has just blown out of control here, and it's affecting every aspect of life. We need a mayor who will take decisive action to restore safety and accountability.
