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Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford says Mayor Olivia Chow struck the wrong tone on her American media appearance on Wednesday.
“Handed a rare chance to defend Toronto’s and Canada’s interests on American airwaves, NDP mayoral candidate Olivia Chow squandered it,” Bradford said in a news release on Wednesday. “The moment called for clarity and resolve. What she delivered was a muddle that does nothing for a city caught in the middle of a trade war.”
Chow made an appearance on CNN with host Kate Bolduan, talking about the escalating trade war one day after Ontario Premier Doug Ford made his media rounds south of the border.
Chow claims United States President Donald Trump has lost his way. She also called Trump’s threat to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America “not very neighbourly.”
“In 2017, professing not to understand the president might have passed for candour,” Bradford said. “In 2026, it reads as willful blindness. There is no mystery left to solve. President Trump has told us, repeatedly and in his own words, what he wants: a Canada reduced at best to a compliant American vassal, if not the 51st state outright. The only question that remains is whether we fight back with everything we have, as a city, as a province, and as a country.”
Trump made his “Lake America” comments on Truth Social on Tuesday morning.
Gravitas needed
Bradford called it “weird” that the death of American entertainer Dolly Parton slipped into the conversation when Chow was asked if Ford was taking the proper approach in trade talks with the American administration.
“Parton’s recent passing is sad, but invoking her memory to ask the American president for kindness is not diplomacy,” Bradford said. “It’s weird.”
The Beaches-East York councillor says the mayor’s chair should evoke power, confidence and self-assuredness. Judging by his comments, he sensed very little of those characteristics radiating from Chow. In a roundabout way, he said more gravitas is needed.
“Toronto is Canada’s largest city, larger by population than most provinces,” he said. “When it speaks, markets, ministries, and the White House all take note. And when its words are flimsy, non-committal, or weak, the world notices that too. Our American neighbours most of all.
“Toronto does not need a mayor’s office that pleads. It needs one that leads. That is a change worth making, and it starts with the mayor’s office throwing its weight around, for the sake of our city, our province, and our country.”
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