Can Toronto city council be saved? She's trying to make a difference
David Menzies sat down with Caryma Sa'd on The Ezra Levant Show to discuss her Toronto City Council run in Toronto-Danforth — where Sa'd says residents are telling her the city has deteriorated, Olivia Chow lacks the courage to stand up to the protest crowd, and that after 23 years of Paula Fletcher, the ward is overdue for someone who will actually ask tough questions.
Caryma Sa'd is running for a seat on Toronto's city council. The lawyer, journalist, and social media personality best known for five years of unvarnished documentation of pro-Hamas demonstrations, swastika displays, and protesters dressing as terrorists on Toronto's streets, has thrown her hat into the race for the Toronto-Danforth seat.
She joined David Menzies on a guest-hosted episode of The Ezra Levant Show.
The seat opened up on the second-last day of nominations, when longtime councillor Paula Fletcher withdrew after 23 years in the ward — the same ward Jack Layton once represented, and one that Menzies described, not inaccurately, as historically sympathetic to the far left.
Fletcher's departure triggered an 18-candidate race, including incumbent councillor Dianne Saxe from another ward, who jumped in for what Sa'd drily described as reasons of "political ambition."
Sa'd's pitch is straightforward: as a lawyer, she understands contracts and the unglamorous mechanics of municipal governance. As a journalist, she knows how to ask tough questions and hold power to account.
"I think municipal politics should be boring," she told Menzies. What she's hearing at the doors is a desire for change, concern about affordability, and a creeping anxiety that the decay visible in other parts of Toronto is beginning to reach Toronto-Danforth.
On bike lanes — a live issue on the Danforth, where Menzies said retailers and restaurateurs have told him the lanes have ruined the street — Sa'd was measured.
She said bike lanes on arterial roads aren't necessarily the best strategy, acknowledged the impact on businesses and on the Taste of the Danforth festival, but noted she also uses the lanes herself, on a scooter that isn't technically street-legal in Toronto. She stopped short of calling for immediate removal, suggesting meaningful resident consultation and noting the province has already begun making some of those decisions for the city.
On Mayor Olivia Chow, Sa'd was pointed without being partisan. She said there is a significant disconnect between frontline police officers and upper brass on managing protests — a file where she said there is "a lot of room for improvement." On Chow's decision to skip an antisemitism debate on September 8 — citing the fact that her campaign didn't officially begin until September 9 — Sa'd called the explanation "disingenuous" and said it was more offensive than simply declining.
"To give an explanation that is disingenuous," she said, "I think was more offensive to the people who did show up."
When Menzies put to her criticism that her campaign is a publicity stunt, Sa'd was direct.
"I already have a public profile," she said. "I don't need to do this kind of stunt. And I dare say that among the candidates for councillor, there is no one who has endured as a private citizen more hate and more abuse than me."
Sa'd describes herself as politically homeless — a position she suspects she shares with many Toronto-Danforth residents. Toronto's municipal election is October 26.
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