Candidate Amber Morley hopes to help her ward of Etobicoke-Lakeshore by improving the lives of its residents.
Ward 3 Etobicoke-Lakeshore is home to Humber College’s Lakeshore campus and has more than 140,000 residents. The area has been represented by councillor Mark Grimes since 2018.
The previous election was a tight race between Grimes and Morley, with Morley ultimately losing by 5,542 votes. Running against five other candidates, including incumbent Mark Grimes, Morley remains motivated.
“Back at it again, for the second time, working really hard to do one better and get elected ideally,” said Morley, who was endorsed by the Labour Council of Toronto and York Region.
She grew up being an advocate and organizer from a young age, including previously working as a director for the South Etobicoke Youth Assembly, a non-profit youth-led organization working to help improve South Etobicoke.
“I learned to develop a huge passion for community building, community organizing and advocacy specifically,” she said.
Morley said both her experience and passion are what makes her the best fit for this position. She said the widespread concern of first-term councillors not being familiar and comfortable with the operations of city hall is not something voters will need to worry about.
“I’ve worked at city hall. I supported counselors to do this work. I’ve been really successful in my role as a constituency assistant and as an administrative assistant,” Morley said.
Morley said understanding how things work and what mechanisms are most effective in municipal politics is the best way to realize the change that people in the community want to see.
“I think the lack of political will to build affordable housing is the biggest threat to affordable housing. We’ve seen a huge construction boom in the city of Toronto, and there’s no shortage of new buildings or new condominiums,” Morley said.
“A lot of these are private luxury or strictly sort of for-profit housing developments and so they’re not actually getting to the heart of the need in our city,” she said.
Morley attributed affordable housing to being largely a product of high poverty rates in the city.
Growing up in a low-income household, Morley said it’s a topic that’s often ignored.
“That’s something that I’m really focused on and has been, frankly, quite ignored by this last number of terms of council, even though the city adopted the poverty reduction report and recommendations and principles,” she said.
“They’ve continued to fail to fund or actually address and provide leadership on those recommendations,” Morley said.