MP turned councillor wants to get Scarborough North moving
· Toronto Sun
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Shaun Chen has come full circle.
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Scarborough North will have a new city councillor, and it’s Chen. Everything else, it seems, is old hat – he’s an established politician, he already knows much of city council and it’s not even his first time working at Toronto City Hall.
Speaking to the Toronto Sun , Chen rattles off the names of new council colleagues he knows as fellow trustees from his time with the TDSB: “James Pasternak, Josh Matlow, Ausma Malik and Neethan Shan. Sorry, not Neethan Shan – Parthi Kandavel.”
Chen does know Shan, but Shan took his place as trustee when he left for Parliament. Chen knows enough city councillors that it’s tough to keep track.
Speaking of Parliament, Chen said he also knows Nate Erskine-Smith well. The two are entering Toronto city politics together after nearly identical tenures as Liberal MPs.
“We’re from the class of 2015,” Chen said. “It’s exciting to know that there are going to be familiar faces on this council.”
Even the building is familiar. He began his political career with a job under then-city councillor Brad Duguid in 2000.
A generation later, he’s 46 and might be known best to Torontonians outside of the ward for his abrupt exit from Parliament in August . He said a car crash had taken a toll on his health.
He quit in time to get the paperwork in on the final day to file for a council run.
“I left Ottawa because of the weekly commute. It’s a three- to four-hour commute each way, and that got in the way of my health following the accident I had driving to Ottawa a year ago,” he told the Sun .
“So, that’s what happened and I’m moving forward, I’m turning the page and looking forward to not having that commute, but to serve locally and to do the job that I love, which is to advocate and fight for the people of Scarborough North.”
Myers’ exit leaves hole
Chen’s win came at the expense of Jamaal Myers, a one-term councillor who had been as staunch an ally of Mayor Olivia Chow as anyone else in his time at city hall.
Myers’ departure also opens up a hole at the Toronto Transit Commission, as he had served as board chairman.
Myers took on that role shortly after Chow became mayor, and he was instrumental in implementing her agenda at the transit commission, such as with the renaming of the Dundas subway station after TMU.
Dianne Saxe, another TTC board member, is also departing, which means a broader shakeup is certain. While Chow could turn to Jon Burnside, the board’s most recent chairman before Myers, she could also once again pick someone closely tied to her ideology, given how greatly she prizes the transit file.
When he spoke to the Sun on Tuesday, Chen said he had no idea about how he might fit with any city hall committees or municipal boards, like the TTC. He said he had exchanged congratulatory texts with Chow, but they had yet to speak in detail.
While Erskine-Smith comes to city hall having spent time on the federal housing file, much of Chen’s committee work in Ottawa, such as veterans affairs and the Library of Parliament, doesn’t have an equivalent in Toronto.
He doesn’t seem deterred. “There’s a lot to do,” he said.
Slow going in Morningside Heights
Asked about ward issues, he brought up the broken northern part of Morningside Ave. He wants to prioritize connecting Morningside between Passmore and McNicoll Aves., and also widen a narrow stretch of Steeles Ave. E near where it meets Morningside.
“The traffic is horrendous if you drive east on Steeles and try to head south on Staines into the neighbourhood. You can get jammed up there for 30 minutes easily,” Chen said.
He also has ambitions for “higher-order transit,” which Scarborough has notoriously been lacking in. One goal is to figure out an eastward extension of the Sheppard subway line into the ward.
That sort of work would be a change for an MP. Chen, however, said he learned plenty from his time with Duguid and even dealt with zoning as a school board trustee, as he had to handle a land deal that involved housing development.
“For me, it’s not such a big change because I’ve done both over my 20 years serving the community,” Chen said. “For me, it’s a full circle moment, having started my first political job at city hall and now coming back to it.”