StarExclusive: Kristyn Wong-Tam to leave city council to run for the NDP in June provincial election.
City councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam is leaving city hall to run for the Ontario NDP in Toronto Centre in the June 2 election, the Star has learned.
“It’s important to allow new people, new energy, new voices, new vision to come in,” said Wong-Tam in an interview. “I think with MPP Morrison’s retirement from political life right now, it opened a new door that I had not been looking for.” Wong-Tam said she was first courted for provincial office in 2018, in back-to-back dinner meetings with two party leaders — Kathleen Wynne and Andrea Horwath — in the same restaurant at the Marriott Hotel on Bay Street across from city hall, a day apart.
She said Wong-Tam’s work as a city councillor has put her on the front lines “seeing every day how people are impacted by chronic underinvestment. Kristyn has a drive to make homes more affordable for middle class and working families, and is a committed advocate for fixing health care and home care, and helping seniors age in their own homes.”
As one of the only racialized members of council, she has focused on issues like affordable housing, accessibility and gender equity, along with the recovery of Main Streets post-pandemic and mental health addictions — work she said would only be amplified at Queen’s Park. She’s proud to see her work on equity issues has led to staff applying a lens on those concerns on all city staff reports, with a more complete gender equity strategy forthcoming. A push for open streets in 2014 and efforts to remake downtown Yonge Street have shown up in the ActiveTO plan that opened roadways to cyclists and pedestrians during the pandemic and the yongeTOmorrow review of the street’s design.
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