I read the whole list of Toronto Mayoral Candidates 2026 - a bunch of dinks.
It is a sea of right-wing crank vanity campaigns. Some are like jokes missing both set up and punchline.
In the absence of a serious radical left candidate with grassroots support, I would be happy to throw my vote away on someone who wanted to use the platform of a mayoral race to conduct propaganda and recruit people to some kind of project, however vague.
There is only one even interesting candidate: Bahira Abdulsalam. Her basic platform is:
But from her page, there is a link to a talk
she gave last year at National Citizen's Inquiry, an anti-vax, COVID-denialism conspiradoodle gathering, called
“Are Children Safe in Canada?” about "gender ideology in schools". This isn't only a socially conservative person, she's likely on some sort of Qanon shit.
TheLocal implies that whatever she has been saying is bad enough that she has been brought up on charges at Professional Engineers Ontario. And maybe something about Palestine as well.
According to her July 2026 interview with Salaam Media also linked from her page, she characterizes the complaints as being about 5 tweets/retweets "relevant to the solidarity with Palestine and expressing my few views about the family values", though she only elaborates upon the former in this interview. She says the allegations were brought by Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation.
partial transcription
I'm actually accused of like-tweeting or expressing my views on social media.
so they selected some tweets relevant to the solidarity with Palestine and expressing my few views about the family values.
And I am accused of being attacking or insulting the Jewish community and the LGBTQ community in Canada.
so there were five tweets that were selected.
And this the origin of those complaints were mainly from an organization called the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation [CAEF], which mainly they are supporting the interests of Israel and they're defending the Israelis' rights in Canada.
however, they claim that they're supporting the Jewish community and so the question here if the professional regulator who regulates the engineering profession is mainly have jurisdiction jurisdiction over my speech.
So, one of the examples of the tweets because you know, after October 7th, for example, they have been raising the question of do you condemn Hamas?
And they are insisting that to select some people to put this question and then so they can answer and then they take their their answer against them.
So, I was saying that as a Muslim, as an engineer, as a Canadian, I will never condemn Hamas until every politician in Canada who supports Israel will condemn Israel.
Which in my view is that why I am asked to condemn something and as someone who supports Palestine and the Palestinian resistance.
the same question is not asked about pro-Israeli politicians who are supporting the the genocide and killing of the Palestinian people.
With brief research, I find her claim regarding the source of the complaints to be very credible. An August 2026 article on The Jerusalem Post: Toronto candidate faces hearing over posts comparing Zionism to Nazism only mentions "antisemitism" and "blood libel", nothing about LGBT-anything. I suspect those were tacked on as pinkwashing afterthought. Also from CAEF's website: Letter from Michael Teper to TDSB Director of Education re Antisemitic posts by Bahira Abdulsalam, dated November 2023, supports my hypothesis. They allege it is homophobia to call someone "openly gay". Wynn's wikipedia page describes her as "the first openly gay premier in Canada". Clearly Abdulsalam has policy disagreements, but those are likely about sex in general, gay straight or otherwise. As to the claims of "antisemitism" they are just as lazy, which is commensurate with CAEF's mission which is to promote the interests of Israel within Canada by conflating Israel, Zionism, Judaeism and Jews.
Her hearing at the disciplinary committee is scheduled to take 17 days over the course of 2026, compared to 18 days scheduled for all other matters combined. I don't know what that represents other than someone is taking it very seriously. I hope I remember to look for the finding when (if?) it is eventually published.
Although engineers are famous for their tendency to way over-estimate their own ability to devise solutions to social problems, it is difficult for me to imagine this one woman deserves so much energy that ought to be devoted to regulating all of Ontario's engineers.
What're you thinking about the mayoral candidates in generate and her in particular? Why no commie running?
