What to know
- Amber Morley defeated longtime incumbent Mark Grimes in 2022 to become Etobicoke-Lakeshore councillor.
- She says she is seeking re-election because she believes there is still work to do in the ward.
- Transit, congestion and accessibility, including improvements at Mimico GO, remain key priorities.
- Morley says representing local residents remains her top priority despite her broader roles at City Hall.
When Amber Morley was elected councillor for Etobicoke-Lakeshore in 2022, she defeated longtime incumbent Mark Grimes, becoming the only candidate in that election to unseat a sitting councillor.
“Which is a very, very difficult thing to do in the City of Toronto and just in politics in general. So I was very proud of that accomplishment,” she told Now Toronto in an interview.
Now, with just over two weeks to go until election day, Morley is running to keep the seat she won four years ago. She says her decision to seek re-election comes from the same desire for change that motivated her first campaign.
“I ran initially because I wanted to see change that reflected my values, that reflected my vision of what a healthy and inclusive, sustainable city looks like,” she said.
Morley said she wasn’t seeing people across the city, including in her own community, building the kind of city she wanted to see, one that is inclusive, sustainable and affordable.
Transit, congestion remain among her biggest concerns
But after four years in office, some of the issues she campaigned on remain unfinished.
Transit and congestion are among the biggest concerns she hears from constituents, she said.
“None of us are trying to sit in traffic for two hours to get to where we’re going, right? Safety on our transit systems is also incredibly important. People want to feel like they can jump on the TTC,” she said. “It needs to be reliable and efficient.”
Accessibility is another issue she wants to see progress on. Morley points to Mimico GO as the only GO station that is currently not accessible, despite being the best and most direct route for many of her constituents travelling to Union Station.
“We’ve been working very hard locally to advocate and collaborate to get those necessary improvements done,” she said.
“There is a history of a failure of public-private partnership that was supposed to deliver these infrastructure upgrades 10 years ago. So that’s an ongoing dialogue and discussion in our community.”
For Morley, the fact that some of these issues remain unresolved is part of the reason she wants another term.
Morley says her community will always be her ‘bread and butter’
Now that she has served her first term and gotten a closer look at how city government operates, she said she understands the value of continuing the work she set out to do.
Morley spent her first term as deputy mayor and as a member of the Police Services Board and Budget Committee. But she said her priority remains representing residents in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, regardless of how many roles she takes on at City Hall.
“Taking care of our residents is our bread and butter here at our office,” she said.
“We understand that the work we do at City Hall from a policy perspective, again, whether it’s budget, policing, community safety, any of those things is secondary to the work that we do to represent our local community.”
Morley said she is proud of the work she has done during her first term, pointing to sustainability and climate initiatives, city-building projects and her vote to rename Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square.
But a second term would give her the opportunity to continue pushing on issues that have yet to be resolved, including transit, congestion and accessibility.
Now, she will face three other candidates in her bid to keep the seat: Anthony Internicola, Mihaela Andrei and Ted Opitz.
Advance voting for the election runs until Oct. 11, with election day set for Oct. 26.
