A ward where everyone is safe, connected, and able to afford to stay.
Vanessa's platform is built on three pillars — and the intergovernmental strategy needed to deliver them.
You shouldn't have to choose a lane.
A professional engineer, a non-profit founder, and an energetic new voice for City Hall — that's what Vanessa Raponi brings. Vanessa's skillset sits at the intersection of the passion of the activism and advocacy world, and the pragmatic, results-driven spirit of the corporate private sector. She has a history of getting seemingly impossible things done, by bringing together people who don't typically align, and leveraging empathetic leadership to break down barriers and make things happen. This election, Parkdale–High Park doesn't need to choose a lane — you can select a candidate who truly represents all corners of the ward.
Vanessa has a simple philosophy: address issues in the short term with something people can feel and touch, so they can see and believe that their involvement matters and is making change. In parallel, address the root causes through slow, complex, multi-year planning that will ensure we don't need to address these issues at all one day. We need both to truly make change.
As Councillor, Vanessa will focus on increased communication with constituents. There are so many people, with so many unique ideas and perspectives — from traffic flows on their side street, to the cross-city organizations they volunteer with. We need modern tools to communicate with 100,000+ people: expanding our newsletters to include podcasts, social media summaries, more in-person community events, and fixed office hours. We need a tracker that shows issues flagged through to resolution. We need recurring meetings with BIAs, residents' and tenants' associations, and key leadership hubs like the High Park Nature Centre, PARC, and Dunn House on complex issues like homelessness and food insecurity — as well as groups like TTCriders, Cycle Toronto, and ACORN on city-wide issues. We must connect with experts, advocate for their well-researched, mass-supported policy changes, and bring those ideas to council as motions and bylaw proposals.
We joined the race on day one, with 100 people showing up for launch day and immediate coverage from CBC and CityNews. We were the first campaign to open an office in the ward. We've knocked on countless doors, attended a wide range of community consultations and events, and Vanessa even started her local tenants association — negotiating with property management and winning a rent freeze for west-end tenants. We've raised over $30,000 through purely grassroots, independent organizing. Vanessa is glad she quit her corporate job to run for City Council, because this is truly the role she was meant for, and she is the best candidate to represent every voice in the ward.
What Vanessa is fighting for.
Affordability
1 in 10 Torontonians are accessing food banks right now. Tens of thousands are on wait lists for supportive housing. We can't afford to live in our own city anymore.
Community
We are more isolated than ever. We need to come together.
Safety
People simply don't feel safe in Toronto. We need a multi-pronged approach to move to a safer city.
Affordability
1 in 10 Torontonians are accessing food banks right now. Tens of thousands are on wait lists to move into supportive housing. We can't afford to live in our city anymore.
Tenants
- Strengthen rent protections like RentSafeTO and support the creation of more tenants associations — with emphasis on units that fall through the cracks: retail conversions, duplexes, triplexes and sixplexes, basement apartments, and the "missing middle"
- Establish renoviction prevention programs
- Follow through on heating and cooling protections, unify maintenance standards for landlords, and strengthen renoviction protections
- Work with experts like ACORN, the Toronto Tenants Union, and local tenants associations to bring forward policy that lets neighbours sleep at night knowing their kids' home won't be taken from them
- Hold landlords accountable to maintaining an adequate standard of living
- Advocate for changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to cap rent increases in units first occupied after November 15, 2018, protecting tenants against unreasonable increases — and support tenants in buildings outside this exemption in pushing back against AGIs (Above Guideline Increases)
Transit
- Support fare capping and hold the line against cost increases for riders
- Improve streetcar reliability through tactics like signal priority
- Invest in platform barriers to prevent unexpected subway delays
- Invest in frontline mental health support, leveraged through the SafeTTC app, to support people in need
- Partner with groups like TTC Riders to execute on accessibility, affordability, reliability and safety — and get ridership back to pre-pandemic levels
- Expand car share programs like Communauto, including free-floating car-share services, such as Communauto FLEX
Food Insecurity
- Address the root causes of poverty: affordable housing integrated into all developments, income supports (a livable wage), and decent, stable work
- Feed people today by supporting the Daily Bread Food Bank's 200+ member network across the city
- Focus specifically on ensuring kids don't have empty bellies through the Student Nutrition Program — 1 in 4 food bank users today are kids
Housing
- We need more housing, everywhere, point blank — but we need to invest in the right housing
- Bring community consultation earlier into the development process to balance bureaucracy with meeting hyperlocal needs
- Follow the Growing Up Guidelines so families can live comfortably: at least 25% of units as appropriately sized 2- and 3-bedroom homes
- Work with private developers to meet in the middle of the financial and technical burden of building new housing, while ensuring the people who live there can not just be housed, but actually thrive
Employment
Applying to a thousand jobs with no response, and struggling to get considered for even a cashier role, simply isn't cutting it anymore.
- Intervene to connect workers with employment opportunities through more job fairs and professional development investment that upskills talented, hardworking people
- Support all sectors — public, private, entrepreneurial and non-profit — in connecting open roles with people eager to fill them
- Help businesses hire more apprentices and interns, building the pipeline that keeps growing Toronto into the innovative hub it has the potential to be
Community
We are more isolated than ever, we need to come together.
Third Spaces
- Protect and expand public spaces — parks, libraries, and community centres
- Support small businesses, from hospitality to fitness to hobby stores
- Grow in-person community events where neighbours meet, connect, and laugh together — by connecting existing organizers with more grants and funding, and hosting more of our own
Multi-Cultural & Interfaith Connection
Toronto's strength is our vast diversity, and our ability to connect over what makes us similar instead of different.
- Bring people together through interfaith panels and shared community time
- Bring justice to hateful behaviour and vandalism
- Accelerate anti-hate rapid response planning across the ward
Safety
People simply don't feel safe in Toronto, we need to take a multi-pronged approach to move to a safer city.
Emergency Services
- Focus funding on programs like 211 (Toronto Community Crisis Line) so experts can meet face-to-face with neighbours in need
- Prioritize Toronto Police Service accountability to rebuild public trust, freeing up resources for the most violent and complex crimes — child sexual abuse, human trafficking, identity theft, cybersecurity, gun violence, and vehicle theft
- Support Toronto Fire Services with additional lithium-ion battery education, the leading cause of fires in Toronto today
Homelessness
Vanessa's father was unhoused in Toronto for 10 years, losing limbs, and eventually his life, to the streets. This does not need to be everyone's story.
- Our #1 solution to helping people who are unhoused is to ensure they have housing — it's as simple as that
- Build more permanent, deeply affordable housing, with on-site support for newcomers, people struggling with mental health and addiction, people with unique accessibility needs, and social work employment support
- Scale up successes like co-ops, Dunn House, and PARC — encampments are the most visible result of a failing system, and the people living in them need these supports, or we will never end homelessness in Toronto
- Invest in more public washrooms and public showers
Road Safety
- Prioritize multi-modal harmony so drivers, cyclists, transit riders and pedestrians can co-exist — investing in affordable, reliable transit, physically separated bike lanes, and sharing programs like Communauto and Bike Share TO
- Implement traffic calming on Parkside Drive, where we've seen a 500% increase in speeding since the removal of speed cameras — short-term Watch Your Speed signs, and longer-term TTC-bus-accommodating speed bumps
- Improve communication on existing bylaws, and ensure enforcement is prioritized
- Explore permitting, insurance, age and speed restrictions for e-bikes and e-scooters, and revisit Toronto's implementation of the Ontario pilot program — these are affordable, low-carbon transportation options that deserve safe, clear regulation
- Revisit front pad parking bylaws to balance environmental protection with solutions to tackle limited parking availability
Seasonal & Climate Services
- Prepare for more frequent extreme weather per Toronto's Climate Readiness Report: indoor air quality, winter storm maintenance, and drain clearing and flood prevention
- Treat climate readiness as a serious safety risk, not just an inconvenience
Wildlife
- Invest in more off-leash dog parks from Warren Park through to Parkdale, and partner with organizations like Paws for Parks to bring tailored policy to council
- Continue coyote watch awareness and leverage animal control services to protect the public
- Expand pest control across the city — bed bugs, cockroaches, rats and other vermin — in TCHC buildings, on the TTC, and city-wide
Intergovernmental Relations
Toronto needs to be in charge of Toronto, and we need both Ontario and Canada's support to make that possible.
City Revenue Tools
Increasing property taxes are currently one of few tools to grow the municipal budget. We need more income sources.
- Increase vacant home taxes on luxury properties, and hold private developers accountable for multi-decade undeveloped sites like the Giraffe Building at Bloor & Dundas
- Push for congestion pricing autonomy back from the provincial government
- Create new sales taxes for events that bring in tourism (FIFA, concerts, etc.) so more of that revenue is invested back into our local economy
- Advocate for a set share of existing income and sales tax to flow to municipal budgets, funded by shifting from narrow per-project funding to broader spending flexibility
Local Collaboration
We can't let party politics divide us — collaboration is how we successfully negotiate and execute our goals.
- Bring the ward's Councillor, MPP and MP together on complex issues — from transit, to affordability, to infrastructure projects
- Lead new collaborative initiatives in planning meetings and public consultations that bring all three levels of government together
- 60%+ of Torontonians don't vote municipally because they feel unengaged — showing them all three levels of government working together is how we rebuild trust
City of Toronto Act
We need radical improvements to municipal autonomy.
- Resource and prioritize constitutional experts to explore concepts like charter cities
- Pursue legislative changes so "the municipality being a creature of the province" doesn't mean local voices are bulldozed for expensive provincial decisions we did not want
- Vanessa has already advocated against the Billy Bishop expansion, bike lane removals on Bloor, and luxury condo developments in Swansea — approved simply because the Ontario Land Tribunal would allow "something worse" to inevitably come to fruition
First Past the Post
This system fails us at all levels of government. People are exhausted by "choosing the lesser of two evils" or voting strategically to avoid splitting the vote.
- Move Toronto to a ranked ballot voting model that allows residents to rank candidates
- Facilitate more democratic involvement from a more diverse slate of candidates across industries, backgrounds and experiences
- Improve voter apathy and encourage candidates and elected officials to work closely together, instead of letting polarized views scare people away from getting involved in politics
What do you want to see here?
This platform is a living document. Your ideas help shape what Vanessa fights for — share what matters most to you in Parkdale–High Park.
Ready to get involved?
Join the campaign and help build a ward that works for everyone.
Social Isolation
40% of our ward lives in 1-person households. Feeling alone is dangerous, and one of the most consistent root causes of homelessness.