Will Toronto get more ethnic councillors?

Toronto Star says though the number of ethnic candidates running in the current municipal election has broken any records, their chance of winning is still slim. Except:

Anyone glancing at the faces and names in the running in this year's municipal elections might conclude that we're on the verge of a minority breakthrough in GTA politics.

It may be the biggest roster of minority candidates ever — especially among the black, Chinese and Filipino communities. But according to the keenest observers of those communities, it's debatable whether city councils after the Nov. 13 ballot will be any less white bread than they are now.

That's because the factors that work against minority candidates aren't going away any time soon: the traditional apathy of new-Canadian voters to municipal politics, the lack of a party system to aid non-establishment contenders, and a tendency to splinter the vote in high-immigrant wards.

There are a record 41 candidates of Chinese origin running for councils and school boards in the GTA, but Tak Lam, editor of Ming Pao Daily, says only a handful have a real chance.

Municipal elections are a tough place for immigrant or minority hopefuls to break in, says Lam, because of the absence of political parties that could provide expertise, a platform and financial backing.

"The feeling is very different from (provincial and federal) elections, because candidates have to campaign on their own. Some of them are newcomers who don't really know how to run a campaign in an election here, and they may not have the resources to print campaign literature and recruit volunteers," Lam explains. "They'd all have a better chance if they got some help in that."

Some candidates simply lack the savvy to promote themselves, says Binoy Thomas, editor of The Weekly Voice, a paper for the South Asian community in Brampton and Mississauga.

"Generally," he says, "there is a lack of credibility among our candidates. They've not worked long enough and hard enough in the community. These guys are not out there with their sleeves rolled up, so who knows them?"

They tend not to buy ads in the English-language press, including his 30,000-circulation paper, Thomas says. "Some of them are not comfortable expressing themselves in English and only approach Punjabi papers."

Add to that the reluctance of mainstream voters to put an X next to an unfamiliar name.

Tags: municipal election, toronto, chinese candidates, ethnic candidates