HARDPARMAR Toronto City Council
Ward 1 · Etobicoke North
Toronto City Council · Ward 1 · Etobicoke North

We build Toronto.It's time Toronto built for us.

Our ward carries the airport, the highways, the rail corridor and the warehouses this whole city depends on. Then our own streets flood, our buses come late, and the road gets dug up three times in one year. I'm a civil engineer. I've inspected this kind of work for a living. I know exactly why it goes wrong — and how to make it stop.

Get involved Read the six pillars
Hard Parmar
Hard Parmar · Candidate for Councillor, Ward 1
—days until the vote Candidate Hard Parmar Election day Mon 26 Oct 2026 Polls 10:00–20:00 Ward 1 · Etobicoke North Neighbourhoods Rexdale · Thistletown · Kingsview Village · Humberwood · The Elms · Willowridge
The number this race turns on

Most of this ward never gets asked.

53,835Ward 1 residents eligible to vote in 2022 who didn't

In 2022, Ward 1 had 70,797 eligible voters. Fewer than 17,000 cast a ballot — a turnout of 23.96%, the lowest band in the city, against a Toronto average of 29.7%.

That statistic gets reported as apathy. It isn't. It's what happens when a place is campaigned at every four years and ignored for the other three and a half. When the buses, the flooding and the broken sidewalks stay broken no matter who wins, people stop believing the ballot is connected to the street.

So this campaign isn't built to win an argument with the 17,000 who already vote. It's built to knock on the doors of the 53,835 who don't, in whatever language they speak at home, and to arrive with something specific enough to be worth their time.

Who I am

I've spent my working life standing in the hole.

Most people running for council have opinions about infrastructure. I have a hard hat, a clipboard, and four years of signing off on whether the work was done right.

I'm Hard Parmar. I grew up here and I still live here. For eight years I've worked the counter at the gas station at Racine Road and Martin Grove — which means I've had roughly the same conversation with a few thousand of my neighbours about what's broken in this ward, long before I ever thought about running for anything.

The rest of my working life has been on construction sites. As an inspector, my job was to stand over the trench and decide whether the watermain, the sewer, the roadbed and the restoration met the specification — or whether the contractor had to come back and do it again. At Metrolinx, I worked on safety standards for rail and transit projects, and I've personally moderated protective-track safety training for contractors and staff.

I know how a capital project actually gets delivered: who signs, who pays, where the delay comes from, and which corner gets cut when nobody local is watching. Ward 1 is about to be rebuilt on a scale this city has not attempted in fifty years. Somebody at that table should know how to read the drawings.

  • 2026B.Eng, Civil EngineeringLassonde School of Engineering, York University. Dean's Honour Roll.
  • 2023–24Construction Inspector — Region of PeelWatermains, trunk sewers, road reconstruction and structural foundations. Inspected work on the QEW & Dixie Road interchange reconstruction and the Mississauga Road trenchless crossings.
  • 2022Safety Standards & Practices — MetrolinxRail and transit safety standards. Held and personally moderated Protective Track Safety training for contractors and Metrolinx staff.
  • 2018–Customer Service Supervisor — Racine MartRacine Road & Martin Grove. Eight years behind the counter in this ward.
The plan · six pillars

Six things I will actually be measured on.

Not values. Not adjectives. Commitments specific enough that you can hold me to them, and check whether I did them.

Pillar 01

Fix it once. Fix it right.

A road on your street should be opened once — not in March for the watermain, in July for the gas, and in October for the sidewalk.

  • One coordinated dig per street. When the City opens a road, the watermain, the sewer, the sidewalk, the lighting, the trees and the crossing get done in the same closure. That is a scheduling decision, not a budget one.
  • A published Ward 1 construction calendar. Every project, every street, every date, on one page you can check — so a small business knows six months out that their frontage is coming up.
  • A 30-day standard on potholes, dead streetlights and broken sidewalks, with the result published, not just the request logged.
  • A basement-flooding audit of the streets that flood in every serious storm, and a funded plan for the worst of them.
  • Parks held to the same standard. Every neighbourhood deserves a modern, safe and welcoming park — playgrounds that work, lighting that works, benches, shade, and bins that actually get emptied.
Pillar 02

Move better. Live better.

Line 6 opened in December. The buses that are supposed to feed it never changed.

  • A full audit of every Ward 1 bus route against the Finch West LRT, and a fix for the connections that force a twenty-minute wait to save a ten-minute ride.
  • A shelter, a light and a bench at every stop in this ward where people regularly wait more than ten minutes. In February, that is not a luxury.
  • Safe crossings on Albion, Kipling, Martin Grove and Dixon — signalised where the collision data says so, not where it happens to be cheapest.
  • A published resurfacing schedule for local roads, so road maintenance stops being a lottery and starts being a queue you can see.
  • Woodbine GO held to a public date. Metrolinx has not committed to an opening. I'll ask for one on the record, in writing, and publish the answer.
Pillar 03

Our fair share.

684 acres at Woodbine — the largest undeveloped parcel in Toronto — are being planned right now. We get one chance to set the terms.

  • A binding community benefits agreement before the rezoning, not after. Rexdale already proved this works once, with the Casino Woodbine agreement. The leverage exists exactly once, and it's now.
  • Local hiring and apprenticeship targets written into that agreement, with Humber Polytechnic as the pipeline — so a 25-year build in our ward employs the people who live in it.
  • An annual Etobicoke North Jobs & Skills Expo. Employers, Humber, the trades and City hiring in one room, in this ward, every year — not downtown, not by invitation.
  • An annual Youth Connect so young people here meet the apprenticeships, employers and programs that are already supposed to be open to them.
  • Parks, a school, a community centre and a library committed in writing before a single tower is approved. Twenty thousand homes without them is not a neighbourhood.
  • Albion–Islington Square treated as a real main street: cleaning, lighting, patios and storefront improvement grants. One of the busiest small-business strips in northwest Toronto should not look like an afterthought.
Pillar 04

Every dollar counted.

Before anyone asks a household in this ward to pay more, they should be able to show what the last dollar bought.

  • The capital budget read line by line for Ward 1, and published: what was promised here, what was spent here, and what actually got built.
  • Value before increases. I'll push for service improvement and cost control to be demonstrated before I support a tax increase — and say plainly when I think one is justified.
  • Faster permits and approvals for homes and small businesses. Delay is a cost, and it lands on the applicant, not on City Hall.
  • A real service standard behind 311 — published performance, not a ticket number and silence.
  • Digging once is a savings measure. Pillar 01 isn't only about inconvenience: three mobilisations on one street is three times the traffic control, three times the restoration, three times the cost.
Pillar 05

Care closer to home.

Getting care here too often means a long trip, a long wait, or simply not knowing where to start.

  • A standing working relationship with Etobicoke General Hospital, Toronto Public Health and Toronto Paramedic Services on access, response times and the gaps residents actually run into.
  • Seniors treated as a design constraint, not an afterthought — even sidewalks, benches at the right intervals, accessible stops, and help getting to appointments.
  • Mental-health and crisis response that arrives with the right people, and support for expanding non-police crisis teams into this ward.
  • An office that helps you navigate the system. When you don't know whether it's the City, the Province, the hospital or the landlord, my office is where you start.
Pillar 06

Always there.

The most common thing I hear at the counter isn't about policy. It's that nobody answered.

  • Weekly office hours, rotating through every neighbourhood — Rexdale, Thistletown, Kingsview Village, Humberwood, The Elms, Willowridge — including evenings and Saturdays, because most of this ward works days.
  • Every message answered inside 48 hours. Not "received." Answered, by a person, with a next step.
  • Interpretation on request, at no cost, by default. You should be able to deal with your councillor's office in the language you speak at home, without booking it a week ahead.
  • A public scorecard every three months: what residents asked for, what I did about it, and what actually happened — including the times I lost.
The ward

Etobicoke North, on the record.

Ward 1 — Etobicoke North · 2021 Census
Population115,120
Land area48.4 km²
Median age38
Median household income$81,000
Renter / owner households45.5% / 54.5%
Eligible voters, 202270,797
Ballots cast, 202216,962
2022 municipal turnout23.96%
Toronto average turnout, 202229.70%

Source: City of Toronto Ward Profiles (25-Ward Model), Statistics Canada 2021 Census, City Planning Division. Turnout figures: City Clerk's Office, 2022 Voter Statistics. Income reflects the 2020 reference year.

What's live here right now

Line 6, Finch West LRT. Opened 7 December 2025 with its western terminus at Humber Polytechnic, inside this ward. Projected to carry up to 40,000 rides a day by 2031.

Woodbine. 684 acres — the largest undeveloped parcel in Toronto — with a conceptual plan for roughly 20,000 homes and an estimated 43,000 construction jobs over 25 years. The City's Woodbine Secondary Plan study is being written now.

Woodbine GO. Under construction on the Kitchener line, funded by Woodbine Entertainment, replacing Etobicoke North station. No opening date has been announced.

The neighbourhoods

RexdaleThistletownKingsview VillageHumberwoodThe ElmsWillowridgeMount Olive
Get involved

This is won at doors, not on feeds.

There's no membership, no experience needed, and no minimum. An hour on a Saturday counts. A sign on your lawn counts. Telling four neighbours counts.

Your details go straight to the campaign. We'll never share them.

Phone647-554-7644
Emailhard@hardparmar.com
Webhardparmar.com
Instagram@hardparmarward1

Volunteers are not contributions. Your time is free to give and doesn't count against any limit — so there's no paperwork and no cap on helping.

Voting

Three ways to vote. Pick the easy one.

You can vote if you're 18 or older, a Canadian citizen, and you live in — or own or rent property in — Toronto. You do not need to be a homeowner, and you do not need to have voted before.

Option 01 · By mail
Request by 24 Sept

Apply through MyVote from 1 September. Deadline is 4:30 p.m. on 24 September, and completed packages must reach Toronto Elections by noon on 14 October.

Option 02 · Advance
6–11 October

Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Advance voting places are different from election-day ones — check yours on MyVote before you go.

Option 03 · Election day
Monday 26 October

10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at your assigned voting place. Bring ID showing your name and a Toronto address. A voter information card helps but isn't required.

Check, update or add your registration at myvote.toronto.ca — open from 1 September until 7 p.m. on 11 October. If you've moved, changed your name, or have never voted municipally, do this first; it takes about two minutes.