5 questions to ask any council candidate who comes knocking for your vote

You're likely to hear it this week, if you haven't already: a knock at your front door from a candidate for Toronto council or one of their campaign volunteers.

They want your vote, and they want it bad. With just over a week to go before the city's Oct.22 election, this is crunch time for council hopefuls.

So what should you ask during these front door encounters with desperate candidates? Based on the results we're seeing from CBC's Vote Compass, we know a lot of voters care about the big issues: transit and housing.

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But there are also a bunch of under-the-radar issues that Toronto's mayor and council are likely to deal with over the next four years local, street-level issues affecting day-to-day livability and governance. Asking about this stuff would also be a good use of your front door facetime.

Here are five questions about local issues to consider posing to candidates when they come knocking.

How are you going to improve local democracy?

Premier Doug Ford's cut to the size of Toronto council has left a tangle of unanswered questions about how the city's municipal government will operate. A big one: how does the city maintain or even improve local democracy now that elected politicians are responsible for roughly double the number of constituents?

One idea: delegate more decision-making powers to the community councils that represent the city's pre-amalgamation municipalities. Council can appoint community members to these bodies, which could create opportunities for representatives from residents'associations, business improvement areas or advocacy groups to get a real seat at the table.

Another idea: participatory budgeting. The city has piloted it in three wards over the last few years, with residents coming together to vote on how to allocate money in their neighbourhoods. Is now the time to take this approach city-wide?

Should the city ban plastic bags (again)? What about non-recyclable coffee cups?

Toronto has a recycling problem. The city estimates about 26 per cent of the material residents toss in blue bins is not recyclable. Not only is this bad news for the environment, there's a financial hit too: a report from earlier this year projected that garbage in blue bins is set to cost the city an estimated $4 million in sorting and management costs in 2018.

To deal with this, environmental advocates are recommending the city focus on the other two of the three Rs: reducing and reusing.

The city could, for example, ban plastic shopping bags, as cities like Montreal and Victoria have already done. (Toronto almost beat them to the punch, before a previous council backed off.) There's also been calls to pass bylaws targeting one of the most common non-recyclable items found in blue bins: the takeout coffee cup.

Would you support a ban on right-turns at red lights?

With more than 30 pedestrian deaths recorded so far in 2018, most candidates are on record supporting the city's Vision Zero efforts. But does that support extend to significant departures from the road network status quo? Like, say, making it illegal for cars to turn right at red lights, like it is in Montreal and New York City?

Advocacy groups like Walk Toronto and the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation have both come forward in favour of such a ban. Statistics collected by the city between 2008 and 2012 found 13 per cent of collisions involving vehicles and pedestrians occurred while cars were making right turns.

How should the city regulate electric scooters?

Councillors spent a lot of time over the last year debating rules and regulations governing new technology companies like Uber and Airbnb. Their next debate will be about electric scooters.

The scooters are coming. Over the last couple of years, American cities have grappled with how to regulate a bunch of companies offering cheap app-based access to shared electric scooters, which can be picked up and dropped off anywhere on city streets.

Scooter company Lime has been eyeing Canadian markets. They launched in Waterloo last week. Toronto won't be far behind.

And while a debate over scooters might seem inconsequential when compared to other city issues, there's a lot of complex urban issues connected to these scooters.

On one side, there's the question of allowing private profit-seeking companies to use public streets, and the accessibility issues posed by scooters left all over the sidewalk. But then there's the fact that services like these give people another mobility option one that isn't driving or squeezing onto a packed transit system.

Chickens: not in your backyard?

Last year, four Toronto councillors volunteered their wards for an idea most fowl: backyard chickens. A three-year pilot project started in March, permitting residents in these wards to keep up to four hens in their backyards, provided they have the proper coops and follow a bunch of rules (No roosters, please).

Poultry proponents say urban agriculture like this is good for the environment. Opponents say chicken coops can smell really bad and the birds sure do squawk a lot. It makes sense to get your local candidate on the record Toronto's new council will get to decide whether this is an idea with wings.