As Toronto prepares to elect its next mayor on October 26, Daily Bread Food Bank — together with community partners including LAMP Community Health Centre and Scarborough United Neighbourhoods — is hosting Toronto’s first mayoral debate of the 2026 municipal election. The debate will take place on Monday, September 14, from 7:00-8:30 pm at Daily Bread Food Bank (191 New Toronto Street).
This event is now sold out. Watch the Toronto Mayoral Debate live online or on CP24. To get a reminder to tune in on the day of the event, sign into YouTube, visit this link and hit “Notify me.”
If you have registered to attend in person, please note that registration does not guarantee admission. Space is limited and admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis. Please arrive early to secure your spot.
Moderated by Daily Bread CEO Neil Hetherington, the debate will focus on the city’s top issues of poverty, affordability, housing, food insecurity, and human rights.
The top three polling candidates were invited to speak at the event. The following candidates have confirmed attendance:
The debate participant selection process is outlined below.
This is your opportunity to hear directly from the top-polling candidates and learn how they plan to make Toronto more affordable, equitable, and livable for all.
Parking is free on site.
Accessibility: An ASL interpreter and live captioning will be available on site.
If you could ask Toronto’s next mayor anything, what would you ask? We’re collecting questions from the public and selected questions will be posed directly to the candidates at the debate.
Our selection approach for inviting the candidates is based on the polling results from Liaison Strategies. Liaison Strategies is conducting candidate-name testing among Toronto voters to help determine which registered mayoral candidates meet the 5 percent debate inclusion threshold.
Liaison Strategies is contacting registered mayoral candidates using contact information that’s publicly available through the City of Toronto to ask if they’d like to be tested. There is no cost to candidates or their campaigns to be included.
Testing began on July 24, 2026, and will continue on an ongoing basis as new candidates are nominated. Only candidates who meet the 5 percent polling threshold will be invited to speak at the debate. If a candidate’s support later drops below that threshold, they will no longer be invited.
As of September 9, 2026, the three candidates listed above met the 5% polling threshold and were selected and invited to participate in the debate.
We are a non-partisan organization and want to offer other ways for candidates who do not meet the polling threshold to share with the public why they are running and their vision for the city. We contacted all registered candidates for whom an email address was publicly available on the City of Toronto’s website, inviting them to participate in one or both of the following:
Candidates were asked to confirm participation and submit materials by Wednesday, September 2. Written statements will be posted on our website in alphabetical order by last name.
