Five candidates vying to be mayor of Toronto squared off in a 90 minute debate Monday afternoon, the second of only two that incumbent John Tory will participate in before next week Monday’s election.

Hosted by the Toronto Region Board of Trade, contenders Gil Penalosa and Chloe Brown went after John Tory’s record on everything from housing to transit.

“Affordable housing has been a huge failure, they don’t even have one shovel in the ground, not one and he’s been there for eight years,” said Gil Penalosa.

“John Tory’s SmartTrack is a mix of the big move which was published by Metrolinx about 15 years ago now and a mix of Transit City which was David Millers so for him to say he’s the only person to get transit moving would be a lie,” said Chloe Brown.

Candidate Sarah Climenhaga went after Tory for his involvement with the advisory committee of the family trust that controls Rogers.

“I think it’s completely inappropriate that we have a Mayor being paid by Rogers far more than the salary that most people make and we need to call that out and as a business community, I feel the business community needs to call that out too.”

Tory didn’t respond directly to the accusations but went on to call himself the city’s chief sales person and pointed to the pandemic interrupting his work in that role.

“When you’re the incumbent, as they say on the radio, the hits just  keep coming, and you expect that at a debate like this, it was a good exchange of ideas and I had a great chance to get my platform out,” said Tory.

Candidate Gil Penalosa accused Tory of being in the province’s pocket. He urged people to say “sorry Tory and vote Gil.”

The other candidate in the second debate was Stephen Punwasi.

The first debate was held last week at the Zoomerplex that aired on Zoomer Radio.  It’s also posted at CARP