I’ve lived in Toronto most of my life and it’s where I call home. My love for this city is what inspired me to study cities and how they work.
I want to bring my love of my hometown and my expertise in building communities to my neighbourhood: Scarborough Southwest.
I grew up as the child of immigrants: I watched them learn to build a life here in Canada, struggle the way that so many newcomers do, and push me to get a good education. They wanted the same things that other parents want for their kids: safe neighbourhoods where their kids could make friends, go to a good school, get a good job and have a good life. That’s still what I and my neighbours want today.
But the status quo isn’t giving us those things. Our streets are less safe than ever, with dangerous driving and deadly collisions happening far too often. We’re not getting transit built quickly enough to serve our growing needs. People can’t find affordable places to live. And our elected officials aren’t taking the climate crisis seriously enough.
Our elected officials have helped create the housing crisis, the climate crisis, and the road safety crisis we’re in. The same people have been in charge for years, and things have gotten worse, by so many measures.
We need new people, new energy, new thinking, and new ways of working. We need people who are staring down the barrel of these crises and who are up to the challenge of tackling them. We have an opportunity to make change for our city and our Scarborough Southwest communities by making a change in who represents us.
I'm running for Toronto City Council to make that change.
My focus is on:
- Making our streets safer for all of us, especially the most vulnerable like children and seniors, or people walking or biking
- Getting more housing built, of all types, so people can afford to stay in our communities
- Getting more local transit built so people in Scarborough have more options for getting around reliably without a car
- Fighting the climate crisis by building climate-responsible actions into all of our policies at City Hall
- Rebuilding and building new social connections that have been so damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic
Making change is a team sport — are you with me?
Some facts about me:
- I was born near Toronto and have lived most of my life in this city
- My parents are immigrants to Canada from Sri Lanka
- I have a Masters in Cities Engineering from the University of Toronto
- I’ve worked as an advocate and city builder with Cycle Toronto, Danforth-Kingston For All, and grassroots efforts to support the creation of the West Toronto Rail Path and the conversion of the Scarborough RT into a dedicated busway
- I'm an advocate for electoral reform as a volunteer with the Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT) and Unlock Democracy Canada