Written by Mihaela Andrei in answer to our questionnaire, and published as given. Not our description of them.
I came to Canada from Romania at nine years old and grew up the way this city does — in several languages at once. Today I speak five: English, French, Spanish, Romanian and Portuguese. I've taught French and Spanish in our public schools since 2009, and I've been a licensed REALTOR for twelve years, helping families across south Etobicoke find homes they can afford in neighbourhoods they can love.
For the past five years I've lived in Humber Bay Shores and fought for its largest condominium community — 1,285 units at Eau du Soleil — as a director and, for the past two years, as board president. That means real governance: a $6.75-million annual budget, a funded reserve, vendor contracts, and the hard work of transparency — including commissioning a forensic audit of $10.7 million in spending and reporting the results to every household.
I hold an MA from the University of Toronto and a bilingual undergraduate degree from Glendon College. I'm 40 years old, and Humber Bay is where I plan to stay.
I'm pro-building — my career depends on homes getting built. But Ward 3 is Toronto's largest ward, with 67,600 units in the pipeline and infrastructure scheduled to arrive years behind them. My commitment is simple: growth and services on the same schedule, decisions made with residents instead of announced to them, and a councillor whose loyalty runs to this ward — all of it.
Our questionnaire
Mihaela Andrei’s own answers to the questions we put to every candidate, published as given — including, where they wrote one, their reasoning in their own words.
I want homes built. But Ward 3 has 67,600 units in the pipeline, and the roads to serve them aren't scheduled until 2028–2030. Blanket upzoning without infrastructure isn't pro-housing. It's pro-backlog. Approve density where services exist or are funded, and build both on time.
Yes, with dignity. When safe, suitable indoor space is genuinely offered, parks must return to shared public use. Ward 3's real failure was process, residents shut out of shelter-siting decisions. Compassion and order aren't opposites and both require a city that listens.
South Etobicoke already pays a congestion charge, in hours. Tens of thousands in Humber Bay depend on two roads and a promised GO station that hasn't opened. Tolling people with no transit alternative is a tax on geography. Deliver Park Lawn GO first and then talk about pricing.
Residents absorbed 9.5% and 6.9% tax increases in only two years. You fix the contracts before you raise the fees. Fund the backlog from what the City already collects, and stop deferring it.
Residents pay for these projects and should be able to check on them. For every major project, post the approved budget, the amount spent, the promised finish date and the current one, and update it every quarter. A delay should never be a surprise.
Residents of Toronto's largest ward deserve a visible, responsive presence in parks, on transit and on main streets, that's the baseline. Pair it with crisis teams for the calls police shouldn't take alone. But safety has to be felt on the street, not asserted in a report.
Ward 3 added the population of a small city with no matching growth in service. Yes to resourcing police for a growing ward, tied to published response times and outcomes by neighbourhood. More money and more accountability aren't alternatives; residents are owed both.
Use the tools, govern the data. Citywide limits on access, retention, auditing and sharing, that is published, and enforced. I've spent years insisting boards document their decisions and the same discipline applies at the City level tenfold.
Before new lines, run what we have. The Lake Shore streetcar carries a corridor of tens of thousands who deserve frequency and reliability now. I'll fight for Park Lawn GO in parallel but daily riders shouldn't wait for ribbon-cuttings to get service they already pay for.
The Bloor fight was never cars vs. bikes. It was deliveries, trades, customers and access which is the working life of a main street. Streets must serve the people who depend on them, designed with the community. 12,500 signatures should start a redesign conversation, not end one.
Ward 3 alone has 67,600 units already in the pipeline. Permission isn't the bottleneck here. Cost, delay and uncertainty are. Cut approval times, automate routine permits, give builders dates they can set concrete timelines on.
The City shouldn't play developer, it should be the best partner a non-profit or builder ever had with financing, fast approvals, and hard performance terms. I have managed vendors for years. You get results by contract and accountability, not by wishing.
Density belongs where infrastructure exists or is funded, corridors and transit. Humber Bay shows the alternative, towers first, GO station and road connections a decade behind. Grow the avenues, protect stable streets, and never let approvals outrun the services beneath them.
Automate routine permits and delegate conforming approvals so a compliant application gets a date, not a queue. Focus as-of-right expansion where corridors are serviced. Delay is a cost every buyer and renter eventually pays in their monthly costs.
Overruns start in the contract. For years I've negotiated and enforced contracts for 1285 units, fixed scope before tender, payment tied to finished and inspected work, penalties for delay, and a vendor's record counted on the next bid. Residents of our Ward deserve better.
Major contracts must be competitively tendered, the City would secure better terms, performance clauses, substantiated savings for residents. Not ideology, but value. Test the market where it can deliver, keep what the city does best in-house, and measure everything.
Households budget and their City should too. Hold the line at inflation and growth, and find the rest in delivery. Procurement, overhead and project discipline before reaching deeper into a homeowner's pocket. Predictability is a service.
Toronto's reliance on land-transfer revenue ties core services to the housing market's mood swing. Stable services need stable, honest revenue, not a bet on transactions.
Ontario law requires every condo to fund a reserve for the repairs it knows are coming. The City imposes that discipline on every condo board in Toronto and exempts itself. A dedicated state-of-good-repair levy is the reserve fund Toronto never built. Time to build it.
Ward 3's biggest files, Park Lawn GO, the Gardiner rebuild, the Mimico Creek rail bridge, they are provincial. Residents need a councillor who gets deals done with Queen's Park, not one who performs conflict for headlines. Partnership isn't surrender, it's how things get built.
Use them to run the building. Hire, restructure, demand performance. Never to override a ward's elected voice on planning. A mayor who must bypass council to pass zoning hasn't streamlined democracy, they've failed to demonstrate its necessity, to persuade it.
141,751 residents and growing, Toronto's largest ward, on infrastructure planned for far fewer. Before the next approval, catch the basics up to the growth already granted for roads, transit, parks, schools, sewers. Growth that outruns services is not what builds a strong city for our residents.
Walk your streets and parks in 2030 and compare. Speed limits and park hours enforced. Litter, potholes and broken lights fixed when you report them, not months later. Bylaws enforced and documented. Residents in every part of Ward 3 deserve a safer, cleaner public realm and I will answer for it.
Employers follow talent, and talent needs a home, a commute that works, and a safe street. No incentive package outbids a city that functions. Fix fundamentals and the site-selection consultants will find us on their own.
Clean, safe, working sidewalks, snow, washrooms, park care, before ribbon-cuttings. Residents judge their city by the hundred small things it maintains, not the one big thing it announces. Basics first is a policy.
Welcome the innovation but require the receipts. Trips, collisions, congestion, curb use, all reported publicly. A city can't manage streets it can't see. Disclosure first and everything else can be negotiated from evidence.
Each card is one question, with Mihaela Andrei filed under the answer they gave and their own words underneath it. The other options offered are not shown, nor how the rest of the field answered.
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