Olivia Chow off to a good start, but still a long way from city hall

It was fitting that Olivia Chow chose to officially launch her campaign to be Toronto’s next mayor in a St. James Town church last week.

She has, after all, been touted by some as Toronto’s saviour. The anointed one. She’s the only person, they say, who can lead this city out of the bizarre wilderness of the Rob Ford years and restore some dignity and calm to city hall. While Toronto’s right wing is fractured between a bunch of candidates, for the city’s progressives, Olivia Chow is the chosen one.

I’ve always been pretty skeptical.

For me, the prospect of a Chow run has always felt too much like a campaign created in a laboratory, the result of Liberal and NDP partisans sitting down and thinking really hard about who might be most capable of banishing Ford from Toronto.

Since I first heard her name bandied about as a possible contender, I’ve worried that Chow will run primarily because a lot of people are telling her she should run ­— and that she could win — and not because she has a lot of ideas for the city and a real desire to implement them.

Her kickoff event did help to dispel some of that worry. At the podium in a jam-packed parish hall at St. Simon-the-Apostle church, Chow gave a terrific speech.

She kept things positive and personal while also highlighting some of Ford’s failures, especially as they relate to deteriorating city services. It was good to see someone go after Ford on his policy record — other candidates sometimes act like Ford would have done a bang-up job as mayor if only he had stayed away from cellphone cameras.

And Chow brought some much-needed passion to the podium. When she proclaimed, “The current mayor’s disappointing leadership has disappointed us OVER and OVER again,” I felt it. The room felt it too.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows for the Chow campaign. Their launch week was marred by some easily avoidable flak over a brochure sent out by Chow’s office before she formally resigned as MP. And while her initial transit policies are better than most — rolling back to the Scarborough LRT will save Toronto a billion dollars — it’s hard not to notice Chow’s not putting the same emphasis on building the relief subway line as some of her opponents.

But it’s early days yet.  Chow will have time to lay out her policies on transit and other issues. All the while, she’ll need to remember to show voters that she’s in this race not just because she thinks she can win, but because she really wants the job.

The church was a good start. But it’s still a long way from city hall.