In Vancouver, A Better City was the political vehicle that carried pro-tech, pro-police and social-services-defunding Ken Sim from a narrow defeat to a commanding victory. In Toronto, a newer organization with the same name and alignment is building campaigns, collecting voter data and promoting an agenda closely aligned with the political candidacy and position transformation of mayoral candidate Brad Bradford. The resemblance is striking. A formal connection has yet to be established.

A Better City seemed to manifest in Toronto out of nowhere in 2025, with a fully developed model and well-funded position. If you follow municipal politics in Canada however, there were echoes of a similar organization in Vancouver with the same name. And a similar model. And mayoral candidates with the same history.

“An answer that was right the first time may not be right again the second.” —Italo Calvino

Brad Bradford received just 9,254 votes when he ran for mayor of Toronto in 2023. He finished eighth.

Three years later, Bradford is Olivia Chow’s principal challenger. A Liaison Strategies poll released in July 2026 put Chow at 49 per cent and Bradford at 40 per cent among decided and leaning voters.

During the interval, a political advocacy organization called A Better City Toronto appeared. It has attacked Chow’s record, campaigned on crime, congestion, taxes and public order, assembled a supporter database and featured Bradford prominently at its public launch.

The obvious question is whether Toronto is watching a version of the strategy that elected Ken Sim in Vancouver.

The evidence supports the comparison. It does not yet establish coordination between the two organizations—or between ABC Toronto and Bradford’s campaign.

The Vancouver prototype

Ken Sim first ran for mayor of Vancouver in 2018 as the candidate of the Non-Partisan Association. He lost to Kennedy Stewart by fewer than 1,000 votes.

Sim subsequently left the NPA and became part of the founding team behind ABC Vancouver—formally registered as the A Better City Vancouver Electors Association. By 2022, three incumbent councillors originally elected under the NPA banner—Rebecca Bligh, Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung—had joined the new party.

ABC was more than a personal campaign. It offered Vancouver voters a complete governing slate and a detailed, 93-point platform.

Its commitments included hiring 100 police officers and 100 mental-health nurses, accelerating housing approvals, cutting business-permit delays and concentrating municipal government on safety, affordability and basic services.

The message was disciplined: Vancouver was not working, the existing administration had lost control and ABC represented a practical, business-friendly alternative.

On October 15, 2022, it worked.

Sim received 85,732 votes. Incumbent mayor Kennedy Stewart received 49,593—a margin of 36,139 votes. ABC also elected seven of Vancouver’s ten councillors, six of seven Park Board commissioners and five of nine school trustees.

In other words, the party did not simply elect a mayor. It built a governing machine across nearly every municipal institution it contested. The City of Vancouver’s results show that Sim and all 18 of ABC’s council, Park Board and school-board candidates were elected.

For Sim, who became Vancouver’s first mayor of Chinese heritage, it was a remarkable political recovery. Four years after losing the closest mayoral election in the city’s history, he had assembled one of its most commanding civic victories.

“You can’t lose if you never give up,” Sim told supporters on election night.

What happened after the victory

ABC used its majority to begin implementing its agenda. Police and mental-health funding, permitting reform, Chinatown initiatives and changes to municipal taxes and services moved rapidly through council.

The unity that produced the victory proved harder to maintain in government.

In December 2023, Sim announced a plan to abolish Vancouver’s independently elected Park Board. Three ABC Park Board commissioners left the party and began sitting as independents. ABC has since said it will again run Park Board candidates in the 2026 election, despite Sim’s attempt to eliminate the institution.

In February 2025, ABC removed councillor Rebecca Bligh from its caucus, saying she was no longer aligned with the party’s “shared priorities and team-oriented approach.”

Two months later, voters delivered ABC another warning. In an April 2025 council byelection, progressive candidates Sean Orr and Lucy Maloney won the two available seats with more than 33,000 votes each. ABC’s candidates finished sixth and seventh with fewer than 10,000 votes apiece, according to the official election report.

ABC also faced an Elections BC investigation into its 2022 campaign finances. The agency found that the financial agent for ABC and Sim had accepted prohibited or over-limit contributions. It imposed $11,888 in combined penalties, plus $960 for contributions that were not returned within the required period. The enforcement decision noted that the violations were described as unintentional and that the campaign cooperated with investigators.

None of this means ABC has disappeared. It remains a formidable organization. Elections BC reported that ABC Vancouver raised $606,477 in political contributions during 2025—far more than any of its Vancouver competitors.

The Vancouver story therefore has two parts. ABC succeeded spectacularly as an electoral vehicle. Governing exposed internal tensions and produced some voter backlash, but the party remains powerful and well financed.

The Toronto version appears

A Better City-Toronto Ltd. was incorporated on July 17, 2024.

Its first visible campaign targeted bike lanes on Yonge Street, University Avenue and Bloor Street West. The group’s domain was registered on October 29, six days after Premier Doug Ford announced plans to remove bike lanes from those streets.

The timing prompted questions about whether ABC Toronto was connected to the provincial government. Founder Jeffrey Kroeker denied discussing the campaign with Ford or provincial officials.

Kroeker told TorontoToday that the group had already been incorporated and took advantage of a timely political issue to “engage voters and engage citizens.”

He described ABC Toronto as a group of approximately 30 to 40 people with municipal and provincial political experience who agreed that “Toronto is broken.”

That phrase would become the organization’s central message.

ABC Toronto formally launched on January 28, 2025, at Revival on College Street. Its executive director, Ariella Kimmel, presented it as a “common sense coalition” intended to counter the “loud ideological voices” at City Hall.

Kimmel also acknowledged that ABC was conceived as a counterbalance to Progress Toronto, the progressive organization that has helped elect left-leaning councillors and supported Olivia Chow.

Hundreds attended the launch, including Liberal MP Marco Mendicino, former deputy mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong and current and former City Hall staff. Brad Bradford was one of four featured panellists.

Bradford welcomed the group as a counterweight to what he called the “NDP coalition under the banner of Progress Toronto.” The Toronto Star’s account, republished by ABC, said ABC planned to concentrate on congestion, public safety and affordability.

When asked who was financing the organization, Kimmel declined to identify its supporters.

Who is behind ABC Toronto?

The organization’s current team page lists four directors.

Jeffrey Kroeker, the founder, is a Toronto lawyer who also works in government relations and strategic advisory services. He previously served as chief financial officer for Christine Elliott’s 2018 Ontario PC leadership campaign and Erin O’Toole’s successful 2020 federal Conservative leadership bid. He has also advised Tim Hudak and John Tory and worked in Stephen Harper’s government.

TorontoToday reported in December 2024 that Kroeker had contributed $28,514 to the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party since 2014.

Kelly Aizicowitz previously worked in Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government, including in the premier’s office. She later worked in government relations, health-care marketing and business operations. By June 2026 she was being described as ABC Toronto’s interim executive director.

Matt McClellan has a background in investment management, early-stage companies and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. He currently manages a Toronto real-estate firm.

Hunter Corcoran is an investment professional whom ABC describes as actively involved in political and public life.

The group includes people with both Liberal and Conservative résumés. Its campaigns, however, consistently occupy centre-right municipal terrain: lower taxes, greater police resources, stricter responses to encampments and disorder, the removal of selected bike lanes and repeated criticism of Chow’s leadership.

Leadership

Ariella Kimmel, known for her pro-Israel advocacy, was the founding executive director and remained ABC Toronto’s media contact as late as September 9, 2025, when the group endorsed Shawn Allen in the Scarborough–Rouge Park council byelection.

By June 2026, Aizicowitz was publicly identified as interim executive director. Kimmel no longer appears on ABC Toronto’s team page.

ABC Toronto does not appear to have issued a public announcement explaining the change. The available evidence indicates that Kimmel no longer holds its official executive-director role. It cannot establish whether she retains an informal, advisory or consulting relationship with the organization.

More than a policy group

ABC Toronto describes itself as a not-for-profit organization advocating practical solutions. Its own privacy policy reveals a more electorally valuable operation.

The organization says it may collect names, addresses, phone numbers, demographic information and political views. It uses that information for voter contact, mobilization, fundraising, supporter databases and audience segmentation.

Most significantly, its privacy and data policy says personal information may be shared, sold, leased, licensed or transferred to political parties, candidates and organizations with compatible political objectives. Those recipients may use the information independently and share it again.

ABC Toronto may also retain supporter information indefinitely.

This makes its petitions and campaigns politically significant beyond the immediate issues involved. A petition about bike lanes, e-bikes, taxes, crime or transit can also identify voters, classify their concerns and create a contact list that may eventually benefit selected candidates.

ABC Toronto has already demonstrated that it is willing to intervene in elections through its endorsement of Shawn Allen. At its launch, Kimmel said the organization had not decided whether to register as a third-party advertiser in the 2026 municipal campaign, but that “the door is open.”

Under Toronto’s election rules, an organization spending money between May 1 and October 26 to support or oppose a candidate must register with the City Clerk. Issue advertising is treated differently, and registered third-party campaigns must operate independently of candidates.

Is Bradford Toronto’s Ken Sim?

While there’s no explicit relationship between the two organizations. They share name and under normal circumstances if a brand is adopted or co-opted by an organization, not supported there is usually public disavowal or public disclosure of some kind in this case there has been none If Toronto has a Ken Sim candidate, Brad Bradford is the clearest match.

Both men are municipal politicians who lost mayoral races and returned promising a safer, more affordable and better-managed city. Both present themselves as practical problem-solvers confronting an overly ideological municipal establishment. Their political language emphasizes public safety, congestion, service delivery, economic competitiveness and civic pride. Political history is the difference, however Bradford’s newfound centre right position is markedly different from the positions he took as a city counsellor and while running for office, an incongruence that many have remarked on it didn’t seem to make much sense, but it does if you look at the A Better City model.

ABC Toronto’s current priorities closely track Bradford’s campaign themes. The organization has repeatedly amplified positions similar to his, and Bradford was given a prominent role at its launch.

When Bradford proposed stricter rules for e-bikes and mini-motorcycles, ABC Toronto called his approach “smart and prudent.” Interim executive director Kelly Aizicowitz nevertheless said in June that the organization had not officially endorsed a mayoral candidate and had no immediate plan to do so.

There are also important differences.

Sim’s 2018 defeat was extraordinarily narrow. Bradford’s 2023 result was not: the official results show he finished eighth with 9,254 votes, compared with Chow’s 269,372.

Sim was part of ABC Vancouver’s founding team and became the leader of a registered civic party. Its name appeared beside his on the ballot, and it ran a full slate around him.

No public evidence shows that Bradford founded, directs, finances or coordinates with ABC Toronto. The Toronto organization operates outside his campaign and has not publicly endorsed him.

The political structures of the two cities also differ. Vancouver has established civic parties that run candidates under a shared banner. Toronto officially elects independent candidates. An organization seeking to reproduce Vancouver’s result in Toronto would therefore have to operate differently: shaping the narrative, developing policy campaigns, attacking an incumbent, collecting supporters and eventually endorsing or advertising for candidates who remain formally independent.

That is why ABC Toronto matters to Bradford, even without a formal relationship. It performs many of the functions a civic party would otherwise provide.

Bradford may be Toronto’s Ken Sim in political terms. Organizationally, he is not—at least not yet.

Are Vancouver, Toronto and Boston connected?

The shared name creates an impression of a network. The public record does not currently support that conclusion.

ABC Vancouver is a registered civic political party led by Ken Sim. ABC Toronto is an Ontario not-for-profit political advocacy organization. No publicly available records reviewed for this article identify shared directors, employees, donors or a formal affiliation between them.

The resemblance lies in branding, rhetoric and strategy. Both emphasize a city that has stopped working, a return to practical government and a coalition built around safety, affordability and core services. That could reflect imitation, informal knowledge-sharing or simply political convergence. Evidence establishing which explanation is correct has not emerged.

Boston’s A Better City is different again. It began in 1989 as the Artery Business Committee, created by business leaders to manage the effects of Boston’s Big Dig. It adopted the name A Better City in 2006 and now works on transportation, land use, infrastructure and climate policy. Its documented history predates the Vancouver and Toronto groups, and there is no indication it is part of their municipal electoral activity.

The questions ABC Toronto should answer

ABC Toronto has become an important participant in Toronto politics while revealing little about its financial supporters.

Who are its donors, and how much has each provided? Has the organization shared petition or supporter data with any candidate, political party or advocacy group? Has it communicated with ABC Vancouver about branding, strategy or services? What continuing relationship, if any, does Ariella Kimmel have with the organization? Will ABC register as a third-party advertiser? And will it ultimately endorse Brad Bradford?

Those questions matter because ABC Vancouver demonstrated how quickly a new municipal organization can move from dissatisfaction to control of City Hall.

The fairest conclusion is that Bradford is emerging as Toronto’s political equivalent of Ken Sim, while ABC Toronto looks like an adaptation of the Vancouver playbook for a city without municipal party labels.

It is a compelling parallel. Whether it reflects a shared organization, an imported strategy or two groups independently arriving at the same model remains the unanswered story behind A Better City. There’s also a recent development: somewhat notorious former federal Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander, who was behind the Muslim snitch line and accused of defaming journalist David Pugliese, is apparently registering to enter the mayoral race today.