Chow urged to live-stream events in councillor’s 'accountability' push

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Go ahead and cancel Netflix – Toronto may soon have all the streaming content it needs courtesy of Mayor Olivia Chow.

Councillors will consider a member’s motion at an upcoming City Council meeting that would request Chow to stream all her press conferences and other media events live on the internet.

The motion, dubbed “ensuring transparency and accountability in the mayor’s office,” was put forward by Councillor Brad Bradford and seconded by Vincent Crisanti.

The motion says it was standard practice “for nearly a decade” for press conferences at the mayor’s City Hall offices to be streamed online for the public to view. Chow’s counterparts in places like Ottawa, Vancouver and New York City regularly stream announcements on YouTube, it adds.

“In the interest of transparency, accountability and public access to information, this motion calls on the office of the mayor to resume the practice of live-streaming press conferences and other media availabilities. These live streams should include the full question-and-answer period with media to ensure comprehensive public access,” the motion says.

Bradford’s motion also calls for all councillors and their staff to get “full access” to the mayor’s media events.

Live streams are nothing new at City Hall.

City Council meetings are streamed live on council’s YouTube channel, as are more than two dozen municipal committees, such as the executive committee, board of health and Toronto’s community councils. Those streams are archived and indexed, so Torontonians can easily go back and watch council’s work on any particular item.

The Toronto Police Service and TTC, meanwhile, host their board meetings on their own YouTube accounts.

While some city meetings draw only a few hundred views, together they add up. City Council’s YouTube page says it has more than 1,800 videos, with a collective 1.6 million views.

Chow’s official YouTube page could use an update. When the Toronto Sun checked in mid-May, the most recent video was nine years old, and the brief bio still said Chow is running to be the MP for Spadina-Fort York as “part of Tom Mulcair’s Toronto team.”

Council’s May meeting begins on Wednesday.

jholmes@postmedia.com