Lily Cheng

Lily Cheng appears on the City of Toronto’s list of certified candidates for Councillor in Ward 18 Willowdale. A certified candidate is one whose nomination the City Clerk has accepted. The list shows the nomination date as July 27, 2026 and the campaign website votelilycheng.ca.

The City’s Members of Council page lists Councillor Lily Cheng for Ward 18 Willowdale. Her City profile says she took office on November 15, 2022. The profile ends with the line “Information provided by the Councillor”. In that text she says she co-founded We Love Willowdale, a community group formed after the 2018 van attack, and founded North York Moms, a Facebook community. The profile lists her seats as the General Government Committee, the Budget Committee, Chair of the Civic Appointments Committee, the Board of Health, Vice-Chair of North York Community Council, the Board of Directors of TO Live and the Toronto Police Services Board. The page shows July 31, 2026 as its modification date.

The City Clerk’s declaration of results for the October 24, 2022 general election lists Lily Cheng first among 4 candidates for Councillor in Ward 18 Willowdale, with 8,337 votes, marked elected. Markus O’Brien Fehr was second with 6,709. The 4 declared totals add up to 19,981 votes, so her share was 41.7 percent and his was 33.6 percent, calculated by voche.me from those figures.

Her campaign website, the campaign’s own statement, says she was Executive Director of NeighbourLink North York, co-founded the 415 Food Hub, helped mobilize the Willowdale COVID Response Network, and received a Willowdale 150 Commemorative Medal. Its home page says that during her term it launched Participatory Budgeting (residents decide how to spend part of the budget) for $3 million of neighbourhood projects, installed 25 smart traffic signals, and “helped secure 800 new police officers city-wide, cutting priority response times by 50%”. voche.me did not check these claims against Council records or with the organizations.

The Local’s candidate tracker, written by that outlet’s journalists, says that during her 2022 campaign she took a position against a modular supportive housing project at 175 Cummer Avenue, and that on Council she passed motions on local issues such as Mel Lastman Square, a seasonal dog off-leash area at Glendora Park, a memorial for the 2018 Yonge Street van attack, and asking the Province to reinstate the planned Cummer subway station. That is The Local’s account. The City’s decisions site refused the request (HTTP 403), so voche.me did not read the City’s record of any motion or vote and cites none.

Her Facts about new shelter page, the campaign’s own statement, says the planned shelter at 68 Sheppard Avenue West is for Indigenous women and children. It says she brought an Administrative Inquiry to City Council on it (a formal request to City staff for information) and moved a motion on site planning and community protections. voche.me could not open the City’s record of either and states them as her campaign’s account.