Former federal Conservative citizenship and immigration minister Chris Alexander has registered as a mayoral candidate in Toronto’s fall election as he pitched himself as someone who brings an outside perspective to civic politics.

Mr. Alexander, a one-term federal MP who represented the eastern suburb of Ajax-Pickering, served in former prime minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet from 2013 to 2015.

His candidacy has the potential to shift the dynamics of the campaign, as Mayor Olivia Chow seeks re-election against Councillor Brad Bradford, a centre-right municipal politician who lost to Ms. Chow in 2023 and has widely been viewed as her strongest challenger.

On Wednesday, Mr. Alexander arrived at Toronto city hall with his wife and three children to sign candidate registration papers for the election, which is slated for Oct. 26. Despite his previous Tory party ties, he told reporters during a Wednesday scrum he’s past partisan politics, and Toronto needs centrist leadership to succeed.

“As democracy in Canada has always shown, it doesn’t hurt and it usually helps when people from outside of a given political arena bring their expertise and their experience to bear,” he said. “I’m one of those people.”

Prior to his stint in federal politics, Mr. Alexander severed as ambassador to Afghanistan and lived in the country for six years while Canadian troops were deployed.

His time in federal politics was coloured by an incident during the 2015 federal campaign, when his party proposed a “barbaric cultural practices” tip line to report incidents of honour killings, forced marriages and polygamy. Mr. Alexander lost his seat to the Liberals in that election.

Mr. Alexander has since described the proposal as a “mistake.”