Council veteran says he won’t let others ‘screw up’ the city he loves

The world is full of once-great cities,” the candidate told editors at Toronto Community News on Friday, Aug. 13.

A half-century ago, Cleveland, Buffalo and Detroit ranked amongst the wealthiest cities in North America. Look at them now, Pantalone said.

“People made wrong decisions and now they’re in the pits.”

Pantalone, after 29 years as a city politician, sees himself as the sole progressive seeking to build Toronto into “a more fantastic city” as mayor, and his opponents – all of them – as “mini-Mike Harrises” seeking to pinch pennies, contract municipal services out and “shrink what we do.”

“Yeah, we’ll save a few bucks in the property taxes,” he said of this less-costly approach, “but we’ll be messing up the city forever more.”

There’s one exception in Pantalone’s theory: his opponents want to build subways, while Pantalone, councillor for Trinity-Spadina and David Miller’s serving right hand as his deputy mayor, is sold on the province’s Transit City plan for light-rail lines.

The light-rail vehicles, he said, are not the “old clunkers” Torontonians see on streetcar tracks downtown; they are sleek “European-style, high-speed trains” that can cure the city’s biggest problem, a transportation system more clogged now than that of Los Angeles.

Subway extensions, several times more expensive to build and to run than a light rail network, are just “beautiful mirages,” Pantalone said.

Coming from Pantalone, a comparison to Mike Harris is serious. The former Ontario premier has been out of office a decade, yet Pantalone still speaks of the damage his Progressive Conservative government did to Toronto in downloaded costs, which if ever removed, would solve the city’s budget problems, he said.

In fact, the central theme of Pantalone’s campaign so far – one he tends to repeat – is that Toronto does not nearly get its fair share of taxes the provincial and federal government collect here.

The problem is not Toronto’s alone, but part of the “nature of the Canadian federation” formed when the country was mainly rural. That relationship with cities must change, Pantalone said, if cities are to succeed without having to beg investments from higher governments.

“The idea that they’re giving us charity for things they should have an obligation (to provide), is a problem in the mind set that they have.”

Pantalone sees it as his job, “my first priority,” to spur Torontonians into demanding more than what he says has been an eight per cent share of revenues flowing to those governments.

“If they don’t know that, and I as a mayoral candidate, possibly mayor, don’t remind them at every opportunity, then they’re never going to know,” he said.

“And if they don’t know, how are they going to argue for the change that we need?”

Pantalone pledged, if elected, to hire two communications workers just to hammer away at this message.

“If the mayor of Toronto fails (to get more money for the city), then I think the whole community fails,” he added.

George Smitherman, one his rivals for the mayoralty, was the deputy Ontario premier for years. If Smitherman was “unable or unwilling from the inside to rectify this problem,” Pantalone asked, why would people believe he could solve it as mayor?

Maybe, he added, the city would be “better off having a different kind of voice which is not afraid to be critical” of higher governments.

Running third in recent polls, Pantalone wouldn’t budge when asked if he would throw his support to Smitherman at the last minute to keep Rob Ford, last week’s apparent front-runner, from becoming mayor on Oct. 25.

“Are you trying to tell me Mr. Smitherman is better than Mr. Ford?” he asked. “I see little difference between the two of them. It’s more veneer, an issue of style, rather than substance. They basically believe the same thing.”

Pantalone said he’s been doing more to differentiate himself from Miller and step up the pace of his campaign.

“I hate to put it in warlike terms; I’m a pacifist, (but) when you’re engaged in a war, you have to know where to wage the battles and how to wage the battles,” he said. “My rise has been steady and history will tell you being third could easily become first. So watch me, as Pierre Trudeau said.”

The Italian-born son of a sharecropper and a seamstress, Pantalone said none of his opponents have anything close to his experience at city hall.

”If I step aside and these guys screw up my city, the city that’s been so good to me as an immigrant, the city where my kids were born. I’d never forgive myself,” he said.

~ Mike Adler

Candidates lined up in Nathan Phillips Square Wednesday  to denounce Ford’s remarks in a television debate the night before.

The Etobicoke councillor was asked how refugees have contributed to Toronto in the past and how they will contribute in the future. He replied the city “can’t even take care of” the 2.5 million people here already, and added, “I think we’ve got to say enough’s enough.”

Ford met reporters with a smile and blamed the furor on “political games” by his opponents. “I’m sticking to my words,” he said.

“My job is to help the 2.5 million people. We don’t have room to bring in another million people,” Ford added in Nathan Phillips Square.

“You try to get home at night, the traffic congestion is getting worse and worse. There’s homeless people sleeping on the streets. We can’t take care of them.”

The candidate admitted he can’t stop people coming to Toronto, since “this is a federal issue,” but added, “we can’t afford it right now.”

Almost half of all Torontonians are foreign-born, and experts say if Toronto weren’t a top destination for immigrants its population would soon decline because of a low birth rate.

But asked if newcomers will mean growth and new taxes for the city, Ford said no. “It means it will cost more to run the city. It’s going to be chaotic.”

Mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi said Ford “does not get” that immigrants are a source of Toronto’s strength.

“Do the math. Without newcomers we will not grow this city,” said Rossi, adding Ford should retract his remarks or withdraw from the race.

Joe Pantalone, another rival, wondered whether Ford’s remarks were “based on a lack of knowledge of what Toronto’s all about” but said the people of Toronto will not forgive Ford until he apologizes.

“This time he’s taking on all Torontonians,” Pantalone said.

George Smitherman, however, said Ford had gone beyond the point where an apology would help. He “should slink away” in shame, Smitherman said.

“This man is a divider. His values are anti-Toronto values,” charged Smitherman, who argued electing a mayor who “sends a message that you’re not welcome” would be a signal the city is on a path to stagnation.

Sarah Thomson said Ford’s comments “show the true Rob Ford” and “tell a lot of Torontonians what to expect if he becomes mayor.”

Later, backed by sign-holding supporters at a rally he shared with Thomson, Rossi said he believes in welcoming immigrants instead of looking “for a smaller, meaner Toronto.”

Thomson said the city’s next mayor must be free of prejudice, something she suggested Ford showed under pressure.

The question that set off the controversy was asked by a Canadian Tamil Congress volunteer, Mathan Thava, and the result was “completely unexpected,” said Manjula Selvarajah, a spokesperson for the Scarborough-based group.

Thava, who is from Woodbridge, said he started his question by noting “a lot of the immigrants and refugees that arrive in Canada actually end up settling” in the Greater Toronto Area.

“How do you think these refugees have contributed to Toronto in the past and how do you think these refugees will contribute to Toronto in the future?” he asked.

Ford’s statements on newcomers to Toronto didn’t make sense and the Congress wants him to explain them, she said. “Is this his feeling about immigrants to this city, because that would be worrying for us,” said Selvarajah.

“With these people coming to Toronto does come future economic activity.”

Ford repeatedly linked the “one million” figure to Toronto’s Official Plan, though the plan projects only 540,000 more people will live in the city by 2031.

~ Mike Adler

CARP, a group representing older persons, says 70 per cent of Canadian citizens older than 65 “vote regularly,” while general turnout in Toronto’s last municipal election was 39 per cent.

And in 20 years, a quarter of the city’s population will be seniors.

But at a debate CARP held Wednesday, Aug. 11 at Ryerson University to highlight seniors’ issues five mayoral contenders stuck mostly to their usual pitches and steered around questions posed on video by former mayor David Crombie, community advocate Zanana Akande and radio host John Tory.

Candidates talked passionately about seniors who are family: Rocco Rossi said he saw his aging grandparents struggle, so he understands the need for automatic doors.

Sarah Thomson recalled walks with her ailing father, who was trailing an oxygen tank and needed to rest. “We have to remember the little things” when it comes to making Toronto friendlier to seniors, she said.

“We can’t take out the park benches just because there’s people sleeping on them now and then.”

George Smitherman – who arguably has done more than anyone to shape conditions for Toronto seniors because he was Ontario’s health minister for four years – is pledging to have them ride free on the TTC from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., “because we have the capacity and because we know an active senior is a happy senior.”

Joe Pantalone, also the city’s deputy mayor, said he would put a permanent seniors’ advocate at City Hall, build two outdoor parks designed for senior exercise needs and freeze property taxes for senior families if they make less than $50,000 a year.

But Thomson said freezing taxes isn’t enough. Seniors need ways of retrofitting homes so they can stay in them, she said.

Rossi said property taxes forcing seniors from their homes must be reduced, and Pantalone, when asked about elder abuse – which Akande said few public agencies in Toronto seem ready to address – called gentrification that produces fears in seniors of losing their home “a form of abuse.”

Rob Ford said his own 75-year-old mother told him, “I can’t afford to live in this city” because of taxes and wasteful “gravy train” spending at City Hall – the very issues Ford likes to discuss.

That gravy train, which has to stop, but “seniors have to come first,” the Etobicoke councillor added.

Pantalone, however, said Ford, who often questions or opposes grants to community groups at Toronto Council, voted against funds for a Meals on Wheels Program.

Smitherman recalled Ford also voted, in an unsuccessful bid to save $13.4 million, to get rid of snow-clearing on some streets.

“A lot of people said, Rob, we don’t want the little dead-end streets snow-plowed,” Ford responded, saying he was trying to return service to past levels.

Ford said he’d hold town hall meetings in every ward where police would warn seniors how to spot fraudsters, install motion detectors, and take other precautions for safety.

Crombie said older Torontonians need to feel secure about where they’re going to live and want to remain “useful” to society. “They need people to be creative about how they can participate in the well-being of this city,” he said.

At the end of the event, which packed a 300-seat auditorium in mid-afternoon, moderator Susan Eng asked the candidates to sign a pledge that included making Toronto “the model age-friendly city,” naming an “age-friendly champion” on council and setting a standard of universal accessibility in public buildings and spaces.

Greeting people outside the auditorium, Mark State, another mayoral candidate, said he’d establish an independent seniors’ commission, a corporation with a board like Toronto Hydro’s, to handle services for seniors and be their voice on council and in the city.

Standing nearby, Dewitt Lee, also running for mayor, said he’d give “red carpet” service to seniors, directing their calls or City Hall visits to the office of a senior’s advocate so they would not have to stay on the phone or in line for very long.

He also pledged to record the life stories of all interested Toronto seniors and make them publicly available in archives. “The history lessons that are embedded inside the minds of our seniors are being lost,” Lee said.

~ Mike Adler

Mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone unveils his seniors platform

A Toronto that will soon have as many seniors as it does children requires changing the way the city works, Joe Pantalone says.

“As the population is aging, we have to be an age-friendly city,” said the mayoral candidate, who promised Tuesday to hire a seniors’ advocate at City Hall, “to ensure everything we do is seen through that prism.”

During a press conference in Little Italy at which he pointed to his own grey hair, Pantalone also said he’ll freeze seniors’ property taxes for four years, provided they have a family income under $50,000 and live in their own home.

Many of Toronto’s older residents feel under pressure and are fearful about their property taxes going up, said Pantalone, the city’s deputy mayor.

Others feel trapped in their homes because they lack transit options, he said, suggesting seniors will find the light-rail vehicles for the province’s Transit City plan accessible because they have no steps. “They’re ideal for an aging population.”

Pantalone said it was important to make Toronto’s subway stations accessible too, but later added he wasn’t committing to speeding up a schedule that would not guarantee that access until 2024. “It’s an issue of money,” he said.

The candidate did say he would build more affordable housing for seniors as well as two “gym parks” which feature low-impact exercise machines designed for older adults in his first term as mayor. The special parks are very popular in Europe and China, he said.

Pantalone further said making Toronto more age-friendly would require many changes, such as in the size of its road signs.

He promised to end the common practice of allowing utility companies to cut sidewalks and patch them over with asphalt, because such irregular pavement is “really a danger” to seniors.

Elder advocates have long called for Ontario cities to be more friendly to the elderly. In an interview in May, Scarborough-Agincourt MPP Gerry Phillips, Ontario minister responsible for seniors, said he wants to work with municipalities to make this happen.

It often is municipalities that can influence things – such as by providing kneeling buses, or through the design of community centres and parks – closest to seniors, and more must be done locally to meet seniors’ needs, Phillips said.

~ Mike Adler

Mayoral candidate meets with TCN editorial board to discuss his ideas for the city

Whatever you saw him do during 10 years of city council meetings, Rob Ford wants you to know it’s not personal.

“I’m not one of these mean, vindictive types of people. I say ‘good morning’ to everyone I see,” says the Etobicoke North councillor, suggesting when he steps out of “the ring” a council chamber often becomes, he can be “buddy-buddy” with councillors he was arguing with moments before.

“Some people aren’t buddy-buddy, they take it personal,” Ford said this week while meeting with editors of Toronto Community News.

“I don’t. I understand that they have a role to play and I have a role to play.”

But can a man who admits having “cheesed off a lot of councillors” – visiting homes in other wards, he said, when local councillors fail to return their constituents’ calls – and who regularly challenges his colleagues on issues large and small, rally a majority to his side if he becomes mayor?

Though he found himself on the losing side when trying to change city budgets, Ford noted he’s gotten closer to reaching the 23-vote tally guaranteed to win.

“I was getting eight or nine votes before, now all of a sudden I’m getting 17 votes,” he said, adding after this fall’s election, “I feel very confident that I’ll have 25 votes to carry my agenda on any given day.”

Ford claims credit for rallying council behind him on one large issue – Woodbine Live, a billion-dollar “urban lifestyle centre” and new residential neighbourhood set for Etobicoke’s Woodbine Racetrack.

The developers approached him and later, Ford said, he made certain the massive project did not go to Mississauga or Vaughan. “With my business experience, I was the one who landed the deal,” he added.

“I don’t remember any other councillors doing the legwork that I did to get this deal.”

Ford said he’s seeing people, including “hard-working blue-collared workers” who don’t usually vote for conservative candidates, come into his camp, a swing Ford, whose father Doug was a Tory MPP in the Mike Harris government, compared to Harris’s trouncing of New Democrat Bob Rae in 1995.

“I’m visualizing what happened in ’90 to ’95. I think this is the Bob Rae days all over again,” he said.

But Ford said he shouldn’t be labelled a right-winger even if he is a fiscal conservative, maintaining he wasn’t on Mel Lastman’s “team” when the right-leaning Lastman was mayor – “I’ve never been on anyone’s team,” except the taxpayer’s, he said – and as mayor can work with anyone.

“There’s a role you play in opposition, there’s a role you play in leadership,” he added.

Ford, who still works for the label and tag business his father founded in Rexdale, won’t change what he calls his simple, customer-service approach to politics. He works hard – though insisting his father worked even harder – to answer every e-mail and phone call personally, even those from residents outside his ward.

“Obviously, being in the mayor’s chair, (I) won’t be able to do that. But I can guarantee that the civil servants and the councilors will be doing that,” Ford pledged.

“Mrs. Jones out in Scarborough, all she wants is her sidewalk fixed or her pothole fixed. I will take the call, I will go out and see Mrs. Jones in Scarborough and I will get it done. And I’ve been doing it for 10 years.”

When everyday services such as pothole-filling aren’t performed, Ford said he can’t see a reason why, particularly when the city has been adding more employees – too many, he says – to its payroll.

“We don’t need five guys driving around in a truck to cut one branch. I see it all the time,” said Ford, who would hire on workers only at half the rate of attrition and added he’d look at scrapping the city’s Fair Wage policy, which he said costs taxpayers millions.

“Just because you do work for the city (as a contractor), you have to pay (your employees) city rates? I don’t believe you should.”

Ford said he won’t promise voters a zero-per-cent property tax increase, “but I’ll guarantee we’re not going to go higher than the rate of inflation, which is 1.8 or 1.9 when I last checked. People can live with that,” he said, pledging he’ll “look under every single rock” for possible savings.

The candidate also promised to record how every council votes on every issue, simplify the language of motions “for the average person out there to understand,” and to post the results, as well as every dime of city spending, online.

His administration, “will be as transparent as that bottle of water there,” Ford said. “And I will make every councilor and every bureaucrat accountable for what they spend.”

~ Mike Adler

Maher, running for a council seat in Trinity-Spadina (Ward 20), is calling on the city to ban sales of cats and dogs in Toronto pet stores, saying it would “reduce the number of unwanted pets” in the city.

He further charges a pet shop is “not a healthy environment for the (animals) and may result in future behavioural problems.”

Maher will plead his case for a ban – which would take effect a year after a bylaw passes – next Friday, Aug. 13 at Toronto City Council’s licensing and standards committee, which could act on or study the issue.

In a letter to committee chairperson Howard Moscoe, Maher said stopping the store sales would promote responsible pet ownership of puppies and kittens instead of impulse buys “based on their ‘cuteness’ factor.”

The candidate said 11 of the city’s registered pet shops sell dogs and cats. Maher said he visited two stores on the list and asked Toronto Animal Services to investigate conditions there in which dogs were caged.

Stacey Halliday, marketing director for PJ’s Pet Centres, said the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council is talking with the city to see where Maher got his information and whether the industry can do anything to address his concerns.

But in an interview Friday, Aug. 6 she said his allegations certainly did not reflect visits to her company’s stores, where, Halliday said, staff do everything possible to send people home with information they need and a sense of lifelong responsibility toward the animals they purchased.

“Our pets stay with their owners for a very long time and there’s a reason why,” she said, arguing dogs bought through services such as Craiglist or from a neighbour’s litter down the street are more likely to wind up euthanized or abandoned.

Dr. Kenneth Hill, a veterinarian at the Bloor Mill Veterinary Hospital in Etobicoke, supported Maher’s proposal in a letter, saying he previously worked at “several Toronto region pet stores” and, based on his experience, “staff at pet stores are often poorly trained and not equipped to provide prospective owners with sound advice” on selecting the pet best for their household.

Pet owners then become dissatisfied or unable to cope with the animals, which “are then prone to suffer neglect” or be euthanized, wrote Hill, who said he sees pets with serious health or behavioural problem “disproportionately over-represented” in puppies and kittens bought from pet stores.

~ Mike Adler

Doug Ford to seek seat held by brother Rob for past 10 years

There will be two Fords on the ballot in Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) in the fall municipal election, now that mayoralty candidate Rob Ford’s brother and campaign manager Doug Ford has announced his candidacy.

“I will be running and announcing tonight,” said Doug Ford in an interview Friday, Aug. 6.

“It’s going to be really exciting, not only for the ward, but for our city and our family.”

The elder Ford had been rumoured to be seeking the seat on council that Rob Ford has held for the last decade, but until Friday, he had been coy about his intentions, only saying that “a Ford” would be on the ballot Oct. 25.

Doug Ford, 45, has been working as campaign manager for Rob Ford through the spring and summer, at the same time as he worked as president of the family printing company, Deco Labels.

He said that if he wins his brother’s seat and Rob Ford becomes mayor, he’ll let the company’s managers run Deco Labels, and let his brother run the city.

“I’m going to just be a councillor,” said Doug. “It would be a conflict of interest if I took any major role down there. I’m not there for a paycheque, just to do a job like any other councillor, and help Rob.”

To that end, he admitted that the family connections would likely mean he’d consult with his brother about larger city issues.

“I think being his brother, you know, we talk every single night from 12 o’clock to one in the morning. We bounce ideas off each other,” he said. “You can’t help but talk. Rob and my other brother are my best friends, and I’m going to support Rob if he has the privilege of serving the city.”

Doug said he shares his brother’s fiscal conservatism, and would intend to look after Ward 2 in the same manner that Rob has.

“I’m going to do the same thing that Rob’s doing, servicing the people of Ward 2,” he said. “Our family has been here for 50 years, we’ve had them over to our house a hundred times. It’s a close-knit community. They voice their opinion when I go into the local Loblaws, the cleaners, people come up to you and share their views. I’m the part time councillor right now.”

~ David Nickle

While saying her environment policies aren’t “extensions of the past,” Thomson praised what she called great work by mayors David Miller and Mel Lastman, who Thomson said both “planted the environmental seeds that put Toronto on the world stage.”

She also said her environment platform, released Thursday, Aug. 5, at a downtown pub, answers criticisms by the Toronto Environmental Alliance she “misses key lessons” on her proposals for a greener city.

“I think it covers each one of them,” Thomson said during a Jarvis St. press conference of the group’s recent comments about her.

“They may not agree with every one of them.”

And indeed Thomson stuck to her argument subway-system expansions – which TEA’s executive director Franz Hartmann calls “a recipe for delay” – are greener and more responsible investments than the province’s Transit City light-rail network plan.

Thomson said subway tunnels are more attractive to riders and will last longer than new surface-rail routes she argued will increase traffic congestion and therefore vehicle emissions.

Her platform includes keeping the city’s plastic bag fee and calls for creating more community gardens and mixed-zoning areas.

Taxi companies would be encouraged by a one-time incentive to switch their fleets within five years to hybrid vehicles, which could cut taxi emissions in half.

Local environmental groups, who Thomson said “are achieving much more collectively than our municipal government could ever do on its own” would be asked to share their resources and expertise with small businesses, in return for more municipal support.

Thomson also said she “will work towards” placing green bins in all apartments by 2014, working with landlord and tenant groups to remove any obstacles to reaching the city’s waste-reduction goal of 70 per cent.

Hartmann, however, said he finds Thomson’s completion date puzzling because the city is already planning to have green-bin recycling in all multi-residential buildings in 2011.

But Hartmann said he believes Thomson cares about the environment and that she is “bang on” in saying the city can help its local green manufacturers by buying their products when possible.

TEA has met with Thomson as well as with her rivals Joe Pantalone – who got the best marks in a mid-term campaign report card on environmental issues the group released last month – George Smitherman and Rocco Rossi to discuss green issues.

Rob Ford, another contender for the mayor’s job, has not agreed to a meeting, Hartmann said. “We’ve out the request in and we’re still awaiting a response.”

~ Mike Adler

Decision comes after councillor endorses Pastor Wendell Brereton

The Rob Ford campaign won’t likely be publicly endorsing more candidates for council, after this week’s controversy over Ford’s endorsement of a candidate opposed to same sex marriage and Toronto’s gay Pride Parade.

“We’re going to focus on Rob’s candidacy, that’s where all our energy is going,” said Doug Ford, who’s managing his brother’s mayoralty campaign and seeking a seat on Toronto City Council himself in Ward 2 Etobicoke North – the ward presently held by Rob Ford.

“As soon as you start endorsing other folks, unless you do an FBI background check, there’s something going to pop up.”

Doug Ford made the comments after mayoralty candidate Rob Ford stood outside Toronto City Hall alongside Pastor Wendell Brereton – a former candidate for mayor who announced he’d be running in Ward 6 for a seat on council, and endorsed Ford’s campaign.

During the press scrum, Brereton was asked about comments he’d made on his website. One, which seemed to refer to openly gay mayoralty candidate George Smitherman, who recently adopted a child with his husband, read as follows:

“Men and women without integrity who can’t govern their own home should not be in politics. Men who don’t truly comprehend the reality of the importance of the God defined family will dismantle the very ethical fibers of what a healthy democratic civilization is.”

And in describing his kind of Toronto, Brereton wrote: “My kind of Toronto doesn’t have businesses or festivals that invite sex tourism. My kind of Toronto doesn’t parade immorality and call it pride.”

And Brereton told reporters that he wasn’t supportive of same-sex marriage.

Ford told reporters he had “the same thoughts” as Brereton.

Doug Ford said the campaign wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

“It’s just not going to happen,” he said. “That’s the last time that’s going to happen.”

~ David Nickle

Former Progressive Conservative leader aims to help city in private life

John Tory said it once in January, and he said it again this week: the radio host, head of the Toronto City Summit Alliance and former Progressive Conservative leader won’t be running for mayor of Toronto in 2010.

Word came of Tory’s decision late Thursday, Aug. 5, night, in the form of a news release – and ended months of speculation he might reconsider his Jan. 7 decision not to enter the mayor’s race.

“In recent weeks, a very significant number of people, most of them average citizens from all walks of life, but also among them community and business leaders, elected officials and commentators, urged me to reconsider this decision,” wrote Tory.

“While I am sorry to disappoint them, I have decided that the decision I made in January of this year will stand and I will not be a candidate in the municipal election to be held in October of 2010. The reason is simple: I believe I can continue to make significant and hopefully lasting contributions to the future of Toronto through the many projects and organizations I have involved myself in outside of public life,” he continued.

Since stepping down as leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives last year, Tory has busied himself hosting a popular talk radio show on Newstalk 1010, taken up the chairmanship of the Toronto City Summit Alliance and returned to the board of Rogers Communications Inc. He’s also co-chairing Diversecity, the Toronto International Film Festival Fundraising Campaign, the Yad Vashem Righteous Among Nations Dinner, the Writers Trust Annual Dinner and the City Film Project for young people at risk.

And that, he concluded, is enough.

“I took the time that I needed to reconsider my decision, and confirmed that for me I thought working outside the city government was best,” said Tory in an interview Friday.

He made the decision while cottaging with his wife Barbara – and said he’s at peace with it.

He said the decision not to run had nothing to do with doubts that he might be able to prevail in the election.

“Any poll you saw showed that I would have entered the race as a frontrunner,” he said. “If it was only whether I could win or lose I would have done this. But at the end it isn’t really about that. I decided not to do it both times – now and in January – because I honestly felt that for me, the place I could make the biggest difference was doing the things I’m doing.”

He said one thing that helped him make up his mind was looking at what he called a shallowness in the mayoralty debate so far, and at the ugly and often personal cut and thrust of what passes for debate on the floor of Toronto City Council.

He contrasted that with people working on the City Summit Alliance.

“When I made the statement January 7, it was the first day I was appointed,” he said.

“Now each month I sit at a table where there’s an anti-poverty activist, a bank executive, an economist, a labour leader and someone from a research think tank. They’re all having a thoughtful discussion with one another about how they can improve the situation for the working poor. That’s without posturing, they don’t snipe or attack each other personally. I can’t tell you how satisfying and inspiring it is. Then you look at an average council meeting, and say, ‘Wow – what a difference.’”

Tory admitted that the speculation around his possible decision to re-enter the race rankled.

“The only thing I take some issue with was people feeling quite free to call my integrity into question,” he said. “That was a ridiculous over-the-top thing to do, and people do that so lightly in politics – at the drop of a hat call integrity into question. I didn’t say I promise never ever to run for mayor – I had just decided not to run. For people to then say I was going back on my word was absurd.”

Tory also worried at the direction the mayor’s race appears to be heading. He said debate so far has been shallow and not focused on the large issues the city needs to deal with – in particular, the city’s financial problems.

“You can do one of two things to fix the city – produce more money, which is not producing more taxes but increasing the base of the economy or the revenue base… or you can get the spending in better order. And the one issue that needs to be addressed is how do you get the city’s finances in order?

“There’s been no thoughtful discussion. My definition would be you do it in a very methodical way. You can walk in and take immediate action, but then you’d have a very damaged business. Whereas if you take the surgical approach where you find better ways to do things – you can do an awful lot that way.”

Tory said he also wanted to see the debate swing more toward the way the city deals with its priority neighbourhoods, and the city’s aging affordable housing stock.

“The state of public housing is not really getting discussed,” he said. “I’ve moderated a couple of others where the word housing comes up in passing.”

Tory said he hopes to bring these issues and others forward – just not as a candidate.

“I’m not a great person for sitting around. I’m going to be back at the stuff doing my radio show this afternoon – ranting and raving about Nathan Phillips Square. The program does give me a chance to talk about these things. That’s the place where I can do the best work.”

~ David Nickle