Let's hope Mayor Tory doesn't take easy path to re-election
Toronto needs a mayor who is unafraid of telling the hard truths.

thestar.com
By Royson James
Nov. 19, 2016

John Tory will be re-elected as mayor of Toronto two years from now. You read it here first.

There is no viable opponent on city council. The city’s progressives have not coalesced around any potential candidate outside city council. There is no discernible, bubbling base of opposition. And seven in 10 Torontonians approve of Tory’s performance at mid-term.

The fourth year of the mayoralty is spent almost entirely politicking and campaigning for re-election. That means, the case for re-election will be made in 2017 when Tory must face critical spending decisions.

Will he impose taxes and fees on Torontonians to pay for vital transit and housing needs - at the risk of being branded a Big Spender? Or will he shrink from the task, opting for a namby-pamby mix of confounding clauses that mask the issue.

Will he try to disguise taxes as fees? Will he sell off city assets instead of taxing to improve services? Will he display fiscal honesty by leveraging city taxes to kick-start critical infrastructure needs, or dodge and duck the issue by sloughing off the responsibility to the province and the feds?

Answers to these questions will define Tory’s mayoralty. The past two years have served as a warmup to the essential monetary decisions - the most difficult and controversial votes of the four-year term.

Tory’s record so far is one of competence, civility and common sense. Hired by the people of Toronto with the stated task of ending the chaos around the Rob Ford experiment, Tory has done exactly what was anticipated.

There have been no consorting with unsavoury characters, lewd behaviour, videos of late-night crack smoking and binge drinking. Tory hasn’t shown up to a news conference with his wife, talking about how much he has to eat at home. The world no longer goes gaga at Toronto. (Yes, Robbie pales compared to The Donald, but still . . .)

Tory plays the mayor’s role in classic terms. Daily, he’s seen shaking every hand, embracing every cause, seemingly everywhere at all times from the crack of dawn till the last subway train - the traditional civic busy body that defines the office.

To fix his perceived political weakness in the suburbs, Tory has become the champion of the car, wearing the cape of the congestion-fighter, engaging tow trucks and enforcement officers to keep rush hour traffic flowing. It’s a band-aid, no doubt, but it’s at least comforting.

When the urbanists wanted to tame the Gardiner Expressway - a roadway considered sacred by the suburbanites - Tory defended the status quo, even opting for a rebuilt Gardiner that is more expensive than viable alternatives.

And, biggest of all, he showed his Scarborough constituency that he is with them - costs and common sense be damned. Before Tory, Rob Ford promised Scarborough a subway extension from Kennedy station to the town centre. Tory did him two better. The subway stays, costs ballooning. He’s added two Scarborough stops on the Stouffville GO line, calling it SmartTrack. And he’s running an LRT out to the U of T campus near Morningside.

Such overkill of political largesse should secure the Scarborough vote - notwithstanding Tory doesn’t have the money to pay for it.

In general, Tory has shown the basic competence required to run city hall. He wins the votes he cares about - a fact that should be a given, considering the levers at the mayor’s disposal. Council passed his poverty reduction strategy, bike lanes, two budgets, SmartTrack, the Gardiner et al.

His most damaging failure was his dalliance with the police brass to maintain the odious practice of discriminatory, racist police street checks, known here as carding. It took a diverse and high profile coalition of civic-minded citizens to bring him to his senses. This alerted citizens to a weak link, a vulnerability not previously exposed. Barring further exposures, this will be forgiven, though not forgotten, by October 2018.

Tory is weak on the social housing file. His transit vision is blurry and conflicted - tangled and made indefensible by his SmartTrack election promise that no longer makes sense but is being propped up at every turn.

The city’s fiscal picture is unchanged. Costs rise with inflation; property taxes rise imperceptibly, below inflation; service demands rise with a growing population; and city staff are left to use budgetary tricks to cope.

Toronto’s fiscal fix requires a mayor of vision, one unafraid to telling Torontonians the truth.

Tory’s conservative strategists no doubt are telling him the sure way to a second term is to stay away from taxes and paper over the budget gaps, leaving permanent solutions to a future administration.

Those who dream of Toronto assuming its place as a great city, able to provide the services of a great metropolis, are looking for a transformational figure.

Either path, I think, leads to victory in 2018. The strategists’ path is more certain.