Pressure builds on Tory to explain budget vote
The councillor who made the February motion doesn’t understand Tory’s actions, nor do allies who got cheat sheets.

TheStar.com
March 20, 2017
David Rider

Pressure is building on Mayor John Tory to explain why his staff instructed council allies to vote against considering the gender impacts of future city budgets while he publicly voted for the initiative.

The councillor who made the motion, along with some of Tory’s allies who voted against it, told the Star on Monday they still don’t understand Tory’s actions which became public after the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro viewed the “cheat sheet” his office supplied to allies at the February meeting to set the 2017 budget.

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who drafted the gender equality motion that passed 26-18, is not satisfied with Tory’s response that his council votes “speak for themselves,” adding that the mayor himself told her the morning of the vote he would support it.

“A complete answer would be ‘Yes I made a mistake,’ or ‘A staff person made a mistake, and I would never instruct staff to ask councillors to vote against a matter of equity,’” she said, adding the issue goes beyond looking at whether genders benefit equally from the city’s billions of dollars in annual spending.

“What’s before us is an issue of leadership and integrity of decision-making. We all recognize we live in the most diverse city in the world, and the mayor often talks about inclusion and ensuring that women are not being left behind… It’s important to know if you are the same person in front of a camera as you are when the camera lights are off.”

At a July 2016 council meeting, Tory voted against a similar motion from Wong-Tam on gender equity in the 2017 budget process. That motion passed regardless.

Her motion was not “out of left field,” she said, adding staff in the city’s equity, diversity and human rights office are developing a framework to gauge impacts of Toronto’s budgeting, in line with those already being used by many governments including, now, Canada’s federal government.

The cheat sheet also revealed that Tory voted in favour of adding a new position to the city’s newcomer office, which helps with resettling refugees, while his office instructed allies to do the opposite. That motion passed 24-20.

Peat said Monday that Tory was flying to India on a trade mission and unavailable for comment.

A previous statement to the Star, which also notes the mayor voted in February for 300 additional child care subsidies, a first-time homebuyers’ rebate and a TTC funding increase, “stands” as the mayor’s response, Peat said.

Councillor James Pasternak, a member of Tory’s executive committee, made no excuses for following the cheat sheet direction and voting against having city staff “develop an Intersectional Gender-Based Framework with indicators that will help determine the impacts of City programs and services on various genders.”

“When the people of Toronto elected a mayor, they embraced a philosophy and an approach to governing so it only makes sense to give his allies a sense of what he’s thinking,” Pasternak said, adding cheat sheets aren’t “sinister.”

“You need some sort of guidance or you’ll get paralysis and chaos on the council floor. It’s true that we get guidance, and I don’t mind voting with the mayor,” while breaking with him on some issues, he said.

As for Tory going against his own instructions, Pasternak said: “That was problematic because we take the mayor’s staff as speaking for the mayor.

“Maybe they got their signals crossed, maybe the feeling was (gender equity) was deeply embedded in our budget, that it recognizes gender and racial diversity and the mover of the motion was grandstanding. I simply don’t know.”

Councillor Jon Burnside was also blindsided by Tory’s vote but suggested he would have opposed Wong-Tam’s motion regardless.

“Our budgets should be about helping all people without getting into the gender lens,” the executive committee member said, adding Wong-Tam did not try to explain her thinking to colleagues before what turned out to be roughly 15 hours of budget decision-making.

“If (a budget initiative) helps the single mother, great, if it helps men, ok. I just don’t see things through that (gender equity) lens.”

Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong voted against the motion but says he was not given any cheat sheet.

“The budget decisions affect everyone and when you make an investment in, for example, transit, everybody benefits, it’s not based on gender,” he said. “I voted my conscience on everything.”

Three executive committee members who voted against Wong-Tam’s motion — budget chief Gary Crawford, Cesar Palacio and David Shiner — did not return the Star’s request for comment Monday.

Their colleague who voted with them, public works chair Jaye Robinson, “is out of town with her family and isn’t able to provide a response at this time,” an aide said in an email.