Mayor John Tory says second-term priorities include affordable housing, rail deck park

Thestar.com
October 25, 2018
David Rider

With a muscular mandate, Toronto Mayor John Tory says he is eager to push his new 25-ward council forward on affordable housing, transit expansion and the proposed rail deck park.

Tory made the comments during a round of broadcast interviews Tuesday morning, hours after beating former chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat and other rivals Monday night with 63.5 per cent of the vote.

Toronto Mayor John Tory, greeting supporters at his victory party Monday night, says his new strong mandate will help him deal with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Asked on CBC Radio for his focus heading into a second term, the mayor said during the campaign he received a “loud and clear” message from Torontonians that they want faster action to increase the supply of affordable housing, especially rental homes, and get building new transit lines.

Improved transit and housing will help connect people in low-income neighbourhoods far from the core, such as Rexdale in the northwest and Malvern in the northeast, to those in the downtown core who are enjoying the city’s economic boom, Tory said.

“I will mobilize the private sector, the union movement and a host of others to say we can deal with this, we can, we’re good enough, we’re wealthy enough, we’re smart enough to address that (housing) issue and bring those people closer into the joy that is Toronto, the place of opportunity,” he said.

Asked if he’ll borrow any of Keesmaat’s ideas, Tory said he wants to look at her proposal for a “rent to own” program to give 10,000 families a path to home ownership, and suggested maybe it could include Toronto Community Housing tenants gaining ownership of their units.

Tory said he expects in January city staff will report to council on next steps on rail deck park, a proposed kind of green roof that would span the rail corridor connecting downtown to the waterfront. The proposal had mixed support on council last term, with some saying the core desperately needs parkland and others questioning how to pay the $1.6 billion-plus price tag.

The mayor said he’s committed to “aggressively” pursuing the project that city staff are expected to suggest would need funding from corporations and developers, and could become a citywide draw and tourist attraction.

Tory said he is sad to see some councillors, including Jon Burnside in Leaside, John Campbell in Etobicoke and Michelle Holland-Berardinetti in Scarborough, go down to defeat.

He was more circumspect about Giorgio Mammoliti, the controversial councillor known for outrageous statements who was soundly defeated by fellow incumbent Anthony Perruzza.

“You never knew what was going to go on,” with Mammoliti, whom Tory sat beside at city council, the mayor told Newstalk 1010. “It was sort of comic relief of a kind but not even really relief.”

Tory told CBC Radio he told Mammoliti directly that he should focus on serious policy, as he had done in the past.

“I said ‘If you could go back to being the guy who had some rational ideas about housing, and tried to be very thoughtful about it ... I think you’d be better off.’”

Tory expressed satisfaction with his new council, saying he’s confident he can find common ground with a majority to move his agenda forward but told CP24 “there’s the odd one that is in business for himself or herself.”

The mayor also said he spoke to Premier Doug Ford on Monday night, and that his new strong mandate will help him deal with the man whom he beat in the 2014 mayoral election but now leads a majority government with a huge amount of power over Toronto.

“What it really means is that we’ve got to get back to say OK we both won, we’re both in office and we both have a responsibility and let’s work together,” Tory told Newstalk 1010, adding he hopes to work productively with Ford but is ready to “fight him on things that are just not in Toronto’s interests.”

Tory is also suggesting that his second term might not be his last after all.

Leaving the mayor’s chair after eight years remains “the plan,” he said, adding he is leaving the door open to a third term only if he needs to block a challenger threatening to undo his transit plan.