‘It’s been pretty agonizing for a lot of people’: Mayor John Tory looks back on 2020, shares why he feels optimistic about Toronto’s recovery

Thestar.com
Dec. 23, 2020
Francine Kopun

In his free time in this pandemic, Mayor John Tory has taken to driving around the city with his wife, Barbara.

They’re not your typical tourists.

Barbara Hackett, whom Tory met when they were students at York University and married in 1978, is a former homebuilder with an interest in construction, and so they’ve visited things like The Well, a massive development taking shape at Front, Spadina and Wellington.

Another time they swung by Queen Street East and the Danforth to do their Christmas shopping locally -- Tory springing out of the car to to pick up parcels ordered and paid for online.

They’ve visited the new sculpture in front of the Richmond-Adelaide Centre, a large white installation called “Dreaming,” by artist Jaume Plensa.

“If you’ve seen it, it’s beautiful. I love it. I want to have 20 more of those,” said Tory during an end-of-year interview with the Star looking back on 2020 and at the year ahead.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given him two jobs -- mayor of the city and head of the city’s pandemic response -- but it has also freed up some extra time for him. Tory, whose day routinely begins before 5 a.m. and often runs to 10 p.m., now spends less time in transit. When he’s done with a Zoom meeting or event, he turns off the computer and he’s already home. There is no one stopping him to chat as he leaves a meeting, no driving home from a distant corner of the city.

Coping with the pandemic means making decisions at “wartime speed,” as he has often said -- so different than the way things are typically done at City Hall -- where ideas are studied, debated at several levels and can then go through several more process points before being implemented.

“You have to move quickly to do things, so that’s been a bit change as well,” said Tory.

Despite the demands of the pandemic, Tory said he continues to work on the biggest issues the city was facing before COVID-19 struck, including and especially affordable housing.

“There’s no question that the focus and sort of my own intensity to push those things forward was limited by the fact that I had to devote so much time to the pandemic itself,” Tory said.

Last week, council debated an emergency housing plan to increase the availability of supportive housing so as to move people out of shelters in the midst of the pandemic, and earlier approved the first modular housing projects to create quick and affordable housing solutions.

“We have to get the focus back on those. And I’m quite prepared to be held to account now for them, but also a year from now, when we’ve hopefully had more of a chance to really put our shoulder to the wheel on those things,” he said.

Tory acknowledged that his SmartTrack plan -- which has been downgraded from 22 new station stops along GO rail lines in the city to just six new stops -- will be different than what was originally contemplated.

Despite the fact that two stations might have been made redundant by the province’s own transit plans, Tory said the much modified SmartTrack will make a big net addition to transit in Toronto.

“You will have new stations that will serve people on train tracks that were there before that will move people around the city and do it in a shorter time.”

And he said he is committed to construction of the Scarborough subway and the Eglinton East LRT, connecting Scarborough and the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, despite a lack of funding for both and the pending closure of the Scarborough RT before any new transit is built.

He likes to think that, with vaccines on the way, we’re in the “middle of the end” of the pandemic, and that as we emerge from its shadow over 2021, he’ll have to focus on the city’s economy.

“There’s absolutely no doubt there’s going to be some transformation of the downtown that results from the pandemic, because unfortunately, some businesses will have disappeared,” he said.

Some companies may decide they don’t need the office space they used to think they needed, which will force change on the businesses that support downtown office towers.

“I believe new investors and new businesses and new uses of space will come along that will occupy that space, because I think Toronto will be a more attractive place than ever to invest, but it will lead to a transformation,” Tory said.

“And so I just think that the economy is going to have to get to be a big focus of my attention. I think it will take a couple of years to get the tourism, hospitality industry back on its feet.”

Budget planning for 2021 -- Tory’s sixth budget -- was tougher than ever this year, as the city grappled with the costs imposed by the pandemic and the fact that many residents, who lost part or all of their income in 2020, are in no position to afford a tax increase.

The city is looking at a $1.5-billion shortfall in 2021. So far, $500 million in savings have been identified, but other levels of government will have to step in to help, Tory said.

The budget process has been proceeding almost continuously throughout 2020.

“We were determined to try to make sure that, on the one hand, we didn’t decrease services at a time when people need them more than ever. And on the other hand, we didn’t believe people could afford a tax increase of any magnitude. So that put us in a, you know, in a tough spot. I mean, obviously.”

Throughout the pandemic, Tory has been scrupulous about following the advice he is doling out to residents.

When he was quarantined for 14 days early in the pandemic after travelling to the U.K., he quarantined right up to the very hour that he had arrived home in the evening, 14 days earlier. He and his wife spent Thanksgiving without their four children and grandchildren. They’re planning Christmas without them.

Still, the mayor’s fundamental underlying optimism remains intact.

“It’s been pretty agonizing for a lot of people and for the city very traumatizing. I’m very optimistic about the city, really. We’ve been trying to lure investments here, even during the pandemic. And there are actually people who are very interested in coming here to invest. It’s just a matter of time.”