It was the 'year of teamwork,' says Mayor John Tory in year-end interview

Thestar.com
Dec. 20, 2021

For John Tory, 2021 was “the Year of Teamwork on Public Health.”

It may not roll off the tongue, but the Toronto mayor’s take on the year that was is not without justification. In the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Toronto as a whole got it done. In mid-December, Toronto Public Health had administered nearly 5.4 million doses of vaccines, and nearly 77 per cent of Toronto residents were fully vaccinated with two or more vaccines.

“The teamwork includes the people who stepped up to get their vaccinations -- the fantastic team that executed it -- and if you look, I think the job we did was comparable to anywhere else in the world,” said Tory in a year-end interview in his office at a mostly-empty Toronto City Hall.

“It wasn’t just about vaccinations, although that was the single biggest part of it. I think we did a great job, reaching out to the communities that wouldn’t naturally have showed up.”

Tory made the comments toward the end of 2021, on the eve of Toronto’s final council meeting of the year, reflecting back on the past 12 long months -- not the only things that got long after a year of the pandemic.

At the beginning of the year, the normally conservatively coiffed mayor was sporting a growing mop, as he made the call to eschew his regular haircuts as barber shops and hair salons remained closed. As it grew longer, it became a bit of an object of fun in the press -- an echo of one of the kind of things one of Tory’s predecessors might have done.

In December, that predecessor -- the amalgamated city of Toronto’s first mayor, Mel Lastman -- passed away at 88. Tory, who helped advise Lastman, had just attended his funeral the day before and reflected on their differences. Lastman, who frequently misstepped in later years, succeeded in a populist mould by connecting directly with people.

Tory said the thing he learned from Lastman and his former mentor former Premier Bill Davis was to be himself.

“Someone described my appeal as ‘managerial blandness,’” said Tory.

Over the year, that managerial skill was tested. In the summer, Tory supported a controversial city initiative to remove homeless encampments from city parks -- a move that saw protesters and encampment residents clash with police and finally cost the city approximately $2 million.

But Tory continued to defend the decision, arguing that the forcible removal of people in encampments only came after multiple attempts to persuade those residents to leave.

“Was it a necessary thing to do? Unfortunately yes,” he said. “The decision of when police got deployed wasn’t mine, but the encampments were unsafe, they were unhealthy and they were illegal. You can’t have encampments in public parks. We have a housing issue to deal with -- and it’s not dealt with by having encampments in public parks.”

On another housing issue, Tory insisted that he is not letting his failure to twice assemble votes to establish regulated rooming houses across the city be the final word on the bylaw.

“We’re working hard on it. We tried to work on it over the summer. Contrary to what was said, it was not an ideological thing on the council,” said Tory, noting that "it was frustrating -- we had people who didn’t have any particular pattern of it, it was just who they were -- they just had a position on it that they thought their residents had. So we’re going to work at that.”

The question of whether Tory will work on that and other issues by seeking a third term in the next election, slated for Monday, Oct. 24, is still an open one.

“If I wasn’t thinking about running again, I could say I’m definitely not running,” said Tory. “I’ve been focusing on the pandemic, on the budget, and I haven’t focused on that serious discussion.”