Integrity commissioner to resume inquiry into Mayor John Tory’s ties to Rogers

Thestar.com
Nov. 8, 2022
Ben Spurr

Toronto’s integrity commissioner has agreed to relaunch an inquiry related to Mayor John Tory’s ties to the Rogers corporation, after suspending the probe in the run-up to last month’s municipal election.

Civic activist Adam Chaleff originally filed a complaint with Commissioner Jonathan Batty in July asking him to investigate whether Tory’s position on the Rogers trust put him in a conflict of interest over a June vote about the city’s ActiveTO program.

Batty started an investigation, but terminated it three weeks later after concluding he couldn’t complete it before the election period officially began on Aug. 19. The province’s City of Toronto Act prohibits active integrity inquiries during an election.

Tory coasted to victory in the Oct. 24 vote and secured a third term. Four days later, Chaleff’s lawyer wrote to Batty requesting he restart the investigation, something Ontario legislation allows. The commissioner wrote back the same day confirming he would reboot the probe, the Star has learned.

In a brief statement Monday, Chaleff, who said previously he would ask Batty to take up the case after the election, thanked the commissioner for resuming his investigation.

Tory denies he did anything wrong.

“Mayor Tory’s record on integrity speaks for itself,” Don Peat, a spokesperson for the mayor, said in a statement.

“The mayor is highly confident he has complied with the law and acted appropriately and in good faith on this issue.”

Chaleff’s complaint centres on a June 15, 2022 council vote about the ActiveTO program the city launched in 2020 to give residents space outdoors in the early days of the pandemic, and which and featured regular weekend closures of a 5.8-kilometre stretch of the eastbound lanes of Lake Shore Blvd. West.

On June 6, Toronto Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro wrote an open letter to the mayor asking him to oppose further closures on Lake Shore, arguing they made it difficult for baseball fans to get to games at the Rogers Centre.

Tory publicly defended Shapiro against backlash from ActiveTO supporters, and later voted to support a scaled-back version of the program that wouldn’t require regular Lake Shore closures.

Chaleff’s complaint alleged Tory had an indirect financial interest in the vote because of his connection to Rogers, the company that owns the Jays.

Since 2010 Tory has been an advisory member of a trust that consists mostly Rogers family members and controls more than 90 per cent of voting shares in the telecom giant. He’s paid $100,000 annually for the role.

The Municipal Conflict of Interest Act says council members must declare any direct or indirect financial interest they have in an issue that’s before council, and not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter. Potential penalties for breaching the act range from a reprimand to removal from office. There’s no indication Tory would face the strictest penalties even if it’s determined he broke the rules.

Tory regularly recuses himself from council votes related to Rogers, but his office says ActiveTO is a broad issue and the mayor “has no reasonably discernable personal interest in it, direct or indirect.”

Even before Chaleff’s complaint, Tory’s critics have charged that sitting on the trust while serving as mayor is inappropriate.

A profile of Tory published in the Star last month quoted an old friend of his, pollster Allan Gregg, as saying the mayor realizes his ties to Rogers are problematic, but he has resisted calls to step away from the trust out of loyalty to his former mentor and the company’s late founder, Ted Rogers.

“It is not that he’s not aware that it’s a conflict of interest ... It’s that he is so acutely attuned to the responsibilities and the promise he made to Ted Rogers,” Gregg said.