‘Bland’ John Tory proud of ability to compromise, remain politically flexible
Issues in 2016 include Uber, budget and SmartTrack
Thestar.com
Dec. 23, 2015
By Betsy Powell
Toronto Mayor John Tory says if you want to know what to expect from his administration in 2016 look back on 2015.
He vows to carry on with plans to improve traffic, public transit and affordable housing.
And in sharp contrast to the tumultuous Ford era, Tory pledges to continue managing the city in the style of his former boss, long-serving Ontario premier Bill Davis, who famously joked “bland works.”
“I don’t mean to be boring, although I try to be,” Tory said during a year-end interview with the Star in his office overlooking Nathan Phillips Square.
His aides tease he is “no story Tory.”
That doesn’t mean there weren’t political struggles in 2015 or bumpy rides ahead as Tory moves into the second year of his four-year term, with looming budget talks and steering his signature $8 billion SmartTrack rail plan through council.
Running primarily on existing GO tracks and not yet fully funded, Tory faces major challenges winning the support of councillors representing both the east and west sides of the proposed line.
“I don’t get sort of stressed that easily. I sort of take bad days as they come,” Tory said of the last 12 months.
For instance?
After staking his position backing a “hybrid” proposal to reconfigure the eastern Gardiner Expressway, Tory said he felt a “degree of apprehension” leading up to last June’s vote.
Council passed his choice by a razor-thin 24-21.
Rather than marching around in “triumphant” fashion, Tory offered an olive branch to hybrid opponents in and outside of city hall, asking them “to find a better way to do this hybrid.”
“Lo and behold that’s exactly what they’re still doing,” he said of the various proposals coming forward. “I’m proud of that, that’s how we make decisions.”
Tory shrugs off dissent. Four members of his hand-picked executive committee voted against the hybrid option.
Why get “into a great lather” if “a couple of people” aren’t on side from “time to time.” But this year has taught him that wrangling votes on council - he doesn’t like the term “whip”- is a critical, time-consuming function when you’re the mayor, something he didn’t know before arriving at city hall.
“My main focus is getting 23 votes at city council, it is a lesson I’ve learned.” He has no immediate plans to alter the composition of his executive, though a mid-term review “may happen.”
Tory is disappointed for his “inadequate” handling of communications around the Uber file, the ride-hailing app service that dominated the agenda at city hall in 2015, and will again in 2016.
“The cab drivers all think I have some issue with them, quite to the contrary,” said Tory, adding he understands “there is a fundamental unfairness to the present situation.”
“That’s what we’re trying to fix with the new regulation,” he said. It will, he suggested, set out insurance requirements that might not be “exactly the same” for cabbies and UberX drivers but it will be “transparent, equitable (and) consistent.”
Some have criticized Tory for blindly supporting the technology giant after famously declaring Uber is “here to stay.”
With city staff planning a new regulatory framework to be released this spring, Tory fires a shot across the bow to Uber.
“It’s absolutely imperative that they show every bit of good faith in being a good corporate citizen,” he says. “If they’re thinking there’s going to be this continued kind of ‘well that really isn’t for us,’ it is specifically about them and all the other players in the industry.”
Throughout 2015, Tory rode high in public opinion polls, but being popular - particularly after the chaotic 2010-2014 term of Rob Ford - doesn’t mean people know exactly what it is he stands for.
He makes no apologies if people find him difficult to pigeonhole. Lacking an “ironclad ideology,” means not being hardwired to think “the government shouldn’t be doing this or doing that,” he said.
“If people started sort of narrowing me down and saying ‘he’s this,’ then I have to be that for evermore, every day on every issue,” he continued in his trademark, long-winded yet rapid fire way of talking.
“That reduces your ability in a big complicated city like this. which is to be what you should be, in terms of trying to do the right thing, even if sometimes that means changing your mind.”
Tory believes he embodies what Toronto is.
