Will John Tory’s ‘prudent’ leadership be tough enough to tackle Toronto’s big issues if he’s re-elected?

As we wait to hear if Mayor John Tory hopes to lead Toronto until 2026, urgent questions loom.

What can we expect from the former telecom executive and broadcaster, should he successfully seek re-election next October based on his self-proclaimed “prudent” approach to city issues for the past seven years?

Is a cautious centrist the right kind of leader to usher in drastic change needed to avert climate catastrophe and revive a downtown virtually emptied by COVID-19?

“Slow, steady incremental improvements are better than nothing,” says Dylan Reid, an advocate for walkable cities. “But we’ll have to move faster and think bigger if we’re going to meet the goal of having a net-zero-carbon city,” one that is livable and affordable even as rapid population growth resumes.

Richard Florida, an internationally known cities expert based at University of Toronto, says Tory’s tactic of building support for change — nudging disparate voters toward a common good — has yielded benefits for Torontonians.

“Coming out of the pandemic we need a steady hand,” Florida says, suggesting that a re-elected Tory might take bolder action on affordability and other issues.

The mayor himself won’t talk about what a third term might look like. His spokesperson Lawvin Hadisi says the mayor “is focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 city budget.

“Given that, we won’t be speculating on future plans beyond 2022.”

But she continues, campaign style, to tout Tory’s “strong and responsible leadership” throughout the pandemic and his working non-stop “to make sure Toronto comes back stronger than ever.”

That rebound, Hadisi says, hinges on progress on transit, housing and affordability “only possible thanks to the solid foundations that the mayor has built and protected throughout the pandemic.”

COVID-19 has shaped Tory’s second term: he is the pandemic mayor. The virus that has gripped the world for almost two years has pushed his agenda in new directions, shaping the city in ways that will long outlive mandatory mask rules.

We asked experts what they expect on issues including big infrastructure projects, transit, housing, walking and cycling, and taxes, if Tory wins re-election.

Few expect this centre-right leopard to change his spots (or blue pinstripes). Being a genial seeker of the middle ground has helped boost Tory’s popularity to the point that almost anyone running against him would be a long-shot.

But is crowd-pleasing caution what Toronto needs to fix skyrocketing housing costs, pandemic-ravaged finances and, most dire of all, global warming?

Infrastructure

Whether it’s the waning promise of a massive downtown park or remaking Ontario Place, Tory has overseen a lot of vision building — but so far not a lot of actual building on those projects.

There have been some wins when it comes to new public infrastructure, say experts, like the rapid development of The Bentway, a multi-use plaza running underneath a western portion of the Gardiner Expressway that includes a skating trail in winter and public art year-round.

“Tory was champion of that and getting it done quickly,” says Jake Tobin Garrett, a park policy consultant.

Garrett says the most exciting parks project underway this term was not Rail Deck Park — a plan to span the downtown rail corridor with a park that was dashed by the planning tribunal in May — but The Meadoway, a project along a 16-kilometre stretch of hydro corridor in Scarborough.

That linear park will span several neighbourhoods and increase the city’s biodiversity in the midst of a climate crisis, says Garrett.

“That is such an exciting idea to me,” he says, “much more of a city-building legacy idea than even Rail Deck Park.”

There have been other changes to how the city views public space, like making the CafeTO program, which permitted restaurant dining in a curb lane during a pandemic that closed indoor dining, a permanent fixture.

Garrett says he’d love to see more of those ideas and have them replicated outside the downtown core. “I don’t think we’re maximizing the opportunities we already have,” he says.

Transit

After rapid transit projects were handed over to the provincial government, Tory and council are no longer in charge of major builds like the Scarborough subway.

Shelagh Pizey-Allen, executive director of the grassroots advocacy group TTCriders, says when it comes to transit operations, which the city is still responsible for, Tory has helped to secure emergency funding after the pandemic decimated transit ridership and consequently, fare revenues.

“It remains to be seen if he’s going to let transit collapse now or do everything possible to win back riders,” Pizey-Allen says, adding that operations funding will be key to ensuring reliable service.

“We think that will be a defining part of the mayor’s legacy — if he secures the resources the TTC needs.”

She credited the mayor with other aspects of transit stewardship, like championing the King Street pilot that improved commute times on the busy route.

Matti Siemiatycki, a University of Toronto urban planning professor, agrees that the pilot was a “signature program,” but questions how the city arrived at the solution within a transit network that still needs much improvement.

“It’s characteristic in the way it was done — started it as a pilot, bringing in tonnes of evidence to support the program and implementing such projects one by one by one rather than seeing it as a network and a system, and aim for much more systemic change.”

Non-transit transportation

While empty buses and streetcars trundle around town, vehicle traffic is building back toward pre-pandemic levels. So are disruptive construction projects and gridlock complaints, despite Tory’s “traffic agents” at busy intersections.

Cyclists are getting an unexpected boom in bike-lane construction. Temporary separated lanes installed early in the pandemic on arteries including University Avenue, to help commuters afraid of infection risk on transit, are being made permanent.

And CafeTO, also being made permanent in some fashion, has encouraged strolling by repurposing some vehicle lanes as warm-weather patios.

“COVID shook things up a bit,” says Reid, of advocacy group Walk Toronto, adding that Tory should be commended for supporting the changes. However, Reid says the city where the car has long been king needs a revolutionary, not evolutionary, approach to transport.

“We need to have a city where the idea is walkability for everyone, where anyone can walk for a reasonable number of things we need to do, and I don’t see anyone having that vision at the moment.”

Keagan Gartz, executive director of Cycle Toronto, says Tory and council enabled unprecedented growth in the bike-lane network over the next three years. There will be future fights over expanding the network further, but it won’t stop.

“Whether it’s Tory or someone else,” as mayor, she says, “they’re going to have to reconcile that people in every part of our city are expecting safe, vibrant, complete streets — for our climate, for our health, for our economy, and for our safety. And they won’t go back to status quo.”

U of T’s Siemiatycki describes Tory’s approach to non-transit transportation as “incremental, middle of the road, and change that has happened but slowly.”

He points to small advances in the Vision Zero pedestrian and cyclist safety plan: “It’s not that there has been no action, but the underlying primacy of the car in much of the city has not been challenged.

Post pandemic, would Tory keep the pressure on for continued change?

“I think he’ll continue at his pace,” Siemiatycki says. “The pandemic accelerated many projects already on the books and enabled them to be implemented with a lot less friction and controversy.”

Housing

In 2021, the outlook on affordable housing was grim. Real estate was a seller’s market and homelessness remained a major issue for the city, which faced blowback for how encampments in public parks were cleared during the summer.

Heading into this year, advocacy group Social Planning Toronto set out the decline in housing affordability over the last 10 years — Tory was mayor for six of them — including a wait-list for subsidized housing growing by more than 50 per cent, a failure to meet the maximum shelter capacity set out by council and average rents increasing between 24 and 40 per cent.

“A heavy reliance on the private sector to provide affordable housing has failed to deliver on this basic right,” the report says. “Governments have not adequately invested in affordable housing, including various forms of social and supportive housing and related supports.”

The mayor has continued to support new housing initiatives, making affordable housing a centrepiece of his mayoralty, including championing the building of modular housing units to offer supportive housing and seeing an inclusionary zoning policy approved at council, which will force some developers to include affordable units in new projects.

“I think the Tory administration will be seen historically as having done a lot of things on the housing file, but many of them not in line with the scale of the crisis,” says Geordie Dent, head of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations.

He pointed to the $1.3 billion secured from the federal government for Toronto Community Housing repairs and a renewed 10-year housing plan.

“However, almost every housing indicator has deteriorated disastrously,” Dent says, noting that more than 30 names were added to the Homeless Memorial — for those who died while without shelter — just this month.

“Homelessness, encampments and shelter use have exploded. Affordable rental units have vanished at never-before-seen rates, and we’re losing a generation of families leaving the city for more affordable housing.”

City finances

Toronto’s budgets have been an annual high-wire act as city staff and politicians try to balance ambitious goals and obligations with revenues derived primarily from property taxes. The pandemic has blown all that up.

The city balanced 2021 books only with massive bailouts from the Ontario and federal governments. Toronto expects to need another $1.1 billion in emergency aid in 2022 and pandemic impacts could bedevil the city for years.

Tory’s mantra has been to do as much as possible with revenues generated through tax hikes at or below the rate of inflation, while seeking partnerships with the provincial and federal governments to pay for things Toronto can’t do on its own.

The public and Wall Street bond-rating agencies, he has noted, both seemed keen.

Coun. Gord Perks, a Tory critic, says Toronto has suffered 11 years of austerity. Services that were threadbare when COVID-19 hit “are absolutely in a mess,” he says. “I have no hope this leopard will change its spots.”

Enid Slack, a municipal finance expert at U of T, says the city’s mayor in 2022 to 2026, whoever that is, should push for fundamental change.

“What the pandemic has shown is just how much the cities are on the front lines,” she says. “They’ve been the ones dealing with public health issues, all the issues around restaurants, finding shelter for the homeless — they are just so many things cities do,” despite limited revenue options and no legal ability to run deficits.

“I think it is time to think about what does the province do, what do cities do and how do we pay for it.”

Jennifer Pagliaro is a Toronto-based reporter covering city hall and municipal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @jpags

David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider