Class quiz. Who is chief of Toronto's parks? Who leads its school system? Who is its transportation boss? If you can't answer, you are not alone. In Toronto, the officials who hold these crucial jobs tend to keep a low profile, leaving their elected overseers to face the heat of the television lights.
Jennifer Keesmaat is a refreshing exception. Since becoming the city's chief planner in 2012, she has used her pulpit to push causes from better transit to a cleaner urban environment. She hosts roundtable discussions. She gives speeches. She sits for interviews and profiles. She has a lively presence on Twitter.
"I was pretty clear from the outset: I am not a bureaucrat," she told me a couple of years ago, when some critics at city hall were first complaining about her outspokenness. "I am a kind of can-do, change-agent type of person." Pushing for more bike lanes hardly makes her a dangerous revolutionary, but, right from the start, her vocal advocacy rubbed some city councillors the wrong way.
Now she is in another spot of trouble. In the recent debate over the Gardiner, she came out strongly in favour of pulling down the eastern end of the crumbling elevated expressway and opening up the waterfront. Mayor John Tory came out strongly in favour of keeping the expressway up, at least in a modified form. Toronto's top elected official and its chief planner found themselves on the opposite sides of an important city issue.
Mr. Tory made it clear that while she had a right to her opinion, he did not think she should be debating him in public. The Globe's Ann Hui reported that after Ms. Keesmaat was summoned to a meeting in the mayor's office, her tweets on the Gardiner came to a stop. A Tory spokeswoman said that even if it was "perfectly appropriate" for officials to voice their opinions, "it is not appropriate for city staff to campaign against councillors or the mayor on social media or through other public platforms."
It was silly to make such a fuss. Ms. Keesmaat was not waging a vendetta. She was simply expressing her professional opinion, which is what she is paid to do.
Her opinion, in this case, was that taking down the eastern Gardiner was more in keeping with Toronto's plans to revive the waterfront and make the city less "car-centric." Given her background and her past pronouncements, it would have been astonishing if she had said anything different – and absurd if she had said nothing at all.
Toronto should not be forcing a cone of silence on engaging officials like Ms. Keesmaat. It should be encouraging them to speak up. In some other big cities, appointed officials are not shy about expressing themselves.
New York's former transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, became one of the best known officials in the city as she transformed the streets of the metropolis, rolling out a network of bike paths and opening Times Square for pedestrians. Joel Klein, New York's chancellor of schools from 2002 to 2010, was anything but reserved as he shook up the city's underperforming education system.
In the end, of course, the city's elected leaders make the big decisions. Mr. Tory got city council to approve his Gardiner plan, if only by a narrow margin. Ms. Keesmaat must now defer to council's authority. She is well aware of that.
But it would be a mistake to rein her in. Toronto needs more like her: bright, articulate public servants who are not afraid to speak their minds on civic issues.