Toronto Mayor John Tory.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
One of the things people say is: We think John Tory is looking over his shoulder at Doug Ford. Are you governing with Doug Ford in your mind?
No. Not at all. But what I have governed with is, the complexity of the city and how it's made up, and with the complexity of my own support base from last time. And the complexity of my support base is that it was comprised of people who live downtown and who were ordinarily more centre-left or even sort of a bit left, and people in the suburban areas who were more conservative.
And so those people have different views, both based on where they live but also based on kind of who they are. But it's also who I am, more importantly. I am a person who people have sort of described as a bit of a conundrum, because I am fiscally quite conservative, but at the same time I recognize that when you are the mayor you have an obligation to build the city up, and that involves spending and investing money. I am the same guy who will proudly say I have brought forward, with [budget chief] Gary Crawford, four budgets that kept tax increases at or below the rate of inflation. But I am also the very same mayor that made record investment investments in the TTC.
The most important thing I set out to do when I got here is to restore and maintain honesty and integrity and respect for the mayor's office and for the mayor of this city, which was a fundamental problem. We can't go backward on that.
The real question people are going to ask themselves, have to ask themselves, I think, is not about looking over anybody's shoulder but do they want to go backward, back to the old way of doing it, the chaos at city council, relationships [with federal and provincial governments] which couldn't possibly be the same, you know, with that other gentleman as the mayor.
One issue that comes up a lot among those downtown centre-left supporters, is the Scarborough subway extension. Why is the city spending so much money on a one-stop subway?
What I will concede to you is this, that I think those who are opposed to it have done a better job in terms of kind of putting a brand on it that makes it sound like it's not going to be something that I believe it will be.
I believe it is going to be a magnet for jobs and investment to the centre of Scarborough where we're going to have, for the first time in decades, office buildings being built there. We're going to have residences being built there. People can live close to where they work. I believe when you look at that as your return on investment – look, subways are expensive, everybody knows that – that people will say, 25 years from now, boy that was a smart thing to do. And no one will question it.
Even if the price goes up?
Nobody has told me for sure that somehow the price is going to go like you said. I mean we've actually got a report that talks about ways you could bring the price down. There's a great job that's been done at sort of demonizing this subway project. I don't buy into it.
The other thing they raise is comparing the two projects (the subway extension with the previous light-rail plan) on an apples-to-apples basis, in a way that doesn't seem to have been done.
When is the right time, if you're going to engage in that comparison if you thought there was any utility to be served? You see I believe that the comparison that was being asked for at the city council meeting was one more sort of obstruction and delaying tactic. And they presented it has being sort of like religion, and sort of, the Holy Scriptures, but it was a delaying tactic. They brought votes on every possible angle of this that you could imagine.
But if you were running a business, and you wanted to know, should we buy factory machinery A or factory machinery B, wouldn't you do some sort of direct cost comparison?
Well I guess somebody thought they had sufficient information because let's also remember one thing: The decision to switch from an LRT to a subway was not made on my watch.
But I have looked at the project now, looked at what it is. We are going to build transit in the city, we're not going to re-examine and reanalyze and rebate and relitigate every single transit debate we ever had. And I look at it and say why is it that there's the assumption made that all of the elected representatives who are all to be held to account by the public, they've all studied the different alternatives, why are those people all wrong? Every one of them is wrong?
Well, there aren't too many transit experts that will agree. And the numbers to justify subway capacity …
Well, okay, that's fine. My network transit plan, which has to be taken together, because the other thing they conveniently do is only talk even as we're doing now, about the subway extension, and don't talk about the [Eglinton East] LRT and SmartTrack. It's a package deal. It's a Scarborough network transit plan. The first time, by the way, there's ever been one, all approved, by the way, and some of it, large parts of it, funded. So even the LRT, the Eglinton East LRT, is on the list across which the federal money will be divided. Patrick Brown's platform, interestingly enough, if he were to become premier, he is going to take the financial burden off Toronto's books, pay for it himself, and thus give us the money to pay for the LRT. So think of the situation we could be in on June 8, if he has won the election. And don't think I am not going to put that proposition to Premier Wynne and say look this is what your opponent said … I think she'll have to take a careful look at that.
Will you govern differently if you are given another four years? Not having the prospect of an election, would it diminish your power or increase your freedom?
When I came in I had the advice of Norm Kelly, which was very wise. He said to me, figure out early on how to manage the second floor, meaning really the chamber. You've got to go out and work those partnerships and get those votes to get stuff done. And I now know that, of course, because I have been here for three years and have three years of experience at it. And so I think I can hit the ground running in the second term, knowing that I have to forge those coalitions and knowing that the stuff we have to move forward is the same stuff: It's transit, it's housing, it's public realm projects that sort of make sure the city stays livable, it's poverty reduction, it's fiscal responsibility and modernization of the city's operations. I don't think I would do much different. You are who you are.
This interview has been edited and condensed.