Doing better than the worst

Holding office following the worst leader in Toronto’s history carries a distinct advantage: it’s easy to do better. That’s the enviable position of Mayor John Tory after winning a hard-fought municipal election one year ago.

It should be obvious, to even the most diehard supporter of Rob Ford, that Canada’s largest city is stronger with a chief magistrate who doesn’t indulge in crack cocaine and self-described “drunken stupors.” In this regard, Tory’s inaugural year has been an indisputable success.

On the other hand, that’s hardly an achievement. To draw a sports analogy: if being mayor after the Ford era were a high jump, the bar would rest on a pair of matchboxes.

Tory easily outdoes his predecessor’s wretched performance. But he’ll need to do better than just that, especially by the end of his four-year term. And his record so far is decidedly mixed.

Consider Tory’s efforts to get people moving. On his watch, service was restored on scores of bus and streetcar routes recklessly slashed by the Ford administration. That has improved the daily commute of thousands of people. And the Toronto Transit Commission now provides free rides to children 12 and younger. But these gains came at a cost. Transit fares were hiked 10 cents, violating — within months — a pledge Tory had repeatedly made on the campaign trail.

On the “plus” side, the mayor took a clear stand on the controversial issue of tearing down a section of the Gardiner Expressway and steered a fractious city council to a reasonable compromise. A “hybrid” solution was approved, involving a redesign of the elevated expressway rather than its removal. While not the cheapest option, its cost is manageable, it frees land for development and has minimal impact on traffic flow.

Tory also launched two initiatives to help the disadvantaged. The first was appointing a sixmember task force, led by Sen. Art Eggleton, to improve Toronto’s supply of affordable housing. At the top of its “to do” list is addressing the abysmal state of the city’s massive public housing corporation. Burdened by a monstrous repair backlog and a history of bad management, this agency is in desperate need of reform.

The panel’s final report isn’t due until the end of the year but solid progress has already been made, with the task force helping to engineer a refinancing of mortgages held by the corporation, saving the system hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Tory administration has also crafted a 20-year poverty reduction strategy that, as a start, would pump as much as $100 million into efforts aimed at helping the poorest in 2016. This step, combined with fixing the chronic mess at Toronto Community Housing, could make life better for people in dire need of help. By the end of his term, these could well be Tory’s finest accomplishments.

Now the disappointments. No failure is greater than Tory’s sorry work on the Toronto Police Services Board. After former chief Bill Blair refused to fix the discredited practice of police “carding,” the mayor backed a craven half-measure of reform, hailing it as a “landmark” in bias-free policing. When that triggered outrage, Tory urged an outright ban on carding, later modifying his position in favour of waiting to see what the province would do.

And then there’s the Toronto police budget, now bloating to more than $1 billion. Tory blamed high police salaries when presented with this figure in the fall. But they’re the same pay levels he approved in the spring when the police board reached a four-year contract with the police union — a deal he described at the time as sending a “message of restraint.”

In truth, budgeting isn’t this mayor’s strong suit. Tory’s inaugural spending plan included an $86-million hole that he blithely expected Queen’s Park to fill. When the province refused to pay, he resorted to creative accounting and borrowed to close the gap.

Finally, two key initiatives remain in limbo. Tory’s SmartTrack transit plan — promising a 53-kilometre, 22-station “surface subway” in just seven years — almost certainly won’t open on time. And it may not be built at all. Nagging questions on fundamental issues such as ridership put the project’s viability in doubt.

And Tory’s oft-repeated pledge to privatize garbage collection east of Yonge St. may have to be tossed out in the wake of a city staff report showing no clear benefit from replacing public employees with a private operator.

Taken as a whole it has been an inaugural year of limited accomplishment — one best judged later, in light of long-term results. This much is certain: when voters next go to the polls Tory won’t be in a position to claim success simply because the mayor’s office has stopped being the punchline to a bad joke. Torontonians expect and deserve measurable progress toward building a brilliant city.

Being better than the worst isn’t good enough.

John Tory has outperformed his predecessor, Rob Ford