Mayor to talk funding cuts on Chicago trip
Three-day visit will include meeting with his counterpart
Mayor John Tory lands Tuesday in Chicago to discuss proposed Trump administration cuts to Great Lakes funding, how cities can pay for new transit lines, and more.
Tory’s visit until Thursday will include panelist duties at the Chicago Forum on Global Cities plus a meeting with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
It marks globe-trotting Tory’s first official trip as mayor to Chicago, which has close ties to Toronto. The late Rob Ford led a trade mission there and met with Emanuel, on one of his few foreign outings.
On Tuesday evening, Tory is having a “dinner briefing” with David Jacobson, the Obama-era U.S. ambassador to Canada, who started as a Chicago corporate lawyer and is now vice-chair of BMO Financial Group.
On Wednesday, Tory will meet Emanuel to “discuss what to do about the U.S. federal budget cuts that are threatening the Great Lakes,” according to a news release.
Budget proposals drafted by the Trump administration include slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 25 per cent.
The potential cuts would see the $300-million budget for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative decimated by 97 per cent.
“Waterfront cities, like Chicago, Toronto and Montreal, that rely on the lakes for their thriving tourism, navigation, industry and drinking water are especially concerned about the cuts,” the release states.
Emanuel will also show Tory and his four-member entourage Millennium Park, the successful 10-hectare redevelopment of Chicago’s waterfront that could be a model for the proposed 21-acre park over Toronto’s downtown rail corridor.
On Wednesday, Tory will speak at a Global Cities roundtable about “fi- nancing transit in Toronto.”
Tory’s biography for the event states: “He has responded to Toronto’s transit crisis by getting on with the Scarborough subway and beginning work on the SmartTrack line: a surface subway that would provide all day, two-way service across the city and help relieve the congested Yonge subway.”
Both those transit projects, however, have been scaled back and neither have yet passed planning stages.
Tory will take part in another panel titled “Open Cities, Closed Borders: A Response to Globalization” about “the role of cities as national governments become parochial.”
Tory will visit Millennium Park, the redevelopment of Chicago’s waterfront that could be a model for a proposed park over Toronto’s downtown rail corridor
Tory will also on Wednesday visit the Remix Project, the most successful initiative from a Toronto-Chicago “partner cities” agreement. It aims to “level the playing field for young people from disadvantaged, marginalized and underserved communities in the areas of art, music and graphic design.”
The mayor will cap the trip Thursday with a visit to the “innovation centre” of radio-telecommunications giant Motorola.
Accompanying Tory will be his chief of staff, Chris Eby; Amara Nwogu, a Tory aide and policy adviser on entertainment industries; Toronto Region Board of Trade chief executive Jan De Silva; and Mark Cohon, chair of Toronto Global, a new agency tasked with attracting global investment to Toronto and the GTA. The city is not paying costs for De Silva and Cohon.
Since taking office, Tory has led delegations to India and Sri Lanka; Austin, Texas; London; Paris; Los Angeles (twice) and San Francisco; China and Japan; and Israel and the West Bank.