Tory to press province for more power
Mayor says ‘weak’ system leaves him at mercy of council on key issues like the budget
Mayor John Tory says he needs more power at city hall to run Toronto effectively — an opinion he says crystallized during a lengthy city council debate over measures to combat gun violence.
“When (Premier) Doug Ford speculates on a ‘strong mayor’ system, I want to take him up on that,” Tory told the Star Tuesday during an interview in his city hall office.
“I think people right now, they think that I have the authority to do a whole lot of things, and in fact I have authority to do very little.”
Toronto, like other Ontario municipalities, has a “weak mayor” system where the mayor has some levers of power — such as appointment of committee chairs — but wields only one vote. He or she must get the support of a majority of councillors to push through initiatives, including the budget.
So-called “strong mayors” in many U.S. cities wield executive powers including shaping budgets before council has a say, appointing and dismissing heads of departments such as transportation, and the ability to veto city council decisions they don’t like.
In the 2016 book Ford Nation: Two Brothers, One Vision — about his time on city council when his brother Rob was mayor — Ford wrote that if elected provincially, he would give mayors across Ontario “stronger powers. One person in charge, with veto power, similar to the strong mayoral systems in New York and Chicago and L.A.”
Ford repeated that idea “in passing” to Tory during a private meeting this month, said Tory, who is currently running for re-election to a second term that he says would be his last.
Tory revealed to the Star his controversial proposal to change current mayoral powers, wielded by three mayors before him since Toronto amalgamation in 1998, as his colleagues spent a full day debating gun violence measures.
Tory cited his need to convince city council to spend about $4 million to double the number of surveillance cameras and invest in gunshot detection technology — council approved the measures hours later — as something a more muscular mandate could allow him to do unilaterally.
“When the police chief, our most senior relied-upon expert, says, ‘I need this,’ I maybe should have been in a position where I can say, ‘You know what, you can have that. That’s a decision I can make,’” Tory said, alluding to an increase in gun violence including Sunday’s fatal Danforth Ave. shooting rampage.
Tory said he will ask Ford to start the process of amending the City of Toronto Act, which affirms the supremacy of city council, but said autumn is the earliest he would expect any provincial action.
Asked exactly what powers he wants, Tory said he doesn’t want to be “prescriptive” but offered examples. He wants to be able to approve spending below a threshold to be determined, ensuring full council approval is still required for big decisions such as the Scar- borough subway, he said. He wouldn’t expect a veto over decisions council is authorized to make.
Tory also wants the mayor to shape a proposed city budget before council has its say. Currently, the budget committee starts debating spending priorities over months, with a proposal that goes to Tory’s executive committee and finally to city council, with multiple chances for public input.
He also wants a bigger say in hiring senior public servants, and said he would welcome a provincial decision to allow the mayor to hire the city manager — the public service head who now reports to council and whose appointment is approved by it.
Strong-mayor systems have been proposed for Toronto before, including by a 2008 mayor’s fiscal review panel. More recently, critics of the idea have pointed to Rob Ford — who as mayor smoked crack cocaine with gang members who sold drugs and guns, and who made world headlines with outrageous behaviour — as an argument for keeping a weak mayor system.
Tory said he would advocate keeping the “safety valve” of council being able to strip Toronto’s mayor of powers in “extraordinary circumstances.”
The mayor will also ask Premier Ford to give Toronto more powers to act without provincial approval. He cited frustration over waiting for provincial approval for “traffic wardens” — special constables guiding traffic flow at intersections — and also photo radar in school zones to boost pedestrian safety.
Tory’s third proposal is to have city council review its procedural bylaw that dictates how committee and council meetings work. Rules that allow councillors to question each other over motions, sometimes repetitively, need to be overhauled to make decision-making more effective, he said.
The mayor rejected a suggestion that he’s taking advantage of the Danforth tragedy to amass more power, saying he raised the strong-mayor option with former premier Kathleen Wynne and citing urgent issues including homeless shelter services, Vision Zero road safety measures, and now gun violence prevention.
“I’m not saying that (the current system) hasn’t worked for the last four years or that it didn’t work in the previous 25 years,” Tory said.
“I’m saying we could make the place work better.
“I think that’s obviously what was in Premier Ford’s head when he talked about this, which is that you could get more done more efficiently,” Tory said.
Gord Perks, a left-leaning councillor who often puts conservative Tory on the spot at council meetings, called the mayor’s power push a terrible idea, saying he is frustrated with Tory’s current level of power and how he wields it with a mostly compliant majority of council allies.
“The thrill of being on Toronto council is that we don’t solidify into the mayor’s party and not-the-mayor’s party,” Perks said.
“At times, Toronto city council can act if they feel the mayor is not acting in the public interest. If John Tory’s proposals had been in place when Rob Ford was mayor, we could have had a much bigger disaster than we did.”