Tory balks at 1-on-1 debate

Mayor says he’ll only attend events featuring more than two candidates,

After weeks of legal and political wrangling over the downsizing of Toronto’s city council, candidates for the top job will swing into action next week in the municipal election’s first mayoral debates.

The first debate will be held Monday. It is being organized by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts and will feature Mayor John Tory, Saron Gebresellassi, Jennifer Kees- maat, Gautam Nath and Sarah Climenhaga. The event at TIFF Bell Lightbox between 10 and 11 a.m. is sold out, according to a spokesperson. CP24 will be live-streaming the debate. A debate has also been scheduled by Global News for Tuesday that will include Tory, Gebresellassi, Climenhaga and Keesmaat.

But whether the two top contenders — Tory and Keesmaat — will ever debate each other one-on-one remains to be seen.

Cameron Watts, co-chair of Faith in the City, a group of faith leaders promoting social justice in Toronto, tried to get Tory and Keesmaat together for a discussion on their positions on poverty reduction. Watts said the Tory campaign wasn’t prepared to commit unless there were other candidates there besides Keesmaat.

Keesmaat’s team did initially agree, but preferred that it be a two-person debate only, according to Watts.

“I just gave up,” Watts de- clared. A spokesperson for the Keesmaat campaign said she wasn’t familiar with the details of the debate request from Faith in the City.

Watts said Faith in the City had decided to invite only those candidates polling 10 per cent or more. In response to questions from reporters, Tory said he is sticking to debates with more than two candidates out of respect for the many people who have signed up to run against him. “We indicated ear- ly in the campaign, weeks and weeks ago, the criteria that we applied in the interest of making sure that the debates were inclusive of some of the other candidates that have put up their time and their money and their effort to participate in the democratic process,” Tory said.

“I think the people will have lots of opportunity to see us debating ... I don’t mind debating ... we set out criteria that are perfectly fair and perfectly reasonable.”