Albertan takes on file for Toronto waterfront
The fate of the biggest infrastructure redevelopment project in Toronto will be overseen in Ottawa by a politician from Alberta.
Is that anything to be concerned about?
Local Liberal MP Adam Vaughan says even asking the question is “parochial” and “cynical.”
“It’s f---ing 2015 already. Stop pretending it’s the 1870s and it’s Tammany Hall and somebody who’s a power-broker is going to make all the decisions. It’s not going to happen that way,” Vaughan said.
Maybe so, but it’s a question that many who have been following Waterfront Toronto’s work spent Friday puzzling out, after it was announced that the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Initiative (Waterfront Toronto) would be overseen directly by Infrastructure and Communities Minister Amarjeet Sohi, who is the Liberal MP for Edmonton Mill Woods. That makes a certain amount of sense — a large infrastructure project overseen by the infrastructure minister — but it is a break with tradition.
Since its inception, the waterfront organization has been overseen federally, in an equal partnership with the provincial and city governments, by the political minister for the GTA, most recently in the persons of Conservative finance ministers Joe Oliver and Jim Flaherty. Both of those men were known to be fiercely protective of Waterfront Toronto’s work — defending it from attempts by the Ford brothers to pick away at it — and were positioned to see that it got the funding it needed.
The question is whether a politician who is not from Toronto, and who is not assembling the federal budget personally, will prove as reliable a champion.
At stake is the redevelopment of more than 800 hectares of waterfront land in a former industrial area adjacent to downtown Toronto.
The biggest item on the immediate agenda is flood protection at the mouth of the Don River. That may not sound particularly exciting, but it is absolutely essential (and expen- sive) work: without it, the Port Lands cannot be redeveloped at all, the proposed development at the former Unilever site (which was a linchpin precondition of Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan) cannot proceed, and plans for East Bayfront transit would be scrapped.
During the campaign, Oliver made a point of committing the Conservatives to the project. The question now is whether its fate is secure under the Liberals. The sense I get is that no one seriously thinks it is in jeopardy.
Vaughan, a former Toronto city councillor who is now the Spadina Fort York MP, has made waterfront development one of the central issues of his political career. He says the shuffling of Waterfront Toronto into the Infrastructure department is a positive thing.
“It’s good news because it ties it into the whole infrastructure play,” rather than being a personal project that lives or dies with the career of one politician, he says.
The other reasons for optimism both Liberals and Waterfront boosters speak of are the commitment of the new government during the campaign to spend big on urban infrastructure nationally, and that 100 per cent of Toronto seats are held by members of the Liberal caucus, which means there will be loud support for the city’s projects in the government.
Officially, Waterfront Toronto greeted the news with bureaucratically neutral optimism.
“We’re excited to work with Minister Sohi. The waterfront project is a great example of how investing in infrastructure creates value for the country …” Waterfront CEO John Campbell said in a statement by email.
“When governments work together on the waterfront, we get more done than any one level of government can achieve on its own. We look forward to discussing waterfront plans with the Minister.”
But this is a change, and change is most often greeted with caution in bureaucracies. Inside the organization, privately, Friday’s news was greeted with conversations about whether concern was warranted, simply because they do not know Sohi and expect to have to convince him and the new government of the project’s merits.
Vaughan has been very categorical on behalf of his party in declaring the island airport expansion dead, so I asked him if he was equally confident that Waterfront Toronto’s funding and projects were safe.
“I am confident that the goals and aspirations of the city will be dealt with in a fair and open way, and we will not be driven by private interests, but by the public good,” he responded.
When I started to say that answer did not specifically respond to a simple yes or no question about the flood protection and other projects, he cut me off.
“That answered that question, because if you look at who’s run the best public process, engaged the most amount of people, and delivered the most amount over the past 10 years in this city, you’d be hard pressed to find an organization as successful as Waterfront Toronto.” Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire