How to do business with a bully
Afew days before Monday’s vote, Mayor John Tory’s media team circulated an official letter from Ontario Environment Minister Rod Phillips, in which he confirmed that the province had signed off on a key approval required for the construction of the epically delayed downtown relief line.
Given the source and the timing, it’s safe to assume the document didn’t just happen to land on Phillips’ desk that day. Indeed, 20 years ago, Tory and Phillips worked together in the administration of former Toronto mayor Mel Lastman. So one way of reading the tea leaves of this regulatory move is that the mayor is signalling the existence of a functioning back-channel link into Doug Ford’s cabinet.
Whether or not this micro development indicates anything in particular about the robustness of Tory’s provincial connections, one take-away is clear: that Tory’s dealings with Queen’s Park, and Ontario’s populist Premier Doug Ford, will not only make or break his mayoralty, but also determine the effectiveness of municipal government for years to come.
The stakes are enormous. If Tory hopes to prevail, he’d be wise to study how Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and her officials succeeded in salvaging a truly trying trade negotiation with the world’s most vexatious bully.
Under Toronto’s governance system, the mayor casts only a single vote, but enjoys some additional formal authority to manage council. The mayor has a larger megaphone than any of his or her council colleagues. And the mayor has sole responsibility for intergovernmental relations.
In Ford’s Ontario, intergovernmental relations will likely look less like the art of the deal than mixed martial arts.
Tory continually stressed that his lowkey, relationship-focused approach to the other orders of government has delivered the goods. This is true as far as it goes, but his counter-parties have been Liberal governments with large Toronto constituencies and a predilection for spending.
It was never hard for Tory to get to yes with Justin Trudeau or Kathleen Wynne. As he vividly demonstrated during the Bill 5 fight, Ford revels in the opportunity to beat up on Toronto council.
So it would seem a change in tactics is in order, but to what?
Here’s where Freeland’s savvy will provide important lessons. With an antagonistic counter-party who may not have sought a win-win resolution, Freeland’s team focused on recruiting strategic allies outside the White House, that is, legislators in states with lots of Canada-U.S. trade, governors, business lobbyists, etc., while the Trudeau government made a point of removing cross-border irritants of lesser importance, e.g., border procedures and defence spending.
Tory, who has no taste for gloves-off political brawls, doesn’t need to be reminded of another pillar of the Liberals’ strategy, which was to not respond to Donald Trump’s outrageous trolling and provocations. But Tory will nevertheless have to find a way to clearly articulate where the city’s red lines lie.
As mayor of the largest municipality in Greater Toronto, Tory certainly has the ability to provide political cover for aspects of Queen’s Park’s agenda, especially those involving regional economic development, government streamlining or land use. But such gestures certainly shouldn’t be offered free of charge. Nor should Tory forget to make use of his other political bargaining chips, such as they are.
Properly cultivated, the members of the Tories’ 416 caucus can become advocates for the city within the Ford government. What’s more, given that those MPPs will all be up for re-election before the next municipal campaign, Tory’s office theoretically can apply a measure of pain to these men and women if their premier inflicts excessive damage to Toronto’s municipal services. The wrinkle is that Tory has to be prepared to deploy his leverage instead of just hoping he can cut deals.
Tory’s office should look to completely reframe the decision-making process. He could call for an independent expert panel to make the final determination on whether the next subway project is the Yonge extension up to Richmond Hill or the downtown relief Line.
As Health Minister Christine Elliott’s announcement Monday, about allowing safe injection sites to continue operating, showed, there are very occasional glimpses that the Tories can make policies driven by evidence instead of politics. Conveniently, Freeland’s handling of the antagonistic horse trading that led to USMCA has offered our mayor a master class in how to deal with bellicose rivals. He’d be wise to invite her over for dinner as soon as he can.