THE VETERAN

Gord Perks Ward 4 Parkdale-High Park First elected 2006

Gord Perks is planning and housing chair, tasked by the mayor with helping her make homes affordable again after costs skyrocketed to the point where even prosperous Torontonians are seeing their children priced out of the city they love.

The hard-hitting, budget-parsing, research-citing environmentalist can breeze into the mayor’s secondfloor office and be greeted with smiles for the first time since 2010 when his progressive friend David Miller was replaced by polarizing right-wing populist Rob Ford.

While it appears nobody’s role has reversed more since Chow succeeded Tory last year, Perks doesn’t see it that way. He notes that people who marvel at the big fights at city council forget that the vast majority of items are never held for debate, but instead quietly approved in one big consensus vote.

“You don’t manage to get 95 per cent of the work done by consensus by accident,” without many premeeting consultations between councillors of all political stripes and the mayor or mayor’s staff, said Perks, long considered the de facto leader of council’s informal leftleaning caucus.

“Most of the work is the same — the big difference is I’m asked to take a leadership role on delivering certain kinds of things,” said Perks, now a key member of Chow’s team.

That doesn’t mean they always agree. Chow surprised some by vot- ing with right-leaning Coun. James Pasternak, and against Perks and other progressives, on whether to ask Toronto police to “develop a policy framework for the management and monitoring of rallies and protests,” amid tensions flowing from the Mideast conflict.

Perks doesn’t see that as a problem, and wouldn’t expect to be in trouble for voting against Chow, saying “it’s much more fluid and inclusive now. You never get the idea that somebody is frozen out.”

Perks said he gets along well with right-leaning Coun. Brad Bradford, his planning and housing vicechair, although they fundamentally disagree on the “bigger public policy stuff.”

Perks credits Chow with fostering a team spirit that means “at the moment we don’t have a group of councillors challenging, in any coherent way, the mayor on big picture stuff,” Perks said.

What to watch After more than a decade fighting right-of-centre mayors, council’s aging left-wing firebrand is back on the inside. Can he pivot from effective critic to successful leader on the all-important housing file?