Mayor John Tory was back at his desk bright and early Tuesday morning after handily winning a third term as mayor the night before.
Tory easily won re-election to keep running Canada’s biggest city, but as he pointed out in an early-morning interview with CP24, “the problems didn’t get any smaller overnight.”
Those problems include traffic congestion, affordability, housing and the need for more green space.
In his acceptance speech Monday night, Tory said he wants Torontonians to look back in four years and know that they made the right choice.
Here’s a look at a few of the big problems he said he wants to tackle in that time.
NAVIGATE THE DIFFICULT FINANCIAL SITUATION FOR THE CITY IN THE MIDST OF AN AFFORDABILITY CRISIS
Balancing revenues and expenses is never an easy task for a municipal government, but perhaps more so now than at any previous point in Tory's tenure. Toronto is still climbing out of a massive fiscal hole created by the pandemic.
“The city itself is looking at more than a $1 billion budget crunch for next year,” Tory said candidly in his acceptance speech.
He said he “will not be imposing big tax increases on people already in the midst of an affordability crisis. It's just not the right thing to do.”
Figuring out how to fill that fiscal hole without taxing people who are already gawking at the cash registers when they go to the grocery store or possibly slashing city services will be a major challenge. But it’s one Tory says he hopes to accomplish by working together with all of council and other levels of government.
In an interview with CP24 early Tuesday, he said the city’s residents remain optimistic, but need some relief.
“One thing I did not pick up on at the doors is the kind of gloom and doom you read about,” Tory said. “People are hopeful (but) people are tired from the pandemic and they're feeling put upon by the affordability crisis, which I'm not going to make worse through big tax increases.”
BUILDING MORE TRANSIT
Transit is never far from top of mind for Toronto residents who froth at the mention of congestion.
Tory acknowledged as much Monday night and promised to keep building.
“We're going to get the $28 billion transit plan built; the Scarborough subway, the Ontario Line the Eglinton Crosstown West, the Yonge Street North extension,” Tory said Monday night. “And I am determined to make sure that the Eglinton East Scarborough LRT and the waterfront transit lines will be moving forward as well during this term.”
Going into the next term of council, Toronto is in fact on track to build quite a bit of new transit. Work on the new Ontario Line is set to get underway soon and there are planned subway extensions in Scarborough and North York. While the opening of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT has again been delayed, its eventual completion is an inevitability.
However its delay should perhaps serve as a warning for all the future projects that plans on paper don't necessarily pan out as quickly or smoothly as anticipated. While Metrolinx is responsible for much of the construction, Tory will need to do everything he can to make sure that construction of the future project stays on track and doesn’t completely upend neighbourhoods for years.
MORE HOUSING, INCLUDING AFFORDABLE AND SUPPORTIVE HOUSING
Affordable is not a word people often use to describe Toronto and the situation has only gotten worse with runaway inflation and rising costs. Tory is vowing that he will do whatever he can to move forward more affordable and supportive housing in his next term.
“I will push forward starting as soon as this week with measures that are going to get more housing built faster,” Tory told CP24 Tuesday morning. “But I will do it I hope by way of consensus and the fact that there’s a recognition — because all the people on the council knocked on the same doors I did and heard the same thing — which is that people want us to be careful, but they want us to move forward.
“They want to see us make some changes so that we can get more housing, including more affordable housing built faster.”
SAFER ROADS
“Our roads will be safer for everyone,” Tory told supporters on election night when laying out his vision for where the city will be in four years.
That has long been a dream for many civic activists in the city who say that speed limits should be lowered in many areas and that roads should be designed in a way that does not invite drivers to use them as highways.
While Tory has signed on to the city’s Vision Zero initiative to make roads safer, there is much work that remains to be done. Tough choices will also need to be made in places where road safety means cars are not prioritized.
NEW PARKS AND OPEN SPACES
One of the things the mayor mentioned he would like to see over the next four years is new parks and open spaces.
Tory pushed hard in his last term to try and create a massive new park (Raildeck Park) in the heart of downtown over existing railway lines, but a court eventually sided with developers and railways, scuttling the city’s plans.
The city still badly needs new green spaces as it continues to grow and the creation of a significant new Park could be a sort of legacy project for the mayor in what may well be his final term.
