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 Remarks by John Tory, MPP Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario Toronto Board of Trade Chair’s Luncheon

 June 22^nd, 2006

 It’s certainly an honour to address the members of the Board of Trade.  While I could speak about any number of different subjects…today I want to focus specifically on this city -- a great city, my home, a city I will always be proud of.  But also a city which faces significant challenges – many of which remain unaddressed in our current political climate.

I want to talk about Toronto.  Where we are.  Where we are going.  And about what we need to do – for our city to be all that it can and should be.

As you may be aware, last week the McGuinty government brought forward, for third and final reading, Bill 53 – conventionally called the City of Toronto Act.

The Act’s stated intent was to expand the authority of the City of Toronto – as well as its capacity to provide new services.  That intent is something I support – and, indeed, have supported for some time.

However, I voted against the City of Toronto Act… 

I intend to seek a Toronto seat in the next general election.  But I still voted against it.

And if that same act – with it’s same language and flaws – came before me again.  I would shake my head at the missed opportunity of it all – and not hesitate to vote ‘no’ again.

Here’s why.

I have long argued for an updated and clarified relationship between the city and the Province…I argued for it from the municipal stage…and I now argue for it from the provincial stage as well …while there is plenty in the text of the act that I could support, there were fundamental flaws to this act, as presented.

First and foremost, it was done prior to any meaningful progress having been achieved on a real, long-term fix for the City’s financial challenges. Talk of a fiscal imbalance is often confined to the federal-provincial relationship when in fact the problems affecting our cities, including Toronto, are just as severe.

In my view, specific proposals should have been put forward to see these problems resolved over a period of time, and to bring an end to the farcical City of Toronto budgeting process which culminates in the annual pilgrimage to Queen’s Park seeking a cheque.

This is no way to manage a huge financial relationship, it discourages any kind of sound planning and it perpetuates a fiscal imbalance between the cities and the province which is not sustainable. The new City of Toronto Act should not have been introduced or passed without an accompanying blueprint which would address this issue.

Second, the Act was introduced without strict requirements which would speak to much greater accountability in City Government.  I have repeatedly suggested that a full line by line program review and value for money audit should have been required before the Act came into force and the Act should not apply until new governance structures are actually in place and working at City Hall.

Third, I do not believe the City should have been granted new powers to tax until the first two issues I have just discussed were dealt with.  One would hope that if the financial relationship with the Province was to be put on a sustainable footing, governance improved and a value for money audit completed, there would be no need for new taxing powers or at least they could be much more limited.

I suggested that the proclamation of these taxing powers be delayed until some of these steps were taken, and that was not accepted by the McGuinty government. Our Party moved an amendment to strike out the new taxing powers and leave the rest of the Bill as it was and that was voted down by the McGuinty Government.

To me, passing this Bill without addressing Toronto’s real financial issues represented the easy way out, weak leadership of the highest order.  To Mr. McGuinty’s way of thinking, it is always easier to hit up the taxpayers for more money. It’s harder to admit that policies of the past, some even written at the hand our your own Party need to be changed and to acknowledge that City of Toronto taxpayers are paying enough taxes to all three governments.  We just need to get the money to the right place.

Taking the easy way out, focussing on the short term fix is becoming a bit of a habit for the McGuinty Government and I want to address that in the context of some other challenges facing the City.

Simply put, I believe the Government of Ontario has a critical responsibility to work with the City of Toronto, organizations like the Board of Trade and other municipalities and organizations in this region to develop real, detailed plans for the future, not just one off ad hoc measures which speak more to public relations.

I learned the importance of planning, first hand, in business. A business leader’s time has to be devoted to both day to day management and longer range planning because, good results one year, five-years, or twenty-years from now, require us to make the right long-term planning decisions today.

This is not a philosophy or an approach that has been embraced in recent years by very many governments of any political stripe anywhere, and I believe that is why we are falling behind in so many areas.

Let me briefly discuss each of the areas which, in my view, are vitally in need of some long range planning leadership from the Province.  Specifically, this City region requires an economic plan, a transportation plan, a waste management plan and a neighbourhood revitalization plan, all of which look 10 years out, all of which keep us focussed on the longer term health and vitality of this great City.

First, an economic plan. In my view, the McGuinty government has largely been absent on this file since coming to office. As important as the automotive industry is to Ontario and as much as I join many of you in welcoming the good news we have seen, we must be more than a one trick pony and that means a much broader economic strategy especially as it relates to Toronto.

Initiatives such as MARS, which I strongly support originated, not with the Province, but, in fact, with the Toronto City Summit Alliance of which I was one of the founding chairs, and through the energy and determination of people like Dr. John Evans.  They are examples of long-range thinking by the community – not by Mr. McGuinty and the provincial government.

What is being done about the taxation and other pressures which are causing many jobs to leave Toronto and go elsewhere in the GTA or beyond? What plans do we have to promote technology-based industries in Toronto and the GTA and secure the thousands of jobs they represent today let alone seeking new opportunities for tomorrow?

And perhaps most important of all, what are we doing to ensure that we maintain our position as a leading North American centre for financial services?

I believe the answer to almost all of these questions is that very little is being done, and given that much of this planning involves the region as a whole, centered around the City, and often involves multiple levels of government, the leadership must come from the province.  Instead, the McGuinty government has become complacent, believing the economic challenge will somehow address itself.  I disagree.

Second, a transportation plan. One subway, a far away plan for an integrated transit pass and a relatively toothless regional transportation authority do not constitute a long-range transportation plan for the Toronto region.

Given the lead times involved in planning and financing projects and initiatives, we must go beyond announcing a single subway or another one-off cheque for the TTC.

What are we going to do to replace the Scarborough LRT and when? While we are answering that question, shouldn’t we be planning the next three steps to the east, even if they are 20 years away? Will we extend the Bloor Subway to the west? The Yonge Subway to the North? Will we ever see regional train service that even approaches what most other major cities have, so car commuters can have a real alternative?

What about roads in the region? An HOV lane here or there can’t be seen as bad news, but a transportation plan it is not. Again, from Mr. McGuinty we have seen public relations triumph over substance and the weak leadership and inaction on the transportation planning file will cost us dearly in the coming years.

Again I recall in business we mapped these things out years ahead, determined where the money was going to come from and agreed that was the course we would follow . Did we change those plans as events unfolded? Of course. Did we end up sticking to most of what we mapped out? Yes we did.

One final word on this subject. The development and implementation of a proper transportation plan must involve a return to some kind of reliable, certain formula for transit funding in Ontario. You can’t plan if you don’t know what the rules of the game are, and whatever that formula is, whichever governments are involved (hopefully all three), we need a formula that will be announced and remain in place hopefully for a minimum ten year period.

Third, a waste management plan. While I believe that each municipality should be responsible for its own waste plans, I have consistently said that it is the province’s responsibility to ensure that such plans are not only in place but also have some connection to reality and that the province does what it can to encourage co-operation between and among municipalities, especially when it comes to innovation.

In my view, Mr. McGuinty can’t even be given credit for weak leadership on this file because there has been no leadership at all. While City initiatives such as the expansion of the green box program have reduced the waste going to landfill, we are still sending almost 100 trucks of garbage a day to Michigan with no real end in sight.

I said this was a disgrace when I ran for Mayor and I still think it is a disgrace today. And it isn’t about whether we are embarrassed. As events related to the sewage sludge show us, we can’t rely on being able to send this waste to Michigan whether you believe it is a disgrace or not.

We must be ready to initiate made-in-Ontario solutions, including tougher laws with respect to multi unit buildings and their recycling, tougher packaging laws and, as I have consistently advocated, the adoption of technology to produce energy from waste and, in so doing, safely dispose of this waste, as is done in other cities around the world.

Finally, we need a plan for Toronto neighbourhoods. This is an issue I feel very strongly about. During the period of my work with the United Way, Salvation Army and St. Michael’s Hospital in the nineties, through my candidacy for Mayor and right up to the present, the number of marginalized neighbourhoods in Toronto and the number of people struggling to keep up within those neighbourhoods has continued to increase dramatically.

While people love to blame one government or another for this, the bottom line is that the problem has continued to grow no matter who has been in office, and there is no real plan to address it effectively, even over a period of time.

What are we going to do with the declining housing stock now owned by the City of Toronto? I have seen first hand the poor condition of those neighbourhoods in my many visits to learn about the crime issue and in my brief stay in Flemingdon Park.

When you see doors that can’t be closed in neighbourhoods where security is a major issue, when you see the one wading pool in Flemingdon Park, the one place people might get some relief from the heat and you are told it was out of order all last summer, you really have to wonder. And those two examples are, of course, the tiny tip of the very big iceberg.

Are we now going to look beyond the immediate short term, beyond today’s single revitalization project in Regent Park and commit ourselves, on some reasonable timetable and on a sound financial basis to revitalize ALL of the neighbourhoods where the physical state of those communities may not cause crime and despair, but certainly contribute to it?

This would require a bold plan which of necessity must involve both the province and the federal government.  If it is a 20-year plan, so be it, as long as it has dates, times, places and money that governments and other partners are committed to. Once again, we have seen not weak leadership, but rather, no leadership at all from Mr. McGuinty’s government in this crucial area.

My final comment on our neighbourhoods is this. I have been in many of those neighbourhoods many times over the past many years. There are some good things happening when it comes to programs for people. But when you listen to the people, look at the programs, you see what we so often see in this country of big government and many governments.

There are federal programs, federal-provincial programs, provincial programs, municipal programs and programs carried on in partnership with the United Way the Board of Trade and others. You would find it difficult to criticize any of these on their own.

But they aren’t part of a co-ordinated plan, with real targets, real co-operation, sharing of ideas and resources and real adoption of best practices. That means we are less effective in making a real difference, faster.

This situation is urgent. It is the responsibility of all governments, the private sector and every citizen. If we believe, as I think we do, that no citizen should be left behind as a principle of our citizenship, then we must address the challenges of these neighbourhoods with a much greater sense of urgency and with some real leadership from the province.

I don’t think that means we owe anyone a living, but I strongly believe we owe these fellow Torontonians the best opportunities possible.  That means having a plan to address the physical decline, finally getting the governments to present a co-ordinated plan for kids and families and addressing some of the systemic inequities in the tax system and elsewhere which in fact make it harder for people trying to get ahead.

As leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, I am passionately committed to enterprise and to creating a climate in this city and across Ontario which will attract and keep investment and jobs…things which do not happen automatically.

Only that investment and those jobs will create wealth which must be created before it can be shared.

And, make no mistake, as the very same leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, I believe that prosperity by itself, without an accompanying higher purpose would be a disservice to the kind of diverse society of equal opportunity we are committed to building.

I believe in this city, and its growth and vitality.  And it will be a top priority of any government I am privileged to lead.

That will require more focussed, more measurable, more co-ordinated, more real leadership and planning than we have seen from the current government.  I am looking forward to tackling that challenge together with you.