George Smitherman, mayoral candidate for the city of Toronto during interview with the Globe editorial board and other writers at the Globe's offices on Sept 29 2010.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman visited The Globe and Mail editorial board on Wednesday. The following are excerpts from that conversation:
On his priorities and reasons for running:
My motivation for running in the first place is that the city that I love very much and that's given me a lot of privilege in my view too often projects itself, especially during its annual budget season, as one form or other of broke and bankrupt and kind of sends the message too often that it's not powerful enough to control its own destiny
And fundamentally, I'm a bit of a contrarian, and don't really agree with that. So I'm running to challenge what has become I think the conventional wisdom at City Hall ... I have the further motivation that came from the garbage strike, which I think really kind of underscored the impotence of the leadership of that place, that they are I think prone sometimes to erratic decision-making, that they haven't cast enough of a view toward the destination point - where it is that they are trying to take the city - and decided I had something to offer ...
Three things that I really want to accomplish. First is restore a sense of fiscal credibility to the city. What do I mean by that? I want to have an attitude adjustment, and a message track adjustment at City Hall, so that we don't spend the first 3, 4, 5 months of every year destroying our own brand and making our city seem less powerful than it is. I want Toronto to be as powerful as it is large. That's task number one.
Task number two, the son of a trucker, wants to bring all the urgency that I can to make it possible to get it around in this city. Some of it is longer-term stuff around transit plans. Quite a bit of it is about the attitudes that we bring to the way we complete road construction ... [currently there's]no sense of urgency to get necessary road and water rehabilitation completed in a timely enough way ...
The third thing, and our first two points contribute to this, is I want to create a City of Toronto that is able to create jobs ... I mean the City of Toronto as a leader in creating an environment in which entrepreneurs can do what they do best. And right now I think the city holds them back. Property taxes are part of that challenge, I think attitude that people experience when they go for services at City Hall is part of that, and I think the City's economic development focus is very unfocused. There are some sectors of growth and opportunity in our City ... Look at financial services, broadly speaking; arts, culture and tourism; clean tech and the green economy; medical-related sciences and research - there are some natural strengths, plus the strengths of our people, in the most diverse array and best educated people in the world. I think Toronto's brand as a kind of a global head office is something that we haven't done enough. We haven't transferred our motto, "Diversity our Strength," into a pocketbook.
What do you think of Rocco Rossi's idea [for a tunnel from the Allen Road to the Gardiner Expressway]
I'm not a proponent for a tunnel ... Take a look at every tunnel that you have and take a look at how you ventilate these bad boys. So it's a ravine valley-you've already put a subway corridor underground adjacent to the ravine valley, presumably eliminating the best proposed route.
To me, that was an attention grab that someone running in the single-digits can offer ... I don't think you would've afforded me very much credibility even for proposing it. Additional road space is going to be a very, very limited opportunity in a city like Toronto ...
The elimination of road capacity [as with bike lanes in the inner core]seems to be at odds with what you are talking about:
Take a look at the full extent of my transportation plan. What I talk about with respect to bikes is: take the lanes that we've already set aside and make them better. Sherbourne Street, for example, is like a corridor road. If you can ride a bike down Sherbourne Street, you're a very good cyclist. Because there's parts of it where it's like, "hang on Nate, because we're headed for the rhubarb."
If you want bike lanes to be well used, we want to make sure they're of a high quality. I'd really like to look at the model that they have in Montreal, where applicable, for curbed separation. It's got its challenges because it can implicate parking spots and stuff like that and those are important for businesses.
But overall, my approach is: take the lanes we've already set aside and make them better. Look for all opportunities to maximize ravine valleys, linear parks and hydro corridors for ... bicycle superhighways. So maintain the city's capital budget for cycling, which is quite high, and focus instead, rather than on advancing more lanes on arterials right now, on making those that we have of a higher quality.
And have a conversation that everyone can seem themselves in. It's challenging, because you can't make more road space. We have an obligation to make sure that everyone can see themselves in that discussion.
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On dealing with other municipalities:
I worked for Barbara Hall who replaced Mayor [June]Rowlands back in the day before amalgamation. [Mississauga Mayor]Hazel McCallion by then was bringing all the GTA mayors together and Mayor Rowlands would never go.
The parochialism of the old City of Toronto in its day is mimicked by the parochialism of City of Toronto in this day. I see Toronto's role as the big kahuna at the centre of a dynamic, urban region, working well and playing nice with our adjacent neighbours ...
There was recently a trade effort that I think maybe involved York Region and Mississauga. They tried like hell to get Toronto participation in it. Toronto was like, "Oh, no, no, you guys go and do your thing. We're going to do our own thing."
I think Toronto's got to get its act together, which Invest Toronto is a tentative step in the right direction. But overall, Toronto needs to emerge as the dynamic force at the heart of a dynamic, urban region. I don't think we've stepped up and used our full power that way. I think Toronto is insular and parochial and I think it works against our long-term interests.
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People have embraced Rob Ford. Why?
Some people have embraced him because they're frustrated. It's not hard to get people aligned around the idea that government is bad and ripping you off. [Ford has]driven home a simple message using repetition of anecdotes and that obviously has its appeal.
In response, I haven't reduced myself, and perhaps some people would argue that I should have, to a message that pretends that the problems that Toronto faces are quite so simple as all that. I could point to all of the limitations - if you go to any of the debates, if he's asked a question, he doesn't answer the question. He just goes back to "cue talking point one." He's got about three of them. They're on a looped tape and he's disciplined about going back to them.
People ask me a question, I make the mistake of actually trying to offer them some content towards the answer. So he deserves credit for the discipline that he's offered and the simplicity of his message. I'm of the opinion that that's wearing thin.