John Tory

Wednesday October 26, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 26, 2022

New Mayor, Strong Mayor?

Some said the race to become Hamilton’s next mayor was hers to lose from the outset.

October 1, 2022

And indeed Andrea Horwath took charge of her political destiny, winning a close race to become the first woman to wear the chain of office in the city.

Horwath pulled out the victory over main rival Keanin Loomis, who traded the lead as votes trickled in throughout the evening. Bob Bratina finished a distant third.

“Hamiltonians deserve to have a city that they know they can trust what’s happening at city hall,” she told a jubilant crowd of supporters downtown at The Spice Factory.

She thanked Loomis, Bratina and other candidates. “We do not agree on everything, but we all love this city.”

Horwath finished with 59,216 or 42 per cent of the vote, while Loomis was runner-up with 57,553 or 41 per cent. Bratina garnered 17,436 and 12 per cent.

The former Ontario NDP leader and Hamilton Centre MPP expressed gratitude to voters. “We all believe in the same thing: We believe in Hamilton.” (The Hamilton Spectator) 

August 17, 2022

Meanwhile, Ontario’s big city mayors elected to a new term in office may soon have enhanced powers at their disposal to tackle tough issues like housing.

But experts say the use of so-called “strong mayor” powers may not be clear-cut, and their use may be limited by budgetary constraints and other factors.

Housing was a major election theme in municipal campaigns across the province, particularly related to affordability.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government recently passed a law giving mayors of Toronto and Ottawa veto power over bylaws that conflict with provincial priorities like housing, and Premier Doug Ford says the powers will be extended to other cities in a year.

Monday night’s municipal election results mean Ford could be extending those powers to former foes in provincial politics, with former leaders of the NDP and Liberals elected as the mayors of Hamilton and Vaughan, respectively.

McMaster University political scientist Peter Graefe says it will be interesting to see how different municipalities use the strong mayor powers depending on local pressures on councils and from voters. (CTV News) 

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro …

 

Wednesday August 17, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 17, 2022

Is a strong mayor system coming to a community near you?

July 27, 2022

It could be. When Premier Doug Ford announced recently that his government would implement strong mayors in Toronto and Ottawa, it sounded like those two cities would serve as pilot projects for the rest of the province, which makes sense.

But already Ford is promising to move to strong mayors in other Ontario cities. During a speech to the Association of Municipalities Ontario annual conference in Ottawa, Ford said: “Building more homes is at the top of the list … In the coming months, we’ll have more information on how these tools will be expanded to other municipalities so more municipal leaders like yourselves can help build Ontario.”

Saturday December 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday December 18, 2021

Toronto city council votes to help fight Quebec’s Bill 21 in court after Brampton calls for support

September 17, 2019

Toronto city council unanimously voted in support of helping to fund a legal fight against Quebec’s law restricting religious symbols Thursday, after Brampton called on other Canadian cities to join in the initiative.

John Tory, the mayor of Canada’s largest city, said in a tweet he would put the request to council Thursday, repeating that both he and city council have repeatedly voiced opposition to Quebec’s secularism law, known as Bill 21.

On Thursday, city council unanimously voted in favour of the motion to reaffirm the city’s opposition to the bill. City council will also contribute $100,000 to support the joint legal challenge to the bill being brought by the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the World Sikh Organization and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

“Today, city council made it very clear that Toronto stands with municipalities from across Canada in opposition to Bill 21 and in support of the legal challenge against this bill,” Tory said in a news release Thursday. 

October 3, 2019

“We cannot simply stand by as Torontonians and Canadians and see a law like this diminish the protection and respect accorded religious and other basic freedoms by our Canadian Charter of Rights of Freedoms.”

He also  encouraged other cities to join the fight to “uphold the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Tory was adding his voice to an initiative from Brampton city council, which also voted Wednesday to contribute $100,000 to challenging the Quebec law and encouraged other cities to donate.

Adopted in June 2019, Bill 21 prohibits the wearing of religious symbols such as hijabs, kippas and turbans by teachers and other government employees deemed to be in positions of authority. Debate over the law was revived this month with news that a teacher in Chelsea, Que., had been reassigned because of her hijab.

Patrick Brown Retrospective

Brampton calls itself one of the most diverse communities in Canada and says it wants to show its support for what diversity brings to local communities and Canada as a whole.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown calls Bill 21 discriminatory and says freedom of religion is a fundamental principle that must be upheld.

Since Brown called on other cities to get involved, several communities across the country have indicated their support for his initiative and will put requests for funding to their respective councils.

By late Wednesday afternoon, the motion had already won the support of Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (CBC) 

 

The 2018 Ontario Election

The Writ Drops

The coming provincial election promises to be an interesting one. At Queen’s Park, Premier Kathleen Wynne has controlled the levers of an unpopular government since 2013, that, combined with 10 years of Dalton McGuinty’s tenure, adds up to 15 years of rule by Ontario Liberals. The projected net debt is at an all time high of $325 billion (compared with $138 billion when Liberals assumed power in 2003). The debt to GDP ratio is approaching 40%. Hydro costs have ballooned under the Liberals, and despite efforts to tackle emergency ward wait times, hospitals continue to be overcrowded. Falling grades are indicating a decline in Ontario’s education, and transit projects aren’t keeping pace with congested 400 series highways. The combined corruption storms resulting from the McGuinty years regarding gas plant emails, and the Sudbury by-election bribery case haven’t helped matters for the current Liberal leader.

The unpopularity problem

The election results of 2014 clearly showed that voters were intent on forgiving the Liberals for their many misdeeds and confident its new leader Kathleen Wynne would build the trust and good government that had been lost in the dying years of McGuinty’s reign. Ontario voters even rewarded the new leader with a majority victory in 2014, after slapping the previous one down with a slim minority. This is often forgotten in the current #metoo climate when supporters of Kathleen Wynne deal the misogyny and homophobe cards to explain her dreary popularity numbers. 

Polls consistently show that voters are done with Kathleen Wynne (ranked as the least popular Premier in Canada), and indeed the Liberal government in Ontario. To answer this, the Liberal Party platform is chock-a-block full of big spending progressive (NDPesque) promises for child care, health care, senior support, and dental and pharmacare. Despite the efforts, the mood among comment boards, call-in shows, and letters to the editor, seem to be very much about “throwing the bums out”. If, at this point the Liberal’s defeat is quite certain, then the question of who wins and by how much remains to be answered.

The numbers problem

Andrea Horwath enters her 3rd provincial election leading the NDP with poll numbers matching the governing Liberals. After attempting to make her party more palatable to centrist and Liberal Party voters in 2014, while outraging the most leftie members in the process, she has steered the party back to its traditional NDP position with campaign promises embracing free dental care, free tuition, and undoing Kathleen Wynne’s privatization of Hydro.

The populism problem

As big spending platforms rule the day on the left with the Liberals and NDP, the Doug Ford PCs are the very opposite. Even with no platform to run on the Tories are banking on poll numbers that are 15% plus above the numbers of either competitor. They are assumed to be the winning player in the game to take power back, to trumpet fiscal prudence, reining in spending, cutting away public services, and doling out incentives to business’ and wealthy folk.

Hastily assuming the leadership of the PCs beset by scandal and malaise under Patrick Brown, Doug Ford seems to have used populist energy to recharge a party lacking confidence in direction. With new leadership comes learning, and based on the amount of sloganeering dished out by Doug Ford, and an increasingly obvious dearth in policy expertise, or even knowledge (i.e.: how a bill becomes law), it’s becoming evident by the day that the presumptive Premier requires a steep learning curve to adequately prepare himself for the top job. It’s merely a matter of time before we find out if Doug Ford just managed to be the right person at the right time, no matter how uninformed he proves himself to be.

At this point there’s no betting on who will be in charge at the pink palace after June 7, 2018. The PCs may now be riding high in the polls, but its leader is just one gaffe away from throwing the party’s support away in the same way John Tory did with faith based schools, or Tim Hudak did with his one million jobs gimmick. What is predictable about the coming 4 weeks are polls that will turn out to be way off reality. Nothing can really forecast how strategic voting will factor on election day, not to mention, the no shows: declining participation of the electorate, which has been dropping with each ballot, and was below 50% in 2014.  There’s no predicting the outcome of this election. It really is anyone’s game. 

1995 – 2014 Election retrospective

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2014 Ontario Election (Click Here)
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Wednesday February 1, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 1, 2017

John Tory ‘encouraged’ by Kathleen Wynne’s words on housing

Toronto Mayor John Tory was sounding somewhat mollified on Monday after meeting with Premier Kathleen Wynne, just days after announcing she’s rejecting the city’s request to put tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway.

Speaking to reporters after the hour-long meeting at Queen’s Park, Wynne hinted at a willingness to boost provincial funding for Toronto’s affordable housing needs.

2007

Tory said he’d pressed the housing issue during the meeting.

“I stressed again, now more than ever, that the province must immediately come to the table to address our city’s social housing crisis,” Tory told a news conference at City Hall on Monday. “I was certainly very firm, again, that we need that help, that some of the most vulnerable people in our city need that help.”

Based on discussions in Ottawa last week, Tory said he is confident the federal government will put “substantial funding” for housing in its upcoming budget. He wants the province to match that money.

In a separate news conference at Queen’s Park, Wynne referred to her “recognition for the need for increased housing support,” but stopped short of promising money.

“We need a three-way partnership on affordable housing — the municipality, the province and the federal government working together as we move into this budget cycle,” she said.

Tory said he was encouraged by Wynne’s message.

“I found that a significant step forward because I’m not sure that I’ve heard those words said before,” Tory said.

Wynne meets Tory on an almost-monthly basis. Monday’s meeting had been scheduled well in advance of last week’s announcement about tolls.

The pair usually hold a photo opportunity inside Wynne’s office as their meeting wraps up, then a joint news conference. This time, the cameras were not allowed inside, the pair shook hands quickly outside Wynne’s door, then Tory departed for City Hall. It created the appearance of a less-chummy-than-normal get-together. (Source: CBC)