Mayoral Debate

Introduction by Matt Maychak, Host of Metro Morning, CBC

June Rowlands is the Mayor of Toronto. She has been described by supporters as one of the hardest-working politicians around and by critics as invisible. A former research director of the Liberal Party of Ontario, she was elected an alderman in 1976. She has sat on the TTC, as a commissioner that is, and is a former chair of the Metro Police Commission. She was elected Mayor, in fact the first woman mayor of Toronto, in 1991 after promising, among other things, to make business feel welcome in Toronto. When she announced her bid for re-election she listed among her achievements–keeping a lid on tax increases, whittling away the debt and cutting city expenditures.

Gerry Meinzer is a newcomer to civic politics and that has prompted some to say he is trying to pull a Ross Perot. It’s prompted others to call him a political unknown but he is no stranger to the Board of Trade. He was named President of the Toronto Board in 1992. Within 10 years of arriving in this country at age 22 with $20 in his pocket, he had booked his way to the top of the management ladder at IBM. He then built his own company serving the computer needs of the insurance industry. He says he wants to build a fixed link to the island airport and work to introduce commuter jets to that airport. He wants to cut city spending by contracting out some services and cut business taxes by 10 per cent.

Barbara Hall has been described in the press as an ex-radical. She is certainly an ex-NDPer and she is running in this election as an independent. Some talk of her passion for the city. Critics complain that’s not reflected in her public performance which is sometimes labelled bland. She has been a city councillor since 1985 when she took over David Reble’s seat in ward 7, the cradle of Toronto’s urban reform movement, and before that she worked as a youth worker, probation officer and a lawyer. Among the things she has supported on council are the city’s bid for the ’96 Olympics and the Bay-Adelaide Centre. Here’s one of her quotes: Red tape must give way to black ink.

The candidates drew their names out of a little plastic container before we came out here and they will speak in that order. We will hear first from the Mayor, then from Gerry Meinzer and then from Barbara Hall. So I ask the Mayor now to make an opening statement. We’ve asked all the candidates to keep their opening statements to seven minutes or fewer.

June Rowlands

Mr. Moderator, my colleagues in this event this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, I thank The Canadian Club, The Empire Club and the Board of Trade for sponsoring this event today. I hope that this signals a change of attitude on the part of the Board of Trade toward the City of Toronto.

Market value assessment was the great battle of the second year of my term. Under the proposals for MVA citizens owning small businesses in Toronto would have paid approximately $47 million extra in taxes, escalating to $180 million as that plan matured. Obviously, many would have been forced out of this city. I fought MVA tooth and nail and during that MVA fight at Metro Council we were up against the Board of Trade. This letter I have here, signed by your former president Gerry Meinzer and the general manager Gerry Coles, is a clear endorsement for MVA. It advocates a 25 per cent increase in commercial and industrial taxes, as long as that increase occurs over five years.

I think Gerry has had a change of mind over these past two years. But the MVA debate convinced the citizens of this city that Metro Toronto no longer works, and the City Council agreed to place this question on the ballot: Are you in favour of eliminating the metro level of government?

This great city, the old central city of the metropolitan group of cities, the commercial, the financial, the cultural, medical and sports centre of this country cannot be ruled by politicians that are elected to represent the interests of suburban communities. We cannot allow ourselves to be governed by an unaccountable super-bureaucracy that is loyal to suburban interests.

Mr. Meinzer doesn’t agree with that. Well, that will certainly be a great comfort to Metropolitan Council, but very cold comfort to the City of Toronto. The whole method of assessing properties obviously has to be studied. The present method simply doesn’t work. We’ve got to find something that will not push businesses and people out of this city.

The hallmarks of my first term as your mayor have been promotional and new business development and economic growth, reordering and streamlining the city’s bureaucracy to bring budgets into line with the economic reality, reducing the tax burden on Torontonians to match that reality, and strong and responsible administration. The largest part of my job has been to construct the base for renewed economic growth and prosperity, while maintaining our services and our facilities and preserving that humane, livable urban environment of which we are all so proud.

It wasn’t easy at all. For almost two years of this term, I took on the responsibilities of Budget Chief and succeeded in keeping tax increases at zero for 1993 and achieved a small decrease of 0.5 per cent for 1994. This was accomplished despite an assessment base that had dropped by more than $104 million, a decrease in general revenue and an increase in debt charges, because debt charges passed capital spending and a substantial decrease in provincial transfer payments. All of that totalled approximately $41 million.

But after seven years as Budget Chief of this city, both during the recession of the early eighties and during the present unexpected recession, I understand that our ability to maintain those high levels of services, most particularly our social and public health services, rests squarely on the revenue which flows from our commercial and industrial tax base. And that is why I moved, both as Mayor and as Budget Chief, to streamline City Hall to cut waste and duplication. Over two years, beginning this year, $72 million will be cut from that $580 million budget. That is a 12 per cent decrease, which is a huge cut. Approximately 1,000 positions have been eliminated from the city establishment, and this was accomplished without layoffs.

I’m very proud of what we did. I worked hard with business to reduce red tape. Incidentally, 70 per cent of all building permits that come before us at the city are processed within two weeks. There is absolutely no city the size of Toronto that can equal that record. And over the past 12 months, as some of you are aware, over one billion square feet of downtown office space have been leased. The vacancy rate has been dropping quite rapidly–three to four per cent in the last year. Sixty-five thousand more jobs have been created, and two-thirds of those jobs are held by people that live in Toronto. By any objective measure at all, we have succeeded in meeting the challenges, and have erected a solid foundation for renewed prosperity.

One of my first acts as Mayor was to create our business development initiative, the BDI, to promote Toronto. This was a real marketing effort to present Toronto as the place to which to relocate, and the place in which to do business and also an effort to keep the business that we already have. Over the two years it’s been operating, the BDI has compiled a database of more than 5,200 companies, of which 1,400 are now Toronto’s top employers. The BDI has assisted 11 companies in relocating in this city. At the present time, it is working with an additional 25 that have expressed strong interest in locating their entire operation or part of their operation here. What are our great selling points? Of course our safe and clean streets, our vibrant and distinctive residential neighbourhoods.

Although overall crime rates are decreasing somewhat because of the aging population, unfortunately there is a growth in violent crime, drug-related crime and crime among youth. Denying it is not going to fix it. The increase between 1992 and 1993 was four per cent. I’ve been given the signal here. I’d just like to say that I have brought forward strong recommendations with respect to gun control. We’ve been in conversation with the federal government. Some of the recommendations may be enacted. We simply cannot allow violent criminals on our streets. We’ve got to begin to tackle that problem because it is a very serious one.

And I would just like to say that while we streamline and cut taxes, we know that many Torontonians need our help. That costs money. We are a caring community. Our quality of life of course depends on providing that helping hand to those that need it. And maintaining our quality of life depends on preserving safety and the prosperity of downtown Toronto. That was why it was so very important to defeat market value assessment. Thank you very much.

Gerry Meinzer

What a terrific incentive! Thank you to the organisers of this event. I think this serves the tremendous purpose of debating the issues.

Since announcing my candidacy, I’ve been right across the city talking to people. I’ve been meeting with people from all walks of life. They told me their hopes for a new Toronto. But in telling, they reveal an anxiety about our city. I think we have squandered opportunity. They wondered what has happened to Toronto over the past few years. They wonder if we have lost our sense of self. Have we lost our will to fight back? Have we become so tangled in the negative that we have lost the will to win?

To people of Toronto looking to restore the pride we once had in our great city, I want to restore that pride, but first we have to get the numbers right. We have to know where we stand and then we start selling the benefits of Toronto.

There was once a time when businesses flocked to this city. There was once a time when jobs were created in the thousands. There was once a time when Toronto had the confidence to dream big dreams. We have to regain that confidence. It will come back when we have a shared vision of a new and different Toronto. The next time we go after a world’s fair or an Olympic bid the world will say, "Yes." Our reputation will be such that the world won’t be able to say, "No."

How do we restore that reputation? Well, let’s start with a vision. That vision must be from neither left nor right. It must be a vision with key pillars, around which we build the Toronto for tomorrow. Here are three pillars that I will build that Toronto around: lower taxes, creating a safer city for the people of Toronto, getting City Hall working for (not against) its citizens.

Let me offer you some details of that vision. I am committed to lower taxes for home owners and businesses by three per cent the first year, five per cent the second and seven per cent in the third year. This 3-5-7 programme of tax relief will signal the start of Toronto’s economic renewal. I won’t stop there. With the city leading the way, as I’ve demonstrated before, Metro and boards of education will not be able to run and hide. They too will have to respond to the public’s desire to do more with less. I will cut taxes by further contracting out some services. Needless to say, the unions who do the work now will be eligible bidders. I will cut taxes by eliminating duplication between the city and Metro, not just divert attention through a ballot.

I will also cut taxes by attracting new businesses.–Toronto needs more tax payers, not more taxes. These new businesses will come to Toronto if they find a receptive environment. They can’t count on that environment now. When everybody else out there rolls out the red carpet to attract business, we roll out the red tape. We will continue to lose jobs until we come to grips with all this. New business will come to Toronto if they have a valuable resource like an improved island airport. And they will come to Toronto if strong marketing lets them know we’re here. On taking office, I will immediately appoint a Toronto infrastructure promotion team. (I recommended this to the Mayor before but nothing happened.) We’ll seek out high productivity, new economy and jobs.

New jobs and a revitalised economy lead directly to the second pillar of my vision for Toronto. A safe city builds on enterprise and opportunity. The most compassionate government programme doesn’t stop at giving people help. It starts with giving them hope. A safe city is composed of people who respect themselves and the whole community. As Toronto’s representative, I will press for more resources to bring police in closer to the community. Where community policing is set up, it lowers crime. A safer city builds on practical, sustainable and workable environmental standards.

Finally, I want to get City Hall working again. Let me just tell you a story of one voter I spoke with. He wanted a tree planted on his lawn. He asked at City Hall and waited for months for an answer. The answer came and that answer sent him to Metro Hall. He waited for the whole month to discover he couldn’t be included in this year’s plantation programme. (We have more horror stories like this.) We have to break up the cosy little group that runs City Hall like a private club. Isn’t it time to break the mould that has city officials more worried about their turf than their task? Their task is straightforward enough: to serve the public.

That’s no different from real life. Each of us succeeds or fails based on how people see us meeting their needs. Right now, Toronto’s need for new and different leadership isn’t being met. To say government is somehow different from real life is a confession of failure. It is a copout. It’s an admission one hasn’t the imagination or courage to offer and to deliver new and different leadership. Real life means managing resources prudently. It is how we do business in our homes. Real life means respecting ourselves and the people around us. It’s how we build a safe and civil community. Real life means caring about your work. It’s how we succeed in meeting people’s needs.

City Hall needs to get real and it needs to get a life. City Hall has to get real in cutting taxes. It has to get real in providing the leadership for a safe city. And it has to get real and be in the community, not stand apart from it. Toronto needs a new and different leadership. Ladies and gentlemen, I want your help in getting that leadership to work. Thank you.

Barbara Hall

Good evening. Thank you to the organisers. It is about time the campaign really got going and I guess this is officially it, in some respects.

The job of mayor is to provide leadership and to ensure that the necessities of city life are looked after. I think that our city is drifting without leadership and I want to take charge and make things happen again.

For those who don’t know me well, I have been on City Council representing a downtown ward for nine years. I’ve been on the Executive Committee for seven. I’ve been Budget Chief on the Economic Development Committee and I chaired the Land-Use Committee. Before I was elected I was a lawyer, a probation officer, a dressmaker, a waitress and a youth worker. I believe that all my experience, both inside and outside City Hall, prepare me for the challenges before us–the challenges of creating economic vitality, of managing City Hall and of building a safe and a healthy city.

First I’m going to talk about economic vitality and how to create it. First of all, business does need lower taxes. I worked hard with members of Council, with small business people and with residents to kill MVA. As mayor I will lead the charge for fairer taxes. The City of Toronto, its businesses and its residents need a level playing field with the rest of the region.

Since the last municipal election, Toronto has lost close to 100,000 jobs. We have to stop watching from the sidelines and get into the global business game. The Design Exchange, which opens next week, is a perfect example of how to do that and I am proud to have played a role in setting it up. It’s no accident that the Design Exchange is at King and Bay, in the heart of the financial district. It’s good business and it’s big business. The Design Exchange will enable home-grown technology and innovative consumer goods of all kinds to compete in world markets. We need to make sure that there are more design exchanges.

In order to create economic vitality, we have to do a better job of managing City Hall and making things happen more quickly. Over the past three years as Chair of Land-Use I’ve been able to expedite many projects through our process. Not all of them, unfortunately, were built, but during the past few months, the expansion of the Convention Centre and the conversion of vacant commercial buildings happened very quickly. I was able to show that it doesn’t need to take years to get through City Hall.

Did you know that if you were to open a small business in this city tomorrow, the city would not pick up your garbage, even though your neighbour’s garbage is picked up and your neighbour pays the same taxes? That’s not fair. Public Works decided that on its own. Next week at Council I hope to reverse that unfairness. As mayor I will ensure that garbage pickup, indeed all city services, are delivered in a manner that is fair and equitable for everyone within the city.

It is curious that the city can’t afford to pick up garbage but it can afford to spend $100,000 or more on a useless referendum. As mayor, I will take the lead to stop the municipal warfare that is happening out there. I will meet with the GTA mayors. I will work with the Board of Trade. I will push joint economic development, because the only way any of us will prosper in this region is by learning to work together, not to fight each other.

There’s more to leadership than managing City Hall and creating economic vitality. I want a city that’s not only good to work in, but is also good to live in. Four summers ago, after a series of sexual assaults in my ward, I met with a group of women in the neighbourhood and together we decided to take action ourselves. We set up the Safe City Committee. We didn’t just lobby other levels of government or use scare tactics. We went out. We improved lighting in underground garages. We improved it on the streets. We got the planning department to factor safety into building plans for parks. We worked with small business and with the police to make our streets safer.

As mayor, I will continue to be on the streets throughout this city, working with men and women from all parts of the city, from all walks of life, to find real practical solutions to the challenges we face.

You may hear throughout this campaign that I represent just one particular political party. That’s not true. I have supporters from all political parties and from people who belong to no party. What we all have in common is a view of the city. They believe, as I do, that to make things happen again in Toronto, we’ve got to create economic vitality, we’ve got to manage City Hall and we’ve got to build a safe and a healthy city. And that’s why I’m running for mayor. Thank you.

Matt Maychak

Thank you all. In a moment we’ll turn it over to all of you. We have microphones at either end of the room. First of all, we’ll start with a business question. Suppose that I am a business person planning to leave the City of Toronto because of high taxes or red tape. Could you each tell me how you would change things in order to change my mind?

June Rowlands

There’s no question at all that taxes have been a very large problem. I would like to say, though, that in the last year and a half, no major business has left the City of Toronto for anywhere outside the City of Toronto. There has been a real turnaround partly because we did hold taxes two years ago and reduced taxes 0.5 per cent this year. However I must remind you that the City of Toronto only spends between 18 and 19 cents of every dollar that you pay. The big tax collectors, of course, are Education and Metro. Metro receives 26 or 27 cents of each tax dollar. So even if we were to reduce taxes almost to nothing here they would still be high because of the school board situation.

We have held conversations with the provincial government and the federal people as well on the unfairness of education taxes. Mississauga, for instance, gets a per capita grant for education. We in the City of Toronto have what we call a negative grant. In other words, we owe money. We don’t get it. We owe it. Scarborough is in the situation that if it wasn’t within Metropolitan Toronto, and those taxes were not pooled at the Metro level, Scarborough would qualify for a provincial grant for education. Instead it is our big assessment base here which is raided and used for education purposes without Metro. Last year in the City of Toronto, $319 million that were not needed by the City of Toronto for its own education system were collected in taxes and were distributed to the other members of the Metro Federation. Scarborough received about $160 million of that. That has to be straightened up. That is one of the main problems and it has to be straightened away.

Gerry Meinzer

Taxes need to come down and Toronto, I agree, needs a new deal. We need some friends to help us, but let’s start at home. Let’s get the taxes down and let’s get our own bureaucracy out there to be friendly, so that they attract business not scare them away. That would be the way that I would fix it.

Barbara Hall

Of course we need to keep our taxes at the city as low as possible and we also need to ensure that we are not duplicating services that other levels are providing. But we’re going to have to get the province to change how they tax us and, quite frankly, I don’t think we are going to do that on our own. We’re not going to do it in an adversarial situation. We need to sit down with the other area municipalities within Metro and within the whole GTA. I believe they recognise that if the core of Toronto dies, they suffer as well. People don’t come to Vaughan. They come to Toronto. The region realises they need a strong core, so Toronto needs to show leadership in bringing people together, in sitting down, in developing some consensus and then in going to the provincial government and pushing hard, hard, hard for the survival of this city. This requires the reduction of taxes.

Question

Ms. Hall, we heard the Mayor say that she managed to keep the lid on taxes, with a small decrease this year. We heard Mr. Meinzer’s promises to cut them by 3, 5 and 7 per cent in each of the next three years. You just talked about fair taxes and petitioning the province. Can you give us a translation of fair taxes? Would you cut taxes, or would you be unable to cut taxes without the approval of the province (which has its own deficit problems)?

Barbara Hall

Well in the past, in all my years on Council, I have supported taxes below the rate of inflation. Over this past year and the year before, I supported a tax freeze. I think when I say "fair taxes" I mean: businesses within the City of Toronto being taxed in an equal way or on a level playing field with those in Vaughan and Richmond Hill. I mean equal grants or no grants. I mean all of us being treated the same way. That’s not happening right now.

Question

Mr. Meinzer, given all the complexity surrounding Toronto’s taxes, and given that the Toronto share of the property tax is, I think, about one-fifth, how would you manage to cut by 3, 5, and 7 per cent? Are we looking at once-a-year garbage pick-up? What services would have to be cut in order to facilitate such a large tax cut?

Gerry Meinzer

It is my intention to follow the example of other municipalities in privatising garbage. Just next to us, East York has saved almost 20 per cent by contracting out. Hazel McCallion tells me she has avoided tax increases twice already because she got a better deal in contracting out. There’s a study by the University of Toronto that reports that the minimum savings by privatising garbage pick-up is 20 per cent. Some save up to 75 per cent. If I only save 20 to 25 per cent, I’m saving $25 million. That’s one half of the $50 million I need to save at the end of the three-year term.

That’s one step. The other step is by cutting layers of management. I think we have duplication falling over duplication. Nothing’s happening here. We still have 225 planners in this city. Somewhere the buck needs to stop. I believe that we need to look at management and that we need to look at a possible consolidation of services that are duplicated between Metro and the City. There isn’t a reason in the world why we have to have two Parks Departments, two Roads Departments, and then send this poor guy to two City Halls to plant his tree.

Question

The Mayor was shaking her head. Perhaps she would like to respond.

June Rowlands

This whole question of garbage pick-up is an extremely complex one. It isn’t just a simple one of saying it’s unfair and we recognize it’s unfair, and that a report is going to come forward with four alternatives. None of you are interested in that. The difficulty is this: that the tipping fee is $50 a ton. When we pick up the garbage, we are not charged by Metro for that tipping fee. When it is picked up commercially, the tipping fee is charged and that puts us in a real mess. The problem is that $50 tipping fee. The City of Toronto doesn’t pay it, but if we start all of that commercial pick-up Metro will suffer.

Matt Maychak

Before we move on, let’s have Barbara Hall have a say on that.

Barbara Hall

The reality is that it is unfair. It is a question of fairness. It’s a question that has an easy answer. What’s happening is that small businesses are dumping their garbage in parks. In one case I dealt with, a small business person who had another shop used to put his garbage in the trunk of his car and drive it down to the other shop each night. We’ve paid for a lawyer and an inspector to prosecute that person, instead of having the truck that’s already on the street stop and pick up the bag of garbage. We need to pick up small business garbage and treat small business fairly.

Question

May I ask if you would tender it out?

June Rowlands

We have unions. If we privatise garbage pick-up, the union workers still can’t be fired.

Question

Ms. Hall, would you contract it out?

Barbara Hall

I don’t believe that contracting out is the answer to our garbage problem. Clearly we have a lot of problems with ‘garbage in this city. I don’t believe the problem is due to the workers. I believe that it is a question of management and that we need to put our energy into solving that problem. I agree that contracting out would not be the economic salvation that Gerry has said it would be.

Question

I’m going to take us away from garbage. I’m the editor of a newsletter that serves the Canadian casino industry.

The government of Ontario has designated the Greater Toronto Area as a possible casino site. This Wednesday, Metro Council will vote on whether it will reverse a decision which it made in February: not to create a committee which will talk with the government of Ontario about whether or not Toronto should have a casino. I’d like to place a question to each of you: Do you support having a casino located on the Toronto waterfront, or would you prefer Vaughan or Mississauga or somewhere else?

Barbara Hall

Thank you. I’m not opposed to casinos. I’ve been off to Atlantic City and thrown the dice and lost my $100. But I support the creation of good jobs and having a safe and healthy community. If a casino can be a part of that, then I would look it. I am concerned about public dollars going into casinos, and I’m also concerned about turning the downtown of this city into a theme park. Some of the descriptions I’ve heard sounded very much like that. But if there are people out there who want to put in applications for casinos, then I would tell them to do so. I would certainly look at the application and determine whether any application would contribute to employment within the city and a safe and healthy city. Those are my bottom lines.

Gerry Meinzer

Well, I don’t have a moral hang-up on casinos either, but I’d like to see the balance sheet. I would like to see figures quite different from those from Montreal casinos. If 96 per cent of all the money in a gambling casino now is already in gambling within the Montreal area, and if only four per cent worth of new economic activity is generated, I’d say, "No." I believe that if Toronto needs to be rescued by a casino then, I think, we’re more bankrupt than I thought we were.

June Rowlands

I will be voting at Metro, and I shall be voting "No." My concern is this. I simply don’t approve of the idea of a billion six coming in from the United States to install 3,000 slot machines. I don’t approve of it because that money all goes back to those investors for at least 10 years, and from then on profits go back to the States. I simply don’t agree with it. If this is such a great business, then at least it should be Canadian money that’s invested.

But casinos, unfortunately, seem to create some kind of a vortex. They just suck everything into them. The experience in Montreal is not a happy one. Gerry just referred to it. In addition to that, the small restaurants in downtown old Montreal no longer have clientele. I’ve talked to the mayor of Winnipeg and she said she hadn’t got anything out of the casinos at all except a lot of extra policing costs. It isn’t the way to go. You’ve asked about the vote at Metro. May I remind you that the zoning bylaw of the City of Toronto does not allow a use of casinos. And so before any decision is made at all, there will have to be a very major debate at City Council. There’s a limited number of dollars for entertainment, for restaurants, for theatres, for gambling, for the horse-racing (which is a good industry here in Southern Ontario). If those limited revenues start getting channelled through casinos, there are a lot of other businesses that are going to suffer. That’s my point.

Question

I would like to know how you envisage the delivery of police and welfare services in the absence of a Metro level of government?

June Rowlands

It is a question that comes up all the time. It is not difficult. To begin with, the TTC used to be a separate commission that delivered its services and it is now part of Metro. The TTC Commission would once again be set up with representatives from the various municipalities. It would probably have to take over the central computer services of Metro and perhaps the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner. The police would simply be the present Police Commission, except instead of having Metro representatives it would have representatives from each of the municipalities. Parks could be sorted out. The City of Toronto can look after the parks. It doesn’t need Metro doing the big parks. Roads are the same way.

This begins to cut out all those levels of jurisdiction which have provided so much discussion. That’s all fairly simple to do. Ambulance services should be associated with the fire services anyway and there’s a move in that direction now. And the move, of course, is to put the fire services ov