LILLEY: Olivia Chow has to go but John Tory shouldn't replace her
There is a long list of reasons that John Tory shouldn't be Toronto's mayor again and it all goes back to his track record.
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Olivia Chow needs to be replaced as mayor of Toronto, but John Tory is not the solution the city needs. The former mayor hasn’t ruled out running again; he has a team at the ready to run his campaign — and plenty of backers.
What the people of Toronto need to realize is that John Tory is the root of many of the problems facing Toronto, and that won’t change if he gets a fourth term.
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LILLEY: Olivia Chow has to go but John Tory shouldn't replace her Back to video
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It’s true, problems like crime, homelessness, encampments, open drugs use, traffic, bike lanes and more have all gotten worse under Olivia Chow. The problem is that since all of these issues were in decline under Tory, you can’t trust the guy who created the problem, or problems, to be the one to fix it.
Between 2014 when Tory was first elected and 2023 when he left office, the number of major crimes documented by Toronto Police Service increased annually from 32,461 to 49,576. That’s a 53% increase in crimes such as assault, auto theft, homicide, sexual assault, and breaking and entering.
Those numbers went higher under Chow in 2024, but the trendline started under Tory.
In 2014, Toronto’s homeless shelters put up just over 4,000 people and were at capacity. Now, the system regularly houses close to 10,000 people a night, and few are moved successfully to permanent housing.
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More than doubling shelter capacity while the problem gets worse isn’t a sign of success for Tory or Chow.
Over the last decade under Tory and Chow, housing has become far less affordable, and part of that is the increase in development charges. In 2014, the development charges on a one-bedroom apartment were $10,429 but now sit at $54,801 while a single-family home has seen development charges increase from $24,298 to $143,409.
If those costs had only kept pace with inflation, they would be sitting at $13,611 and $31,711, respectively.
Instead, the city jacked up development charges, not to mention all the other fees, and increased the cost of building new housing dramatically. Meanwhile, over the past four years — under both Tory and Chow — property taxes have increased by just shy of 30%.
Over the last decade, the median price of a single-family home in Toronto has gone from just over $500,000 to more than $1.25 million. The median price of a condo apartment in that time now sits at $600,000 compared to just over $350,000 in 2014.
The dramatic increase in housing prices, development charges and taxes started under John Tory and continued under Olivia Chow.
Neither one of them deserves to be rewarded for this by giving either one of them another term as mayor.
The move to put Toronto at the forefront of bad drug policy with ever expanding injection and consumption sites, the push for so-called safe-supply — and even the push to decriminalize all hard drugs — started under Tory. Those programs were implemented with the promise that they would curb overdose deaths and help people get treatment; they have done neither.
We had 460 emergency room visits due to opioid overdoses in 2014 and 2,660 in 2023. We went from 131 opioid overdose death in Toronto to 529 over that same time period.
Tory was the man who approved the massive expansion of bike lanes into areas they have no business being placed. He was also in charge when the city started to look dirty as garbage wasn’t picked up.
“You should go see Los Angeles,” Tory said to me once after complaining about how dirty the city looked.
I had seen Los Angeles; it’s not a look we want to replicate. Also, saying well it’s bad here, but it’s worse elsewhere isn’t leadership in any way shape or form.
“It will be different this time,” a backer of Tory for mayor has said again and again.
I don’t see how.
Tory and Chow share many — not all but many — of the same disastrous policies. The best that could be argued is that he isn’t quite as radical and is a better manager.
Is that a reason to put him back in charge?
Toronto needs new and fresh leadership that will challenge the system, reform how City Hall operates, who will control costs and taxes and make Toronto a city that works again.
Who that leader is, I don’t know. But it isn’t John Tory.
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