Smitherman wants to break city's 'pattern of mediocrity'.
Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman speaks the the Toronto Community News Editorial Board Friday afternoon. (July 23, 2010)
Staff photo/NICK PERRY
Don't write George Smitherman off "as a downtown guy" because he sees Maple Leaf Gardens from his apartment window.
To beat that perception and become a mayor for all parts of Toronto this fall, the former Toronto Centre MPP says he's striving to "be out there and be seen" in the city's suburbs, including Etobicoke, where he was raised.
"My roots in Etobicoke are roots that mean a lot to me and contributed a lot to who I am," the candidate told a meeting with the editorial board of Toronto Community News last Friday, July 23.
What he found in four days walking along Eglinton Avenue, he said, is a Toronto slowly becoming "a bedroom community" because jobs are going elsewhere and where, in the suburbs, certain places "are being left behind."
A civic government locked in "a pattern of mediocrity" shares the blame for areas with empty storefronts or lower employment, Smitherman suggested, because it hasn't spoken openly enough to Torontonians about the heavy tax burden on Toronto businesses.
Making its commercial property taxes more competitive is a way to create jobs and address Toronto's social challenges, argued the candidate, who said his transit system expansion plan would bring more economic opportunities to the city by knitting together its more neglected parts.
The first half of his plan, a five-year run-up to the 2015 Pan-American Games costing the city a "relatively manageable" $465 million, would speed completion of the Spadina Subway to York University, and extend the Sheppard East Light-Rail Transit line to University of Toronto Scarborough, the Harbourfront LRT to Toronto's Portlands and the Eglinton LRT to Weston Road.
His following five years are far more ambitious, costing billions: Smitherman would extend the Sheppard "Stubway" to Downsview station and the Finch West LRT to Highway 27, while adding new Bloor line stations at East Mall and Sherway Gardens "that have been spoken about to the people of Etobicoke at least since the 1980s."
He also said the obsolete Scarborough RT, not expected to last much longer than 2016, should be rebuilt as a subway instead of an LRT, a "second-class transit" which would continue the need to switch lines at Kennedy Station.
Responding to the charge his campaign has lacked direction, Smitherman acknowledged he could do better "and sharpen up my messages," but said people should look carefully at the character and commitments of his "primary opponent," Rob Ford, who proposes a more extensive subway expansion while eliminating the city's land-transfer and vehicle registration taxes.
"He's getting into the tune of billions of dollars of unanswered questions," Smitherman said.
"I've got 90 days to go, I don't mind if you people want to characterize me as an underdog. I like my odds."
Though a self-described "regionalist" from an early age when it comes to transportation, Smitherman is critical of the "one-size-fits-all solutions" a post-amalgamation Toronto has been pressing its former suburbs to adopt.
If local residents feel strongly about maintaining Etobicoke's standards of leaf collection, or if North Yorkers want the city "to catch the snowflakes before they even land," their community councillors should be able to make it happen, he said.
Smitherman also pledged to spend several days each month working from the civic centres in North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke or East York - one of many ways, he said, to assure people in all parts of the city "their voice has not been lost or watered-down."
Deputy premier and a cabinet minister until he resigned to run municipally - he survived almost five years as Ontario's health minister, "one of the hardest jobs in Canada" - Smitherman said his good relationship with Premier Dalton McGuinty won't make him a "patsy" for the province when he's mayor.
"I think you'd have to say that doesn't exactly align with my MO (method of operations), with my style."
But Smitherman said he's grown weary with a city administration that, at budget time, projects itself "as broke or bankrupt." A Toronto that shows its house is in order, he said, "is going to be far more effective actually in getting the respect that it warrants and resources that it would require from other levels of government."
Dismissive of Joe Pantalone - another election rival he said has "extraordinarily low" support - Smitherman charged Toronto's deputy mayor spreads misinformation whenever Pantalone states Toronto is forced to subsidize the TTC by $500 million a year, because he does not mention $155 million the province will give the city in gas tax revenue this year.
Still, Smitherman said the city's next years are going to require "restraint," especially from its public service, and he will present what is essentially a draft budget by this fall to show what that will mean.
"Either there's going to be some sacrifice, or some jobs are going to be sacrificed," he said.