Unconventional Candour

by George Smitherman

  So, my first (short-lived) reaction to Ford’s move was positive — I thought it might help me. First of all, the expanded ward (number 13, or Toronto Centre) encompassed most of my old riding (except for affluent Yorkville and Rosedale) and I had run and won three straight provincial elections there (1999, 2003, and 2007). I had also done well there in my mayoral run in 2010.

  I also naively assumed that Kristyn Wong-Tam — the incumbent councillor for the western half of the enlarged Ward 13 — would choose to run in the neighbouring new ward of University-Rosedale (number 11), where she was equally well-rooted.

  My first warning that something might be amiss was an exchange of messages with Heather Ann McConnell, Pam’s daughter. “Pam told me once that she liked Kristyn and would step aside for her if she had to,” wrote Heather Ann. I slowly realized that Pam’s personal endorsement of me could be posthumously revoked by her family.

  Then I learned that the progressive councillors had worked out a deal among themselves so as not to face each other in the campaign: Joe Cressy would run in Spadina–Fort York, Mike Layton in University-Rosedale, and Wong-Tam against me in Toronto Centre. And she would have the backing of Cressy’s and Layton’s teams and all the special-interest, union, and NDP resources that came with them. (Cressy and Layton are New Democrats; Wong-Tam says she is not a member of any party, but she votes consistently with the NDP bloc on council.)

  My campaign photo for the 2018 Toronto municipal election.

  At this point, I took a brief family vacation at a friend’s beach house in Prince Edward Island. Instead of relaxing on the beach, I went through a terrible depression while I was there. I knew that I was sitting on the horns of a dilemma. If I stayed in the race, I would likely lose the election. If I quit, I would lose face, especially within my own family, whose lives had been disrupted so that I could pursue my dream.

  I talked to my former boss and mentor, Barbara Hall. “Ford has given you an elegant way out,” she advised me. I got the same advice from others, like Patrick Devine, the veteran municipal lawyer, who bluntly predicted I would be slaughtered in the election. But I decided to stay in the race. I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of quitting. I also felt a weird shame that I had been hoodwinked again and had put my family through unnecessary upheaval. Getting out early would have been the easy and prudent thing to do. But I stayed in and worked hard to press the incumbent(s).

  Shortly after returning from P.E.I., I started campaigning in the expanded parts of the ward. But I campaigned only half-heartedly, because the downsized council was being challenged in the courts and I held out hope it would be struck down and the forty-seven-ward election would be restored. That did happen, of course. The court ruled on September 10 that Ford’s legislation was unconstitutional because the change it imposed would result in wards of such size that they infringed on citizens’ rights “to cast a vote that can result in effective representation,” and the unilateral changing of electoral boundaries in the middle of a campaign infringed on candidates’ freedom of expression. But this decision was immediately trumped by Ford’s unprecedented threat to use the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution.** Ford’s threatened move was unnecessary, however, since the decision of the lower court was overturned by the Court of Appeal on September 19. All this legal and legislative wrangling created a weird political vacuum during which it was difficult to campaign. With the appeal court’s decision, the twenty-five-seat council, my worst-case scenario, was back in play — with the election just thirty-three days away. The whole experience exhausted me and my family. Imagine explaining to a newly arrived Cuban and two kids just how the law works and what the notwithstanding clause is all about.

  * * *

  I ran a very issues-oriented campaign, with five pledges: to champion affordable housing, to tackle poverty, to protect our kids from gangs, to finish the redevelopment of Regent Park, and to run for no more than two terms on council. (Not coincidentally, Wong-Tam was running for a third term.) The platform resonated with those people who paid attention to the details, but there were not enough of them.

  The cost of housing is an overarching problem in the ward, where Cabbagetown houses that used to provide shelter for low-income people are being sold for over $1 million. Displaced by this gentrification and by new apartment developments with higher rents, the tenants have been left with nowhere to go, as there are long wait lists for city-owned housing. I spent much of my campaign addressing this issue and insisting the city needed “deeply affordable” housing. I must have had some impact because by the end of the campaign Wong-Tam was using the exact same phrase.

  The affordable housing that is available in the ward is, unfortunately, plagued by crime and drugs, and suffers from poor maintenance and inadequate security. One example is 251 Sherbourne Street, a city-owned apartment building in the heart of the ward that is about 250 metres from my own home. I talked to many of the tenants there and discovered they were terrified by the drug dealing and violence on their premises. (A man had been shot dead in their building earlier in the year.)

  “Think you’re tough?” I asked in a campaign video, with the building looming behind me. “Imagine living at 251 Sherbourne with the city as your landlord. If getting to the front door meant fighting your way through drugs and crime, would you ever even leave your apartment? The current councillors have had years to fix this. Can you even trust them? I’m George Smitherman and I make positive change happen.”

  For this, Desmond Cole, a local activist, accused me of “racist attacks” on social housing tenants, and NOW magazine said I was “beating the crime drum to death.” (I learned in this campaign that there are a lot of so-called progressives who think it is “racist” to point out that the tenants in city-owned housing are being neglected by their landlord.)

  What I was seeking was housing that is both affordable and SAFE. My bold proposal was to use section 37 of the Planning Act, which allows the city to extract cash or other benefits from builders in exchange for higher-density developments. Wong-Tam had been using these section-37 dollars, which amount to millions, to improve parks and install fountains in her ward. This is what the “Chardonnay set” in the ward wants and that’s where the votes are. But they aren’t the people most affected by new development in the ward. Rather, the biggest impact is on those people who are already marginally housed. I wanted to use section 37 to buy a piece of all new developments for low-income housing. That would ensure mixed-income buildings on the co-op model. But the homeless, who would benefit most from such a move, don’t vote.

  The campaign had its highs and lows. Among the lows, beyond those inflicted by Doug Ford, was the decision by Pam McConnell’s children, Heather Ann and Madelyn, and Pam’s husband, Jim, to openly side with Wong-Tam. “Our family knows that Kristyn is the best person to serve Toronto Centre’s diverse neighbourhood,” they said in an endorsement published in KWT’s campaign pamphlet. “She has a proven track record, cares deeply about people and the community and is highly effective at getting things done. Pam’s legacy of hard work and love for the common city will be in great hands with Kristyn, who shares her values and worked so closely with her over the years.” So much for my values and years of close co-operation with Pam, and so much for Heather Ann’s teary-eyed endorsement at my own launch just weeks prior.

  Another low was the decision by two former Toronto mayors, Art Eggleton (a Liberal) and David Crombie (a Red Tory), to go ahead with their pledge to hold a joint fundraiser for Wong-Tam. They had made the commitment before it became known that she would be running against me in the expanded ward, but the shifting political landscape didn’t give them pause. (For the record, another former mayor, Barbara Hall, dropped out of the event.) And, to make matters worse, they deliberately shifted the venue for their fundraiser from Wong-Tam’s old ward to my new turf, Regent Park, even before the Toronto Centre battle lines had been legally confirmed. Along with being deserted by the McConnell family, this was one of the most
hurtful acts I have ever experienced in politics.

  Nor were the provincial Liberals — with the exception of former cabinet minister Steve Del Duca — any help. That is not surprising because they had actively tried to recruit Wong-Tam to run for them in the provincial election earlier in the year. And after the June election debacle the provincial Liberals’ resources were almost entirely extinguished.

  In the end, few Liberals came to my aid in the campaign. One exception was federal immigration minister Ahmed Hussen, whose political career I had helped to launch. Another was Bob Rae, former Liberal MP for the riding. But current Liberal MPs Adam Vaughan (Spadina–Fort York) and Julie Dabrusin (Toronto-Danforth) both endorsed Wong-Tam. Bill Morneau did call me on the day before the election to inform me that the polls didn’t look good for me. I abruptly ended the call and trudged along in the terrifying final hours of a losing battle. I will definitely remember those for whom I have sacrificed and those who abandoned me in my time of need.

  Despite my disappointment with the lack of support from the federal and provincial wings of the Liberal Party, I wasn’t trying to run a Liberal campaign, per se. Quite the contrary. As noted already, my campaign colour was yellow, not Liberal red. I do not like party politics at the municipal level. But I had hoped more Liberals would at least lend me a helping hand, as I had helped many of them over the decades.

  The media largely shunned me as well. The Toronto Star, which had endorsed me for mayor in 2010, opted for Wong-Tam and smothered her with coverage. So did NOW magazine, which called my campaign an “embarrassment.” The Toronto Sun backed Troisi, while at the same time noting she couldn’t win and suggesting I might be the better bet to beat Wong-Tam. Go figure.

  It didn’t help me that there were so many candidates in the election for Toronto Centre — nineteen in total. (To run as a candidate you only need to pay $100 and have twenty-five people endorse you.) They represented every neighbourhood and virtually every ethnic and social group in the ward. That meant the campaign was chopped up into little pieces by the candidates, each with a claim on some neighbourhood or group, and it was hard for me to get any traction against a well-entrenched incumbent like Wong-Tam.

  Everywhere I turned, along streets and into buildings that were once part of my political fortress, I found shifting allegiances. In the Gay Village, I was no longer the only gay politician in town. Wong-Tam is an out lesbian. And in Cabbagetown, a lot of my hard-core supporters peeled off to Troisi. Elsewhere, within ethno-cultural communities where I was well known, candidates from those communities challenged past loyalties to me.

  With so many people running, all-candidates meetings — there were half-a-dozen of them during the campaign — were a bit of a zoo. Candidates were given only a few minutes to make their points. And most of the audience was filled with partisans from the camps of each of the candidates. That left only a handful of undecided voters in the room. So the meetings were basically a waste of time. Troisi actually skipped a couple of them in St. James Town, thereby avoiding accountability to the angry residents of 650 Parliament Street who had been displaced by a fire. And Wong-Tam approached them with dull, scripted messages that wouldn’t offend anyone. When asked how she would address a problem, she would promise to order up a study or plug the issue into some established process.

  As in my mayoral campaign against Rob Ford, I never got a chance to debate Wong-Tam head-to-head. I thought I was going to on CP24, a local news channel. But Troisi was included in the debate at the last minute, and the debate sort of fizzled. I did manage to make my point that Wong-Tam did not have a good relationship with Mayor John Tory. “I would work with Tory to deal with the issues in the ward,” I said. Wong-Tam said she had a “proven track record” of working with everyone, a statement that belies the truth of her toxic relationship with the mayor.

  Nonetheless, there were rewarding moments in the campaign for me. On the Thursday before the vote, for example, I ran into a woman who lived at 251 Sherbourne and was terrified by her experiences. “Thanks for having our backs,” she said.

  Far and away the most moving experience for me was a visit to Margaret’s Place drop-in centre. It operates as a low-barrier shelter open 24/7 and accommodates people suffering from serious mental health issues or drug users currently under the influence. There I sat and talked with an older woman who refused my offer to help with her Old Age Security payments because she distrusted governments. I planned to return and offer myself as an individual case worker for her.

  Another woman called me to complain bitterly because she had not been allowed to meet with me when I was health minister about a personal matter involving the misdiagnosis of her son. “But I have read your platform and agree with every word of it and I am going to vote for you,” she said. “I just wanted you to know it has been a difficult journey for me.”

  I really enjoyed these human interactions. They were a reminder that much of politics is basically social work.

  Two weeks before the election it became clear to me that I was going to lose, and possibly by a wider margin. The outside world — media, my old Liberal colleagues, my friends and acquaintances at the community level — had ruled me out of consideration. Help stopped arriving. Meanwhile, Wong-Tam got support from the unions, Progress Toronto (largely an NDP front), NDP councillors, and the McConnell family.

  I don’t want to sound like I was entirely outmatched. We put up a good fight and carried a lot of the debate in the campaign, because of my provocative online videos. Money was not a problem for my campaign. The city restricts spending in ward elections to just $65,000, and I was able to raise that amount without much difficulty. We delivered a hundred thousand pieces of campaign material, and I got hundreds of hugs from friends I had gathered over the years.

  And in the same way that my mother and stepfather stepped up to help with my first campaign in 1999, my family played a huge hand in this one. My sister Joanne legged it out and fought the battles one by one. In Regent Park, she was subjected to severe homophobic remarks from the sign crew of an opposing candidate on account of my sexual orientation. My sister Christine and her partner, Marc, scoured the best vantage points for signs on many late-night missions.

  I also received support from my political family, those who assembled to express their love for me as a candidate and my mission. Amazing women like Patti, Nancy, Hawaa, and none greater than Joyce Grigg, my most loyal supporter of all time, gave so much. As did wonderful new friends like Michael and Anthony.

  In the end, I finished a poor second with just 15 percent of the vote. Wong-Tam got 50 percent, and Troisi was third with 9 percent. On election night, in my concession tweet I wholeheartedly congratulated Wong-Tam, and I thanked the voters “for giving me the chance to fall in love again.”

  Considering that my fate was clear long in advance, I surprised myself with how emotional I was when I rose to give my concession speech, after being introduced by none other than Barbara Hall. I choked up badly when I described the fortress-like fencing I had seen proliferating in my neighbourhood as a result of intensifying displacement and the income disparity that has created a cavernous gulf in vast swaths of Toronto’s downtown.

  Afterward, my reaction was decidedly mixed. On the one hand, I felt intellectually reinvented and re-energized. I had run an issues-based campaign, and I had lost to someone who is a “process politician,” someone who I felt would push the paper but not drive solutions. Even though I took a shit-kicking at the polls, I felt more relevant. And in a way, Rolando and my kids know the real me much better now. Indeed, Rolando, who had come to Canada from Cuba with no similar campaign context, gained experience quickly and supported me in the textbook way of a political spouse, at home and on the campaign trail. I will always picture him crossing Parliament Street after the election to take down that last errant sign of my political career, which had been taped to a Cabbagetown storefront. And I will always remember my daughter, Kayla, gleefully running across Ontario Street
to show me the Troisi flyer she had pinched.

  On the other hand, the whole experience — being run over by a Ford again, being shunned by Liberal colleagues, and seeing an endorsement posthumously withdrawn — was painful.

  Of course, I realize I will not get a lot of sympathy. I hope instead to channel the pain, find strength from the experience, and live to fight another day. As my father advised me after I got run over by an opponent in a hockey game, “Take the number, George.”

  ____________________

  * Toronto Community Housing Corp., the city-owned provider of social housing. It is the largest publicly owned landlord in Canada, with 2,100 buildings and 110,000 residents.

  ** This clause allows governments to pre-empt portions of the Charter of Rights for up to five years, in order to pursue policies that they wish to implement.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a book is not a task to be taken lightly. As with politics, it inev-itably requires sacrifices — this is particularly true for the writer’s family, who are asked to give of their time and privacy. This book was only made possible by the space and time — and love — given me by my husband, Rolando. I thank him for that. Sharing the gritty granularity of my life with him was difficult; his acceptance helped to draw us together.

  The actual writing of this book involved collaboration with Ian Urquhart, the former Toronto Star editor and columnist. As a writing partner, Ian exceeded my wildest dreams. Bringing his craft and his enthusiasm, he drew from me the story of my life. These are my words and this is my life, but it is offered with the help of Ian’s thoughtful hand.