503 
On Monday night Heritage Toronto hosted a mayoral debate in the lovely, historic, and packed-out Great Hall at St. Lawrence Hall, an appropriate location for the heritage topic. Text by Tyler Greenleaf Photos by Interchange42
The highly structured debate was moderated by Paul Bedford, a former Chief City Planner for Toronto. Newcomer Rocco Achampong, a lawyer by day, joined well-known candidates Rob Ford, Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi, George Smitherman and Sarah Thomson. The debate featured seven questions put forth by Heritage Toronto and two submitted by audience members. Considering the audience attending (which did skew strongly towards retirees) each candidate declared clear support for various heritage initiatives, although in different ways.
Rocco Achampong was well-versed in the history of Toronto and had obvious enthusiasm for the city and its heritage, having been involved with Jane’s Walks as well as hosting tours of Osgoode Hall. He noted that the Heritage Toronto Office falls under the city’s Culture Division. If Mayor, Achampong would pull the heritage office out of Culture Division and create a Heritage Division to give it more attention outside of this large branch of city government. He bemoaned the lack of heritage coordination between the city and province and would work to remove an overlap of services.
Besides reiterating his campaign talking points throughout the debate, Rob Ford surprisingly agreed that the $700,000 Heritage Toronto budget was way too low and said he would re-deploy current city employees to the Heritage Office. His other suggestions to increase funding for the heritage office included promoting volunteer clean-up of natural heritage green spaces (most notably the Don River, which he noted seemed remarkably more dirty compared to the Humber River which is located in his ward) and through fundraising from private citizens for funds to support heritage initiatives. He noted the volatility of heritage planning with the influence of the OMB as a constant threat.
Joe Pantalone repeatedly touted his experience with heritage preservation (noting examples from Exhibition Place and Fort York, among others), as well as the coming bicentennial of the War of 1812. He saw the bicentennial as an opportunity to secure federal and provincial dollars for additional heritage support in the city. Pantalone also saw an opportunity for additional funding support through developers, who, when submitting their development application, would have to include heritage research on the buildings in the immediate vicinity. This would help relieve the burden of research and identifying heritage buildings for the city. Pantalone strongly supported creating a City of Toronto Museum in Old City Hall.
Rocco Rossi clearly did his homework when it came to what kind of work Heritage Toronto had been doing, telling the audience he would work to manage the dollars used by Heritage Toronto, as only 12 buildings were protected so far this year when 40 had been done in 2009. He also had notes about how many buildings were deemed heritage in each part of the city (downtown Toronto has the most heritage designations, which is not surprising considering it is older than the rest of the city). If mayor, Rossi would create more detailed secondary plans with local communities including creating heritage designations at a neighbourhood level. Finally, he promised to take responsibility for the city and offered leadership in the form of tackling issues without blaming other levels of government for the city’s problems.
George Smitherman was clearly comfortable speaking about heritage issues, having held a press conference at Yonge & Gould earlier that day promoting his five points of preserving heritage in Toronto including cracking down on neglectful owners of heritage buildings, proactive planning to preserve heritage structures, and further planning engagement with the community. Smitherman noted his experience in saving heritage structures and insinuated that he would consider pursuing the creation of a governing body that would replace the OMB using powers granted by the existing City of Toronto act.
Touting “pre-zoning” as a way to designate heritage areas, Sarah Thomson plans to protect all buildings built prior to 1920. As a means to address planning and heritage protection, she would take a very long-term view of city planning, trying to anticipate the Toronto of 200 years from now. Thomson expressed a desire to work more closely with communities across the city to build partnerships and consensus on heritage buildings and new developments. In the end, the audience was most inspired by George Smitherman with Joe Pantalone or Rocco Rossi behind him. This downtown crowd clearly did not support Rob Ford, whose minor applause did not extend beyond his dozen or so campaign supporters in attendance.
