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Mayor John Tory's Toronto

True. She actually knows something about planning, which certainly makes her unacceptable to suburban voters.

If she had focused on planning outside of Toronto, that would have made her more acceptable. Even if it was a goodwill gesture type thing. But nope. Total 100% snobbery.
 
She's someone easily painted as a downtown liberal elite, who's out of touch with the rest of the city.

Not that she had the ability to call any shots as a bureaucrat, but I think city planning's support of the Scarborough subway extension under her watch says otherwise. Tory is the epitome of "elite" (and actually lives downtown), so in a head to head match, I'm not sure that she's going to be sunk for that.
 
If she had focused on planning outside of Toronto, that would have made her more acceptable. Even if it was a goodwill gesture type thing. But nope. Total 100% snobbery.

If she'd focused on planning [outside of the purview of her job in the TORONTO planning department], that would have made her more acceptable?

She was not beholden to GTA suburbs. Her job was to plan for the city, not areas outside of municipal taxation. Want GTA-level planning? Talk to the province. Unfortunately, we've spent too much time, energy and resources on making sure Joe-the-Georgetown-taxpayer gets the most out of Toronto, meanwhile areas of large growth get ignored until it's impossible to ignore them any more. Why the hell do we have TTC subway stops in Vaughan again, and not just a GO Transit system with better service and range?
 
I like how you imply that NYSE aren't part of Toronto and then call Keesmaat a snob for favouring the inner core.
She was not beholden to GTA suburbs. Her job was to plan for the city, not areas outside of municipal taxation. Want GTA-level planning? Talk to the province.

The "outside of Toronto" remark was probably is referring to outside the old city. Even so, the argument that she was "focused" on that part of the city and somehow ignoring the rest, is pretty insufficient without some evidence to back it up.
 
If she had focused on planning outside of Toronto, that would have made her more acceptable. Even if it was a goodwill gesture type thing. But nope. Total 100% snobbery.

Hmmm, that must be why all of the major transit projects currently under way are in the suburbs, not downtown where they're actually needed.
 
With DoFo running for the provincial PC leadership, Tory is obviously less concerned about a suburban challenger and more focused on his vulnerability to a competent, urbanist candidate. He’s been supporting little, so-typically-Toronto-timid progressive initiatives like the Bloor bike lanes and the lame-ass King pilot, and this latest news falls in the same category. Of course the billions will go to suburb-friendly insanities like East Gardiner and SSE, so we know where Tory’s heart lies. But on the plus side we won’t actually be permitted to have an accurate costing on the latter before the election. And the no-no tax increase pledge dovetails nicely with the inevitable SSE fiscal disaster.
 
With DoFo running for the provincial PC leadership, Tory is obviously less concerned about a suburban challenger and more focused on his vulnerability to a competent, urbanist candidate. He’s been supporting little, so-typically-Toronto-timid progressive initiatives like the Bloor bike lanes and the lame-ass King pilot, and this latest news falls in the same category. Of course the billions will go to suburb-friendly insanities like East Gardiner and SSE, so we know where Tory’s heart lies. But on the plus side we won’t actually be permitted to have an accurate costing on the latter before the election. And the no-no tax increase pledge dovetails nicely with the inevitable SSE fiscal disaster.

Meh, by all means elect him. We shall see how much he enjoys his job with a slate of more competent and aggressive councillors. He might come to regret it.

AoD
 
I am not looking forward to the obscene number of debates, even though the election period has been shortened. There should only be a dozen or so of them, if even that.
 

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