Remembering John Tory and the legacy of his disgraceful resignation

It's been just over five months since Toronto Mayor John Tory resign from office in disgrace. Even though the city has finally elected a new leader, Olivia Chow, it's worth remembering Tory's time in office and why he left Toronto as one of Canada's most disliked political officials.

Tory resigned from his position as the mayor of Toronto after it was revealed that he'd had an affair with one of his staffers while in office.

“I will be spending the next two days in meetings with Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie and City staff to continue to ensure an orderly transition,” Tory said in his statement on February 15th. 

“I continue to be deeply sorry and apologize unreservedly to the people of Toronto and to all those hurt by my actions without exception,” Tory added. 

Of all the scandals one would have thought could take down Toronto’s 65th mayor, few would have guessed that it would have been an extramarital love affair with one of his mayoral staffers. 

"During the pandemic, I developed a relationship with an employee in my office in a way that did not meet the standards to which I hold myself as Mayor and as a family man," Toronto’s former mayor said during his resignation announcement. 

"The relationship ended by mutual consent earlier this year. During the course of our relationship some time ago, the employee decided to pursue employment outside City Hall and secured a job elsewhere," Tory added. 

When John Tory ran for mayor of Toronto he portrayed himself as a strong conservative family man and promised to return some normalcy to Toronto’s politics, something he did relatively well in comparison to his predecessor. 

Tory was a welcomed breath of fresh air when he was elected in 2014. The stretch of Rob Ford and his cocaine-fueled scandals still loomed large in the noses of many Torontonians but he never really did do more than he promised. 

“He ends on a rather… yeah not an exciting note,” said Wayne Petrozzi of Toronto Metropolitan University at the time of Tory's resignation from office, “but that’s the way he came into office.”

"He promised not to do much, and he didn’t,” Petrozzi criticized as he waxed and waned about one of Toronto’s longest-serving mayors. 

While running for office in 2014, Tory promised honesty in government, as well as a program designed to make Toronto “more livable, more affordable, and more functional” according to the Toronto Star.

While some would argue that Tory did restore honesty to Toronto politics, few would say that he made the city more livable, affordable, and functional. 

Under John Tory, Toronto became the 89th most expensive city in the world according to Mercer’s 2022 Cost of Living Report, easily beating out Vancouver which only placed 108th. 

Even though home prices in Canada were falling, in Toronto at the time it still cost on average $1.2 million dollars for a detached home and could run a person as high as $3 million in some areas of the city according to a report from Jack Landau of BlogTO. But was still better than the cost to rent. 

"Today’s rents are unaffordable to nearly half of Toronto renters,” wrote the Toronto Stars’ Joy Connelly in an October 2022 article on the unaffordability of the city. 

"According to the City of Toronto," the Star journalist wrote, "the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in 2021 was $1,661," a price Connelly said was out of reach for anyone earning minimum wage and one that's only gotten worse since the article was written, and that situation has only gotten worse.

If you thought the cost of buying and renting was a problem for Toronto's affordability after more than a decade of John Tory’s leadership, those issues paled in comparison to the city’s crumbling functionality and infrastructure. 

“We are billions behind on basic repairs to keep things in a functional state in Toronto,” wrote TVO Today’s Matt Gurney, noting that the city’s state of good repair backlog is $9.5 billion and is expected to reach $18.1 billion within the next decade. 

Housing, livability, and functionality were all issues that made John Tory one of Canada’s most disliked mayors, and maybe that’s what his legacy should be rather than one of a straight-laced conservative who was brought down by an affair.