>>Mayor Tory: Good morning.
Today, the Executive Committee is
meeting with a very busy agenda,
including the City's first ever Reconciliation Plan.
As I said last week, in introducing the plan.
It is an important step
forward for our city and we are
genuinely committed to
implementing real reconciliation
measures with the full engagement of
Indigenous communities.
It is a living document from day one,
so it's not meant to be the last word,
it's meant to be the first word.
Developed in close consultation
with Indigenous communities,
but now being brought
to life with their
their leadership under their
leadership and with their ownership.
And I want to outline that I understand
the phrase that is contained
in the report that says
nothing about us without us,
and that is something that, as Mayor,
I'm very conscious of as we go
forward with this.
So that is something very important
in front of the Executive Committee
today and on to the City Council after that.
I also want to highlight the
ModernTO report, which is in front
of the Executive Committee today.
It's a report which outlines the
proposed vision for unlocking
eight City-owned properties to help
us deliver even more affordable housing.
The relocation of more City jobs
to locations such as
the Scarborough Civic Centre.
So City Council adopted ModernTO
in October of 2019,
staff have been hard at work to see
through the goals that we have for this program.
It was always about how we could
modernize our city office footprint
so that we were using the space we
had as efficiently and effectively as possible.
And that meant taking our own space
in the civic buildings, for example,
to city halls as it were
and making better use of those more
efficient use of those as opposed
to using expensive leased space
elsewhere in the city.
And this, of course, can lead to the
saving of millions of taxpayers
dollars on an ongoing basis.
And then it opens up
some of these properties for
other uses, including affordable housing,
and the modernized spaces
will allow for jobs to be in
different parts of the city and city own space.
The program made sense when it came
forward in 2019.
It makes even more sense today
in the wake of the pandemic.
This is exactly what people expect
us to do here at the City Hall,
which is to find sensible ways to do
things in the most efficient way
possible, reducing costs
so as to keep our city operations
more affordable and creating more
opportunities for top priorities
like affordable housing.
That includes making sure that we're
using our city facilities, which
already cost millions of dollars
a year to operate in the right way,
in the best way, in the most efficient way.
COVID-19 allowed us to see how
and why ModernTO can work
after many workers were suddenly
working from home out of necessity.
We know the hybrid work model on
which ModernTO depended works.
We saw that real time
and so now we just need to move
forward with this plan and the time
to make this change is now.
ModernTO will reduce the City's
office footprint from 55 different sites,
many of them leased to 15 locations,
primarily by ending many of those leases with
outside parties and creating office
hubs within key civic buildings,
including City Hall itself,
Metro Hall and the Civic Centres in
Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke.
And that process, in turn, will
unlock eight low occupancy,
city-owned properties, generating
investment capital that can be
directed towards City-building
purposes, including, very
importantly, the delivery of more
affordable housing.
The sites to be unlocked and
repurposed include 610 Bay Street,
which is the site of the Old Bus Terminal,
277 Victoria Street,
931 Yonge Street,
33 Queen Street East,
75 Elizabeth Street,
1900 Yonge Street,
which is the present headquarters of the TTC,
18 Dyas Road and 95 The Esplanade.
These eight properties have an
estimated market value of at least
450 million dollars.
It's anticipated that the majority
of the value will be invested
into city-building benefits, while a
portion will be allocated to the
Land Acquisition Reserve Fund as
per Council direction.
To secure more affordable housing options.
I am not averse at all as Mayor to
us buying land where it is
strategically advantageous for us to
do so and then using
that land for city-building purposes.
Top of that list is affordable housing,
but also things like parkland as well.
By repurposing these sites, we can
explore better use of public land
and identify ways we can leverage
the land value to build more vibrant
and livable communities.
Across the portfolio, the plan proposes to
deliver between 500 to 600
affordable rental and ownership
homes in prime downtown
and midtown locations.
And this is important as well to make sure
that downtown
we also have included
affordable rental and
ownership properties right downtown,
not just in other parts of the city.
It also allows us to proceed
with needed infrastructure and
service improvements,
new institutional and civic spaces, and
contributions made to our
Land Acquisition Fund.
So to pick one example, the site of
the old bus terminal at 610 Bay Street.
It presents an exciting opportunity
to deliver all of affordable housing,
accommodating a new
Toronto Paramedic Service hub,
new retail and commercial space,
while at the same time incorporating
and preserving the existing heritage
structure of the bus terminal and
providing for public realm and
streetscape improvements.
So that is possible
that it shows what is possible in
one of these sites going from an old
bus terminal that's now all along,
no longer in use to all of
these other uses, including
affordable housing, but also other
uses as well.
I know the staff will work on these
redevelopment plans and opportunities.
They have yet to be determined,
but it will be a
collaborative effort involving the
City, CreateTO and, of course,
other people in the private and
nonprofit development sector.
And we will be getting lots of
impact from City Councillors, from
occupants who live in the
in the area, from City divisions, as
well as from external partners.
I also want to note that any public
services currently being delivered
on these sites, including The Works
at 277 Victoria Street,
will continue to be delivered and
robust communications will occur
well before any city services are relocated.
I want to take this opportunity to
thank the CreateTO team,
the City Corporate Real Estate Management division,
City Planning and all of the other City agencies
that have helped us get ready to
take these next steps and to
move ModernTO forward, and they
were moving it forward in terms of
some of the preparation work even
during the pandemic.
It allows us to move forward not
only in building more affordable
housing, but also modernizing
the city and the services that we
have to offer.
This is something that I've been
proud to champion from day one,
and I'm looking forward to seeing
the ModernTO plan come to life in
the months and years ahead.
Pursuant to the plan that's under
consideration today.
It modernizes the government.
It makes the City government itself more efficient.
It contributes to future strategic
land acquisitions, and it
offers new locations for affordable housing.
And these are gains that we
must consolidate and achieve
and move forward with now because
we have the opportunity to do so.
Consolidate our gains on these
things where we've put the plan
together, make them happen,
bring down the number of city
locations, make the city more
efficient and at the top of the
list, make sure that we have more
affordable housing for people to live in.
Today's an important step forward on all of that.
I'm happy to answer your questions.
We have some CreateTO people on the
line with us.
If there are technical questions
about this report and on
any other subject that's of interest
to you today, thank you.
>>Don: Thank you, Mayor.
Will now open up questioning,
starting with Momin Qureshi from City News.
Momin, go ahead.
You're off mute Momin.
We'll come back to Momin, we'll try
Jennifer Pagliaro from the Toronto Star.
>>Jennifer: Good morning Mayor can you hear me?
>>Mayor Tory: Yes, I can. Thanks, Jennifer. Go ahead.
>>Jennifer: Thanks.
I wanted to ask, you know, the
reconciliation plan is obviously
an important document, and there are
a lot of concrete steps in there.
But you and I both know
that sometimes keeping track of
the progress of these very big
policy reports can be
challenging, and it's not always
clear the progress we're making.
So I wonder what your expectation is.
You know, for example, there's a
whole section about combating
racism that that's a huge topic.
It's a it's a big task
even for a city like ours and
wondering what what you will do
personally as mayor to see
those actions move forward.
>>Mayor Tory: One of the things I initiated before
this report came forward was
meetings that I was having on a very
regular basis.
Every month I was
meeting four and sometimes five or
six of the agencies that serve
Indigenous communities in Toronto.
And it not, it gave me not only an
opportunity to learn about the work
they were doing, but also to respond
to some of their concerns, which
included the fact, for example, that
they felt they were not getting
their fair share of funding even
during the pandemic to serve
Indigenous communities.
It included the fact that they
pointed out to me that the
Indigenous organizations were not
really partners in housing for
Indigenous people, but should be
because if they were going to have
culturally sensitive housing,
they had to be partners.
And I think the results you now see literally
coming out of those meetings that I
had were that we
did allocate during the pandemic a
larger share and appropriate share
of money for Indigenous communities
to support them, and that
we now have a very substantial
partnership with Miziwe Biik to
do a 5,200 affordable housing unit.
So I think in terms of my own
participation in accountability,
I will be continuing with that
process of meeting with people on a
very regular basis to hear back from
them, whether we're doing what we've
said we're going to do.
But secondly, there are quite robust
accountability mechanisms built in
to this Reconciliation Action Plan.
It's not dissimilar when you
mentioned racism to what we did with
the anti-Black Racism Plan
Action Plan, where we have
a group that meets and I meet with
them, I think two or three times a
year to have them tell me
how we're doing on the things we
said we would do.
And I can assure you those meetings
are not self-congratulatory
meetings on either side, their
meetings where we talk turkey about,
you know, whether things are getting done or not.
So I welcome those
kinds of mechanisms because I think
it keeps the entire city government
on its feet and on its toes rather.
And I think there's
substantial accountability
mechanisms built in, plus the
efforts that I will continue to make
to stay in very close touch with
Indigenous communities.
I'll say one more thing.
I think the other part of that
constant communication is going to
be to even more completely engage
the Indigenous communities.
They still feel and I understand
their feelings very acutely
that you know, anything that comes
out of City Hall like this.
Notwithstanding the consultation and
engagement that took place leading
up to it, which was significant, is
still a document prepared by the
city government with respect to
some of its plans for reconciliation.
And of course, reconciliation is a multi-sided
process, and it has to involve
ownership by Indigenous communities
and having them feel
that this is a legitimate document they own.
And so I'm very much committed and I
committed publicly to that and
privately with them that we're going
to keep moving in the direction of
making sure they own this
reconciliation process and that we
are implementing a plan
that that is a plan that is
very legitimate and satisfactory in
their eyes, not just in the eyes of
people who work in the City Hall.
And notwithstanding the very sincere
efforts that have been made by
people inside this building.
>>Jennifer: And I wanted to ask you a question
unrelated to executive,
but not to the city.
David Rider had a story today
about the infighting
and some of the scandals happening
at the City's largest union.
And I wondered as Mayor, do you get
briefed on these issues?
Do you have any role just
given the the situation
and the impact it may have on on so
many city workers?
>>Mayor Tory: Well, these are largely internal
matters, but I and I haven't
had a briefing that sort of goes
beyond what people have read in the
newspaper as yet.
But I will say this Local 79
and all of our unions during the
course of the pandemic have been
excellent partners.
They have been people who
demonstrated a great deal of much
needed flexibility to allow us to
redeploy workers so that we could
look after some of the most
vulnerable people in our city.
And so stability inside those
organizations is important to us
because these are our partners, and
I look at it that way.
I think I've had a reasonably good
record on labor relations during
my time as mayor, and I would intend
to continue that. But that requires,
you know, me to work with the
leaders of those unions and them to
work with me. And so stability
inside those organizations is
important because they represent our
employees who we value so much
and because we need to deal with
them on things like the pandemic and
other day to day matters.
So I'm looking forward, obviously,
to hearing more about it, not
because of curiosity, but really
just because I want to make sure
that they can move forward in a transition.
They obviously have to
go through now where they're going
to change leadership, and
I just hope that goes smoothly for
them and that we can continue to
work with them on all the different
things we do together.
>>Don Thank you, Jennifer.
That's it for questions today.
>>Mayor Tory: What happened to Momin?
>>Don: Momin had to step away,
so he doesn't have any question.
>>Mayor Tory: All right. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.