WATCH: This is day one of the John Tory era at city hall and the new mayor is wasting no time getting down to work. Dave Trafford reports.
TORONTO – Toronto Mayor John Tory and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne pledged to work together to tackle the city’s most pressing issues such as transit, housing and job creation.
“John has already shown a real commitment at working with other levels of government,” said Wynne following a joint meeting Monday morning at Queen’s Park — Tory’s first with the premier since claiming victory in October’s municipal election.
“We’re not going to necessarily agree on everything over the next four years, but as elected leaders it’s important to work together.”
Wynne also stated there is a potential for increased cooperation with Tory than during the Rob Ford era.
“If the communication is better, I think there’s much more potential that more can get done and you can boil that down to money but I think it goes beyond that,” Wynne said.
“How do we coordinate efforts? How do we make sure that our priorities are aligned and that is what is critical at this juncture.”
Tory promised during his election campaign to work with the province and the federal government to move ahead with plans to enhance transportation services in the city and implement his SmartTrack proposal.
“What’s encouraging for me, we talked about traffic and transportation… and to integrate SmartTrack into a regional rail system,” said Tory.
The Ontario premier also promised that the controversial Scarborough subway extension will go ahead as planned.
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“I campaigned on getting ahead with fixing traffic and again with the Scarborough subway and SmartTrack,” Tory explained. “The Scarborough subway has been agreed on and will proceed.”
The meeting comes a day after a list of Tory’s executive committee appointments was leaked to the media. In it, councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong was chosen as the city’s new deputy mayor.
All city councillors, including the mayor, will be sworn in at a ceremony inside council chambers tomorrow at 2 p.m.
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