It’s been a year like no other for Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly, who inherited more power at city hall after Toronto council’s move to take away some of Rob Ford’s executive functions in the wake of his admission of drug use. Despite events of this year, Kelly says he isn’t ruling out supporting Ford in the upcoming municipal elections.
In an interview with CTV Toronto’s Natalie Johnson, Kelly said: “He’s working hard on his weight, maybe if he works as hard on other personal issues -- who knows who he might be sometime from now?”
A veteran Scarborough politicianand Ford ally, Kelly was appointed Deputy Mayor in August after Doug Holyday stepped down to run in a provincial byelection.
Kellyurged the mayor to take a leave of absence following his admission to having smoked crack cocaine, after months of having denied the allegations. When Ford didn’t step downor take a leave of absence, council stripped the mayor of most of his powers and gave them to Kelly.
Kelly says his relationship with the mayor hasn’t changed much since the scandal broke. He says Ford, who remains the figure head of the city, is a “shy guy” who largely keeps to himself.
“I don’t think we’re getting in each other’s way,” he said.
Moving forward, Kelly said he hopes personal issues will remain “outside of the body politic and outside of the political discourse of the city of Toronto.”
As de-facto mayor for the next 10 months, Kelly hopes to focus on responding to the major challenges Toronto faces. His top issues: reducing traffic and modernizing infrastructure, which he says will require multi-billion dollar investments.
He isn’t talking about introducing new taxes. What he hopes to do is bring the federal and provincial governments to the table to work out a “fair deal” that would supply Toronto with a “dependable revenue stream” flowing from the two orders of government.
“The national government takes a ton of money out of Toronto, so wouldn’t it be nice if they shared more of it with us?”
Kelly believes Canada’s largest city should be eligible for more provincial and federal investments in order to compete with other world-class cities like Shanghai and Mumbai.
Inthe coming months, Kelly says his priority will be on restoring calm at city hall, regaining the respect of Torontonians in their city government, and turning the focus off Rob Ford.
“That’s the most important thing for me,” he said.
Torontonians were just beginning to boast about their city, Kelly said, “and suddenly, just unexpectedly, we’re the laughing stock of the world.”
“I think a lot of Torontonians have been hurt because they got to the point that they had all this confidence and pride, and to have it taken away from them, I think hurt a lot of people.”
With a report from CTV’s Natalie Johnson
