During his official mayoral campaign launch on Sunday, John Tory defended his record on public safety policies and transit and took aim at his main opponent former chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat.

At his town hall meeting in Liberty Village, Tory told the crowd that he is “proud” of his accomplishments on council during his four years in the mayor’s chair.

“I’m proud of my record of standing up for Toronto and working to make Toronto a better place to live. There is more to do and more that we will do,” he said.

Tory said under his leadership, measures have been taken to make the city safer and concrete plans have been put in place to build more transit, including his SmartTrack plan.

“The first thing we did under my administration was to introduce a (transit) plan and get the council to agree on it and approve it and it took a lot of hard work,” he said.

Tory went on to suggest Keesmaat was enthusiastic about his transit plan and even “took some credit for it.”

“I’m fine with that but it doesn’t quite square with all of her criticism that we hear today about that plan now that she suddenly she decided she wanted to be mayor,” he added.

Tory accused Keesmaat of wanting to “start up the old debates” on transit, a move he suggests will set the city back.

“She wants to start up the old debates and the old arguments and the studies all over again. She wants to take us backwards to the days where all we did was redraw plans and re-debate plans and re-decide things and no work actually got done,” Tory said.

“Well I say to that, no way. We are not going back to those bleak days. We are moving forward with a realistic long-term plan approved overwhelmingly by the city council and support by the other governments.”

Keesmaat fired back on Sunday, suggesting Tory has not been honest about his “real record of dithering and weak leadership.”

“John Tory promised to build 53 new kilometres of track for "SmartTrack". Zero — not a single kilometre — of that track has or will ever be built. He promised to build 22 stations. Now, six new stations are currently planned to be added to the GO system at the City’s expense. John Tory should be held accountable for that record,” Keesmaat said in a written statement.

“Today, John Tory criticized my goal of building 100,000 new affordable rental homes as overly ambitious, and defended his modest goal. He has much to be modest about when it comes to housing: Toronto recently surpassed Vancouver as the most expensive city in Canada in which to rent. Toronto is now the world’s ninth least affordable housing market. John Tory should be held accountable for that record, too.”

Speaking to CP24 on Sunday afternoon, Keesmaat also criticized Tory’s record on public safety.

“He did not support a handgun ban. Now we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of shootings. We have a public crisis happening around safety and now he supports a handgun ban,” Keesmaat said. “I think we need to be clear about those kinds of things. We need to be honest about his record as mayor.”