Lets re-visit what MARCUS GEE of The Globe and Mail, a John Tory friendly newspaper, said on Monday, Jan. 19 2015.
What is harder to defend is Mr. Tory’s claim that he didn’t know the true state of the TTC when he made his promise not to raise fares. Mr. Tory has been around a long time. As a former radio talk-show host, a two-time mayoral candidate and a civic leader who campaigned for better transit, he is hardly a babe in the woods.
Transit was the centrepiece of (John Tory) election campaign. He criticized Mr. Ford’s transit record and held forth on a multimillion-dollar transit-improvement plan that the TTC put out last summer. Where, he demanded then, was all the money going to come from? This avowed non-expert considered himself expert enough to propose an elaborate $8-billion transit plan, SmartTrack.
It is unfair to hold politicians to every one of their promises. If the facts change, they have a right, even a responsibility, to change tack. But when he made his promise, Mr. Tory knew that the TTC was struggling to restore service. He must have known, as well, that finding the money to get the service back would be tough without asking commuters to pay more at the fare box.
He made the promise regardless. Now he has broken it, and that is never a small thing. Mr. Ford, making sense for once, put it simply. “John said he wasn’t going to increase fares. We all heard it during the mayor’s debate. And he has.”
