Mel Lastman

He's a former cabinet minister under Dalton McGinty and a bit under Kathleen Wynne.

And he worked with Mel Lastman at City Hall as a city councillor.

And it turned out, while we'd sparred in the legislature, there were some ideas we really support together.

And Brad Bradford, I think, hats off to him on this idea to turn our water and wastewater system in Toronto away from a current system where everybody pays the costs up front.

That is back in 1997 when the two incumbents were running.

It was then Mayor of North York and Mel Lastman.

defeated, you know, the Toronto mayor at that time, Barbara Hall.

Yeah, that was the first, you know, time you would have actually had, I guess, two incumbents running against each other.

And, of course, the reason the Queen Subway got back-burnered was, oh, we have to build lines in the suburbs.

You know, Queen was supposed to be the next line after Bloor, but then Mel Lastman came along and said, oh, North York deserves at least one subway.

You called it in our other episode a virus that had come into the civic discourse about this deserving transit.

Yeah,

Joe, how problematic or do you think it's very realistic for Brad Bradford to promise a year of a one-year property tax freeze while he's promising all of these other things, including adding more police officers?

I remember Mayor Mel Lastman making that promise and one of the regrets in a conversation that I had with him towards the end of his term was was I regret having promised that and having done that.

The same thing happened with city council 2010 to 2014.

Rob Ford got away with it for one year, but then right after that was a council rebellion and it didn't happen again.

Weasel out of giving a straight answer that they can be called to account for.

And I remember way back in the day when we had one of those sanctions debates for Mel Lastman.

He was mayor and we had a panel of reporters there and.

First, my colleague asked him, he had promised not to raise taxes.

...

this is when Mel Lastman was the mayor of Toronto.

Yeah.

That's right.

I mean, John Tory sat on the police board.

Mel Lastman sat on the police board.

Even the last time we had an NDP mayor and David Miller, he sat on the police board.

But Olivia Chow has delegated that away.