Mayor John Tory said Wednesday he had no involvement in encouraging the owner of the Scarborough Town Centre to back a pro-subway push, following a Star story outlining those connections. “It is grossly misleading for both a headline and a story to imply the mayor had any involvement in this whatsoever,” Tory told reporters, responding to a question about whether it was appropriate for his office to privately lobby a developer that does business with the city. “I didn’t make a phone call, have a conversation, send an email about this ever, ever, not one time, and there would have been nothing wrong if I had.”The Star reported that Oxford Properties president and CEO Blake Hutcheson told an annual meeting of the pension group OMERS this week that Tory’s office had “bombarded” them to support a subway and influenced them to back the pro-subway ConnectScarborough group. In an email to the Star on Tuesday, the mayor’s spokesperson Don Peat wrote: “The mayor’s office and other councillors encouraged Oxford to be more public about their views on the subway.”

Source: thestar April 12, 2017 22:41 UTC