Toronto Environmental Alliance

13 October 2010
Don Peat
Toronto Sun

Mayoral contender Rob Ford isn’t green with envy that the Toronto Environmental Alliance gave him an F and rival George Smitherman an A+ in its candidate report card.

While giving Joe Pantalone and George Smitherman an A+, the alliance failed Ford and Rocco Rossi, who also received an F, on Wednesday.

Alliance executive director Franz Hartmann said Rossi and Ford didn’t submit any answers to a provided survey.

“If a person who takes a course fails to show up to the final exam, they get a failing grade for that, this is the same,” Hartmann said.

The survey asked the candidates to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions about public transit, waste diversion, green energy, buying local green products and other topics.

Hartmann said the ranking matters because Torontonians care passionately about building a green city.

But Ford fired back that the survey was biased.

“It may as well have been written by David Miller himself,” Ford said on Wednesday. “I’m not going to pander to special interest groups or promise to spend money we don’t have.

“We need to get rid of the wasteful spending so we can invest in priorities like public transit and the environment.”

Rossi said Toronto cannot be strong environmentally unless it’s economy is in good shape and that’s why he focused “on developing the best fiscal plan of all the candidates.”

“We all want a greener Toronto but TEA’s agenda is not widely shared by Torontonians,” Rossi said. “TEA does not share my belief in contracting out garbage, exploring new and emerging technologies to deal with our garbage problems, selling Toronto Hydro to pay down the debt to invest in subways, reducing the size of council and term limits.”

Hartmann denied TEA was pushing its own agenda, insisting, “this is not TEA’s agenda, this is Toronto’s environmental agenda.”

As originally published here: http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontovotes2010/2010/10/13/15675701.html