{"id":64540,"date":"2021-10-29T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=64540"},"modified":"2021-10-29T09:05:05","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T13:05:05","slug":"lorinc-unanswered-questions-about-john-tory-and-the-rogers-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2021\/10\/29\/lorinc-unanswered-questions-about-john-tory-and-the-rogers-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Unanswered questions about John Tory and the Rogers Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Questions about Mayor John Tory\u2019s relationship with Rogers Communications Inc. have dogged him since even before he was elected mayor, and they have once again burst into the public eye.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, the Toronto Star<\/em>\u2019s Jennifer Pagliaro reported that Tory receives a $100,000 annual retainer from the Rogers Control Trust, which is the entity that owns 97% of the company\u2019s voting shares and is in the midst of a Shakespearean battle that has dominated the headlines for weeks.<\/p>\n

The detail about the retainer, which does not appear in the disclosure documents that Rogers files with the securities regulators, is new. For many years, Tory\u2019s membership on this elite board \u2014 at the behest, he\u2019s often said, of his late friend and mentor Ted Rogers \u2014 has been a matter of public knowledge. Yet he has never mentioned his financial interest in that role.<\/p>\n

Before he ran for mayor in 2014, the Star<\/em> has also reported<\/a>, Tory owned millions of dollars of RCI shares, and his CV, of course, included stints in the Rogers C-suite.<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s stock and frequently repeated response about his connection to Rogers is that he recuses himself from any decisions that involve Rogers\u2019 interests, which include the city\u2019s wireless contracts, access to public rights of way for cable installation, and, of course, real estate, and specifically the Rogers Centre, which the company owns.<\/p>\n

The Rogers Centre story turns out to be more complicated than those other files.<\/p>\n

On July, 3, 2019, Tory told NewsTalk1010<\/a> that the company was thinking about tearing down the 30-year-old stadium, which was built with over half a billion in taxpayer money in the late 1980s and then sold to Rogers for $25 million as part of a bankruptcy proceeding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you\u2019re going to see some action because they have a decision to make, do they invest more in it or do they actually try to replace it?\u201d Tory said on air. \u201cI think the people at Rogers are aware of the fact that the notion that you\u2019re going to get a lot of big cheques or any cheques written by government for the stadium is not likely to happen. Therefore, they\u2019re going to need to come up with a way to pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A month later, he publicly declared<\/a> he would be recusing himself from any further discussions about the Rogers Centre, citing a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

In light of what\u2019s going on now, why did Tory suddenly start talking about the Rogers Centre in the first place? And how did he know that \u201cthe people at Rogers are aware\u201d of the fact that they\u2019re not going to get any \u201ccheques written by the government for the stadium\u201d?<\/p>\n

He said later that he was speculating.<\/p>\n

But on June 18, 2019 \u2014 about two weeks prior<\/em> to Tory\u2019s first comments \u2014 a Rogers lobbyist named Jodi Parps<\/a> emailed Councillor Joe Cressy and a member of his staff about a freshly registered lobbying file<\/a> to discuss \u201cfuture plans for Rogers Centre, the surrounding area, and City’s leasehold interest in the subject site.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, on July 10, Cressy and his staff had a follow-up meeting with Edward Rogers, the now-fired Rogers CFO Anthony Staffieri (whom Rogers wanted to replace CEO Joe Natale), and Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro (who had told BNN Bloomberg<\/a> earlier in the week that the stadium needed work. \u201cYou need to be able to provide a family the best family experience, or a young person who wants to come for a bar environment, the best bar in Toronto.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Cressy says he\u2019s never spoken to Tory about the future of the Rogers Centre. \u201cHe declared an interest on that file,\u201d he told me in a text message this week. \u201cThat file has an iron wall between City staff and me AND the mayor\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were some other people connected to this file who also met with Cressy on July 10, 2019: Amir Remtulla, Doug Ford\u2019s former executive assistant and now a lobbyist for Brookfield Asset Management\u2019s property group, as well as three Brookfield executives.<\/p>\n

Brookfield is a massive firm with global interests, and assets estimated to be worth over $250 billion, according to the Financial Post<\/a><\/em>. Those with long memories will recall that it once was the Edper conglomerate, which had been founded by members of the Bronfman dynasty.<\/p>\n

One of its longest serving executives and directors is Jack Cockwell<\/a>, who joined Edper in 1968 and rose to become CEO (the name Edper, which became linked to Bay Street scandal in the 1990s, has been purged from Brookfield\u2019s website). Cockwell, as it happens, joined the reconstituted Rogers board<\/a> last weekend after Edward Rogers replaced several directors. (He\u2019s also served on the Waterfront Toronto board<\/a> and those of many charities.)<\/p>\n

In late November, 2020, well over a year after those meetings, the Globe and Mail<\/em>\u2019s Andrew Willis published a story<\/a> citing sources saying that Rogers and Brookfield were planning to demolish the stadium, re-build part of it on a portion of the leased site, and redevelop the rest with offices and condos. As Willis wrote, \u201cRogers Communications Inc. and the real estate arm of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. are working with city, provincial and federal government officials on a plan that would effectively cut the Rogers Centre in half.\u201d He also noted Edward Rogers’ growing interest in real estate investment.<\/p>\n

Rogers quickly denied Willis\u2019 account, and a spokesperson, Andrew Garas, said<\/a> that any such plans were on hold. \u201cThere is no update on the\u00a0Rogers\u00a0Centre\u00a0to share at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

As most Torontonians know, baseball was back at the Rogers Centre this year, and the rumours about its future have been drowned out by the brawl inside Rogers\u2019 boardroom.<\/p>\n

However, the lobbyist files remain active. As for Tory, who is now embroiled in a extravagantly ugly family fight, he still hasn\u2019t adequately explained how he had known way back in July of 2019 that the future of the Rogers Centre was, as the old saying goes, in play.<\/p>\n

photo by James Cullen (cc)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Questions about Mayor John Tory\u2019s relationship with Rogers Communications Inc. have dogged him since even before he was elected mayor, and they have once again burst into the public eye. Earlier this week, the Toronto Star\u2019s Jennifer Pagliaro reported that Tory receives a $100,000 annual retainer from the Rogers Control Trust, which is the entityContinue reading “LORINC: Unanswered questions about John Tory and the Rogers Centre”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":64545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Unanswered questions about John Tory and the Rogers Centre - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2021\/10\/29\/lorinc-unanswered-questions-about-john-tory-and-the-rogers-centre\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Unanswered questions about John Tory and the Rogers Centre - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Questions about Mayor John Tory\u2019s relationship with Rogers Communications Inc. have dogged him since even before he was elected mayor, and they have once again burst into the public eye. 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