Though John Tory was the leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives and Olivia Chow was an NDP MP, few of their policy disagreements are genuinely ideological.

They had two stereotypical right-left exchanges on Monday.

Early in their debate at St. Andrew's Church, Chow touted her proposal to “create” jobs for young people by forcing companies who get big city infrastructure contracts to set aside positions for local youth.

She said that system had worked well during the Regent Park redevelopment project. Tory, though, said many of the set-aside Regent Park jobs were created by negotiating with the companies involved.

“I would prefer to do it by way of negotiation,” he said, “as opposed to you, who will set up some sort of bureaucracy.”

Later, moderator Evan Solomon of CBC asked the candidates what the mayor can do to help older adults who have been laid off. Tory said he doesn't think the municipal government gets enough money from property taxes to provide job-transition programs. As mayor, he said, he would try to persuade the federal and provincial governments to increase their own support.

“It is the proper responsibility of the federal and provincial governments,” he said.

Chow said the city already spends money on retraining and should continue to do so. Then she went broader.

“Mr. Tory — listen to his answers very carefully,” she said. “There's really no role for the city government to play in asking governments that do business with the city to sign an agreement. No role to play. No role to play on dealing with senior workers. No role to play in almost everything.” Returning to her own voice, she added: “We do not believe that we should leave people behind.”

Tory scoffed.

“If we're going to try and pretend — this is what we do, especially in election campaigns — we pretend that the city hall, after the election, there's going to be some magic, gigantic pot of money that's going to be available, when we can't even keep up public housing and keep the roads in proper repair...I'm saying let's get real.”

“If you think the private sector is the solution for everything,” Chow responded, “then why are you running for mayor, if you don't see any role the city would play?”

Define 'identical'

Chow emphatically challenged Tory to admit that her promise on property taxes — to keep increases “around” the rate of inflation — is “identical” to his own promise to keep increases “within” the rate of inflation. As Tory pointed out, they are, in fact, not identical: Chow's is less specific, and she has mused about a 3 per cent increase even though inflation is about 2 per cent.

Where are we again? Part 1

Chow trotted out one of her scripted zingers, accusing Tory of going from a faith-based schools plan — the one that doomed him in the 2007 provincial election — to a “faith-based” transit funding plan, tax increment financing. She was, still, in a church, so some people booed. During a subsequent exchange on the island airport, Tory, who endorses council's unanimous vote to wait for more information before making a final decision, accused the anti-jets Chow of saying “to hell with the experts.”

Where are we again? Part 2

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Tory blamed Chow, a former city councillor, for the traffic nightmare that is Liberty Village. The problem: as she pointed out, Liberty Village is in the ward beside her old ward, not her old ward itself. Scrambling gamely, he tried a new argument: part of the problem at city hall, he said, is that councillors don't take ownership of issues outside their wards.

Section 37

Tory used the topic of “Section 37” money to portray himself as a fiscal watchdog. Chow used it to portray him as ignorant.

Tory argued there is insufficient transparency and accountability around the spending of the millions of dollars that councillors get developers to agree to give the city in exchange for the right to build bigger buildings.

“Nobody's ever really sure what happens to it,” he said.

Chow said, “Can you give me one example? Where? Where? Give me one example.”

Tory did not give her an example. But he said he had seen a ward-by-ward list of Section 37 totals, and some wards have received “$50 million or $60 million.”

“I can tell you right now, some of that money has not been deployed, and some of it for a long period of time,” he said.” And I'm just saying that I think the taxpayers are owed better than that in terms of transparency, and if we have the transparency, we're much more likely to see whether a park was delivered somewhere that's needed with that money, or something else, or not.”

“Mr. Tory, you can't just make things up along the way,” Chow said. She said those funds are “locked in” to specific uses by legal agreement with the developers but often aren't spent until the building is done.

“You can't just look at a report and say 'oh, you know, there's money there,'“ she said. “It doesn't happen that way. If you had any experience in dealing with Section 37, you would know that the funding won't come until the development is finished.”

“Right now,” Tory countered, “you also can't tell me that all of that money that's been taken in — I'm not just including the Section 37 money, I'm including as well the development charges - was spent the way we should have seen it spent.”

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