John Tory is running for mayor of Toronto.

Tory will file his registration papers at city hall on Monday, about an hour and a half before Councillor Karen Stintz files her own. The civic advocate, talk radio host and former leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives will become the most formidable declared challenger to incumbent Rob Ford.

In an announcement video to be posted Monday on his website, Tory said he would make Toronto “more livable, more affordable, and more functional.” He identified the downtown subway relief line as his top policy priority, saying that “livable means, first and foremost these days, tackling congestion.”

Tory said he would keep taxes low, “especially property taxes.” And without mentioning the proudly uncompromising Ford, who has lost numerous key votes and who has pledged a “war” on members of council, he touted himself as a consensus-builder and willing listener whose inclusive style achieves results.

“You’re not going to be able to tackle gridlock in the streets if you’ve got gridlock at city hall,” Tory said.

“Building a great city means people working together. My whole career has been about bringing people together. I ran a big company (Rogers Cable) that employed thousands of people. I ran the United Way campaign in every corner of the city. And I ran the Canadian Football League. I’ve learned that you can’t conclude, on the basis of your own opinion, that that guy over there is wrong or that you can’t work with him or won’t work with him.”

With voting day eight months away, the low-hum early campaign will now intensify: all-but-certain candidate Olivia Chow, the NDP MP, is now the only rumoured contender who will not have registered as of Monday. All three of the active challengers to the conservative Ford — Tory, Stintz, and former councillor David Soknacki — are on the centre-right.

Tory, 59, is a vocal advocate of the need for new taxes to pay for transit expansion. Ford imposed a new property tax to pay for the planned subway extension to the Scarborough RT, but he criticized Tory last week for holding “tax, tax, tax” views. Campaign manager Doug Ford attacked Tory for his wealth and connections despite the Fords’ own, calling Tory “part of the establishment” and “one of the elites of the 1 per cent.”

“I think Rob has a record to stand on. John doesn't have a record to stand on,” Doug Ford told Newstalk 1010 late Sunday. “And we're going to address that moving forward. We look forward to the 110 debates, that's going to come out on some of his views.”

Tory ran for mayor and lost in 2003, and he lost a general election and a byelection as PC leader before he resigned in 2009. He has recently maintained a high-profile public presence as the chair of CivicAction, an advocacy group, and as the host of an afternoon-rush show on Newstalk 1010; his reluctance to surrender the radio perch, as he will now have to do, likely accounts for the delayed entry for which he has been criticized.

The long-discussed downtown relief line is the preferred project of the TTC’s chief executive. The line — which Tory called “the Yonge St. subway relief line,” a politically preferable formulation — would run in a U shape down into the downtown core from the east and west sides of the Bloor-Danforth line, and possibly from as far north as Eglinton Ave., relieving pressure on the crowded Yonge-University-Spadina line.

Stintz too will campaign for the relief line. Ford says it is his third transit priority, behind a Sheppard Ave. subway extension, which council rejected in 2012, and a new line on Finch Ave. Soknacki wants to scrap the Scarborough subway and build the cheaper light rail line that was originally planned.

Tory is supported by a long list of prominent people. The roster includes former deputy mayor Case Ootes, who ran Ford’s 2010 transition team; Liberal provincial minister Brad Duguid; Gail Nyberg, executive director of the Daily Bread Food Bank; and Ontario PC president Richard Ciano, whose business partner, former Ford campaign chief Nick Kouvalis, will be part of Tory’s campaign.

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