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May I have your attention please?

Will the real John Tory please stand up?

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Anyone paying attention to the ongoing spat between the mayor of Toronto and Ontario Premier Doug Ford could be forgiven for doing a double take on Wednesday as audio surfaced of Tory saying the city should just get on with cutting bureaucracy in the face of provincial funding cuts.

Of course, the audio in question wasn’t about the current funding spat but was instead taken from 2013 when Tory was a radio host, Rob Ford was mayor and Kathleen Wynne was premier.

“He could save 50 million bucks with his eyes closed,” Tory said of the late mayor.

Tory said the key was cutting the “bloated city bureaucracy.”

The comments were made as part of Tory’s radio show on Newstalk 1010 in June, 2013.

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Full disclosure, I worked with Tory when I was the Ottawa bureau chief for that same radio station and regularly joined Tory on air.

What he said in his rant was the kind of common sense solutions that Tory would as a radio host but that are more difficult for politicians of any stripe to make when in office.