How did Toronto’s mayor end up in the middle of the Rogers family feud?

Jordan I’ve never seen succession, but I am told that the comparison to what’s going on at one of Canada’s largest companies right now is entirely apt.

News Clips …At the center of the battle, Edward Rogers, son of the company’s founder, the late Ted Rogers. He was ousted from the executive board last week after current CEO Joe Natale discovered a plan to unseat him, reportedly via pocket dial…

…We’ve got everything here that makes a good news story: We have conflict. We have emotion. We have revenge…

…Given the respective deep pockets of the two sides of the family, if one of them loses in the BC Supreme Court, then I expect it’ll go to the BC Court of Appeals…

Jordan We don’t know yet who will end up in control of Rogers Communications, which it should be noted, is the owner of Frequency Podcast Network and by extension, this very podcast. But among the many things that we’ve learned during this saga is that government will have a voice in the decision. Sort of, not officially.

John Tory Clip …I am compensated for this role as other people are who are in similar kinds of positions with trusts…

Jordan That was Toronto Mayor John Tory defending his involvement in the internal Rogers drama. How did the Mayor of Canada’s largest city end up with a voice in the fight for control of Rogers? It is a complicated story, and it raises a whole lot of questions, which is why we’re here today. What did Torontonians know about John Tory’s relationship with Rogers before they voted for him twice? And what did they only learn over the past couple of weeks as the Rogers drama unfolded? Where are the conflicts of interest between the Mayor of Toronto and Rogers Communications? And how has John Tory recused himself? Where could these conflicts still remain?

With Rogers currently engaged with the city on very public projects, including for instance, the future of the Rogers Center, which would reshape the city’s downtown. Shouldn’t the Mayor have to pick a side?

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Jennifer Pagliaro is the city hall reporter for the Toronto Star . She knows the rules of municipal politics, the written ones and the unwritten ones, which is why we’re here today. Hello, Jennifer.

Jennifer Hey. How’s it going?

Jordan Good. And I’m so glad we can talk to you because you have been covering John Tory for quite some time.

Jennifer Yeah, we’re approaching the eight year mark, which is hard to believe.

Jordan No kidding. But if you can think back to when John Tory was a candidate all those years ago, what did we know then about his past and his relationship with Rogers?

Jennifer Yeah. So that was actually something that I got assigned to do as a new reporter at the Star, was write a profile about John Tory’s relationship and experience at the Rogers Corporation. I actually wrote a profile back then and found it actually quite easy to come up with public information about his time there. He was a senior executive. He basically ran the cable business for several years. And so there’s actually quite a lot of info about his time there warts and all. And so I wrote that profile, including that he was and always has been held in high regard by the Rogers family. He was a close personal friend of Ted Rogers, as was his father. And so we knew all about his relationship then. And I’ve recently learned that I didn’t know exactly everything. But I think, for the most part, the fact that he has had a long standing personal and professional relationship with the company and the family has been fairly well known for anyone who wanted to know about it.

Jordan And when he became Mayor, how did his role change?

Jennifer So that became a point of contention because his relationship with Rogers was raised on the campaign trail and the question of whether he could maintain his role at that time, he was on the board of directors and also on this somewhat more secretive body, the Control Trust. And it was put to him several times whether he would continue in those capacities. And so when he was elected, he sort of preemptively sent out this letter to reporters and said that he was going to declare a conflict on several issues. There were some other things not related to Rogers in that letter. And he said that while he would be stepping down from the board of directors, it’s like any board of directors of a major company, it makes important decisions about the future of a company and directs business changes. It impacts shareholders.

But then he said that he would not step away from this control trust, which I think in general people know less about. It doesn’t exactly follow the same parameters as a board of directors. You can’t see the meeting minutes. There’s not agendas. And he essentially said that he had this sort of unending loyalty to Ted Rogers, that he had promised this man who had passed away that he would help his family take care of his family business. And he refused to step aside from that role. And so he has remained on the Control Trust these last seven years.

Jordan And in normal times—disregarding the weirdness of the past couple of weeks, which we’ll definitely get into—in normal times, shat does that role entail? What does he do on the Control trust?

Jennifer That’s a great question. It hasn’t really come up outside of the scandal that we’ll get to. And as far as I knew, he was a sitting member. The Control Trust is made up of largely surviving Rogers family members. And then there’s kind of these four, you could call them family friends or advisers who are not family members but close, trusted folks. And as far as I knew from reading corporate documents, if the company was going to up and decide to, for example, get out of the cable business, make a huge change. That would be something that ultimately the control trust would have sort of the deciding vote on. That they are ultimately responsible for major governance or corporate changes. As far as we knew, there were meetings, but it wasn’t really taking up a lot of his time.

Jordan And again, previous to what we’re about to discuss. Do you remember ever over the seven years preceding this, if there was a time—you mentioned, he declared a conflict of interest—if there was a time when City Hall was involved with something related to Rogers that the Mayor either did or didn’t kind of recuse himself from, has it ever even come up?

Jennifer Yeah. So as far as his conflict, he declares conflicts on a pretty regular basis. And I should say that so do several members of Council. It’s not unusual for members of Council to have a conflict. For example, most members of Council own some kind of real estate, whether it’s their personal home or an investment property of some kind. And so if there’s a development, let’s say, going in next door, that could impact that councillor’s home value, and they would therefore have to step aside from the discussion about whether that development should be approved or not. That’s kind of like a basic conflict most people can understand, and no one would really begrudge a city councillor for owning a home.

So he declares a conflict on Rogers quite regularly. And part of the reason for that is because, I think, as his letter set out in 2014, his office is being overly cautious on issues that may relate to Rogers. So often, when something comes up that seems related to the telecom industry, they will preemptively declare conflict. And what that means is that the Mayor does not participate in that debate. In the pre pandemic times, that means that he would actually leave the Council Chamber, in pandemic times, it means that he steps away from his computer, and he also doesn’t participate in the vote. And then when that item is over, he comes back and carries on.

And we actually are able to go in and see how often he’s declared these conflicts. And my colleague Matt Elliot actually went in and looked at that. And I looked at that myself. And most of his conflicts in recent years have actually been Rogers related. And whether that has any bearing on how those issues get decided, it’s difficult to say. Again, some of these are pretty minor Council debates. They’re not the level of deciding the future of the Gardiner Expressway in terms of City Hall importance. And again, they may not all necessarily impact Rogers directly because, again, they’re having John Tory step aside out of an abundance of caution.

Jordan Well, that makes sense, especially since he’s been so public about his role with Rogers that he would just sort of preemptively put aside any of those concerns.

Jennifer Yeah. It kind of allows them to just ensure that he’s not getting mixed up in a situation where someone could come back and say you do have a financial interest in Rogers, and you did vote on this item that’s directly related to Rogers. That would get him into kind of a legal nightmare. And his office, as far as I can tell, has been incredibly careful to make sure that he does not get himself in that situation.

Jordan So now let’s talk about the past couple of weeks, and I’m not going to ask you to explain in detail the entire internal conflict at Rogers because that’s a podcast episode unto itself. Our colleagues at City News, also owned by Rogers, have been reporting on it. Your team in the business section has broken a bunch of stories on it, so we won’t delve into the entire machinations of the business part of it. But maybe can you just explain what happened at Rogers to drag Tory’s role on it into the spotlight?

Jennifer Yes. Thank you for not asking me to explain the whole thing. I think the people you mentioned have been doing great work. As far as we can tell, and I’m leaning pretty heavily on others reporting here, including Christine Dobby in our shop, is that Tory has kind of taken on this role as mediator. And again, you have to think back to the fact that Ted Rogers put John Tory in this position as sort of a trusted family friend. So he’s not a family member. But in this case, I think if you could kind of put yourself in Ted Rogers shoes in terms of planning the future of your company, you have your kids, you have your wife, and then who else do you want on this incredibly important body? So you pick people who you can trust from a business sense, people who know your family.

And I think what’s happening is that Tory is trying to act to help resolve whatever familial conflict is going on. I think from what Tory has said publicly, he doesn’t want this to be the media circus that it is. And I think he’s trying to help them resolve it privately. And I’m not sure that you can say that he’s really on anyone’s side, other than he seems to be trying to get this resolved so that the company can carry on with business as usual.

Jordan And in that role, maybe speak a minute because there was a meeting that precipitated the discussion that we are having now, that kind of made it plain just how involved the Mayor was. Can you tell me about that meeting and what we know about it?

Jennifer Yeah. So we know that this meeting happened in the middle of the week. The Mayor does work 24/7. But obviously this happened in what would normally be the middle of his work day. And there was a meeting that we know for sure involved the Rogers family members. And it sounds like John Tory was essentially asked to play the role of mediator because he’s a non family but trusted kind of member of this control trust. And it sounded like before everything really blew up, they were trying to avoid the situation that happened, which is essentially Ed Rogers getting himself removed from the board of directors and this all kind of blowing up.

And so it sounded like they were trying to come to some sort of intermediary compromise, which may have been, it’s been reported, like taking some of Ed Rogers powers away. And then that kind of backfired. And the end result is what we’re seeing playing out in the news. But it sounded like the Mayor has said that it took, he said several hours out of his day. There’s sort of been this counter narrative in the form of Martha Rogers Twitter feed. So for people that don’t know or aren’t following this very closely, she is Ted Rogers daughter. She’s the sister of Ed Rogers, and she also plays a role in several of the Rogers entities on this control trust. And she accused Tory of not being forthcoming about just how much time he’s been spending, including at this meeting. So that part is up for debate. But it seemed that he played a pretty key role in trying to get this thing under control.

Jordan And this is one of the reasons that we’re talking to you right now because it was this meeting, at least to me and probably to a lot of the other folks who aren’t immersed in every detail of this saga. But it was this meeting that really kind of drove home the point of just how close to what was going on at Rogers the Mayor was, and got people, frankly like you, digging again. And what has the saga revealed about the Tory/Rogers relationship that we didn’t understand before to your point when you were writing that initial profile?

Jennifer Yeah. So one of the biggest things that came up recently and was kind of my introduction into this reporting on this whole scandal myself was that we learned that the Mayor actually gets compensated annually for being on this control trust. He makes $100,000. That’s something that his office confirmed to me. And that was news to me, to a lot of people. I guess I never really considered that he was being compensated for being on this control trust. I understood he was doing it out of this again, sort of unending loyalty to Ted Rogers. And so that was a surprise to us.

Just to put that in context, the Mayor earned close to $200,000 for his role as Mayor in taxpayer dollars. And so $100,000 to someone like Mayor Tory, who is quite independently wealthy. It might not be a lot of money, but just to put in context, it is sort of half of what he made for being the Mayor of Canada’s largest city.

Jordan Now, considering that nobody seemed to really know this. I assume the answer to this question is no. But maybe more importantly, is he breaking any rules here? And if so, why aren’t there rules about this kind of thing?

Jennifer Yeah. And that’s a really interesting question and something that I’ve been asking experts about and exploring myself. So there’s sort of two sets of standards that Council members, including the Mayor, must follow. We sort of covered the conflict of interest. There’s a very specific set of rules when it comes to that. And regardless of whether he’s earning money directly from the control trust or he holds shares or what have you, he is declaring a conflict as far as we can tell quite often and sometimes unnecessarily when it comes to things that might be related to the Rogers Group of companies.

But there’s this other set of standards. There’s a Council code of conduct that all members must follow, and that sort of speaks more to ethical standards and not so much legal conflicts. And that’s where things get, I guess, a little more open to interpretation. And there are independent watchdogs that the city employs, that are sort of the arbitrators of these rules. And those are, I guess, still open for discussion as to whether any Council member should be holding these kinds of roles, whether we accept that, whether we’re comfortable with that, whether it does actually violate any of these standards that we’ve set out for members.

John Tory is not the first person on Council, and he won’t be the last to have a secondary income. Like there are other councillors, other Council members who actually have second jobs, they own companies. I said earlier, people have investment properties, they have other lines of income. And so it seems impossible to avoid some of these conflicts at times. And it’s really about how we feel about it. And if the rules don’t cover what is happening here with the Mayor and Rogers, do we think that those rules should change? I think those are all items that are, like I said, open for discussion.

Jordan Well, I think the thing that fascinates me most, and I guess I’ll put it to you in maybe kind of a hypothetical question. I understand totally that there are strict conflict of interest rules at City Hall and the mayor’s been recusing himself and makes perfect sense. But what about in the other direction? Is there anything considering Tory is on this trust that has enormous decision making power at a company that, frankly provides key infrastructure in Toronto and many other places. Is there anything governing his role on the Rogers Trust to make sure that he makes a decision that benefits the city of Toronto? Like, there are many things that Rogers could or could not do that would have an impact on life in this city. And I don’t think there’s anything unless I’m mistaken, preventing John Tory in his role at Rogers from doing something that maybe John Tory and City Council would not like to see happen.

Jennifer Yeah. You raise a really good point. As far as I understand, the members of the Control trust, their sole responsibility is to secure the future of the company, which will publicly trade. It is a private corporate interest. And the Mayor, no matter what he says, is kind of wearing these two hats, and anyone who’s had to do that knows it’s kind of hard to recuse yourself from one duty while you’re performing another.

The best example that I can raise to help people sort of understand this dilemma is it’s been reported and people are aware of the fact that the Rogers Company is considering the rebuilding or the reimagining of the Roger Center, the Sky Dome, as most people know it. That’s again, like, as you mentioned, a huge piece of infrastructure in the city. It’s home to major sports teams, obviously a huge source of economic interest for the city because of the hosting of all of the different events that go on there beyond sports. And it touches on development and planning issues. And that’s something that you would kind of expect the Mayor of the city to have a voice on and to have the city’s interests at the heart of that discussion. But it’s a real dilemma because the Mayor has already previous to what’s happening with the Rogers family. He’s previously recused himself, saying that he will not participate in any of the discussions at City Hall about the Rogers Center because of his role on the Control trust.

And so that kind of raises the question. The Mayor is wearing two hats, and so he’s taken off his mayoral hat, but he will still be able to represent the interests of the Rogers Company in the future of the Rogers Center, which may or may not benefit the city.

Jordan I’m going to ask you a question that you will understand because we’ve spoken about this previously. How is this different? And I realize it is different, but this is more, I mean, maybe kind of a rhetorical question. How is this different from Rob Ford as Mayor having a part time job coaching a high school football team? He was intensely criticized for that, for distracting himself from his mayoral responsibilities and mediating high stakes board disputes with one of Canada’s largest companies in your spare time seems at least on par, if not worse.

Jennifer Yeah. I honestly think it’s a really good question. I don’t think it’s one that I can answer, but I think it’s a question that residents could consider. You’re right. Mayor Ford was heavily criticized and putting aside the actual conflict of interest that he found himself in related to the football situation that is different from what’s happening with the Mayor. But just in terms of what you’ve presented like that, he had the side gig as a football coach. One major difference is, I think being a football coach and being like a high powered corporate executive, one is a bit more surreal. I think, like having the Mayor of the city like coaching high school football on the side, is perhaps a bit goofier.

And I think in some ways it was more visible, like I remember my colleagues at the Star and other reporters, including from City and your colleagues, would actually be able to go to the football practice or the football game and see the Mayor there. Whereas I think what’s happening with Rogers is it’s very much behind closed doors and sort of out of sight, out of mind. And it has been for the last seven years, and it is only because of this very public family feud that we’re reconsidering the mayor’s role on this trust.

But I do think again, it’s fair to have this discussion. He is a public figure. These are publicly elected jobs, and I think it really is for us to decide if we are comfortable with this. And again, whether he’s following the rules. That’s important, the rules that we already have in place. But if we’re not comfortable with it, then that is a question of whether the rules perhaps need to change.

Jordan Well, and that’s my last question. I believe, you can tell me if we’re wrong, we’re one year out from John Tory’s bid for reelection, I assume this will be an election issue. Is that the discussion around City Hall?

Jennifer Yeah. So we are one year out from the municipal election. Mayor Tory has not definitively said whether he will actually seek reelection. That’s something that we’re still sort of hotly anticipating. But I think if he does run again, I think it would be almost guaranteed to expect that whoever is challenging him would raise this as an election issue. Whether it will matter to people at the polls, again, hard to say. It will be like a year passed by then, assuming the family is able to resolve whatever is going on at Rodgers before October of next year, then this may fade from people’s minds. But yeah, again, I think it’s an open question. I think it’s up for discussion. I think it’s hit on something that people feel not quite good about, and it’s hard to put your finger on it.

And again, there’s a difference between whether he is, in fact following the rules. And I do think that he is to the best of his ability, following the conflict of interest rules and has tried to ensure that he’s following the Council code of conduct in all things. But it still leaves sort of this weird feeling that people are having about him having this dual responsibility and being as public as he is and this feud being as public as it is. So yeah, I’m interested to see both how the feud resolves and whether this has any long lasting impact for Mayor Tory.

Jordan So am I Jennifer, thank you for your insight and explanation on this I know municipal politics can get a little bit complicated.

Jennifer Yes, it can, but always happy to hash it out with you here.

Jordan Jennifer Pagliaro, City Hall reporter for the Toronto Star. That was The Big Story, which, if you haven’t realized by now, is owned by Frequency Podcast Network, which is owned by Rogers Communications Incorporated. And you can find us at thebigstorypodcast.ca . You can also talk to us anytime on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN, you can email us as well at thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. You can find us in any podcast player on Apple on Google, on Stitcher on Spotify on Amazon Music and through your favorite smart speaker. Just ask it to “play the Big Story Podcast”.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.

Back to top of page