More than 1,000 people from the worlds of government, business, non-profit, labour and academia attended the CivicAction Greater Toronto Summit last February. The municipally minded group, chaired by former mayoral candidate John Tory and CEO Julia Deans, has now released a slew of recommendations generated by the event, from the creation of a regional body on economic development to a concerted effort to support the Metrolinx transportation plan.

What was the best moment from the summit?

John Tory: For me it was the fact that notwithstanding all the challenges that are faced by the region, more acute perhaps in the City of Toronto, there was a passion and enthusiasm in that room to continue to work at these things. If all those people had decided we should just give up, that would have been discouraging.

Any particularly good ideas that came from meeting?

JT: On economic development, our perspective going in was that there should be a body established to help create a regional approach to economic development. And while we still believe that should be done, rather than everybody doing their own thing, [attendees] slowed us down a little bit. Not on the basis that it’s the wrong thing to do, but that it’s fraught with political issues and that we should be careful about not stepping on anyone’s toes.

So you’re trying to be practical, rather than make grand pronouncements?

JT: I think that’s been the history of the summit. We don’t just tilt at windmills or issue reports for the sake of having them out there. We’ve already been working with Metrolinx on developing funding options. By virtue of being an objective, non-political organization, we can actually call a meeting of regional mayors and other players and they will come.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was ill during this year’s summit. What is your relationship like with his administration?

Julia Deans: We’ve been working with them on a number of things in a much more positive way then we have in other years. In housing, we worked with the affordable housing office to create a regional housing databank that puts all information related to housing in one place. We’re also working with some environmental officials to create an extreme weather resilience working group, what to do when you get these mega-storms, how do you protect our infrastructure. We’re bringing the private sector into that discussion. So they’re reaching out more than they might have in the past.

Is the undertone of the event that this is a rough time to get things done in Toronto?

JT: A couple of people have said, “It’s all fine and good to write this stuff up but in view of what’s going on in City Hall is there any hope of getting any attention from anybody?” But we find people are undiminished in their desire to build a stronger region and address some of these issues. We may not be able to address these things in exactly the way we have before because of the financial situation, but the notion that somehow we all just shrug our shoulders and give up is not on. Take the example of the libraries. The approach we would take is neither “these awful people are going to burn libraries down,” nor is it saying “they shouldn’t change a thing.” It’s about getting all the partners involved to discuss the future of libraries, because it’s going to change.

What are your next steps?

JT: The first one will be a panel working to respond to the Social Assistance Review Commission launched by the province. We’ve already started gathering some of the regional and provincial leaders around a table, and they hadn’t been in a room together for years. Rather than seeing more reports, you’ll see specific initiatives.

The Premier and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi both addressed this year’s summit. Any plans for future events?

JD: The next big summit will be in four years. They take a huge amount of effort and we need to bear down on getting the work done. But we’ll do mini-summits, so we’ll do one in two years checking in and seeing if we’re on track. It won’t be 1,000 people, but it’s a way of holding ourselves accountable.

You’re currently searching for a new CEO to replace Ms. Deans, how is that going?

JT: We’ve had an excellent response to the fact that there’s a vacancy. And we’re just beginning the process of looking at that list of people and beginning the difficult task of finding someone who can replace Julia. But we’re working on it.