The unexpected transit turnaround that TTC chair Karen Stintz, seen here in her City Hall office, engineered this week has many people reconsidering their views of the Ward 16 councillor - sometimes, though not always, for the better.
TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR
The transit motion voted in by council this week is not to be called “the Stintz plan,” insists the woman who engineered it.
But the special council meeting Karen Stintz pulled off this week — which united councillors across the political spectrum, partially revived a killed-off transit vision, splattered egg on the mayor’s face and rendered Stintz both hero and traitor — has prompted many to ask:
What, exactly,
is Stintz planning?
Was this the first salvo in her mayoral campaign for 2014? Was it all part of some master scheme to take down Rob Ford?
The answer to both questions is no, she insists. Because here’s the thing about the Stintz master plan: There is none.
“Day by day,” Stintz says, “issue by issue.” That is how the TTC chair approaches her political career. And when her moments arise, go big or go home.
“I’ve tried to make that my approach,” she says.
Over the past two weeks, the public has seen a surprising side of Stintz, the 41-year-old right-leaning councillor that many people — the mayor included — once thought they had pegged.
The Ward 16 councillor’s recent display of boldness comes as a surprise to many, but not to those who know her best.
It is the same all-in approach that catapulted her into public life in the first place. In 2003, she answered an advertisement calling for election candidates and managed to unseat a long-serving incumbent.
When Stintz first stepped foot in City Hall, she was an unproven politician who “couldn’t even find the elevator to the council chamber.” But on Wednesday, the third-term councillor stepped confidently through those chamber doors, into a role that nobody could have predicted eight years ago.
Growing up in North York, Stintz never planned a future in public life. She showed no interest in student government whatsoever. “No, no, nothing,” she says. “I was very shy.”
Stintz’s parents split when she was 4. At the age of 10, an only child, she moved in with her father, a NASA scientist from Baltimore who helped work on the Canadarm, Canada’s most famous contribution to space technology.
Her mother, Stintz says, “had some problems.” Last June, she spoke publicly about her mother’s battle with schizophrenia at the unveiling of Crisis Link, the TTC’s suicide prevention program.
At 20, Stintz pocketed the first of three degrees, graduating from the University of Western Ontario with a political science diploma. She then moved to Boston to study journalism. She wanted to cover public policy, but instead wound up writing a sports column for a Markham newspaper.
Stintz went back to school, this time getting her master’s degree in public administration at Queen’s University.
Her first job out was with Medcan Health Management, a private health clinic where she was tasked with building a physician network. One of the people who interviewed her was Darryl Parisien.
Stintz was smart, articulate and proved to be an excellent hire, the type of project manager who had a knack for getting things done, Parisien recalls. She became a friend. And then something more.
“It was just one of those things,” Parisien said. “All of a sudden one day. I just got hit in the head with a big love club, I guess.”
Ten months later, the two were engaged. In 1999, they married in a modest ceremony in Niagara wine country.
Parisien said his wife had an interest in the political world when they met, but didn’t contemplate joining it until after they married.
In some ways, it was Parisien who ushered Stintz into public life. The software company president has political connections of his own, having once worked as an assistant to Bernard Valcourt, a minister in the Brian Mulroney government.
Stintz caught the bug in 2003, when the couple volunteered for John Tory’s mayoral campaign. She was working at Queen’s Park at the time, as a public administrator with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care — a job that offered only lukewarm satisfaction.
Along came that ad.
In Ward 16, the Eglinton-Lawrence area, the tale of Stintz’s entry into politics has taken on the proportions of a creation myth. As the story goes, a local ratepayers group was fed up with incumbent councillor Anne Johnston over a development issue and placed an ad in the North York
Town Crier.
“CITY COUNCILLOR NEEDED,” the headline screamed. “We want to elect a city councillor who will work with residents, not one whose attitude and behaviour tells us – ‘she always knows what’s best for us.’”
The first call was from Stintz.
“She was not exactly twiddling her thumbs waiting for someone to recruit her,” says Bob Michener, part of the group that placed the ad. “When (the opportunity) came, she didn’t hesitate.”
Nobody believed she had much of a chance, but the couple pushed hard to the finish line, throwing about $10,000 of their own money into the pot.
Stintz won handily, capturing 42 per cent of the vote while dethroning Johnston, a political veteran of 31 years. According to one newspaper, Stintz “sobbed” with joy at the news, barely able to speak.
But her early days in council were difficult. She had yet to grow the thick skin required to survive public life with sanity intact, Parisien says.
Stintz had unseated one of mayor David Miller’s close friends and political mentors. Stintz and Miller’s opposing political views often clashed on the chamber floor.
“I didn’t have any relationships on council,” Stintz says. “It was a very rocky beginning.”
But in that first year, she displayed some of that spirit of compromise that helped her broker this week’s transit victory.
In one instance, she spearheaded an effort to rename the Forest Hill Memorial Arena for Larry Grossman, first Jewish leader of the provincial Conservatives. But that angered the Royal Canadian Legion, which wanted the arena to continue honouring war veterans.
In the end, Stintz said, “we came up with a compromise”: the facility was renamed the Larry Grossman Forest Hill Memorial Arena and there was a formal dedication to veterans on Remembrance Day.
Over the years, Stintz has slowly but surely found her voice — helped, in part, by the $4,500 of taxpayer dollars she used to buy voice-training lessons in 2008, an expenditure that caused public embarrassment for the councillor some had described as “shrill.”
She became one of the most vocal members of the so-called “Responsible Government Group,” right-leaning councillors who coalesced as the unofficial opposition to Miller.
The adversarial relationship did little to help an ambitious young politician angling for more responsibilities. In 2006, Stintz was among 26 councillors who threw their names in the hat for a position on the TTC. She also vied to be a city rep on the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority. She got neither.
“I know that through the two David Miller terms, she was champing at the bit to be given an opportunity to do something more than simply be the councillor for her ward,” says Ward 5 councillor Peter Milczyn.
.
Enter Ford Nation. Although she declined to endorse Ford, she was nonetheless welcomed into his inner circle and appointed TTC chair. One of Ford’s key campaign promises was to put all future transit tracks underground. He wanted an ally who could help him realize that vision.
But in her first months as TTC chair, Stintz was already doubting the practicality of Ford’s plan, which would mean an expensive cancellation of Transit City — a LRT-centric plan Stintz supported — and completely burying the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.
When Stintz made her views known to Ford, then-chief of staff Nick Kouvalis questioned her loyalty.
Kouvalis said the first crack between Stintz and Ford appeared after she backed down on plans to cut 48 bus routes, a move that would have freed $7 million.
Kouvalis said the bus motion was a “test” to see which TTC commissioners would fall in line and which were “wet noodles.” Stintz was a noodle, he says.
“My advice was: Get rid of her, right there on the spot,” Kouvalis says.
He recently reiterated that point to Ford, he adds. “She’s committed the biggest sin in politics, which is disloyalty,” he charges.
“The left is using her and they love all of this, (but) they’ll never trust her. She’s never going to be one of them and nobody on the right is ever going to trust her again.”
But Wednesday’s meeting demonstrated that councillors are prepared to look beyond political boundary lines, counters Adam Vaughan, a member of council’s left.
“This week was part of a process of Karen finding ways to cross divides that might have challenged her in the past,” he says. “I think both of us weren’t prepared four years ago to find common ground as easily as we found the battle ground.”
Someone who never doubted Stintz’s position on transit is her close friend and fiercely loyal advisor. Built like a bodyguard, J.P. Boutros seems an unlikely candidate for city hall subordinate. In a former life, he’d spent his time jet-setting and lounging on “yachts in Monaco” as a Formula One marketer.
Boutros met Stintz on the playground because their kids played together. The casual sandbox friendship evolved into one of politician and trusted confidante.
Boutros had doubts when Stintz first asked him to work for her on the TTC file. He was seeking to make a serious contribution somewhere and wanted to know her motivations.
He scribbled down a list of six priorities on a yellow sheet, asking her to rank them by importance: the mayor, the premier, re-election, herself, her own provincial ambitions, or TTC riders.
Without hesitating, according to Boutros, Stintz wrote a number “1” next to “TTC riders.”
“And I said, okay,” he recalls. “And she’s always frickin’ held true to that (priority).”
Since Wednesday, many councillors she once aligned herself with have been baying for blood. Doug Ford says Stintz should resign as TTC chair. Speaker Frances Nunziata said Stintz “should be ashamed of herself.”
But Stintz has also found a legion of new fans, mostly on the left — people who never would have imagined themselves cheering her on. After Wednesday’s vote, Twitter burbled with praise for Stintz and “Karen Stintz fan club” buttons circulated in the chamber.
“I’ve never had a fan club,” she says with a laugh.
For her own part, Stintz says her only loyalties are to the people who voted for her. And if she loses her job as TTC chair over this, she will have no regrets — “not for a minute.”
“She really is quite delicate and pleasant and gentle in her demeanour,” says Councillor John Parker, who supported Stintz’s motion. “But I’ve come since to know that she also has a strong flinty side.”
Stintz says she has no plans to take over the mayoral chair in 2014. “Rob is the mayor, Rob can get re-elected, I’m not going to run against Rob,” she says.
Her husband agrees it is possible Stintz may find herself working outside the political world. Boutros speculates that Stintz would probably enjoy a corporate career in football — a passion she inherited from her father and, incidentally, shares with the mayor.
If anything could steer Stintz from her political path, it’s her commitment to family. Her father has recently moved into her Lawrence Park home, and she visits her mother, who lives in a home in East York, once a week. In her city hall office, nearly every surface is covered with pictures of her children Jackson, 7, and Hailey, 5, and the primary colours of their artwork.
On Wednesday night, in the wake of what many deem to be her greatest political achievement, Stintz went straight home so she could tuck her kids into bed. Other councillors and staffers, including Boutros, headed to a nearby bar.
“I’m looking forward to the press conference where I get to say I’m looking forward to spending more time with my children,” Stintz recently said in a lighthearted exchange with the
Star’s Tess Kalinowski.
But the next election is still two years away, and there is no telling where the tracks will lead. Like everything else, she’ll take it day by day.
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