CITIZEN JOE: Former Toronto councillor denies ‘layer cake of conflicts’
· Toronto Sun
Toronto City Hall’s go-to guy thinks it’s all “a bit much.”
Yes, Joe Mihevc said, he’s a lobbyist for local property developers, and yes, he’s working a sole-source contract as a consultant for the city’s shelter services division.
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And yes, after some three decades as a city councillor, most of that spent on the board of the Toronto Transit Commission, he’s serving as TTC vice-chairman, a paid role set aside for people not on City Council.
So what? He said he hasn’t broken the rules, and City Hall agrees with him. After giving so much of his life in service to the city he loves, his skills and expertise are in demand. He’s outside of politics, yet he continues to serve.
Mihevc is doing work he’s good at and he’s keeping busy in his 70s. He’s contributing to his community. Why all the questions?
Exasperated, he told the Toronto Sun over the phone: “This is a bit much here.”
Asked what he meant, he replied: “I think you know what I mean.”
The Sun reported this month about Mihevc’s consulting job, which includes community outreach related to a planned shelter at 3838 Bloor St. W., near Kipling Ave. In that article, local Councillor Stephen Holyday suggested that while the public wasn’t speaking up much, that was perhaps because the city failed in making sure people knew about the plan.
True enough, the first consultation meeting about the shelter in months, held March 4, was “jam-packed,” Holyday told the Sun .
Mihevc’s group pivoted from a more passive format, with displays and one-and-one chats, to a town hall-style question-and-answer session, he said.
It’s not clear if the city would view that as a success or failure, because Mihevc’s contract doesn’t say.
The Sun obtained his four-page consulting contract in a freedom-of-information request – $79,500 for the “provision of community engagement facilitator services to support the opening of new shelters.” The document contains no terms or details of Mihevc’s work and it is largely made up of standardized contractual language not specific to Mihevc.
In a statement, the city said Mihevc was retained in 2024 to handle engagement at 3838 Bloor as well as 2 Buttonwood Ave., at Jane and Weston, and 68 Sheppard Ave. W, near Yonge St. The city has been aggressive in rolling out new shelters across Toronto, to the point that the timelines for buying property and consulting the public “did not align” – so the city quickly hired “a small number of experienced facilitators” to sole-source contracts.
The city said those facilitators’ duties are laid out in a 16-page request for proposals containing a lengthy rundown of “expected activities,” which was provided to the Sun .
Mihevc’s contract ends this month and new facilitators, who were hired under a typical competitive process, will pick up the work, the city said.
Mihevc said he doesn’t see how his role – occupying “that in-between space between City Hall, the (shelter) operator … and local residents and organizations” – could give the appearance of conflict.
“I don’t have any power here. I don’t have any power to say no to the project or, frankly, yes to the project,” he said.
All he does is relay “the best and clearest information” between City Hall and Torontonians, he said.
Asked if he, in his time in politics, would’ve approved of his sole-source deal, Mihevc argued that the question incorrectly presumes councillors oversee such contracts.
When asked instead if, had he learned of such a contract, he would have brought it up at City Council, he replied: “I’ve given you my answer.”
From City Hall to city lobby
Mihevc spent 28 years as a city councillor, first for the old city of York and then post-amalgamation Toronto, from 1991 to 2018, plus a “brief interlude,” as he put it, in 2022.
Former city leaders can become lobbyists after a one-year cooling-off period, as records indicate Mihevc did. He lost in the October 2018 municipal election, held after the province cut Toronto’s wards down to 25, reportedly pocketing $114,306 in severance.
As of this month, his firm, Mihevc Consulting and Mediation, had 14 active lobbying registrations on the city’s online database, all related to planning and development. Another 25 lobbying registrations bearing his name have elapsed.
A handful of those died on June 1, 2022, when Mihevc was appointed as councillor for Ward 10, taking over for a departing Joe Cressy. He registered for a couple of lobbyist jobs after another cooling-off period.
When Mihevc was handed Ward 10 in 2022, it was councillors and then-mayor John Tory who put him there, not the voters who rejected him in 2018. The vote was near unanimous, with only councillors Holyday and Jaye Robinson opting for other candidates.
Even then, Mihevc had worked as both lobbyist and consultant. The Sun reported in 2021 that he had been paid at least $71,000 for community engagement work involving a different shelters strategy, including selling the public on the notorious temporary shelter at the downtown Novotel .
TTC citizenship
Mihevc won another appointment in March 2025, as vice-chairman of the TTC board. That pays $10,000 a year, plus a $450 per diem per meeting attended, according to a city document . (The board typically meets at least a dozen times a year, putting compensation over $15,000.)
The TTC’s bylaw on board proceedings says the vice-chairman is selected “from among the citizen members” of the board – which is to say a current politician can’t hold the post. Mihevc told the Sun he had served on the board “for most of my political career.”
While Mihevc is a city lobbyist, his role with the TTC means he’s also lobbied on behalf of the city. In an interesting twist, the city’s registry shows repeat lobbying of Mihevc by Glenn De Baeremaeker, a fellow former councillor. (The TTC referred all questions about apparent conflicts of interest to City Hall.)
Mihevc said there’s “nothing unusual or untoward” about a lobbyist holding roles with the city, as he doesn’t himself lobby for transit-related interests, or use his city roles to find clients.
“There are lines, and you can do both. In fact, many folks do both,” he said.
As for the TTC, he had “the right to put my name forward,” and he won’t speculate as to why he was picked. When he got his position with the TTC, he said he “immediately” went to the integrity commissioner and lobbyist registrar.
The City of Toronto said Mihevc completed a declaration of potential conflicts, which was reviewed before he began his engagement work. The lobbying bylaw does not prohibit a registered lobbyist from holding public office, the city added.
‘Preparing an assassination piece’
Mihevc is not the only engagement facilitator whose ties to the city have drawn scrutiny. A group called the New Toronto Initiative, which opposes an Etobicoke shelter planned for Third St., howled late last year when the consultant on that file, Bruce Davis, was appointed to a municipal land board.
Mihevc has his hands on Toronto’s real estate world even beyond his City Hall roles. He has a garden suite business, Humewood Homes, and does some teaching – one of his true passions, he said – in urban studies at York University.
Holyday said despite his misgivings about the city’s consultation process on the Bloor shelter, Mihevc has been genial with the public and has clearly put some hours in.
“I don’t think I can criticize the work that he’s done,” Holyday said.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of the non-profit group Democracy Watch , said while Mihevc appears to be following every rule, those rules might be the problem.
“It sounds like a layer cake of conflicts of interest,” Conacher told the Sun .
“Obviously you can’t be on the inside and the outside at the same time … You can’t have it. You can’t be a lobbyist that is inside government.”
Joe Mihevc disagrees. He said he expected the Sun was “preparing an assassination piece when there’s no material basis for it.” And he said he doesn’t understand the need for scrutiny simply because he’s not the retiring type.
“I’m a busy boy. Yes, I am,” Mihevc said.
Asked about the appearance of conflict, and the idea that inaction might benefit one’s interests as much as action, Mihevc chuckled.
“In the real world, you deal with,” he said, then trailed off.
He collected his thoughts.
“My statement is this,” Mihevc said. “I have acted with integrity and honesty in all my dealings with the city, while I was a councillor up to now. That’s what matters to me and that’s what lets me sleep at night.”
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Duff Conacher, co-founder of the non-profit group Democracy Watch, said even when someone in the public sector denies being in a conflict of interest, the appearance of a conflict of interest can be problem enough.
In theory, he argued, an apparent conflict could lead to legal trouble if someone decided to, for example, sue the Toronto Transit Commission over the double role that Joe Mihevc, the former city councillor, is filling as both a lobbyist and a subject of lobbying as the transit agency’s vice-chairman.
While Conacher said Toronto’s lobbying rules are generally stronger than those of the provincial and federal governments – critically, the city bylaw covers unpaid lobbyists – he argued they may not be strong enough.
“You can’t be making decisions where you’re supposed to be upholding the public interest while you are lobbying for private interests,” he said. “It’s a fundamental conflict of interest, and if it isn’t illegal, it should be illegal – and that rule should apply to every government institution, not just City Council.”
That no misdeed by Mihevc has been alleged is not necessarily the point, Conacher said.
In a decision-making role, Conacher said, you “can help your private interest by not doing things as much as you can by doing something … not taking action on it, not addressing it, never making a decision about it can help your private interest that you represent as much as taking the action – but of course, that inaction is difficult to see, because you didn’t do anything.”
“That’s how dangerous it is,” he added, “and that’s why the rule for conflicts of interest is, you may say you’re not influenced by your private interest, you may say you’re not doing anything to help your private interest, but no one can do a Vulcan mind meld, except Spock, and see inside your head – and Spock was a fictional character.”