Massara sworn in as new Toronto Board of Trade chair
Board will work to 'build a better future' for city
There are great days ahead for Toronto, Paul Massara promised Thursday after the venture capitalist was sworn in as chairperson of the Toronto Board of Trade.
The president of Genesis Capital Corporation called his appointment as the city's latest business voice "an opportunity for us all to build a better future."
That's a future, he said, in which the board works as a group to tackle Greater Toronto's biggest challenges with solutions that are right for business and the environment.
The 10,000-member board, Massara said, is focussed on building "a stronger city and region in every sense," helping business leaders succeed while harnessing the talent and skills of Toronto's immigrant workforce.
Massara, 42, previously a member at-large on the board's executive committee, said at the annual TBOT luncheon the group's efforts to extend its relevance and influence will continue far beyond his two-year term, the longest for a chairperson so far.
"What lies ahead is not a sprint but a marathon."
Outgoing chairperson and Toronto Community News publisher Betty Carr said she steps down with a sense of accomplishment, "that we collectively continue to build a better business climate and a better city."
Over the last year, she said, city builders made progress on reducing business taxes and raising issues such as improving Greater Toronto's roads and transit and reversing provincial downloading of social program costs to municipalities.
The board also expanded its events, services and networking opportunities.
Carr, who remains on the board this year as past chairperson said she has faith it can be even more influential with Massara, "a man of vision and accomplishment" at the helm.
Massara knows how businesses succeed but he's also become a leader in Toronto's political sphere, one of only three business representatives on the mayor's fiscal review panel, she said.
In all, 19 directors stood to be sworn in by Mayor David Miller, according to the dictates of an 1845 law. Thanking each member for serving, Miller said the board is "not shy about advocacy" but has come to recognize a lot of common ground with government.
"That's what a great partnership is all about."
Keynote speaker Tony Comper, past president and CEO of BMO Financial Group, said the city is in the midst of a cultural renaissance "that never needs to end and must not be allowed to."
Once missing the cultural infrastructure to showcase its artists, the city has a new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, additions to the Royal Ontario Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario and other projects that will give Toronto the "critical mass" it needs to transform "into a new kind of city altogether," Comper said.
Toronto is attracting the best and brightest because it's becoming the type of "creative city" spoken of by University of Toronto professor Richard Florida, he added.
But for its next leap forward, the city must engage all its citizens, regardless of status, in its diverse cultural life, he said, adding that engagement will both fill theatre seats and expand future support for the arts.
There may be no going back to the numbers of tourists Toronto drew before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks or a new era of high gas prices, said Comper.
"We can no longer count on visitors to keep our cultural industries thriving."
But Greater Toronto's citizens are all we'll need to keep our renaissance going, provided new people are brought in to support it, he said.
"We must get the message to every person in the GTA that in fact there cannot be a great leap forward without them."
