‘Hindsight is always 20/20’ mayor says about Raptors parade planning

By Dilshad Burman

Mayor John Tory says he’s happy with how the Raptors parade turned out, but “with an asterisk.”

He says the parade — attended by over two million people — was largely a success, but improvements are required.

“Hindsight is always 20/20 and there’s a lot of hindsight that’s being exercised now,” he told reporters on Thursday. “There were things that we clearly could do better.”

One of the main areas of improvement Tory identified was crowd control, adding that many of the other problems were connected to it and had a cascading effect thereof.

“Why were the situations in the square so difficult for people? In part because the parade was three hours late. Why was the parade three hours late? Because the crowd control at the beginning of the parade was inadequate,” said Tory.

Questions about who mapped out the parade route were deflected, with Tory saying he will not point fingers at any one agency.

“The fact is there was a discussion. I think the route came about perhaps more at the behest of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, but we were all there together,” he said. “There’s a collective responsibility to be taken here.”

Tory called the parade an “overwhelming success” while acknowledging that there were many problems that led to safety risks that “fortunately didn’t materialize into any serious injury to anybody” and reiterated that these issues need to be fixed before the next big event.

“That will be a great problem to have — that we have to put on a better parade to celebrate somebody else or the Raptors again,” he said.

A review of the parade and its planning will be conducted with the cooperation of the city, the TTC, various sports teams, police and any other agencies involved to make sure that the next large scale event is better managed.

While Tory said he would defer to the report following the review for proper recommendations on improvement, he did put forth a few suggestions of his own.

“I’m not the expert,” he said. “But when we are using Nathan Phillips Square, there’s got to be a better way to do it than was done on that day.”

Tory’s ideas included creating isles through the square for people to come and go and breaking up the crowd with water kiosks that would serve as separators and prevent people from being packed in too tightly.

When it comes to the shooting that injured four people and sent thousands of others fleeing, Tory said such incidents are largely unpredictable and not related to planning.

“If people are nonsensical enough to do that sort of thing with a gun, then I’m not sure you can plan for that,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said the shooting had all the markings of a targeted incident.

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