John Tory Hired A Crisis Communications Expert to Advise Him and Wife When She Found Out About His Affair
When former Toronto Mayor John Tory had an affair with an aide 38 years his junior, she was under the impression that Tory and his wife, Barb Hackett, were estranged. They were not, Tory told the city’s integrity commissioner. Although Hackett did need to hire a political crisis communications expert to help them — the not estranged husband and wife — moved forward after she found out about the affair.
These were just a few of the details that emerged in the 122-page report that Integrity Commissioner Jonathan Batty released on Thursday where the commissioner said the Tory broke ethics rules when he had an affair with a subordinate but recommended that Tory, who resigned after the news broke in February, face no sanctions from the council.
According to Hackett, when she found out about the relationship with the former aide identified in the report only as “Ms A,” Tory told her that he would end it, showing her an email that “said their personal communications had to end and they had to ‘find ways to limit their personal contact’ in the workplace.”
When Hackett later found out that he resumed the affair, she and Tory “privately retained” Amanda Galbraith, a family friend and former Tory aide who is now a principal at the crisis communications firm Navigator, to advise them.
In his report, Batty emphasized that Ms. Galbraith was not retained by the City of Toronto to provide human resources advice to the Mayor’s Office as “relationships between a person in authority and someone who works for them need to be managed according to the city’s human resources policies which are incorporated into the Code of Conduct. City policies require that a safe workplace is maintained,” he said.
Instead, Galbraith was hired to advise Tory and Hackett privately because as Tory said, they “were struggling … and we were looking for somebody who could help.”
According to her profile on Navigator, Galbraith, who specializes in crisis communications, media relations and reputation recovery, has 15 years communications experience in the federal and municipal government, private sector, on political campaigns and as a journalist.
She was previously Tory’s Director of Communications, and had “played a key role in shepherding two multi-billion dollar budgets and the city’s successful labour negotiations.” She was also co-chair of Tory’s 2018 campaign.
Why they didn’t hire a marriage counselor, or a therapist, like normal people, remains unclear.
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