Chow thanks Grant for 32 years of service

“At MLS, years are like dog years,” Grant notes

Retiring director of Licensing and Standards Carlton Grants’ remarks to Toronto City Council July 24th, 2025:

“Mayor Chow madam, Speaker, Members of Council, the senior and corporate leadership teams, the MLS team, city colleagues, past and present. My wife, Carrie, good morning. I want to begin by saying how truly honored I am to have this opportunity to speak to all of you this morning. It’s a privilege that I don’t take lightly as I reflect on the past 32 years, I’m reminded of a very different time in 1993 we had computers, but we didn’t have email, we didn’t have voicemail.

We used maps by Perly’s and shared a brick cell phone from Motorola. When we did site visits, we relied on faxes, letters and landlines to communicate,

Whether 1993 or today, getting things done is still about relationships and about people working together, solving problems and building something meaningful. And it’s the people I’ve worked with who have made this journey so special. Your support, your collaboration and your friendship have meant everything to me.

Thank you for the memories, the challenges we’ve overcome and the countless moments of shared growth. I’m proud of what we built, but I’m even more grateful for who I’ve built it with. I want to thank the people who saw something in me, the people that hired me, provided me with different opportunities, stretched my thinking and trusted me to lead, Garth Armor, Joel Halstead, Shirley, Hoy and Tracey Cook. Thank you. You didn’t just shape my career. You shaped my leadership style, my authenticity, my standards and my values.

I hope I pass that forward to those I’ve worked within MLS and to the hundreds of others I’ve worked with across the city.

While I’m the leader of MLS, I don’t see my role as any more important than the role of colleagues at all levels of the organization. I simply could not have done this alone, and I want to thank each and every one of you for the difficult work you do every day.

To my MLS senior management team, thanks for being a part of my journey together. We’ve grown the division into an employer of choice, a division continuously improving, a division that makes a difference one address at a time, for the residents, small businesses and students who call our city home, I can say without hesitation that there is no other division with the breadth, scope and scale of municipal licensing and standards, our work is front facing, challenging, under intense public and political scrutiny. But the one thing it is never It is never boring.

Each day, each day brings new challenges, new complaints, new businesses, new problems for us to solve.

MLS is number one in FOI requests, top five in  complaints. The Ombudsman says we have five of the top 10 calls to 311, and in the  top three in media requests per year.

I’ve been fortunate to finish off my career in MLS, six as executive director and seven as the Director of Policy and Strategic support. This is 13 years. MLS years are like dog years, so that’s 91 years.

To Dana and Camille. Thank you for your support and the way you go about your work, with patience, empathy and professionalism every day while dealing with the myriad of issues facing MLS.

To Annalisa,  our careers have run parallel for over 22 years. As we’ve traversed this organization, we’ve learned from each other, vented to each other and supported each other. Thank you for your willingness to work together and do whatever it takes, regardless of which city division we were in at the time. Your commitment to the city has always stood out to me. It’s unparalleled, and I’m lucky to have you as a friend and call it to the to the division heads here today. Thank you for your collaboration, and while we each wear our own hat with its own set of roles and responsibility, we also wear another hat, a bigger hat that represents the entire city. Continue to think about ideas and solutions as one city rather than individual divisions. Strive to get to yes, but don’t be afraid to say no, if no is the best answer.

A special shout out to my colleagues and clerks, legal and strategic communications: thank you for being great partners and for always wearing your “one city hat.”

To the members of the media, thank you for reaching out to me and allowing me to provide important facts, context and outline our specific challenges for the stories you are working on, please continue to report on city hall with the balance and integrity it deserves.

I’ve had the privilege of learning from and working with many strong women in the city, and I’m so appreciative for the strongest, kindest and most important woman in my life is easily my wife of 31 years, Carrie.

I would not be here without your unwavering support, your encouragement and your sage advice. You kept me grounded and consistently reminded me of what truly matters.

You listen to my stories that were always unique, diverse and bizarre, our conversations would often conclude with Carrie asking me, “What does that have to do with you at MLS?”

And I would simply say “It just does. I can’t explain it.”

While my role has had a higher public profile, your career as an executive in financial services and healthcare should be celebrated equally. Thanks for being you. Thanks for us.

My 32 years at the City of Toronto have been more than a career for me. They’ve been a calling, and I’m so grateful to have shared it all with you.

My time at City has left my time at the city has left me with lifetime of lessons and the legacy of our shared work. I may be retiring from the city, but I will never stop caring about its future or the people who make it thrive. Thank you for the honor of serving alongside you.

Thank you for the memories. Thank you for everything.”