Hope for ‘transformative’ transit comes from province, not city council

NationalPost.com
Oct. 19, 2016
Chris Selley

Kathleen Wynne may be the country’s least popular premier; her party may be 10 points down to the Progressive Conservatives, as of threehundredeight.com’s weighted polling average at the end of September; and Metrolinx, the ostensibly arm’s-length agency charged with dragging the region’s public transit options into the 1980s — and perhaps even beyond — may be a “monster (that) is getting away from them,” as NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo put it last month amidst accusations that an as-yet-unreleased review of Metrolinx operations would whitewash problems.

But for now, if nothing else, Wynne still has something pretty meaningful to offer voters in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area: $16 billion or so (of their money) to make it easier to navigate a rapidly growing region in a way that residents of many other comparable jurisdictions — Chicago and New York, to say nothing of European cities — take for granted.

Projects planned and funded — many already under way — will be “nothing short of transformative … for this region,” Wynne told a friendly crowd at the Toronto Board of Trade Wednesday. It is difficult to argue. However you crunch the costs and benefits, frequent, two-way, all-day GO train service between downtown Toronto and Kitchener/Hamilton, plus further improvements on the Lakeshore East and Lakeshore West lines — already half-hour-or-better, both directions, all day — would offer millions of people all manner of professional and personal lifestyle improvements.

Even if an out-of-control monster called Metrolinx is in charge, and even if the Liberals richly, decadently deserve defeat, many commuters may struggle to dismiss this pitch out of hand — especially since Wynne’s friend in the Prime Minister’s Office is similarly enamoured of infrastructure spending.

“One year ago, we got the real federal partner that I had been calling for. And that is a very big deal. That alignment is extremely important,” the premier effused Wednesday.

So there’s all that. And then there’s the city of Toronto.

“We’re expecting that marvellous alignment with the government of Canada, the city of Toronto and the province of Ontario to help us with the capital (costs of projects),” Peter Wallace, the city’s plain-spoken general manager, said in a speech at the Munk School of Global Affairs Monday. “For sure, we’ll get some money out of that. But no other government has expressed the slightest interest in helping the city of Toronto with its operating (budget) challenge.”

Indeed. And however much the city might get to put toward its staggering $23 billion in approved but unfunded capital projects, it will be a tiny fraction of $23 billion. Wallace has quite rightly been telling councillors, publicly, that they are to a significant extent running a model parliament: saying yes to the moon without so much as a space program, let alone a rocket. It is time, he says, for more earthly pursuits: find the money for what you’ve committed to or don’t commit to it. And don’t pretend even more largess from upstairs will bridge the gap, or use it as an excuse to commit to even more things.

“The province owes us that money, therefore the province should buy us that new (thing),” said Wallace, mimicking Toronto’s traditional thinking. “Like, it’s just not gonna happen. The province is dead flat broke. Forget it.” And while Wallace pledged a “race to the bottom” when it comes to finding efficiencies, he stressed that’s absolutely not sufficient to be a game-changer in the big picture. Given how big the big picture is, he is certainly correct.

Mayor John Tory has taken some flak for his demand for a 2.6 per cent budget cut across the board, even as he pledges to commit to new taxes to fund his relatively ambitious platform. Is he a city builder or not? Toronto politics being what it is, however, one can understand the instinct to be seen guarding the public purse more zealously than ever when preparing to raid voters’ wallets. Tory remains committed to supporting new revenue sources for transit and housing, and getting them approved by city council by the end of the year — and not before time.

He has been mayor for nearly two years. If his eventual commitment doesn’t suggest the possibility of transformative change in Toronto — on its own, not after months of consultations or once the province and the feds chip in their hypothetical third of the dough — it will be far more difficult to see in his administration the transformative potential that he promised.