Mayor Tory welcomes ‘fresh start’ after Ford government caves on budget cuts

Thestar.com
May 28, 2019
David Rider

Mayor John Tory is welcoming Toronto’s “fresh start” for relations with the Doug Ford provincial government, adding he had expected the bruising war for public opinion to continue.

“I’m happy we’re going to have a fresh start and sit down together and find better ways we can do things together. That’s the beginning of a process that’s a big improvement,” over Ford’s previous retroactive imposition of $177.65 million in cuts now off the table, Tory said in an interview.

Tory said he got a call from Premier Ford’s office Sunday afternoon, one day after knocking on doors in Progressive Conservative MPP Robin Martin’s midtown riding urging residents to oppose the cuts, asking for a conference call between provincial and city officials.

The result was Ford agreeing to scrap all the 2019 cuts to municipal funding except the clawback of an increase in municipalities’ share of gas-tax revenues, with the province sitting down with local governments to look at ways to find savings in 2020 that will help Queen’s Park reduce its deficit.

The about-face followed a pressure campaign by Tory and other Ontario mayors on PC MPPs.

“I was optimistic that if we kept at it -- and quite frankly I thought we’d have to be at it for longer than we did -- the government would get that feedback from the MPPs themselves,” and reverse course, the mayor said.

Tory, who spoke with Ford by phone Monday morning, said he didn’t want to start future talks, possibly with the help of a provincially funded auditor, with a list of demands. But he added that, the Ford government wants to cut core services important to Torontonians, he’ll have no choice but to restart the pressure campaign.

“If our interests are adversely affected going forward, we’ll do whatever we have to do whether it’s going back out on the streets or other things.”

Cam Guthrie, the mayor of Guelph and head of the Large Urban Mayors’ Caucus of Ontario, said Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark got the message loud and clear during a meeting in Guelph on Friday.

“We were incredibly united -- he heard from big, small and other municipalities about what these cuts represented and how difficult they were mid-year with budgets already set,” Guthrie said.

“The municipalities are still concerned about any impacts on core services, however at least now we have the runway between now and our 2020 budgets to sit with the provincial government.”

At Toronto City Hall Councillor Joe Cressy, chair of the public health board, called Ford’s reversal of deep cuts “a tremendous victory, for the people of Toronto and Ontario and to the tens of thousands of individuals who signed petitions, made phone calls, knocked on doors, to mayors from across this province, to chairs of boards of health

“I think this has demonstrated that when this government makes the wrong decision, the people of this province have a role to play in making them reverse course.”

The city estimated that the proposed provincial funding reductions to public health would have meant a $1 billion reduction in spending over 10 years, at a time when Toronto’s population is increasing and aging and the country is in the midst of an opioid crisis.

Instead, the province has agreed to work together with municipal officials to find efficiencies in public health programs.

Both Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s medical officer of health, and Cressy welcomed discussions with the province.

“That is a conversation we’re prepared to have, that is what we’ve called for since the beginning,” said Cressy. “The retroactive cuts that were announced and the arbitrary cost-share reduction was foolish from the beginning. We’re looking forward to now being able to reset and start from scratch.”

Not everyone was celebrating, however. Shelagh Pizey-Allen, executive director of the advocacy group TTCriders, said the province should also reverse its gas-tax funding clawback.

The funding boost was granted by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government. Ford’s campaign pledged during the 2018 provincial election that the extra funding would survive, but his government reneged once in power.

That cutback will cost the city about $1.1 billion over a decade in funding to fix and maintain TTC equipment, making less frequent the breakdowns and closures that aggravate riders.

“It shows that public pressure is working, but they need to be listening to transit riders as well,” said Pizey-Allen.

“People want to get to where they are going on time, they want more affordable transit and this gas tax cut needs to be reversed to get us there.”