Earlier today, Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the grand reveal of the Liberal government’s long-awaited strategy to fund GTA transit this week.
In the year since Metrolinx unveiled its recommendations on how to raise $2 billion a year for the next quarter century (as per the Metrolinx Act, 2006), we’ve been treated to a disgraceful spectacle of political spinelessness, first at Toronto city council (which voted to not endorse almost every one the proposed taxes and levies) and then at Queen’s Park, where the Liberals have spent months retreating from Wynne’s pledge to break the back of this destructive problem.
During the extended period of policy foreplay leading up to last spring’s announcement, and then in the aftermath, one public figure emerged as the champion of an unpopular proposition. In interviews, through his advocacy group and on the radio, John Tory banged away at the message that our political leaders have to demonstrate some intestinal fortitude on the subject of paying for transit.
“We also know that if we haven’t come to grips with having a straightforward discussion about this issue, then we will let another period of time pass by,” he told the Toronto Sun last March. “And even worse than that, you may have people get elected on promises not to do anything about it and we’ll be sitting here five years from now with no money and no transit projects actually under construction.”
So here’s my question: Will John Tory blast Kathleen Wynne this week for wussing out on her promise to fix the funding mess once and for all? Will he ream out the Liberals for perpetrating one of the most epic examples of policy foot-dragging in recent memory? And does he point out to gridlock-addled Torontonians that the Liberals have had years to make their move, and instead waited until they were way past the government’s best-before date?
I’d love to hear some fire and brimstone, but I’m not holding my breath.
From what we’ve seen to date, the candidate version of John Tory (who is surrounded by Liberals) is not the advocacy version of John Tory, and that makes me wonder which one will be taking office if he prevails next October.
One of the more surreal exchanges in the campaign so far occurred when Karen Stintz accused Tory, during the CityTV debate, of harbouring a plan to foist his “secret” transit taxes on an unsuspecting electorate.
Tory, the civic action figure, was anything but secretive on this subject, and he’s left a long trail of quotes, speeches and statements in his wake. I remember tuning in to his drive-time show a couple of years ago, when he was asking callers to choose from a list of possible taxes – a gas tax, a point on the HST, property tax, and a couple of others. “Pick your poison” was his line, but Tory added this interesting proviso: callers weren’t allowed to say there was no problem.
As I recall, his preference (that day) was the HST because it spread the tax burden so broadly. “Many hands make for light work,” Tory told his listeners.
Here he is, more recently, in a joint Toronto Sun op-ed with then Civic Action CEO Mitzie Hunter, now MPP for Scarborough Guildwood: Our political leaders, they wrote, “need to buckle down and get ready to make tough decisions about how to fully fund a better transportation system through new sources of revenue — both public and private — that are dedicated and sustainable and spent efficiently, accountably and transparently.” And so on.
As I wrote in this space last week, apropos Olivia Chow’s hedges about the Relief Line, the leading mayoral challengers need to prove — to me, anyway — that they’ve got the jam to fight for the city’s interests instead of playing go-along for the sake of partisan convenience (and access to party voter identification lists).
As the most outspoken advocate for a full suite of revenue tools, Tory should be taking it upon himself to make it sticky and uncomfortable for the Liberals (and the NDP and the Tories) for their failures on the transit file.
But Tory can’t merely berate the provincial powers that be for not acting decisively. As he did with Civic Action (and its long list of political ambassadors to the cause), he must persuade Toronto voters that there’s no free lunch in this urban life — that if we want a “Yonge Street Relief Line” and any other improvements, we’re going to have to face up to the fact that we’re all going to have to pay, somehow.
The campaign, as the insiders like to say, is long, and there are still plenty of opportunities for the candidates, Tory included, to prove they have credible strategies to help underwrite expansion without detonating operating budgets.
So if Tory genuinely wants to “fix transit,” as he’s promised, he’s got to risk his political capital and speak frankly about solving the funding shortfall. Anything less and we’ll all know he’s just more of the same, only in a more genteel package.
3 comments
If only the candidates were running against each other, but instead they and their war rooms are all running against Ford and his machine of vicious lies and magic beans. Ergo, no truths can be told by the others, no taxpayers even slightly inconvenienced.
The sad part is that there is a substantial portion of the city that is tired of being referred to as “taxpayers” (as if all we care about is not having to spend an extra 60 bucks when we renew our license plates), and would be receptive to being treated as “citizens”.
I find it ironic, John, that John Tory went from being the individual who more than any other made PT taxes toxic (by holding up sign on Gardiner ramp in 2003 Mayoral Contest stating that David Miller wanted to toll the Expressway), then became the CivicActionSaint calling for intestinal fortitude amongst sitting politicians, imploring them to just get on with the job of funding & building PT—to now equivocating on PT funding, as he seeks Toronto’s Mayoralty while still clinging to the Fordian “Respect for Taxpayers” mantra, at the expense of PT funding.