{"id":60147,"date":"2019-04-29T13:00:15","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T17:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=60147"},"modified":"2019-04-29T13:30:53","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T17:30:53","slug":"lorinc-after-toronto-loses-the-game-of-chicken-with-doug-ford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2019\/04\/29\/lorinc-after-toronto-loses-the-game-of-chicken-with-doug-ford\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: After Toronto loses the game of chicken with Doug Ford"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A tweet from the Globe and Mail\u2019s Jeff Gray<\/a> aptly summarized the noisy feud that broke out last week over the Ford government\u2019s move to cut $1 billion from Toronto Public Health in the next decade: a \u201cClass A Clamshell-Pink Palace bunfight,\u201d Gray wrote. And one, he added, that\u2019s likely to continue for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

To recap: we had the spectacle of Queen\u2019s Park emissaries darkening the doors of 100 Queen to accuse the city of prevaricating. Meanwhile downtown councilor Joe Cressy, chair of the Board of Health, was turning up  everywhere, fronting our counter-attack.<\/p>\n

Although Mayor John Tory seems content to let Cressy carry the heavy end of this political canoe, even he issued statements that sounded genuinely irate. \u201cWe have been clear that this is an incredibly serious funding change which puts our city’s health at risk and will put lives at risk here in Toronto and across the province,\u201d Tory said in a statement released last Wednesday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that the political response to the looming TPH cuts has been noticeably more raucous than the city\u2019s reaction to the cumulative loss of $1.1 billion in transit capital dollars<\/a> due to the Ford government\u2019s decision to cut our portion of the Wynne government\u2019s gas tax.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the difference in tone has to do with the fact that the health cuts hit individuals whereas the impact of the TTC funding is more diffuse. But if I\u2019m feeling cynical, I\u2019d venture to guess that the more muted response on the transit funding file may have to do with the continuing \u201cnegotiations\u201d over the subway upload.<\/p>\n

In the main, it would appear that the powers that be on council are now fighting the good fight, at long last. So two cheers for at least turning up.<\/p>\n

But what happens when we eventually lose this game of political chicken?<\/p>\n

Because we will. (Sorry.)<\/p>\n

Even though close observers of the Ford government have noted that the Tories do yield on certain decisions when there\u2019s enough noisy push-back (funding for autism treatment, the sex ed curriculum, sort of, etc.), Toronto politicians who think they can achieve a similar outcome are deluding themselves and their supporters. Beating up on Toronto council has made for good retail politics in the conservative hinterland for years, and that habit won\u2019t change anytime soon.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting to ponder is how Tory will manage the fiscal aftermath, given all the heated rhetoric in recent days about the life-and-death consequences of these cuts. Put another way, if Tory is sincere in his assertion that provincially-imposed budget slashing could lead to loss of life, doesn\u2019t it then follow that he\u2019s essentially committing himself to finding ways to replace all those dollars?<\/p>\n

In an election year, I suppose, there\u2019s a half-decent chance that federal largesse may come Toronto\u2019s way in one form or another, and with it the promise of an easing of the budget pressures being imposed by Queen\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n

Yet if no external sources are found within the next several months, the onus surely is on Tory to either propose property tax hikes or new revenue streams to generate the funds required to ensure that TPH can continue to keep vulnerable people safe. Indeed, after this year\u2019s budget fiasco and the long-predicted slowing of the municipal land transfer tax, Ford\u2019s draconian cuts should be forcing Tory and council to finally<\/em> pay attention to former city manager Peter Wallace\u2019s advice<\/a> to diversify the city\u2019s revenues as a basic risk management strategy.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it already looks as if the mayor and his budget chief will revert to their more instinctively conservative response, which is to further starve the city\u2019s services as a means of absorbing these and other cuts imposed by Ford & Co.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is there will be some services that will have to be cut if we have to look at this retroactively,\u201d Gary Crawford told CTV News<\/a> over the weekend. \u201cThere is no pocket of money sitting around anywhere for us to be able to make up the difference and if we are forced to make the difference and open up the budget to look for savings that concerns me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has long astonished me that the debate about fiscal sustainability at council is so stunted, and it is now doubly shocking that the response to over $2 billion in lost provincial transfers may be to hack services in order to balance the books.<\/p>\n

We seem destined to be governed by politicians who can only see one side of the ledger statement, even when it has become abundantly and almost violently clear that even more austerity as a remedy is the wrong way to go.<\/p>\n

The harsh new normal for the City of Toronto is that we will spend the next several years enduring more and more fiscal hits courtesy of the Ford government, which, lest anyone forget, didn\u2019t even get manage to reduce spending this year (i.e., expect more to come). So if Tory & Co. are genuinely concerned about housing and transit and quality of life and, well, life itself, then the mayor surely has a duty to begin a serious conversation with Torontonians about the cost and extent of the municipal services that sustain the 2.7 million people who call this place home.<\/p>\n

To do anything less, at this point, would be nothing short of a complete abdication of Tory\u2019s responsibility for ensuring the livability of this city.<\/p>\n

photo courtesy Toronto Archives:<\/a> fonds 1244, item 0152a<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tweet from the Globe and Mail\u2019s Jeff Gray aptly summarized the noisy feud that broke out last week over the Ford government\u2019s move to cut $1 billion from Toronto Public Health in the next decade: a \u201cClass A Clamshell-Pink Palace bunfight,\u201d Gray wrote. And one, he added, that\u2019s likely to continue for the foreseeableContinue reading “LORINC: After Toronto loses the game of chicken with Doug Ford”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":60151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: After Toronto loses the game of chicken with Doug Ford - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2019\/04\/29\/lorinc-after-toronto-loses-the-game-of-chicken-with-doug-ford\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: After Toronto loses the game of chicken with Doug Ford - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A tweet from the Globe and Mail\u2019s Jeff Gray aptly summarized the noisy feud that broke out last week over the Ford government\u2019s move to cut $1 billion from Toronto Public Health in the next decade: a \u201cClass A Clamshell-Pink Palace bunfight,\u201d Gray wrote. 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