Royson James
A Doug Ford-led Ontario government is bound to create upheaval for Toronto,
Only deluded Liberal supporters hold out hope that Kathleen Wynne will be re-elected premier next Thursday. The rest of us know this is the end of 15 years of Liberal party rule in Ontario.
Toronto, the municipality, should look back fondly on the Dalton McGuinty-Kathleen Wynne years.
It’s difficult to remember now, but when the Liberals took power in 2003, Toronto was a basket case — the target of provincial downloading, a city put in a fiscal straight-jacket by restrictive provincial policies and the object of hostility from former premier Mike Harris and his cabinet ministers.
It mattered not that the mayor was Mel Lastman, who froze property taxes for three years, as the province wanted. Harris put the squeeze on the city in every possible way. He shut down subway plans, stopped paying for transit, dumped social service costs on the city, downloaded thousands of brokendown social housing units and showed Toronto the back of the hand — all in a an effort to cut city spending to meet a perceived ideal Ontario average.
Just google Harris-Lastman and you get a sense of the bad blood between city hall and Queen’s Park before the Mike Harris government and its successors were sent packing — ushering in this sustained period of relative peace and co-operation.
“Everything Harris touches turn to #*$^&,” Lastman once told reporters in the city hall press gallery.
As this period ends, uncertainty reigns. Again. The wrong choice for Toronto could plunge the city back to those tumultuous times. An NDP government under Andrea Horwath would continue much of the co-operative spirit between the two orders of government. A Doug Fordled Ontario is bound to create instability and upheaval; hostility, even.
Would you be surprised if Ford takes away the city’s right to impose a land transfer tax, the very instrument that has rescued the city’s budget for years? It’s the type of populist move Ford favours — one that will be hailed by his base supporters and welcomed by the real-estate industry, and will create almost no political fallout.
Remember the vehicle registration tax?
When Ford and his brother Rob arrived at city hall in 2010, it was the first thing they got rid of. Nobody cried, but more than $60 million is still missing from the city’s budget and has to be filled by other instruments, such as growth in the land transfer tax.
On transit, Ford has declared that subways are back, even where they are not warranted. As premier, he plans to impose the following on the city’s current plan: three subway stops beyond Kennedy (instead of one); and looping the line with the Sheppard subway in the McCowan and Sheppard area. The existing plan has an LRT running from McCowan to link with the Sheppard subway terminus at Don Mills Rd.
Ford’s designs could add $3 billion to transit costs in Scarborough, without addressing rapid transit needs in Malvern, the University of Toronto and Centennial College.
Ford hasn’t disclosed the source of such funds, but he could divert most of the $4 billion the Wynne government announced as extra transit cash for Toronto to pay a portion of the city’s priority projects such as the downtown relief line, the Yonge subway extension to Richmond Hill and the Waterfront LRT.
In other words, Ford is most likely to disrupt the current transit planning regimen in Toronto — one already too slow and too politicized and made too costly as a result.
TTC chair Josh Colle describes those prospects as a “sort of like throwing a grenade into the proceedings” — the last thing the city needs.
Post Harris, McGuinty embraced Toronto as his economic engine and proceeded to give the city powers commensurate with its clout and needs. The City of Toronto Act was created, giving Toronto the most autonomy of any provincial city. Suddenly, respect and co-operation reigned where conflict had calcified.
This goodwill survived three mayors of different style and substance — David Miller, Rob Ford and now John Tory. That’s a signal Ford should recognize, but history shows that careful consideration is not part of his makeup.
So, despite the City of Toronto Act and despite current conventions between Toronto and the province, a new premier can revert to the traditional role as boss, parent and ruler who can impose any measure on its capital city. Municipalities are still constitutional creatures of the province.
On issues that most matter to me — municipal relations, police oversight, transit, engagement of the province’s underclass — the Liberals have maintained a superior standard. In embracing the spirit of electoral change, Ford’s Ontario would be a return to a failed past.