SMARTTRACK PLAN GETS $2.6B PLEDGE
Toronto • Mayor John Tory could not hold back an ear-toear grin Thursday when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the federal government will contribute $2.6 billion toward SmartTrack, the express rail transit plan that was the linchpin of Tory’s mayoral campaign last fall.
“I’m very pleased to announce that our government will contribute up to one-third of the cost of Mayor Tory’s SmartTrack public transit program,” Harper said at a press conference at the TTC Hillcrest complex. “It will mean better, faster commutes for hundreds of thousands of people, and in that, our government is very proud to be a part of.”
The money will come from the Public Transit Fund, implemented in the 2015 budget by Finance Minister Joe Oliver, who was also present for the announcement.
Oliver called Toronto an engine of the Canadian economy.
“If we can’t get people moving in the GTA, our engine will splutter,” he said.
Harper said the money will only become available when the city of Toronto applies and the application is approved.
The transit project would see 53 kilometres of express rail and 22 stations, with five TTC interchanges, built with the hope of providing relief for TTC subway riders. It would also connect the financial district in downtown Toronto to the Airport Corporate Centre in Mississauga and Markham. Tory has said the project can be completed in only seven years and will cost $8 billion.
The provincial government has committed $2.8 billion to SmartTrack to electrify the Stouffville and Kitchener GO lines. Toronto city council approval is still needed before the project can move forward. Council approved spending $1.65 million to study the feasibility of SmartTrack in February.
Harper said the federal government’s funding should be enough to convince the city to support SmartTrack.
“Far be it for me to tell Toronto city council how to vote,” he said. “But when the federal government comes along with $2.6 billion to assist a visionary project of the mayor who was just elected, I would have a very optimistic view of the possibility of city council adopting this project.”
However, Adam Vaughan, a Liberal MP who is a former Toronto city councillor, wasn’t so optimistic.
Calling Harper’s announcement “a stunt,” Vaughan said the province was not consulted, and he doubted other GTA mayors were either. Vaughan also criticized Harper for not making funds available until 2019.
“This is a half-baked idea, with a half-baked program, with money that doesn’t arrive until half a decade,” he said. “2019 is two terms of parliament away.
“This is a stunt. This is the prime minister coming to the transit issue late. If you’re waiting for a train, you’re going to have to wait until 2019. If you’re waiting for a job, you’re going to have to wait until 2019.”
That wasn’t a concern for the smiling Tory, who called Thursday a “great day for the city of Toronto,” and said he will still look to use tax increment financing, a mechanism often used in the U.S., that involves borrowing money and banking on future property tax increases in certain neighbourhoods to pay it back, to fund Toronto’s third of the share. “I was very clear and very confident during the election … in saying that the tax increment financing has the potential to do what needs to be done in terms of the city’s share of financing SmartTrack,” Tory said.
“SmartTrack will be built. The people will be saying hallelujah because they’re going to have a way to get around this region; it’ ll relieve congestion on the existing transit system and on the roads.”