Kiss that billion bucks goodbye

RE: LRT

I can almost agree with Andrew Dreschel (full disclosure: a friend and former colleague) in wanting to spend $1 billion on more pressing needs in Hamilton than light rail transit. Where we part company, I think, is in his belief that Hamilton could, would or ever will get that money out of a Doug Ford government to spend on whatever it wants.

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk has given Ford the perfect excuse to renege on any and all of his campaign promises. Her calculation that Ontario’s deficit is about double Premier Kathleen Wynne’s claimed $6 billion allows Ford to announce right after the election that the province’s book are so deep in the red that all spending is cancelled. Kiss the billion bucks goodbye. No LRT; nothing for infrastructure, reducing poverty or anything else; and no chance of encouraging growth and development that is proven to accompany LRT lines.

Wynne is toast, so Hamilton’s only chance of keeping the LRT project alive is if Andrea Horwath’s NDP is the next government — or at least holds the balance of power. It has dismayed me for most of the 55 years I’ve lived in Hamilton that city councillors continually squander city-building opportunities for the sake of re-election. This time, a group of short-sighted, ward-heeling councillors may punt the LRT because their constituents don’t want construction traffic jams to mess up their commute. Shame on them.

Rob Howard, Hamilton