Hudak takes caucus on wild transit ride
Queen’s Park can’t compete with city hall when it comes to transit intransigence. But that hasn’t stopped Tory Leader Tim Hudak from trying to boost his notoriety rating to rival Mayor Rob Ford’s.
Long silent on transit issues, Hudak belatedly pushed subways to the top of his political agenda this week. Now, inspired by Ford’s tunnel vision, Hudak is riding to His Worship’s rescue at warp speed. But he is taking his largely rural caucus for a wild ride through Toronto politics.
Here are Tim’s top 10 Tory transit troubles:
It’s hard to rebrand yourselves as pro-transit Tories when you’re still branded in the public mind as the PC government that cancelled the old Eglinton subway in 1995 and plugged the holes. Some track records can’t be buried.
The Tories want to make subways a wedge issue — peeling away grassroots support from a handful of Liberal MPPS whose Scarbor- ough constituents favour tunnels. The ruse failed. Suburban Liberals restated their personal support for subways, but argued they couldn’t overrule Toronto city council.
The wedge boomeranged by opening a new chasm between Tories and New Democrats. The two opposition parties enjoy ganging up against the government, but the latest PC antics only reminded the NDP why they are frenemies forever — even in a minority Legislature.
Hudak insists Premier Dalton Mcguinty should ignore Toronto council’s vote because the province is paying for the new $8.4 billion Eglinton crosstown line. Yet the very next day, he assailed the government for imposing provincewide rules on placement of wind turbines, saying municipalities should prevail on planning issues. Except in Toronto?
Apparently so. The Liberals dug out an old transit quote from Ottawa-area Tory MPP Lisa Macleod, who once urged the premier to “let city hall make their own decisions . . . and respect the fact that they were duly elected by the citizens of Ottawa.”
Hudak claims Toronto’s binding vote shouldn’t count because Ford won a direct mandate to bury the old LRT transit plan and dig more tunnels. But in Ontario, mayors have only one vote on council. In any case, the mayor’s two mythical promises — slaying the costly gravy train and building subway lines at no cost — have gone off the rails. Voters are feeling buyer’s remorse and his political honeymoon is history.
Hudak hitched his wagon to Ford Nation in the last campaign with the goal of ensnaring Mcguinty. Instead of eating Liberals for breakfast, Ford Nation has now swallowed up the Tory party. Elder brother Doug Ford, who muses about running provincially, appears to be driving the Tory train on subways — with Ford campaign strategist Richard Ciano now party president.
Hudak hopes to lure Ford supporters from the inner suburbs who still cling to the mayor’s pipe dream of underground subways. After all, every poll shows everyone loves subways. But when pollsters ask the obvious follow-up question — would you support a new transit tax or parking fees to pay for them — support crumbles.
The Tory caucus insists that a world class metropolis merits nothing less than subways — ignoring the list of cities, from London to Paris, that rely on a mix of both subways and LRTS. Hudak airily dismisses LRTS as “glorified streetcars,” arguing that subways are faster, less disruptive and more popular with riders. Yet he knows subways are a non-starter in suburbs that lack the population density to make them cost-effective, especially when there is no extra government money to tunnel along both Eglinton and Sheppard.
It may seem like hubris for a caucus without any Toronto MPPS to tell Toronto what to do on transit. But the Tories aren’t trying to win over Toronto. They are simply targeting precise pockets of the inner suburbs that remain loyal to Ford, in hopes of gaining a beachhead in a city that hasn’t elected a Tory since 1999. Hence Hudak’s cynical sop to the suburbs, while the rest of Toronto can only marvel at his hypocrisy. Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, twitter.com/reggcohn.