Transit funding top on Wynne’s agenda
Premier speaks to delegates about finding ways to create new ‘revenue tools’
HAMILTON— Calling traffic congestion “the No. 1 issue in relation to quality of life,” Premier Kathleen Wynne is throwing out another lifeline to find ways of funding more public transit. Wynne asked members of her own Liberal party at a weekend convention here to help devise new “revenue tools” that she has promised to reveal by next spring in hopes of winning support from opposition parties and the public.
She admitted that’s a tall order, given that both the Progressive Conservatives and NDP have said they won’t back new taxes or fees on Ontarians, whose pocketbooks are already pinched.
“I know that within the party, as within the population as a whole, there’s a range of opinions. It’s good we have an opportunity to air those,” Wynne told reporters after a luncheon speech to convention delegates Saturday.
“The mechanisms and how we pay for it? That is the political challenge. I get that.”
Wynne also has a 13-member panel led by Ryerson University educator Anne Golden, a former United Way president, looking at potential new revenue tools — which Conservative Leader Tim Hudak says is a twoword code name for taxes.
New Democrat MPP Paul Miller (Hamilton East-Stoney Creek) said his party will consider only those revenue tools “that aren’t going to impact the people of Ontario in their own pocket” and said closing corporate tax loopholes is the way to go.
Given the possibility Wynne could put her transit funding solution in the spring budget, the stakes are high because her minority government can’t survive a vote on it unless she gets opposition support.
“It remains to be seen what they bring forward,” Miller added. “It could trigger an election, no doubt about it.”
The premier hedged when asked if transit funding will be the so-called “ballot question” in the next election, whenever that comes.
“I don’t know if this will be the issue. There will be many issues.”
Wynne warned that dropping the ball on improved public transit and a means of funding regular expansion — in the same way highway improvements are made every year with little fanfare or debate — would be “abdicating our responsibility to the next generation.”
“We’re at the point right now where peoples’ quality of life is so affected that they can see what the negative impact would be if we don’t do something about this right now,” she added.
“In some ways the population is ahead of us on this in terms of understanding the necessity of making these investments.”
“It remains to be seen what they bring forward. It could trigger an election, no doubt about it.” PAUL MILLER NDP MPP
In her 12-minute speech to about 500 delegates, Wynne touted the party’s new “Common Ground” website — an online suggestion box — where moderators will take submissions on ways to boost the economy and lower an unemployment rate above the national average. The submissions — from Ontarians of all stripes — could make their way into the next Liberal campaign platform. “We want to hear people’s priorities and their ideas,” Wynne told the crowd. “We are doing politics differently.” Conservative MPP Rod Jackson said the premier — who has made a show of holding a number of roundtable discussions with business and labour leaders across the province to get ideas — is dithering while 600,000 Ontarians remain unemployed. “Instead Kathleen Wynne has told the people of Ontario to wait another six months while the Liberal conversation club holds another discussion,” he said.