A hard slap for Toronto

Premier Kathleen Wynne has delivered a hard slap in the face to Toronto by nixing the city’s plan to pay for transit by putting tolls on two highways.

It’s not just the money — though that’s certainly important. The city needs billions to pay for transit, housing and a host of other vital projects. And it’s far from clear that the extra gasoline tax revenue the premier promises to give the city will match the money that road tolls would have risen.

Much more important is the blatant disrespect towards the city, whose mayor and council bravely stepped forward last fall with a proposal they knew would be unpopular with many people. Putting tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway was always going to raise the hackles of commuters, especially those in the 905 suburbs.

Yet Tory took that chance and brought 32 councillors along with him. It was the boldest move to break the logjam in transit funding the city has seen in many years.

For weeks it seemed as if the Wynne Liberals would not stand in the way, even as the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats at Queen’s Park raised their faux-populist cries against any sort of toll or tax, anywhere, anytime.

Now, suddenly, the premier has vetoed tolls for transparently political reasons. She made the announcement in Richmond Hill, in the heart of suburban commuter country, at a news conference that resembled a campaign rally.

By all accounts, she had been told in no uncertain terms by Liberal MPPs from 905 ridings that she would be cutting her own political throat if she gave the green light to highway tolls.

Instead, she chose to throw Tory and Toronto council overboard, leaving the mayor sputtering about how he’s sick of having Queen’s Park treat him like a “little boy in short pants.”

No wonder. Toronto put itself through a long, arduous debate over how to fund transit without simply going begging to higher governments. It finally rallied around highway tolls — not a perfect solution, but at least a way forward.

But to what end? If the province can sweep all that aside because some people don’t like the outcome, how will the city find the will to make other difficult decisions that require provincial approval, or at least acquiescence? What message does that send to other cities?

To make it all worse, it kills a plan that would have both raised money for transit (in the range of $170 million to $200 million a year to start) and changed behaviour in socially beneficial ways. Tolls would raise the cost of using highways, incenting people to drive less, cutting emissions from cars and trucks, and encouraging more people to use public transit.

Instead, commuters will be spared the pain of paying $2 a trip for the highways they use (less, it should be noted, than transit riders pay every day). And the province promises to make the city whole by doubling the share of the gasoline tax it directs to cities.

In other words, all Ontarians will pay through their general taxes — but voters in a few key suburban swing ridings won’t be able to pin the blame for pesky tolls on the Wynne Liberals. And the additional gasoline tax money directed to municipalities ($334 million by 2012-22) won’t be available to pay for other pressing needs in Toronto or elsewhere.

Once again, taxpayers will be fooled into thinking there really is a free lunch: more transit at no extra cost.

This is the kind of magical thinking that has got the city and the region into the infrastructure mess it’s in. For far too long, we have collectively refused to pay to keep our roads properly maintained, our transit systems up to date, our public housing fit for human habitation. Politicians have been all too happy to encourage taxpayers in the belief that no more money is needed, that Band-Aids can be applied by shuffling existing funds around.

It’s disappointing that a Liberal premier, whatever the political imperatives facing her, would torpedo a modest but genuine attempt to break that cycle.

She will now have to tell the city where the money for its other priorities is coming from, since Queen’s Park clearly won’t allow it to grow up and take control of its own destiny.

In blocking tolls, Wynne chose to throw Tory and the Toronto city council overboard