Posts Tagged ‘Ontario Support for TTC’
Toronto’s Election Agenda Should Be Set By Torontonians
When I read that Dalton McGuinty had an opinion on what the ballot question should be in Toronto’s municipal election I was taken aback. It just seemed inappropriate that the Premier of Ontario would be advising residents what debate should determine the outcome of the race.
Watching the election unfold so far it seems clear there are going to be two camps, the folks who want to take drastic action to fundamentally alter how and what City Hall does and those who think tinkering is the way to go.
The province has used the 2010 municipal budget as an opportunity to use spending power to exert more control over the TTC. This is something Torontonians should approach with caution because it means local control will be shared with the province, likely through Metrolinx. This could create an even more unwieldy governance structure for the TTC.
The Premier’s suggestion that the Toronto Election is a good opportunity to discuss the idea of transit workers being declared an essential service was not only off base, but possibly a sign of what is to come with the permanent funding proposal from the Province, particularly in a race that sees the front runners running against City Hall, not for it.
With the significant decisions the next Council is going to have to make regarding Toronto’s future should be top of mind of all voters when they determine who to send to Council in the fall. I believe our next Mayor and members of Council need to focus the municipal/provincial relationship on building a sustainable and workable framework for Toronto to govern it’s affairs with the resources needed to meet the challenge. We need to make sure, whoever is elected doesn’t sell our city short in these negotiations and ensures the Premier understands providing adequate funding to the City of Toronto and the TTC isn’t optional, its necessary.
How about the province just fund a proportion of the TTC’s operating budget because it’s the right thing to do, and historically a role they played.
If there is to be a ballot question regarding anything to do with the Provincial government it should be, which candidate for Mayor best represents our City’s long term interests in negotiating a sustainable framework with the Ontario Government.
Comments OffMcGuinty, Smitherman, Miller, the Streetcars and the Jobs
”I do think that in these times you have to be a little bit careful about writing cheques that you don’t have the ability to back up, Smitherman said.” No streetcar budget: McGuinty – Toronto Sun, April 30th 2009
Isn’t this baffoon of a Minister a giant verbal cheque writer? You know, in the ‘don’t let your mouth write cheques your body can’t cash’ kind of way? His attack first, be thought for later, approach to public policy and governance has him backpedaling and side stepping his own piles of BS and embarrassment more than any other Minister in the cabinet.
I don’t know how the politics of this went down, I do see a mayoral ‘wannabe’ and the real Mayor lining up for a jousting match that affects millions of Ontarians. Who knows how it will end, but I’m with the Mayor on the purpose, and the benefits for regional development in two parts of the Province that badly need it.
For McGuinty to pretend he is showing any financial restraint, when he will literally double the debt over the course of the eight year tenure his government before they are defeated is almost laughable, if it wasn’t so serious for my generation. He will be the Premier who will go down in history is running the largest deficit this Province has ever seen, and adding more to it’s debt than any other Premier in the history of Ontario. I will likely be far past punditry or active involvement in politics before this Premier’s debt legacy is paid off. (Don’t say, but the melt down, the melt down, because he had been running deficits almost annually since 2003, while raising taxes and spending along the way.)
Maybe Miller just saw the piles of debt financed cash Smitherman and McGuinty were mindlessly shoveling out Queen’s Park, and genuinely thought he could get in on the fun without asking… I mean when you have Smitherman preaching about the need for ‘green’ everything and having billions upon billions for a ’smart grid’ and for the folks who bought and paid for the Green Energy Act, could you hardly blame him? Public transit is one of the legitimate opportunities to address carbon dioxide emissions, considering 75% of Ontario’s existing electricity supply does not generate carbon dioxide, but certainly all those vehicles on the road do.
If it wasn’t discussed in advance, I can understand why the Premier and his rabid attack dog are upset (although I think Smitherman’s emotional range starts at ‘angry’). At the same time, it is a project with a whole lot of merit and even if toes were stepped on and rings weren’t kissed, the economic benefits, and environmental realities of this should not be ignored.
McGuinty sucks at looking tough, and if he chooses this as the issue to be the bad guy, he will vilify himself and give Miller a giant political two by four, even if there may be some cold hearted merit to what he would be trying to say. That being said this is the same Premier who yesterday said he wasn’t closing any emergency rooms in small communities, just ‘consolidating them’.
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