The Libs have all but killed Toronto’s dream of becoming a truly global city with news in the budget that billions for a citywide light rail network will have to wait.
All of which in reality means we can relegate this baby, so nicely incubating in our visions of a clean, green future world, to that dusty shelf of good intentions left unrealized. Can we imagine the plan being revived now?
And all for the sake of tired old economic thinking that the deficit, above all else, needs to be slain.
For those who want to give up control of the TTC to the province, take note.
When pushed comes to shove, Queen’s Park, and the feds to for that matter, will do what government’s facing re-election a little more than a year down the road always do: hang T.O. out to dry. Will Toronto voters remember this day come the 2011 provincial election?
We thought the deficit was coming under control, more than three billion bucks less than the 24 bil projected.
The Libs can try and hide all they want behind the excuse that health care and education are priorities. Transit City is just as important an investment.
The thousands of jobs it would have created, and the resulting development it would have sparked along proposed lines, to say nothing of the stimulus for low-income neighbourhoods, are enormous.
It’s too bad.
Some of the most important infrastructure projects ever built in this city were started in tough times, completed against all odds. Think Union Station. They helped lift us out of economic hard times. They reflected a can-do spirit, the courage to look forward, beyond narrow and vested political interests.
Instead, Dalton McGuinty’s Libs, praised by greens for pushing an activist agenda on the environment (see Green Energy Act), looked in the rearview mirror, saw the monster of a deficit and crumbled to the old ways of doing things to save their asses in 2011.
Now, about the province of Toronto idea…[rssbreak]
