Preville on Politics

Toronto the gullible

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Philip Preville

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Let me get this straight. Last Friday, Mayor David Miller and his TTC Chair Adam Giambrone unveil Transit City, a laudably ambitious plan featuring some nice graphic design courtesy of Spacing magazine’s Matthew Blackett. But there was a catch—the same catch as always.

Like every other new idea at City Hall, Transit City was a plan without money. Unless new federal and provincial funds came through the door, Transit City would be a non-starter. In other words: over to you, Jim Flaherty. One report said Miller and Miller Lite rushed the plan so they could release it before the federal budget.

This counts as clever politics, but little else. It takes months to put together a government budget (just ask Shelley Carroll). By last Friday, the federal budget was already completed, fini, no more revisions. The booklets were at the printer. Jim Flaherty was planning a busy weekend shopping for skates. He’s not going to stop everything and call his staff in on the weekend so Toronto can get some money for a light-rail network it cooked up in a hurry. I would be surprised if the mayor didn’t know this himself.

And yet today, these guys, who should know better, are reporting with a straight face that Flaherty’s budget leaves Transit City “up in the air,” having presumably forgotten that it was a pie in the sky from the moment it was announced.

It’s not that Transit City is a bad plan, or that the lack of funding for transit and for cities aren’t real problems. It’s just that the mayor, after months of campaigning for more money, waited until the last business day before the budget to explain what he needed it for. Of course he didn’t get it.

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Philip Preville

Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.


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