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Headlines: In exchange for the city dropping its objections to the province’s plans for Ontario Place, a partially abandoned, provincially owned former waterfront theme park that will now become the site of an Austrian chain of indoor water parks and spas called Therme, the province will assume the prices for the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway. The two main problems of vehicular access to the city center.
The city will gain advantages of about $9 billion in profits, adding up to $1. 2 billion in operating investment over the next 3 years. Even that doesn’t fill the gap: The city is facing a $1. 5 billion budget crisis this year alone. But the $300 million hole is a manageable challenge for the city, which can’t legally run deficits, unlike $1. 5 billion.
In theory, this could have been a politically risky move for Chow. She had promised to fight the provincial allocation of Ontario Place (although she never seemed as enthusiastic as those who suggested she do so) and use the proceeds from the non-governmental project. -redevelopment of the east side of Gardiner for housing and other priorities. Both issues are absolute obsessions for some Torontonians to the point where I may not tell them about it because I don’t notice it myself, and I’ve lived here. maximum of my life. There was some consternation in the lines on Monday afternoon, but things were pretty quiet, and rightly so.
The fight for Ontario Place has taken place on the provincial side and the opposition New Democrats continue to question the Therme deal (rightly). This fight can continue on the provincial battlefield without being distracted by a mayor and councillors claiming they can thwart the legislator’s will with emotional videos on Facebook or chaining themselves to trees.
The task of rebuilding Gardiner’s eastern component had been officially on hold for about eight years (with a painfully compromised 36-5 City Council vote, no less) until Chow’s a Success Cross proposed revisiting it. to be settled again.
Many of the city’s most committed progressives are so convinced that former Mayor John Tory is the embodiment of satan that he and his predecessor Rob Ford were to blame for all the city’s budget messes now weighing on Chow, who will gladly settle for whatever they want. Otherwise, a terrible loss becomes a pragmatic victory. They may understand the city’s basic fiscal crisis as well as anyone else. They knew that it would be mandatory to reach a compromise in order to get out of it.
Ironically, for the city as a whole and for the council that governs it, those so-called concessions may simply be the biggest victory: two surely unforgiving questions about hobgoblins have been swept from the municipal discussion table. The Gardiner and, more recently, Ontario Place has sucked too much oxygen into this city’s politics for far too long. That sets the stage for a discussion about more vital things, such as where the city is going to locate the roughly $300 million it still wants to close. this year’s budget deficit, not to mention all the other partial or unfunded priorities languishing on Chow’s desk.
For Ford and his progressive conservative government, it’s another desirable moment in their relationship with a city in which a passionate minority despises them to the point of apoplexy. but it also sent 11 local MPs to Queen’s Park last year. I probably don’t hear it, and I’m not sure I’d brag about it in the rest of Ontario if I were Ford, but the fact is, this government has been very smart to Toronto; in fact, more so than its liberal predecessor.
After five-and-a-half years in office, even if he’s not beholden to the city, Ford is still a creature of Toronto. And it turns out that the rivalry between the vision of the city of the “inner suburbs” that the Fords have championed and the vision of the “inner city elite” more historically associated with Chow is shrinking as an electorate increasingly disillusioned with the Liberal Party and the NDP is being pursued. The most unlikely charge to live with. . . and perhaps also expelled from the vote of the Liberals and the NDP. Stranger things happened.
National Post Office
cselley@postmedia. com
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