Toronto ‘council rules supreme,’ transportation minister says

The Ontario government is siding with Toronto city council, marking another blow for Mayor Rob Ford whose subway plan was defeated on Wednesday.

Councillors voted 25-18 in favour of a light-rail transit (LRT) plan championed by TTC chair Karen Stintz. The plan would see LRTs along Eglinton, Finch and the Scarborough RT.

“Council rules supreme unless it delegates to city management or any other committee to make a decision,” transportation minister Bob Chiarelli said at Queen’s Park on Thursday. “The decision that city council took — they have the legal authority to do it.”

Chiarelli also reaffirmed the provincial government’s commitment to invest $8.4 billion in Toronto’s public transit.

“I’m confident the mayor will pause to reflect on what council decided yesterday as the province and Metrolinx will, so that we’ll be able to move forward together to build the transit solutions Toronto needs,” Chiarelli said.

The mayor called the vote “irrelevant,” and said the transit decision rests with Ontario’s premier. He even took his case for subways to the streets after the vote, riding the TTC overnight.

Before the minister’s news conference, his brother Coun. Doug Ford again voiced his frustration with the decision, insisting the “people are supreme” and that “council is not supreme.”

He also expressed both his and the mayor’s disappointment with Stintz. He told CityNews the mayor has lost confidence in her, and that she has “a personal agenda … a little agenda she’s moving forward on.”

“[Torontonians] don’t want a Band-Aid solution in 25 years that we’ll be tearing these trolley trains down the middle of Scarborough off the tracks,” he said. “We’re standing up for the people of Scarborough.”

Premier Dalton McGuinty said Thursday that the mayor “reached out” to him last Friday, and that he once again told Ford that he “needed the approval of a council.”

At the news conference, Chiarelli said, “I don’t’ know where Mayor Ford got the sense that the premier was advocating or in partnership advocating for subways.”

He reiterated that the memorandum of understanding the mayor signed last March with the province to bury the entire Eglinton line using provincial money and to extend the Sheppard subway using private-public money was on the condition that he’d take it to council for approval.

Chiarelli, who has asked the Ford brothers to meet for dinner four weeks ago and hasn’t heard back, pleaded with the mayor and the TTC chair to come to the table and make the decisions that still have to be made, referring to the advisory panel that was approved on Wednesday to further study possible extensions to the Sheppard subway. Its recommendations are expected Feb. 21.

“But we can’t afford to wait,” he said.

The mayor’s brother even suggested Thursday that Toronto voters have a referendum on the transit matter, but Chiarelli shot it down.

The transit plan council voted in favour of on Wednesday evening would see LRT lines constructed on Finch Avenue West from the Spadina subway extension to Humber College, and on Eglinton between Jane and Kennedy.

It also calls for the Scarborough RT to be converted to an LRT with an extension to the Malvern Town Centre as funds become available, and the establishment of the expert panel to study a Sheppard subway extension west from the current Sheppard station to Downsview.

Under Stintz’s plan, the Eglinton LRT will run above ground east of Laird Drive to Kennedy. The nearly $2 billion saved on tunneling will be used to build the other LRT lines.

Some riders waiting for an Eglinton bus at Pharmacy Avenue on Thursday morning were divided on the LRT plan.

“It’s a good choice but the biggest concern for me is always the money,” Marco Pashkovsky said.

“If some of that money [saved by keeping the Eglinton line aboveground east of Laird] can be spread around for other transit projects, I think overall that’s probably the better scheme.”

Another rider, who would only provide her first name, Carol, didn’t agree and cited problems with the Scarborough RT.

“It’s better underground,” she said. “The Scarborough Rapid Transit is always down in the winter if there’s bad weather.”

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