Anne Golden says she and her panel of experts have landed on the elusive solution to transit funding in the Toronto region.

While Golden wouldn’t cite specifics, Toronto Star sources say a gas tax, corporate tax and land-value capture will be in the mix when the province’s Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel releases its recommendations on Dec. 12.

Road tolls and a regional sales tax aren’t part of the plan.

In a key departure from the transit investment strategy released by Metrolinx in May , the panel headed by Golden will also endorse debt financing as a way to build the big-ticket projects identified in the Big Move regional transportation plan, including the relief line in Toronto and Mississauga’s Hurontario LRT.

The panel’s recommendations won’t, however, focus exclusively on funding major projects. The report will also urge immediate investment in local transit improvements to begin filling the yawning gaps in the region’s skeletal network.

It will recommend a phased-in approach that will, in the short-term, raise less than the $2 billion annually prescribed by Metrolinx, but build the funding over time.

Golden, who has led the panel, working closely with former Toronto chief planner Paul Bedford, credits fresh eyes to finding the “fair and logical” answer to one of the region’s two most pressing problems — an inadequate, clogged transportation system. (The other, she says, is growing income inequality.)

In a recent interview with the Star, she promised that the panel was recommending a funding approach that would be shared among residents and businesses. It pushes for immediate action by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberal government — as early as the spring budget.

“I’m confident of what we’re proposing . . . What we’re proposing will be modest and tolerable,” said Golden.

While the panel decided against endorsing particular transit lines, it will step far enough outside its funding mandate to discuss the issue of governance, she said.

Without that discussion the report can’t overcome what she called “the elephant in the room,” public mistrust of government.

To that end, the recommendations will repeat the call from Metrolinx and groups such as CivicAction for dedicated funding, protected in a trust, so governments can’t use transit dollars to pay for other projects and services.

Golden is promising detailed recommendations on accountability, transparency and the management of funds dedicated to transit.

“People do not have faith in the actual process of transit planning,” she said.

Not a transit planner herself, Golden was reluctant to label the recent political endorsement of a Scarborough subway as an example of bad planning.

But, she said, “I can tell you it’s a decision where there’s no evidence that I can find that justifies it.”

The panel’s report represents the third time the Ontario Liberals have considered the issue of funding a massive transit expansion. Congestion is estimated to cost the region more than $6 billion a year in lost productivity and 30 years of underinvestment in transit is considered a root cause.

When Metrolinx released the Big Move in 2008, it included a $50 billion list of regional transit projects to be built over 25 years. But it stopped short of a funding plan.

That didn’t come for five years. In May, Metrolinx released its investment strategy recommending a 1-per cent regional sales tax, a 5-cents-a-litre gas tax, a business parking levy and increased development charges.

Wynne then appointed the Golden panel to consult more widely, something the panel chair herself acknowledged was viewed as “an off-ramp” for the minority Liberal government.

Coming up with a politically palatable solution, however, was not the panel’s job, insisted Golden.

The Ontario Progressive Conservatives have said that transit should be funded by government cost-cutting and the NDP has taken the position that corporate taxes have a key role to play.

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“The panel has focused on getting it right,” said Golden

“How it fits with a minority government situation and with leaders who have already spoken out on their positions, I can’t tell you,” she said. “I can tell you that we do not believe as a panel this plan can be funded through waste or efficiencies. There’s absolutely no evidence for that.”

Ontario hasn’t raised gas taxes since 1992. The 14.7-cents unleaded fuel tax raises about $2.4 billion annually.

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