To tee up the surreal transit funding discussion that will take place at City Hall’s executive committee this week, here’s a quick recap on the witch’s brew of ideas/non-ideas in circulation right now:

Liberals: Mostly ignoring the expert advice she’s received from Metrolinx and Anne Golden’s Transit Investment Panel, Premier Kathleen Wynne continued to cave to Andrea Horwath’s demands last week by ruling out the HST and a gas tax hike as possible funding sources, and vaguely promising something in time for the budget.

NDP: Horwath’s crew now say they want to hike taxes for corporations and high-income earners, and claim these measures will raise about $1.8 billion per year, although it’s by no means clear whether all or some of this windfall will go to transit, and if the funds that are, in fact, pledged will be dedicated.

Progressive Conservatives: Tim Hudak says he’ll search diligently between the pillows of the provincial chesterfield to find the billions needed to build subways. But as many experts, including Golden and the Toronto Region Board of Trade, have said, finding efficiencies alone won’t pay the fare.

John Tory: After spending two years yodeling about the need for a revenue tool that spreads the pain as widely as possible – by which he meant the HST — and even lambasting both the Tories and the NDP for ducking the debate, Tory’s said nothing to date that suggests specificity.

Olivia Chow: Spokesperson Jamey Heath says Chow, who was the federal NDP’s transportation and infrastructure critic, has no position on any specific revenue tool, and told me I was asking “hypothetical questions.” “I don’t see why we’d get into debating which revenue tool is better when it’s not a council decision.” (Council, as it happens, spent a long and hallucinatory session last May debating which tools it should recommend to Metrolinx; it rejected almost all of them, including the property tax, which is now being used to fund the Scarborough subway.)

Karen Stintz: In defiance of the laws of gravity, economics and common sense, Stintz declared she would fund transit expansion without more revenue tools, pledging instead the proceeds of the 10% of Toronto Hydro the city’s allowed to sell.

David Soknacki: In an interview last night, he said he was “disappointed” by Wynne’s position and feels the whole suite of proposed taxes and levies should be on the table, including the HST, the gas tax, higher transit fares and even property taxes. “The more you put on, the less you need from any of those tools,” Soknacki said, adding that the Chow campaign’s refusal to take a position is “irresponsible.”

Rob Ford: He’s ruled out donations from Kevin Spacey to help underwrite the cost of new subways, so the fairy, um, dust option becomes that much more crucial.

So now on to this week’s absurdities: On Wednesday, executive committee will consider a staff “update” on Metrolinx’s investment strategy— or what’s left of it. The report, signed by the city’s three top bureaucrats, is a good one, as far as it goes.

They recommend more political representation on the Metrolinx board; additional latitude for municipalities in spending the promised 25% of dedicated revenues for local transportation initiatives; a return to the Bill Davis formula of splitting the net operating cost of transit service between the province and the city; and a distribution of funds based on the provincial gas tax formula, which was established in 2003 and relies on these principles (they are well worth quoting in their entirety, as itemized in the report):

Allocation formula combining annual transit ridership and municipal population data, e.g. 70 percent transit ridership and 30percent population in the existing gas tax formula

Eligible expenditures including growth and state of good repair, capital and operating

Use of funds subject to general rules but not tied to specific projects

Funds transferred irrespective of expenditure status, and unspent funds to be placed into a dedicated reserve fund administered by municipalities

No municipal matching required and no restrictions on combining (stacking) with other sources of funding (e.g. Federal grants)

Reasonable administration required on the part of municipalities in relation to reporting back on funding allocation to local transportation priorities.

All of this lands with a hollow thud, because no one has a fleshed out position on anything at the moment, and because the Wynne government, last Thursday, clotheslined (“pre-empted,” “short-circuited,” “rendered pointless…”) the council discussion by signaling its intention to nix the most economically viable and stable revenue sources. (A senior city official told me his team had no idea the premier would be making her statement when they released their report early last week.)

In effect, staff are asking council to push the province to take more specific positions on transit funding at precisely the moment when the Wynne Liberals are running as fast as they possibly can away from the revenue tools debate they themselves created.

“Caved in,” The Globe and Mail’s Adam Radwanski put it. A more nuanced accounting of the Liberals’ thinking can be found in Adrian Morrow’s report on Wynne’s speech: “One Liberal source said the government did not do a good enough job ‘managing’ the two expert groups to steer them away from politically unpopular recommendations.”

I ranted about this utterly depressing state of affairs on Twitter last week, but the basic architecture of the dynamic is well worth enunciating:

One, none of the three provincial parties have the guts to tell GTHA residents the hard truth about what’s required to confront the region’s transportation crisis, much less articulate the cost of inaction or the assuage the public about the relatively minor impact of new fees.

Two, the Liberals’ promised budget — which I’m guessing will contain a combination of borrowed funds for the downtown relief line and a vague promise to earmark future surpluses generated by economic growth — will be nothing but an election plank.

Three, the mayor — who is arguably to blame for much of the current policy chaos — has nothing constructive to say, which is not surprising. What is alarming, however, is that neither of the leading contenders for his job — Tory and Chow — appear to be willing to use the bully pulpit afforded them by an election campaign to stand up for the city and really hammer the provincial parties to do the right thing.

Here’s the rub: the next mayor will be expected to weigh in on this debate; after all, they’ll likely be sworn in shortly after the coming provincial election, just as the next government is making decisions about its spending and legislative goals. So if the top candidates don’t take a position during the race, how should voters judge whether they will be effective advocates for the city (and the region) once in office?

photo by City of Toronto Archives