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Premier Doug Ford’s antipathy toward the city government he ran to lead five years ago exploded last week in an attack against Toronto mayor John Tory, who has been campaigning alongside other Ontario mayors against provincial funding cuts for public health.

“The City of Toronto spends millions of dollars watering dead tree stumps, hundreds of thousands of dollars on car fleets that are collecting dust, and uses public health resources to conduct ‘shade audits’ of public parks,” Ford fumed.

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“If John Tory spent as much time going through the city’s finances as he does worrying about the colour of the Toronto sign, he would be able to find some efficiencies and deliver some value for taxpayers’ dollars.”

The missive came after an insufferable weeks-long argument between elected officials at the municipal and provincial levels as to who exactly should be said to be cutting public health programs like school nutrition, immunization monitoring and water testing: The province for withdrawing the funding, or the city for allocating the cuts to those programs. “Who the hell cares?” I imagine the vast majority of people would respond. “Does my kid get breakfast or doesn’t he?”