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“One of the things about infrastructure is, when you take big gaps, that’s when you get into trouble, because that’s when you lose that expertise, you lose that momentum,” Wynne said in the Walkley Yards train shop near South Keys, after riding in on an O-Train. “The reality is Doug Ford, at this moment, is taking money out of the very funds that help to build infrastructure. By saying he’ll take 10 cents out of the gas tax, that’s a billion-and-a-bit dollars. That is huge, huge support every year, for building support, building infrastructure around the province.”

The provincial government gives cities a share of its gas-tax revenue to use on transit construction at their discretion and it also delivers bags of cash for specific projects. Ottawa is counting on both kinds of money to pay for its light-rail plans. After the first phase through downtown opens in the fall, the second stage includes extensions to Moodie Drive in the west, Baseline station and Algonquin College in the southwest, Riverside South in the southeast, and Trim Road in the east.

Ford has promised that the gas-tax money that already goes to cities won’t be affected — the whole tax cut will come out of the province’s end of the $2.6-billion-a-year tax. Local Progressive Conservatives, including their most prominent incumbent Lisa MacLeod, have sworn up and down that the extra billion for the next phase of light rail is safe.

But Wynne said that the pileup of new spending and tax cuts the Tories have promised to offset with unspecified “efficiencies” ($8 billion now, with another $12 billion to find if a Ford-led government seeks to balance the budget) leaves everything questionable.