Premier Dalton McGuinty rejected Mayor Rob Ford’s demand for an immediate funding boost for Toronto policing, instead making Ford a promise on Monday that the funding will not be slashed in the future.

Ford, proclaiming that “money talks and B.S. walks,” had insisted that McGuinty provide an extra $5 million to $10 million to hire additional officers for the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), in the wake of the mass shooting at a Scarborough block party last Monday.

McGuinty, who met with Ford and Police Chief Bill Blair for more than an hour in his Queen’s Park office, only guaranteed his government would provide the current $5 million per year for TAVIS on a newly “permanent” basis.

He also pledged to make $7.5 million in Provincial Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy funding permanent. He said all of the money would come from “existing budgets,” but that he doesn’t yet know which ones.

While ostensibly offered on a time-limited basis, TAVIS funding had never appeared to be in jeopardy: McGuinty has repeatedly renewed it, most recently last summer, since the program was created in 2006. But McGuinty told reporters after the meeting that its future had been uncertain because of the province’s $15 billion deficit.

Blair, who said the province has been “steadfast” in its support for TAVIS, would not answer directly when asked whether he had thought there was ever any danger that the funding would eventually be withdrawn.

“It’s useful that the premier was able to make that commitment, and it’s a substantial amount of money . . . $5 million every year. And that’s a lot of money,” Blair said. “And so I’m very grateful for the premier’s announcement that that funding is now stable.”

Ford claimed after the meeting that he had gotten what he wanted — even though he had said he was seeking immediate cash for TAVIS, not the long-term commitment McGuinty gave him.

“There was no B.S. I wasn’t going to sit there and listen to it. I asked for the funding for TAVIS, and he said yes, we’re going to continue funding TAVIS. That’s what the people want,” he told reporters.

Councillor Shelley Carroll, a Ford critic, called McGuinty’s decision “exciting,” saying, like Blair, that it would allow the police to do better long-term planning.

“I don’t know if we want to call it a triumph because what it is is the net gain of a tragedy,” she said.

But NDP MPP Jonah Schein (Davenport) questioned the significance of the announcement. He said nobody knew TAVIS or PAVIS had been on the chopping block.

“The McGuinty government has lowered expectations to a level that they expect kudos when they don’t make reckless cuts,” Schein said.

McGuinty’s government announced last July that it would spend $10 million on TAVIS over two years. The money, which Blair said was to expire at the end of the current fiscal year, pays for four 18-officer teams that are deployed to high-crime neighbourhoods as the need arises.

Blair and others have credited TAVIS for contributing to a significant drop in violent crime. Some residents of TAVIS-patrolled neighbourhoods, however, have expressed anger at the teams’ practice of stopping, questioning, and “carding” non-criminals.

Blair said he did not himself ask McGuinty for more funding for TAVIS for this year. Though Ford had said he wanted the funding “to be able to tell Chief, ‘Go hire police officers,’” Blair said he didn’t have the ability to do immediate hiring.

Asked why he rejected Ford’s demand, McGuinty said: “I thought we had an existing program; we should fund that existing program.” He urged Ford and city council to “dig a little bit deeper and bring something to the table.”

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Ford will meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a Scarborough police station on Tuesday. McGuinty wanted a federal government representative to attend the Monday meeting, but Ford, whose relationship with McGuinty is strained, asked Harper to meet with him separately.

McGuinty said his government will report back in 30 days on “further actions to make communities safer.” He also announced $500,000 to improve coordination between police forces in targeting gangs and guns and $500,000 in accelerated funding to Toronto community groups.

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