Article content continued

At the CivicAction forum, a panel of four GTA mayors rebuffed moderator Steve Paikin’s questions about impediments to regional co-operation. They co-operate all the time, they protested. Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring went so far as to say that “we need to leave our municipalities behind and look at these issues across the whole region.”

It wasn’t very convincing. He can try to leave his municipality behind if he likes, but as Oakville Mayor Rob Burton — who voiced skepticism this week that Metrolinx’s Big Move suite of transit projects is the “very best that we can do” — noted, the mayors are beholden to their councils. And as Torontonians know full well, each councillor has his own preferences on what sort of transit is appropriate for where and when, and in the current climate that’s basically “the most expensive possible form, everywhere, right now.”

Asked whether she needed municipal buy-in to implement her revenue tools of choice, Ms. Wynne hedged in a way that sounded a lot like “no.” “The whole process will be better if in the end we have municipal support,” she said. “But the reality is, I’m saying that we have to take action, and as a provincial government it’s my responsibility to determine the actions that we will take.”

As a provincial government it’s my responsibility to determine the actions that we will take

Bravery is one word for this. Chutzpah is another. We are currently waiting to ascertain how many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars the Liberal government threw away cancelling some gas-fired power plants, specifically to satisfy local concerns. Now she wants $50-billion? And she wants us to believe she’ll hold the line if, say, an imperilled Liberal riding happens to contain a fiercely unpopular LRT line? Personally, I would love to believe her. But I don’t. And it’s precisely through that sort of bickering and tweaking and delaying that the Big Move would turn into yet another expensive fiasco.