Toronto Mayor Rob Ford must accept his limited powers and work with city council on the $8.4 billion TTC expansion plan, warns Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli.

While Chiarelli insisted Friday he was “not going to comment on the mayor’s performance” over Toronto’s transit-funding debacle, he delivered a stern lecture to Ford.

“It would be fair to say that it’s an admission of failure on the part of this city council — the whole administration, the mayor’s office, and city council — if they say: ‘we can’t do our job, bail us out in terms of decision-making,’” he told reporters.

Chiarelli’s comments came following a breakfast speech to the Toronto Board of Trade where he reiterated the province’s support for the transit plan.

While Premier Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet previously endorsed Ford’s proposal for an extension of the Sheppard subway and a longer tunnel on the east end of the Eglinton LRT, that scheme was defeated 25-18 by city council two week ago.

Instead, councillors essentially revived the 2009 Transit City plan of former mayor David Miller, which would expand street-level light-rail route on Finch Ave. W., and on Eglinton east of Laird Dr. But the Eglinton line would still be underground from about Jane St. to Laird.

The memorandum of agreement between the province, Metrolinx and the City of Toronto says any transit plans are subject to approval by the governing bodies of each party. In Toronto’s case, this would be city council.

Stung by that defeat, Ford this week used his allies on the Toronto Transit Commission to fire TTC chief general manager Gary Webster, an LRT booster, without cause. That could cost taxpayers $560,000 in severance.

A long-time former Ottawa mayor, Chiarelli reminded Ford that Ontario does not have a strong-mayor system seen in major U.S. cities.

“In Ontario, council is supreme. Council makes the decisions and the mayor’s role is to demonstrate leadership, demonstrate consensus-building, be able to move with public,” the minister said.

“The best mayors are ones that can be facilitative in nature, because they do not have the power. No mayor in Ottawa or Kitchener or the city of Toronto can do things on their own. They need endorsement from council,” he said.

“That’s the reality. That’s the difficulty and challenge of being a mayor in Ontario — that you’ve got to build consensus, you’ve got to be able to get the votes at council. That’s your job — to lead by building consensus and moving forward. That’s the type of system we have.”

In his speech to a Bay Street audience, Chiarelli was more measured, emphasizing that he welcomed the “healthy debate” swirling around the Eglinton-Scarbrough crosstown project.

“The McGuinty government’s position has been clear from the beginning — we wanted the city to come to a common position so that we could focus on building much-needed public transit,” he said.

“I also want to remind everyone here that there are — and always have been conditions on any plan — including meeting the province’s specific accounting rules which require that we ‘own and control’ the assets that we amortize.”

That, Chiarelli added, means “Ontario will need to own each of these transit/LRT lines, and that we will need to ensure that nothing neither jeopardizes the province’s fiscal framework, nor undermines how credit rating agencies will view our role in the project.”

High-ranking officials at Queen’s Park remain baffled at why Ford did not seek council approval for his post-Transit City subway plan immediately after winning McGuinty’s support last year.

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While many Liberals prefer the LRT plan, which they endorsed when Miller was mayor, they were prepared to ride with the then-popular Ford who was elected in 2010 promising subways.

“Why did he wait?” asked one senior government insider this week, noting the mayor’s subway dream would have easily passed council last summer.

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