Queen’s Park will not slam the brakes on Toronto Mayor John Tory’s plan to slap $2 tolls on the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway.

But Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca emphasized Thursday that the province will not impose similar road-pricing charges on Ontario’s 400-series highways.

“No. Not happening,” Del Duca told the Star.

But he said the provincial Liberal government was all ears to Tory’s proposal — with a caveat.

“While we are always willing to listen to municipalities’ requests for new sources of revenue, these requests need to come with the support of council,” the minister said.

“If the mayor and the city want to implement tolling on city-owned highways that would be their decision and they would need to have public buy-in,” added Del Duca.

“At this time, we have not received a formal proposal from the city, but once it is received, we will need time to carefully review it,” he said, noting the province “knows how important it is to relieve congestion in Toronto for residents and commuters.”

“We’re . . . making massive investments in transit in the city of Toronto, whether it’s providing $3.7 billion for GO RER (regional express rail), which will form the foundation for Mayor Tory’s Smart Track; $10 billion for the Toronto LRT projects, the Scarborough subway, and the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension, or $169 million in gas tax, last year alone.”

Under the 2006 City of Toronto Act, the municipality has the power to toll its own highways, but only with a green light from the province.

Surprisingly, neither the opposition Progressive Conservatives, which Tory led from 2004 until 2009, nor the New Democrats broached the issue of tolls during the one-hour question period in the Legislature

“I’m not going to comment on the strategy the opposition chooses to deploy here in the Legislature,” said Del Duca, admitting he had expected Tory or NDP questions on the controversial proposal.

Given that Premier Kathleen Wynne is departing on an Ontario trade mission to Japan and South Korea, it was the last opportunity for more than a week for PC Leader Patrick Brown or NDP Leader Andrea Horwath to hold her to account.

Speaking to reporters outside the House, Brown said he opposes the tolls.

“The last thing we need is to make life more unaffordable in Ontario,” said the Conservative leader.

“We have not yet heard whether Kathleen Wynne is going to be supporting this,” he said, ignoring the fact that he had pointedly refused to get Wynne on the record moments before.

Brown said charges for driving on the two city-owned highways are a “bad idea” from the mayor.

“I certainly wouldn’t support tolling the DVP and the Gardiner. To make people pay for infrastructure they’ve already paid for . . . it seems unreasonable,” he said.

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“Right now, Ontario is becoming less and less affordable. This would make it worse. I hope Kathleen Wynne has not given the city of Toronto secret permission to go out and do this . . . . I don’t think Kathleen Wynne should be giving out new taxation powers.”

The NDP’s Horwath also questioned the need for new tolls.

“I don’t believe the debate should be about how much more that people who are low-income folks, who are working poor, who are working class people, are going to have to pay to take the bus and to use the roads as opposed to the debate around what the other levels of government are doing to help struggling municipalities to pay the bills and provide good transit systems,” she said.

Horwath accused the Liberals of trying to “download, through the back door” more costs on Ontario’s cities and towns and called for the provincial and federal governments to step up.

“It’s no wonder that municipalities are having a hard time, and it’s up to the other levels of government, who bring in far, far much more money than municipalities do, to help them provide these key services,” she said.

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