Toronto Mayor John Tory has declared war on Premier Doug Ford’s funding cuts, escalating a political war and criticizing a potentially expensive Ford campaign promise on alcohol availability.

Tory used an annual luncheon speech Monday to the Scarborough Business Association to lay into the Ford government’s budget cuts set to cost Toronto hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

The speech followed morning pleas from public health officials from Peterborough and the Kingston area who came to Toronto City Hall in solidarity with opposition to cuts roiling local governments across Ontario, many facing retroactive funding clawbacks for budgets already set for 2019.

The mayor told a sold-out hotel Kennedy Ave. ballroom that Ford’s “damaging” cuts to provincial transfers for public health, child care, transit operations and more threaten to hurt Toronto’s most vulnerable residents as well as the economies of the city, Ontario and even Canada.

Over the weekend and into Monday, other groups also challenged the government’s plans. The association representing Ontario’s 2 million students said there are “gaps” between their education priorities and the government’s, especially when it comes to bigger class sizes and online courses in high school. Families of children with disabilities argued they are being ignored by the provincial government and the Mayors And Regional Chairs of Ontario (MARCO) spoke out against proposed cuts to public health.

“You’ll see me standing up for our city when the provincial government risks stalling out the economic engine of Ontario just to save less than one-tenth of one half of one percentage point of the provincial budget,” Toronto’s mayor said, vowing to lobby Ford’s MPPs “ward by ward, door to door.

“I will not let this city be pushed backwards.”

That vow to fight the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, a party he once led, triggered applause from audience members in a part of Toronto considered friendly to Ford. Audience members gave Tory a standing ovation when he finished, although some told the Star they support both leaders and hope the hostilities end soon.

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Tory later told reporters he considered his broadside “a strong invitation” to Ford to reverse the cuts and sit down with the city to figure out how Ontario can erase its deficit in a less damaging way.

But he hit the former Etobicoke councillor and one-time mayoral rival hard.

He said Ford’s child care cuts amount to $84.8 million and will make a successful but increasingly unaffordable city more difficult for lower-income residents, keeping some parents at home rather in the workforce.

For public health cuts that Toronto pegs at eventually costing the city $100 million a year — Ford’s government argues the city is inflating the size of the cuts — Tory raised the spectre of SARS, the 2003 epidemic that killed 44 people, sickened many more and hammered Toronto’s economy.

He pointedly wondered why the Ford government is making the cut deeper for Toronto than for any other Ontario town or city, and urged the audience to ask PC MPPs about that.

The mayor said of Ford clawing back an extra share of gas tax granted to Ontario municipalities by the former Liberal government, after it refused to let Toronto toll highways: “Premier Ford and the PC party specifically promised during the election campaign that that commitment would be honoured.

“That makes the cancellation of that funding a huge broken promise for people and communities across Ontario,” that will cost Toronto an estimated $100 million per year.

While much of that was an escalation of past criticisms, Tory opened a new front by linking Ford’s cornerstone campaign promise to get beer and alcohol into corner stores to his budget cuts.

The Star has reported it could cost Ontario taxpayers $1 billion or more for the Ford government to break a complex 10-year deal signed by the previous Liberal government with major breweries that operate The Beer Store.

“Where is the sense in that?” Tory asked the audience. “Cutting public health programs and daycare programs so as to find the extra money ... potentially hundreds of millions of dollars ... to pay The Beer Store to change their contract? What does that say about our priorities?

“Cutting public health and child care but funding a greater supply of alcohol in corner stores?”

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The mayor also targeted Ford directly, saying he’s had positive working relationships with two prime ministers and the former premier but from the current premier he gets “just unilateral retroactive letters, emails and phone calls — not the behaviour you would expect from partners.”

Ford, whose government has accused Toronto officials of fear-mongering and dishonesty over the cuts, fired back in a news release that made it clear he has no plans to back down.

His government has to tackle a mountain of debt left behind by Wynne, the statement said, and the public health cuts “amount to one-third of a percentage point of the city’s annual budget.

“This is the same city budget that spends millions of dollars to water dead tree stumps and hundreds of thousands of dollars on car fleets that collect dust ...,” Ford said, referencing a recent city audit.

“Instead of irresponsibly wading into provincial issues he is neither involved in or understands, perhaps Mayor Tory should find time to sit down with his Auditor General and find some value for taxpayers’ dollars.”

Toronto Public Health should find efficiencies to avoid any cuts to services, Ford added.

Earlier Monday, the Toronto’s board of health voted to use its own advertising locations to warn residents of the health risks if provincial funding cuts proceed as planned.

“This is now a province-wide controversy,” said Cressy, referring to public health departments and other agencies speaking out against the cuts, after a city hall news conference featuring visiting public health officials also fighting the cuts.

“Our task is going to be impossible without significant layoffs and drastic measures like closing our remote offices,” said Dennis Doyle, mayor of Frontenac Islands and chair of the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington board of health.

“Coupled with proposed paramedic changes, which would result in closing small rural paramedic stations, we will end up with many ghost towns across rural Ontario, as people will not want to live there with all these service reductions.”

Kerri Davies, vice-chair of Peterborough’s health board, said: “We need to work together to ensure that public health in Ontario is maintained and that we don’t waste all of the good work that we’ve done over the years to get a good return on our investment in public health.”

Back in Scarborough, after hearing Tory’s speech, Shawn Allen, founder of Matrix Mortgage Global, said both the mayor and the premier, who he likes, have mandates to fulfil.

“It’s rather difficult to say (who is right) but I do think at the end of the day people do support the mayor — he won two elections and people in the room support him,” Allen said.

Michael MacChesney, a realtor based in the Don Mills Rd. and Highway 401 area, said in an interview he didn’t agree with everything Tory said, but he didn’t begrudge the tough words, adding he personally doesn’t understand the urgent need to get alcohol into corner stores.

“I do wish Mr. Ford and his people will find a way to sit down at the table with Mr. Tory and his people because all of us are suffering when they’re not at the same table,” MacChesney said.

With files from Francine Kopun

David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering Toronto politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider

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