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Mayor Rob Ford says he is pinching pennies, but he has failed to mention a whopping bill that the Province of Ontario is still preparing to send to the City of Toronto, related to Mr. Ford’s cancellation last fall of Mayor David Miller’s Transit City program.

On Monday I reminded readers that, in cancelling the Sheppard East LRT, Mr. Ford had left $333-million in federal money on the table. In addition, the Post has confirmed, the City of Toronto also still must repay the province the “sunk costs,” at minimum $49-million, that the province had already spent on light rail lines later scrapped by Mr. Ford.

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Here is an emailed response from Metrolinx spokeswoman Vanessa Thomas to questions about these sunk costs.

Q Has Metrolinx sent the City a bill yet for the sunk costs associated with the cancellation of Transit City?

A “At this time, an invoice for the sunk costs related to changes to the original 5 in 10 plan, also known as Transit City, has not been submitted to the City of Toronto. As part of the Memorandum of Agreement between the City and Metrolinx, the City will be absorbing the costs related to changing the original 5 in 10 plan, which included the four LRT lines in Toronto.

“Currently, we are still reviewing the costs with the TTC and our suppliers. It is important for us to be as accurate as possible and it will take some time to determine the exact impacts of the changes to the transit plan.

“As of April 2011, we estimated the sunk costs would be at least $49 million, which is mainly for work associated with the environmental assessments and design/engineering and project management associated with the Finch and Sheppard LRTs.”