Premier Doug Ford’s Toronto MPPs will pay a heavy political price if they continue cowardly defending their government’s deep cuts to city funding, Mayor John Tory is warning.

“If you can’t rely on the MPPs elected to represent Toronto to have the courage to speak up ... who can you count on?” Tory told reporters Wednesday while unveiling a new City of Toronto website, www.toronto.ca/stopthecuts with a petition so residents can urge MPPs to reverse the retroactive cuts.

If the best Ford and his 10 other Toronto MPPs can offer are scripted “smokescreen” defences, the mayor said, “they’re going to pay a heavy price for that come the next (provincial) election.”

Ford’s offer Tuesday of a total of $7.35 million to help large municipalities hire auditors to find efficiencies to offset provincial cuts is a public relations “stunt,” Tory said, that suggests PC MPPs are feeling pressure from residents to stand up to Ford and his “unelected advisers.”

“They’re starting to feel some heat from people on this and I think we have to turn that heat up so they understand people are just not going to sit by and watch them mistreat municipalities in this way,” he said.

Tory, handily re-elected last fall, vowed to keep escalating his pressure campaign on the Progressive Conservative government until it reverses mid-year cuts the city manager has pegged at $178 million, hitting public health, child care, transit maintenance and more, and sits down with city officials to find efficiencies that don’t hurt low-income Torontonians.

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The petition follows letters to Ford’s Toronto caucus members, a speech in which Tory questioned Ford’s potentially costly campaign pledge to get beer and wine sold in corner stores and joint statements with other Ontario mayors also grappling with provincial funding clawbacks.

Tory, a former Ontario PC leader, accused Ford of dishonestly portraying his April budget as keeping a lid on taxes without cuts, only to have notifications dribble out of Queen’s Park with “nothing left unscathed including programs hitting the most vulnerable Torontonians.”

Ford, whose majority government was elected last June, also broke a campaign pledge to not claw back a boost in cities’ share of gas tax revenues — for Toronto $100 million per year already committed to TTC maintenance, the mayor said.

“They’re very proud of saying promises made, promises kept,” Tory said of Ford’s MPPs. “This is a promise made and a promise blatantly broken.”

Appearing on CP24 Wednesday, Ford shrugged off Tory’s pressure campaign and said Ontarians are “1,000 times better off” than they were before his government took power last June.

Ford shot back at the mayor in an interview on CP24.

“I just have a few things to say to the mayor: that’s not showing true leadership. When he can’t find one per cent, and I ask the people at home can you find one per cent savings? That’s all we’re asking of the mayor,” the premier said. “This mayor and this council absolutely refuses.

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“I want to remind the people of Toronto this same council and the same mayor has rose the budget 40 per cent in the last five years. Are you getting 40 per cent more services?”

City figures say Toronto’s overall operating budget, including grants from other governments, rose 20.5 per cent in that period. Expenditures funded solely by property taxes rose 15 per cent.

Budget documents says that, when inflation and population growth are factored in, annual city spending per Torontonian dropped over those five years.

Ford noted Tory suggested cuts were easy before being elected mayor five years ago.

“I remember in 2013 the mayor was a talk-show host ... saying that ‘If I was down there (at city hall) I could find $50 million with my eyes closed’ ...

“My question to the mayor: Are you the mayor, the talk show host, or are you the mayor that now needs to open his eyes and find savings?”

Tory said city manager Chris Murray will present city council in June with options to reopen the city budget set in March, including options for cuts and an extra tax hike, but councillors will stick their guns that Ford must roll back cuts made this year, many of them retroactive to April 1.

The city petition, with names to be presented to the province later, follows an earlier petition started by progressive activist group Progress Toronto.

Almost 10,000 people have used Progress Toronto’s petition fighting the public health cuts to email their MPPs and Ford, and have connected more than 4,000 people in Toronto PC ridings by phone to their MPPs’ offices, the group said Wednesday.

“We are knocking on doors in conservative ridings again this Saturday, helping people take action and our door knocking will continue every week,” said Michal Hay, Progress Toronto executive director.

With files from Rob Ferguson 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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