The propensity to overstate a claim and, by so doing, muddy a clear uncontested truth is a fatal flaw existing in many professions, no doubt. So, we understand the pit Mayor John Tory has dug himself in his budget fight with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Premier Wynne has abandoned the City of Toronto on housing and transit, the mayor says, and, as such, all MPPs and citizens should stand up for the city. Tory is right about housing; he’s dead wrong about transit. By coupling the two needs he weakens his housing demands. That is a pity.

It is inarguable that the province of Ontario has done a horrible job looking after the housing needs of its vulnerable citizens. Bad went to worse when former premier Mike Harris dumped the social housing file in the laps of municipalities in the late 1990s. Harris did other egregious things but this was among his most cynical, damaging and unforgivable.

Most people who have studied the function and efficacy of government conclude that issues of social equity — welfare payments and subsidized housing and social and income assistance — are best funded by the government that gets its income and taxes from a broad base of citizens. That way, citizens of Wampus, for example, would not suffer from no subsidized housing or zero welfare payments just because the businesses have left Wampus for Bumpus. No, we combine the wealth of Wampus and Bumpus and we look after the less fortunate of both towns.

Canada is good at that — in education and social housing and health care, et cetera. The province, not Toronto, is supposed to take care of social service costs of Toronto residents. Harris turned that on its head with an unconscionable download that has threatened to sink Toronto.

Toronto has the vast majority of social housing units in the GTA and in the province. Property tax dollars were never meant to pay for social services. To dump these cost on municipalities was akin to a targeted strike against the provincial capital.

Dalton McGuinty succeeded Harris and did more to rescue Toronto than is recorded and trumpeted. He reversed much of the Harris download of social service costs. And McGuinty’s successor Kathleen Wynne has continued the rehabilitation.

However, both Liberal premiers have failed to remediate one visible area — public housing. And it is to their shame. Pointedly, Toronto bears the brunt of this failure. And it is particularly stinging because Premier Wynne’s own riding has more social housing units than some entire Ontario towns and jurisdictions.

Citizens in search of rental units head to the city where there is a larger inventory. Nearly half of Torontonians rent. People arrive looking to land a home with cheap rent. If the rents are too high — and they are, when four in 10 are paying more than 30 per cent of their income on rent — residents apply for a government-subsidized unit. While they wait for a unit, they shack up with friends or neighbours or church family.

In Toronto, 181,000 people are on the wait list for subsidized housing. It takes nearly a decade to move to the top of the list. One reason is that the current stock is crumbling. On average, the units are 42 years old. The city says it doesn’t have enough money to repair them. The repair bill is about $2.5 billion. The backlog is $1.7 billion. Our politicians won’t fix crumbling units and are closing them by the thousands. A projected 1,000 units that are in disrepair are slated to be closed by next year.

That is an unspeakable crisis — one worthy of the mayor’s focused attention. Tory wants Wynne to pick up one-third the cost, with the federal government funding one-third and the city the other one-third. That’s a reasonable solution. Reasonable Ontarians understand this.

But then Tory loses his way. In responding to the provincial budget he started talking about Wynne’s shortfall in transit funding as well. Excuse me. Don’t muddy the waters, Mr. Mayor.

It’s been a long time since Toronto had a more willing and reliable partner for transit. Toronto didn’t have to pay a cent for the Crosstown LRT, now under construction. The provincial Liberals are fully funding all of the Finch West LRT.

Queen’s Park signed a contract to give city hall $1.4 billion to extend transit from Kennedy station to the Scarborough Town Centre and offered to handle operating costs. Tory looked the gift horse in the mouth and decided to spend more than $3 billion going on $4 billion for a one-stop subway. So don’t cry poor on transit when you waste billions. And don’t blame your benefactor.

Better to stick to the housing file where the province has blood on its hands.

Of course, the city isn’t blameless on the housing file. City councillors should know of the dire needs in their wards. They can see the impact of poor housing, crumbling units, inhabited by people whose average household income is under $19,000 a year.

One imagines that if city councillors really cared about the state of public housing, council would not be signing off on closing thousands of housing units while the waiting list bulges towards 200,000 applicants.

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Where is the money? How about some of the billions earmarked for the expensive options to rebuild the Gardiner Expressway? How about some of the billions for the one-stop subway.

One imagines that if the microscope was placed on city spending and housing, one might find that city hall is almost as much of a dead-beat landlord as Ontario.

Royson James’ column appears weekly. rjames@thestar.ca

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