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Selley: Nothing will force the mayor into a retreat on the Sheppard subway. He will insist on its viability and impending ground breaking until the day he leaves office, and thereafter he will claim that it exists even though it does not. He will fill his leisure hours driving up and down Sheppard Avenue, making train noises to himself. The surplus thing is interesting, because it further chips away at the crisis justification for cuts. I suspect we may see the Mayor shift his messaging back towards pure small-government: It’s not that wehave to cut these things, in other words; it’s that we should cut these things. The classic fiscal conservative line is that surpluses are over-taxation; as much of the unexpectedly large surplus from 2011 is thanks to the land transfer tax, I expect the Mayor will feel emboldened to go ahead and cut it. Other predictions: We still won’t hear that damn 911 tape, and people will still be talking about it; the Mayor will attend a Pride event of some sort, if they’ll have him; there will be some disappointing-to-very bad news about the Eglinton LRT; and Pan Am Games cost overruns will become a serious issue.

Goldsbie: The Fords have already lost some allies for pushing ahead with cuts despite a generous operating surplus, and the plan for the private sector to fund the Sheppard subway has already imploded, so I’d venture to say that Matt’s cheating with his predictions. Sort of like if I were to go out on a limb and prophesy labour strife in our near future. Instead, I will guess that other brother Randy Ford will come into conflict with Michael Ondaatje over the future of the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant; that the mayor will become involved in a fist fight with Ken Finkleman; and that The Toronto Star will publish maddeningly incomplete reproductions of Rob’s medical transcripts. The Toronto Sun, meanwhile, will continue its evolution from a news organization to a propaganda unit by installing Councillor Doug Ford as its editor-in-chief (his salary, of course, to be donated to charity) and replacing its remaining reporters with random internet commenters selected for their proficiency with “straight talk.”