TORONTO

Well, that was awkward.

Mayor John Tory says it’s “not business as usual” after meeting Monday with Premier Kathleen Wynne.

The hour-long, face-to-face marked the first time the two senior politicians have been together since Wynne put a spike through Tory’s plan to impose tolls on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway.

While the pair shook hands after emerging from Wynne’s Queen’s Park office, each held their own press conference. Normally, the duo field questions together after meeting.

Tory was candid about his decision not to share the podium with Wynne.

“I think it was going to be better to stand here and talk to you myself and to avoid the potential awkwardness of getting into a lot of this kind of stuff, for example, with the two of us standing there.”

Tory said his goal for the meeting was to get the relationship back on track. The toll flip-flop raised “lingering questions” about the city’s ability to make independent decisions, he said.

“I’m just trying to say it couldn’t be business as usual,” he said. “We were trying to get ourselves back toward business as usual and having a very frank discussion about where the city was going to with some of its very pressing needs in light of the fact the province had said no to something we democratically ... asked for.”

While Wynne initially insisted she would not stand in the city’s way if it wanted to impose polls, the premier last week flip-flopped, refusing to give the permission needed for the plan to go ahead.

Instead, she promised to double municipalities’ portion of the gas tax to pay for transit. That would give Toronto an additional $170 million a year. On Monday, she insisted that her meeting with Tory wasn’t about a “broken relationship.”

“A strong relationship can go through periods of disagreement ... and come out on the other side even stronger,” Wynne said. “That’s the way I see the relationship with the City of Toronto.”

Wynne denied killing the toll plan to win support of voters in the 905. Toronto’s toll plan was not affordable for many people, she said.

Tory expected more

It all must have seemed too good to be true.

And indeed, on Friday Premier Wynne announced that it was.

Mayor John Tory said Monday that at one point in December, he thought Toronto would be granted permission to toll two key downtown highways in addition to being given a larger share of provincial gas tax revenue.

Turns out, it was one — the gas tax revenue — and not both.

“After the council vote (for tolls), it was very much put on the basis that the gas tax, which came up at that time ... (and) there was also the notion that there would be a regulation put forward that would say ‘yes’ to tolls but that we couldn’t actually implement them until the transit options were available,” he said.

Tory believed for weeks that not only would he get about 200 million from toll revenue, but that the province would deliver millions more in gas tax cash. But that all came to an end when Premier Wynne called him to break the news she was killing his toll plan.

sjeffords@postmedia.com

