Given the city’s embarrassingly inept response to the ice storm, you’d think winter was the exception in Toronto, not the rule.

Alas, winter is us, always has been and — probably — always will. But that doesn’t mean the city is prepared for the worst it can deliver, or believes it should be.

Even before all the bills are in, civic officials are telling us the storm will cost Toronto’s mythical hardworking taxpayers at least $106 million. And that doesn’t include the damage done to the tree canopy, the full extent of which won’t be known until later.

That’s a lot of money, though probably less than what we “saved” by investing as little as possible in the municipal and provincial infrastructure for the past 40 or 50 years.

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What the government — and its critics — can learn from the ice storm: Commentary

The prevailing orthodoxy of our time has it that the expenditure of public money is inherently wasteful and often evil. In this city, if you’re not out to derail the gravy train, you’re nothing but a tax-and-spend leftie. Either you respect the taxpayers, or you’re a bike-riding downtown pinko.

Many Canadians, not just Torontonians, live in abject fear that government deficit is some sort of plague that could strike them down at any moment.

A succession of regimes — federal, provincial and municipal — has instilled a deep sense of dread in Canadians. Over and over, we are told we’re too poor to cover anything but the barest of basics. Conveniently, this has had the effect of reducing expectations, and in Toronto’s case turned locals into willing participants in the dismantling of the city in which they live and work.

That’s why something like the ice storm starts as an inconvenience and ends as a disaster. That’s also why Mayor Rob Ford was so unwilling to declare a state of emergency; to have done so would have been an admission that his administration is based on a lie.

Interesting, too, that the chief magistrate used his ice storm photo-ops to praise the Hydro workers, card-carrying members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, for their hard work getting the power back on for the 300,000 customers who spent the holidays shivering at home in the dark.

Ford didn’t have to say it, but we all know they would have toiled even harder were Hydro privatized and employees paid less.

But now that the price must be paid, Ford is quite happy to go to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, hat in hand, to request emergency funding.

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Meanwhile, Ford Nation spent last week lining up for food vouchers organized, in a well-intentioned but misguided gesture, by Wynne.

No doubt the irony was lost on Ford and his supporters, but in fact the ice storm showed them for the fools they are.

At the same time, Canada’s little big man of finance, Jim Flaherty, is fiddling with a budget that will have federal coffers awash in surplus cash. For this, his government will expect to be rewarded with re-election.

Just don’t question Flaherty about the cost of his surplus.

But Torontonians can take pride in the minister’s accomplishment; after all, they contributed more to his success than residents of any other city in Canada.

Still, $106 million would have helped in some small way to pay for updating the system, installing mini-grids, burying cables and maintaining the tree canopy. These are things, however, that can be put off to another day — and another storm.

Besides, the money wouldn’t have been available unless disaster had struck. By then, of course, it was too late.