A Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak wants to cut public servants and sell public buildings to help pay for public transit.

Pulling no punches as he unveiled a 27-page policy discussion paper, Hudak said a new $2 billion annual “Ontario Transportation Trust” would be funded by eliminating an unspecified number of civil servants and selling surplus land and offices.

“We’ve done a lot of heavy lifting in how we can make government run better. Will it result in fewer people working for government? Absolutely,” he told reporters Thursday at Queen’s Park.

“There will be significant reductions in the size and cost of government.”

With an election expected as early as next spring, Hudak said his administration would impose “no new taxes” to pay for much-needed subways and road improvements.

He would amend the Liberals’ 2005 Places to Grow Act, designed to reduce gridlock by keeping a lid on urban sprawl, to “take municipalities out of the straitjacket” and allow unfettered development.

“Housing affordability has gone through the roof in the GTA. We need to have more land available to keep housing costs under control.”

When it was pointed out that new subdivisions could lead to even more traffic, Hudak replied: “I just don’t think it’s the province’s role to tell a municipality how to run their city.”

His policy document is the last of 15 so-called “white papers” the Tories have been releasing with an eye toward a 2014 election platform.

Hudak would upload the TTC’s subways and LRTs to GO Transit and have the province take over municipally run highways such as the Don Valley Parkway.

His government would “prioritize a new East-West Express Line, commonly known as a Downtown Relief Line, as the most important new subway route.”

As well, he wants the system expanded into Scarborough, Richmond Hill, and Mississauga.

Aside from eliminating jobs in the 1.2-million-strong broader public service, Hudak hopes to “raise additional funds for transportation infrastructure by encouraging Ontario and Canadian pension funds to invest in government-owned businesses.”

“This partial ownership by pension funds would raise billions of dollars necessary to improve and expand Ontario’s subways, light rail transit, roads and bridges,” the PC document states.

“The pension plans of our teachers, municipal, energy and health-care workers, for example, invest in businesses like these all over the world on behalf of their members. We think they should invest in Ontario, too.”

Ironically, the Tories have been railing against the “gold-plated pensions” of “union elites” in recent days and are warning major reforms loom in public-sector retirement benefits if they win power.

With the Ontario government occupying 7.7 million square feet of office space in 100 buildings in Toronto alone, the party believes excess facilities could be sold off and the money earmarked for a “transportation trust” to ensure the proceeds do not just get funneled into general revenues.

“We will make it a priority of reducing gridlock and we will do it without raising taxes.”

Hudak’s announcement comes as Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals are looking at paying for new transit through an increase in the gasoline levy and a 0.5 per cent corporate income tax hike.

Transportation Minister Glen Murray struck a seasonal Dickensian note, suggesting the Tory leader was like Ebenezer Scrooge.

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“Let’s revisit the three transit and city ghosts of Tim Hudak’s past,” Murray said in a statement.

The minister said Hudak was in premier Mike Harris’s government when the Tories scrapped the Eglinton subway and froze GO Transit funding; downloaded the DVP and Gardiner Expressway onto the city; and forced the amalgamation of Toronto “without consultation with mayors.”

“It’s clear Tim Hudak hasn’t learned from the ghosts of his past, as his plans for building transit in Toronto are as frail as a snowflake.”

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