Queen’s Park lets down our mayor — again: Keenan

The first rule of Toronto City Hall government is that the province will mess you up.

The second rule is that you need the province’s help to do most things. Which makes the first rule all the more frustrating.

It is a law as old as amalgamated Toronto — recall Mel Lastman promising to haunt the dreams of Mike Harris after what he said was a double-cross by the premier, or David Miller calling Dalton McGuinty “disgraceful” and “thick” after Queen’s Park reneged on part of its Transit City funding commitment, or Rob Ford declaring “complete shock” at Kathleen Wynne’s decision to yank $110 million in funding from Toronto’s public housing budget.

So it is and was and apparently ever shall be: when push comes to shove, the premier does the pushing and the mayor gets shoved. Queen’s Park will sometimes extend an olive branch, but eventually they’re gonna use that same branch to whack you senseless.

We saw it again last week when new mayor John Tory abruptly announced the city was rejecting the offer of a line of credit from the province to fix a budget hole Tory and Co. were counting on them to fill.

The provincial offer of “help” was ridiculous on its face: grabbing at city land, extending payday-loan-style terms, and brandishing forbidding collateral requirements. As councillors left and right independently said, it was an “insult.”

It’s as if the province didn’t want Toronto to take the loan. Almost as if they actually wanted to be seen insulting Toronto.

With a provincial budget deficit of over $12 billion, and with a byelection underway in Sudbury, it’s not hard to find both practical and political reasons the province would tell Toronto to go stuff it.

On Friday the premier, couching her comments in history and the context of the provincial budget troubles, basically confirmed that how the deal would play in the Nickel Belt was a major factor: “We were trying to be helpful within the principles that, quite frankly, we would have used with any other municipality.”

No favoritism, you understand. Toronto is just like any other municipality. In any rational division of administration, Toronto would be its own province — one larger than all the Atlantic provinces combined, an economy responsible for 10 per cent of the country’s GDP. In any rational system, public housing would not fall on the local property tax base. But we don’t live in a rational system.

In the world we live in, Toronto is stuck footing the bill for 60 per cent of the public housing in the province. And Toronto is a child of Ontario, and therefore subject to the whims and resentments that animate the conversations of those out playing bingo and getting stinko on a Sudbury Saturday night.

Given that, the puzzling thing is why, as sources in the mayor’s office suggest, provincial officials originally privately assured the city that real help would be forthcoming — hinting not just that the premier might write a cheque for the $86-million shortfall in question, but might also pony up some additional dollars for transit investment.

Which is why the city made it public in the budget, which led to this high-profile debate about loan terms.

Why go through all that? Why grin and hold the football there for Tory, just to snatch it away when he’s ready to kick? I don’t know the specific reason. I just know the rule. That’s what the province does: it messes with Toronto mayors.

For his part, in his announcement the city would go it alone, Tory tried to play it cool — being all “Fakers gonna fake, Premiers gonna preem, I’m just gonna shake it off.” I’m paraphrasing.

But that’s an appropriate reaction. The city has the money in current revenue to bridge the gap now — both in surpluses from 2014 and in revenue it was allocating to capital projects (it can borrow to fund those capital projects — nothing illegal or irresponsible about that). As far as I can tell, the reason it didn’t do that in the first place is it was hoping “short-term provincial help” as a continued budget line would evolve into “long-term provincial acceptance of responsibility.”

Balancing the current budget more or less as planned shouldn’t be too hard.

The future is the more dire concern. As the city seeks $800 million or more to sustain its crumbling public-housing stock and hundreds of millions more for transit, it will absolutely need help from upper levels of government, who have access to broader based and more progressive tax revenue sources.

That’s the second rule: you need the province’s help.

The bind of mayors past is now Tory’s conundrum. On the one hand, trying to fight a war against the province is like opening a second front against Russia — it’s a strategy that has never led to a happy ending. On the other hand, politely playing along as the loyal sidekick of the province won’t get you any love either.

No matter what you do, the first rule says the province is gonna mess you up.

Those are the rules Tory inherits, and last week we all learned he’s not immune to them. In the short term the city can go it alone. Developing a longer term strategy to play with those rules is the really hard part.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues; ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire