City council likely to have final say on transit plans

City council likely to have final say on transit plans. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, left, and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty pay a visit to the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT site at Keelesdale Park in November of last year. File photo/NESTOR PONCE

That was the word from Toronto Transit Commission Chair Karen Stintz this afternoon, following the release of an independent legal opinion suggesting Mayor Rob Ford and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty did not have the authority to shut down work on the Sheppard LRT and put the Crosstown LRT underground last year.

Stintz said she believed council would be debating the matter in March, when former councillor Gordon Chong delivers his plan for funding the $4 billion plus Sheppard subway that Mayor Ford promised.

City Councillor Doug Ford, brother to Mayor Ford, said he believed the issue of transit will be coming to council soon, but he would not say when.

Joe Mihevc, a former vice chair of the TTC, released a legal opinion he'd solicited, arguing that Ford had no authority to cancel the Transit City plan after he was elected in 2010.

Ford announced the "death" of the Transit City light rail network shortly after being sworn in as mayor. While he didn't take the matter before council, he ordered TTC General Manager Gary Webster to start work on a plan to build a subway along Sheppard Avenue, then negotiated a deal with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty - set down in a "memorandum of understanding" - that would see a massive shift in funding from the Sheppard LRT to the Crosstown LRT on Eglinton Avenue between Kennedy subway station and Black Creek Drive.

The province, and its transportation agency Metrolinx, immediately pulled funding from the Sheppard LRT and set about plans to put the entire length of the Crosstown underground. The non-binding memorandum would see the city picking up the costs of shutting down the Sheppard LRT, which are estimated to be $65 million.

"Mayor Ford has no independent authority to bind the city," said lawyer Freya Kristjanson in a legal opinion on the deal. "While the mayor has a large part to play in Toronto civic life, he cannot act without the approval of council."

Kristjanson wrote that the mayor is legally only a single vote on council and only council has the power to compel action from city bureaucrats and make arrangements with other levels of government.

And the memorandum of understanding is itself non-binding without the approval of council, which has not yet been given.

Mihevc, councillor for St. Paul's, said because Toronto City Council had approved Transit City in 2007 as part of its overall environmental plan, council's position remains unchanged from the time of former mayor David Miller.

"It is still correct to say that Transit City is still the transit policy of Toronto," he said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of Transit City's demise have been greatly exaggerated."

The legal decision came as it appears a number of councillors are favouring a plan that would take about $1.5 billion from the Eglinton line - by running it partially above ground, as originally planned - and using it for other transit priorities.

Mayor Ford made it clear he supports subways at his weigh-in Monday morning as part of a public weight loss campaign.

"It's the taxpayers, he said. "It's the taxpayers that elected me to put in subways so that's what we're going to do."

Ford dismissed the legal opinion, and when asked on what basis he had proceeded, answered, "It's like winning an election. So if they voted me in..."

Ford made it clear he won't bow to a compromise that doesn't include the $4.3 billion Sheppard subway. A compromise proposed by TTC chair Stintz, that would see the $1.5 billion put into a short extension of the Sheppard subway to Consumers Road appears to have fizzled.

"It was a compromise proposal and we thought there might be openness for a plan," said Stintz. "The mayor has announced the MOU (memorandum of underestanding) will come to council. I was advocating for a compromise that I thought met with the mayor's vision."

Scarborough Centre Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker said the most likely compromise to win is some form of Transit City, in which light rail would be possible on Finch Avenue West, and/or back along Sheppard Avenue through Scarborough.

"The question becomes, if you're going to daylight Eglinton, what do you do with the money?" said De Baeremaeker. "I think that Chair Stintz in order to help the mayor save face said, 'I'm willing to compromise and put $1 billion into extending the Sheppard stubway one more stub.' The mayor said '...I'm not compromising. It's my subway.' And so after that rebuff... I think that if we simply vote for our residents, the Transit City Plan will be approved."