General Politics Discussion

[danbrotherston]

With Chow's win in Toronto and the strong mayors powers, anyone have a good sense if she can unilaterally cancel the Gardiner project?

Given the utterly immense amount of funding that would require such a move would seem to be an unbelievably smart move. Yeah, you piss off a handful of suburbanites, but in return you free up enough funding to pay off basically every other person in the city.

I don’t know whether it’s within her power or not.

Regardless, I don’t expect it. The bad projects seem to have an unstoppable momentum (Scarborough subway, Ontario Line), whereas the good ones can be cancelled almost anytime (Scarborough LRT network, Downtown Relief Line).

I mean, that's a perception...but it's only a result of a strongly conservative council...which has now changed.

I also think the subways are different...they might be less optimal (although I find the objections to the Ontario line pretty weak) but they aren't an wildly destructive as the Gardiner project. And the Gardiner project is also not as far along as the others I believe.

FWIW...I do think there is a risk in cancelling in progress projects (Toronto has made this mistake many times) but the Gardiner is one that I think could be cancelled at this point.