Mayors

Thursday May 23, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 23, 2019

Ford offers school boards and municipalities money to hunt for savings

After hitting municipalities with cutbacks in provincial funding, Premier Doug Ford says his government will now spend $7.35 million to help them find savings.

Toronto Mayor John Tory immediately panned the move, calling it a “$7 million public relations exercise by the government of Ontario.”

“It does us no good getting money for a line-by-line audit that we’re already doing without consideration from the province of the fact that these retroactive, mid-year cuts will seriously hurt residents and families,” Tory said in a statement of the estimated $178 million in funding clawbacks the city faces to public health, daycare and transit.

The mayor said he is “committed to finding more and great efficiencies” — but is urging the Ford government to halt the current cuts.

On Tuesday, Ford — repeating the “four cents on the dollar” mantra he used on the election campaign trail a year ago — said in a lunchtime speech in Ajax that the province will provide the money for cities and school boards to conduct in-depth financial audits to identify where they can trim budgets by 4 per cent.

Later, speaking to reporters, Ford said it’s not unfair for the province to impose clawbacks on the city well into its fiscal year.

“We’re asking to work with him as a partner,” Ford said. “We are working collaboratively with any municipality that wants to take us up on the offer.”

The premier noted that more than 90 per cent of provincial funding “goes to municipal partners and hospitals and universities. They’re our partners. We don’t have like Fort Knox sitting down at Queen’s Park, a whole bunch of gold sitting there. Ninety two per cent of our money goes to municipalities and other partners, so we’re asking them to work with us. And we’ll work with them and support them.”

Ford made the $7.35 million announcement speaking to members of the chambers of commerce in Whitby and Greater Oshawa, as well as the Ajax-Pickering Board of Trade.

Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association, said boards “already operate very efficiently, because we’ve had to.”

She said it will be up to individual boards to take the province up on its offer, “but they’ll be hard-pressed to find 4 per cent in efficiencies” given about 80 per cent of funding is in staffing and contracts, and other pockets of money are “sweatered,” meaning they can only be spent on the programs they are intended for, said Abraham, of the Kawartha Pine Ridge public board.

But Ford said cities and school boards must do their part as the province tightens its fiscal belt.

“Our government was elected to fix 15 years of Liberal mismanagement, put the province on a path to balance and protect services like health care and education,” Ford said. (Toronto Star) 

 

Wednesday January 30, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 30, 2019

Provinces not co-operating to get infrastructure projects underway: Trudeau

Unco-operative provincial governments have been making the effort to get more infrastructure dollars into Canada’s cities a challenge, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday.

Trudeau, whose government has struggled to fulfil tens of billions worth of infrastructure commitments, made the remarks in Ottawa before a meeting with more than a dozen of Canada’s big-city mayors. He didn’t single any provinces out by name.

His Liberal government has been criticized for how slowly federal money has moved for big civic construction projects, despite its big-ticket plan to spend more than $185 billion on them over 12 years.

“It’s not always easy — we understand that the political context varies a little bit from one end of this country to the other and there are provinces that don’t completely have the same attitude when it comes to tangible investments in their communities and in the big cities,” Trudeau said in French before switching to English.

This cartoon has been animated!

“We’re having sometimes certain challenges with the provinces in various ways.”

Trudeau called big cities the economic engines of the whole country and argued that investing in infrastructure is one of the best ways to create jobs in the short term and growth over the long term.

Federal Infrastructure Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, who also met with the big city mayors Monday, said challenges have surfaced following several recent provincial elections.

Champagne, for whom speeding up the rollout of infrastructure investments is a top priority, said the arrival of new governments has slowed down some of the intake, review and approval of projects. He did note these delays are normal when there’s a change in government. (source: CTV) 

 

Wednesday October 24, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 24, 2012

Mac report illuminates issue of LRT for city

Senior Hamilton bureaucrats are carefully studying a report produced by McMaster University researchers that suggests that light rail transit has the potential to succeed in Hamilton but will be a “long, challenging and costly process.”

The study looked at successful and failing LRT systems across North America in terms of their ability to attract riders and new development.

It will be a big part of a staff report coming to councillors that will definitively recommend whether the city should forge ahead with building an LRT line for Hamilton, said city manager Chris Murray.

“It will speak to all the things we need to do to take advantage of the growth opportunity Hamilton is enjoying.”

The university report, produced by the McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics and commissioned by the city, is “good advice to staff and council on how to move ahead with LRT,” said Murray.

Though he stopped short of saying LRT is now a city target, he said Hamilton has “already invested heavily” in LRT.

“I don’t think the feeling is out there that LRT isn’t worth pursuing.”

But Mayor Bob Bratina has repeatedly shot arrows into the hearts of those pining for B-line LRT stretching 13 kilometres between McMaster and Eastgate. It’s projected to cost between $875 million and $1 billion to build. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Monday, October 2, 2006

October 2, 2006

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday, October 2, 2006

Eisenberger accused of poaching Di Ianni’s ideas

We all know that election campaigns can bring out an unsavoury opportunism even in the most principled of politicians.

But you can say this about the self-serving low that mayoral candidate Fred Eisenberger seemed to hit the other day: He now has nowhere to go but up for the balance of his campaign.

A week ago, after Mayor Larry Di Ianni identified public safety as the No. 1 issue in his re-election bid, Eisenberger dismissed it as a George Bush-style scare tactic.

“It’s a Bush-like attempt to strike some fear mongering into residents,” Eisenberger was quoted as saying in the Stoney Creek News.

But then this Wednesday, Eisenberger called, on short notice, a media conference in the forecourt of City Hall to announce his own scheme to “improve public safety,” one that was startlingly similar to Di Ianni’s draft plan for hiring more police and installing more surveillance cameras downtown.

Mario Joannette, Di Ianni’s chief of staff who is managing the mayor’s campaign while on unpaid leave, makes no bones about what he believes happened.

He maintains Di Ianni’s draft was leaked to Eisenberger, who blatantly lifted the idea and rushed to get his announcement out to the media ahead of his rival. (Hamilton Spectator)