Reality Check #3 for George Smitherman

From mayorjoe.ca:

Recently, George Smitherman announced his transportation plan, but forgot to announce his plan for how to fund it – pledging to pay a $7 billion price tag by using half a million of already-committed city money.

GEORGE SMITHERMAN, MAY 2010:

“[My plan would use a model] most similar to a mortgage model used by many of us to achieve the joys of home ownership before we have all of the money to pay for the full purchase price.”
(Globe and Mail, May 28, 2010)

He was criticized in the news media for having no real source of money, but the clearest critic so far of the Smitherman approach remains George Smitherman himself.

REALITY CHECK – GEORGE SMITHERMAN, APRIL 2009:

When Smitherman was Minister of Infrastructure, Mayor David Miller pushed a plan to buy new streetcars on the hope it would qualify for provincial stimulus funding. Smitherman said this left him “perplexed – I’m not really accustomed to operating in an environment where you have an announcement about the acquisition of a product and the entering into of a contract, absent of the financial resources to do that.”
(National Post, April 28, 2009)

In a way, nothing has changed – even when Smitherman was the most powerful politician in Toronto, he was unable to find any money for investing in real public transit. Now, running for Mayor, he’s clearly having the same trouble.

We wish he’d developed his new-found interest in transit a little earlier, but at least now he sees how difficult it can be to plan a transit network when you don’t know where the money’s coming from.