Tory heading to Ottawa to meet with fellow big city mayors

Toronto, Mayor John Tory says he will continue his push to make sure Toronto gets its “fair share” of federal infrastructure dollars as he sits down with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several of his ministers at a meeting of big city mayors in Ottawa over the next two days.
Tory will head to the nation’s capital later this afternoon to attend the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Big City Mayor’s Caucus alongside representatives from 21 other cities.
The meetings, Tory said, will give him another chance to make the city’s case for funding for a range of infrastructure projects, including the downtown relief line, a light rail line along the city’s waterfront and capital repairs to crumbling community housing buildings.
“While the priority projects are clear my main message to Ottawa will be this: Toronto requires fare and stable funding and it has to be allocated based on need, based on capacity and based on measurements such as transit ridership in order to ensure we get our fair share,” Tory told reporters on Thursday morning. “Without this kind of allocation model big cities will not be able to plan ahead and address infrastructure deficits that they may have.”
During the election campaign, Trudeau promised to invest $20 billion in social infrastructure, $20 billion in transit and $20 billion in green infrastructure over the next decade.
Though only $17.4 billion of that money was initially expected to be delivered during the next four years, the state of the Canadian economy has led some to speculate that the upcoming budget could include an even larger pool of infrastructure money for cities.
Speaking with reporters at city hall, Tory said he doesn’t expect he will get specific funding commitments from Trudeau or his ministers over the next two days but he said that it is “likely” that he will get an indication of when those commitments could be coming and in what form they may come in.
Specifically, Tory said he is hopeful that the federal government will finally contribute its one-third share to a $2.6 billion, 10-year plan to repair neglected community housing units.
“It’s a lot of money (that Toronto is asking for) but if you do the math on what Toronto’s share should be of what is the multi-billion dollar infrastructure commitment they have made that is a lot of money,” he said. “I am just making sure we get our fair share and that we get on with doing it, which I think they want to do as quickly as possible.”
While in Ottawa, Tory will meet with Trudeau, Minister of Infrastructure Amarjeet Sohi, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna and Minister of Immigration John McCallum.
Some of the other topics that are likely to be discussed in addition to infrastructure include climate change and ongoing efforts to resettle Syrian refugees.