If you’re wondering why the Eglinton Crosstown is stalled and Metrolinx is a mess, Caroline Mulroney has the answer:
Not me. Nothing to do with me.
She’s merely the mighty minister of transportation has been since mid-2019. Next month will mark four full years on the job for Mulroney.
That makes her the province’s longest-serving transportation czar in 33 years. You’d have to go back to 1989, when David Peterson was premier and Brian Mulroney was prime minister, to find anyone driving the train for quite so long (Ed Fulton).
Today, the Crosstown LRT that’d be light-rail transit is going nowhere fast.
This week, the Crosstown consortium is back to bashing Metrolinx (and the TTC) with yet another lawsuit blaming everyone but themselves: “J’accuse.”
As always, Mulroney is back to courting public opinion by blaming her predecessors all the while refusing to say what needs to be said: “Je m’excuse.”
In truth, the causes are complicated from contractual disputes to COVID-19 delays. But if you listen to Mulroney’s press lines on the transit line, there is no news and no nuance:
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Sympathy for shopkeepers blockaded by Eglinton’s construction zone for years? Empathy for the crosstown commuters still on hold? Clarity for journalists trying to make sense of the nonsense?
None of the above. The playbook is a blame game that goes back in time:
“We have learned one thing, and it’s something that all Ontarians know,” Mulroney lectured the legislature this week.
“The Liberals made mistake after mistake after mistake when they were in government, and the NDP supported them when they held the balance of power. We learned from the Liberal mistakes and that’s why we committed to doing things differently.”
There was a time when blaming the previous party in power seemed plausible notably in the months right after the 2018 election. But ever since last June’s election, the previous government, technically speaking, has been none other than the PC government of 2018-22.
By her logic, the five years since Doug Ford’s Tories first gained power somehow don’t count. Which means Mulroney cannot be held to account.
That’s not to say that the minister bears all blame for the fiasco at Metrolinx, the transportation co-ordination agency she oversees. But Mulroney cannot claim to be blameless.
She had four full years to get to the bottom of the Metrolinx morass. As minister, why didn’t she have Crosstown in her crosshairs, demanding accountability?
The answer is that she turned her mind to machinations and communications rather than construction and operations. Mulroney’s office obsessed with muzzling Metrolinx rather than cracking the whip on Crosstown.
A confidential email trail shows the minister’s top political aides vetting communications from Metrolinx to the media and opposition politicians. A typical example is this edict, emanating from Mulroney chief of staff Michael Beaton, directed at his Metrolinx counterpart:
“I understand you spoke with Mike Beaton about a potential new approach for Metrolinx (Crosstown) comms (communications). Here is the new statement, which we propose comes from (Metrolinx CEO) Phil (Verster),” one of Mulroney’s PR aides wrote in an email revealed by Star reporter Lex Harvey.
Imagery matters to Mulroney’s team. Efficiency, not so much.
Perhaps that’s why she and Ford invited the media to a photo op this month with Metrolinx to announce wait for it two new electric GO buses. An entire transit system is being held hostage, and she hosts an announcement about two buses?
It’s always awkward watching Mulroney and Ford onstage together erstwhile rivals for the party leadership in 2018 (she finished third). When the transportation minister struggled with answering a question on Crosstown delays earlier this year, the premier stepped up to rescue her with a fuller explanation and rumination.
The budget has ballooned from an initial $8.2 billion to as much as $12.8 billion. The budgeting, like the politicking, is nothing if not frustrating.
The NDP Opposition lays the blame at the so-called P3 — public-private partnership — building the Crosstown line, as if all the problems would vanish if only government agencies had sole authority. Leave Metrolinx or the Toronto Transit Commission in charge and transit would roll out at high speed.
To be sure, P3 has its pluses and minuses, but this is hardly a perfect test case. COVID-19 ensnared the Crosstown project, causing massive complications. Litigation is exasperating, but the truth is that the consortium has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from Metrolinx after launching lawsuits in the past, so it’s not always wrong.
Its latest complaint is that the TTC’s formal role, as operator of the LRT, is conspicuously absent from the contract language after all these years. Metrolinx and the Tories say it’s a delaying tactic and a distraction, but it’s a good question why, after all these years (the last four under Mulroney’s reign), isn’t all of this spelled out?
The TTC and Metrolinx allege that Crosslinx has it all wrong the tracks aren’t straight and true, and the consortium can’t get its story straight. That’s a question for engineers and lawyers to sort out in due course.
But Torontonians deserve straight talk from their politicians now. After years of delay, they want answers about the LRT’s pathway to an opening day in the near future, not a trip back in time to another governing era.
Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:
@reggcohn