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GTHA Regional Transit Amalgamation Discussion: Superlinx/Subway Upload

steveintoronto said:
I think a court case would come first. And this is about a lot more than just the subway. It goes to the heart of the Constitution Act and the Fed's ability to exert jurisdiction where provinces had *thought* (whether rightly or wrongly) they had absolute jurisdiction over municipalities.

An example of this Fed/Prov skirmish is already headed to court over Carbon Pricing and method. It's considered that the Feds will win an easy victory on that one. But the subway? The Feds (not all, anyway) might be reticent, as responsibility to rule also means costs.

Now that Sewell wrote that opinion piece, well exposed by TorStar, btw. guaranteed there will be more opinion pieces on the matter, and from Constitutional Lawyers.

I'll keep digging and see what I can add later, but the legal precedents clearly exist. Ford will have no-one to blame when he ends up losing rather than gaining on this...
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Ah, so essentially the argument is that the Province has no right to legislate over the TTC subway whatsoever. That will be a fascinating situation, if the argument holds water. Couldn't this potentially render a lot of the past Provincial legislation over the subway invalid?
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Ah, so essentially the argument is that the Province has no right to legislate over the TTC subway whatsoever.
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Let me flip this over, and I'm only surmising based on the precedents I can find. There are areas not yet defined by the SCC!

Inversion: "The powers of the province to seize and regulate what has determined to be *in part* federally regulated are limited". How those limitations are defined/assessed is the interesting part, but a decision has to happen at some point based on the overlaps of the Constitution Act.

You'll remember with the potential of Quebec separating, the Court had to define *in the spirit of the Lawmakers who wrote the acts* the terms and in fact the *actual wording of the question* of what Quebec claimed didn't pertain to them to begin with.

I was just reading the Ont Expropriations Act as per Munis: Nothing! In fact, very little reference even to their (ostensibly subsidiary) rights to themselves expropriate property.

@rbt wrote:
Toronto is a department of the province known as Municipality of Toronto
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? "Department" C'est quoi? Are we into Napoleonic Law now? Sewell raises an interesting point. Under both provincial and federal expropriation law, the term "fair value" pertains. Without having the various acts and legal precedents handy for reference, I have to leave it at that....but consider the claim (and I admit, City Solicitors agree with this, City Solicitors are known to be pretty...errr...slack) that "The Province can take anything and everything". Well, the Charter indicates otherwise.

I leave it at that for now, this is really the domain of Constitutional Lawyers, and the press will be hosting discussion on this shortly.

If I can make a wild projection if it comes to Court? The ruling will be (with caveats) "Yes, the Province can 'expropriate' municipal property and value, but they can't violate the law in doing so. The law states (gist) "replacement by equal value for goods or property expropriated". Next step, if appealed, would be to Federal Court.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Ah, so essentially the argument is that the Province has no right to legislate over the TTC subway whatsoever. That will be a fascinating situation, if the argument holds water. Couldn't this potentially render a lot of the past Provincial legislation over the subway invalid?
Click to expand...

The author of the article, John Sewell, quotes Expropriation Act law to back his claim that the "law appears on the cities side". He's mistaken as that legislation will not be used to perform the transfer. At most, the City of Toronto Act will be modified to remove the ability granted by the province to design, own, and operate such infrastructure.

The city has only voted to state they oppose the upload; AFAIK the city has not yet decided to pursue a legal strategy.

I expect Tory is well aware there is not a strong legal defence for this action; the only defence is going to be political or against the process (Ford should run public consultations in the 905).
 
rbt said:
The author of the article, John Sewell, quotes Expropriation Act law to back his claim that the "law appears on the cities side". He's mistaken as that legislation will not be used to perform the transfer. At most, the City of Toronto Act will be modified to remove the ability granted by the province to design, own, and operate such infrastructure.

The city has only voted to state they oppose the upload; AFAIK the city has not yet decided to pursue a legal strategy.

I expect Tory is well aware there is not a strong legal defence for this action; the only defence is going to be political or against the process (Ford should run public consultations in the 905).
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I really don’t see why the Expropriation act was seen as a hurdle in the first place. QP and rewrite the law at their convenience.

The main legal hurdle for QP seems to be that the TTC subway is apparently a federally regulated railway (see Steve’s posts from yesterday). If that’s the case, the uploading proposal appears DOA if the federal government steps in. I’m no legal expert though, so I might be misunderstanding the situation.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I really don’t see why the Expropriation act was seen as a hurdle in the first place. QP and rewrite the law at their convenience.
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Yeah, it probably wouldn't be.

The main legal hurdle for QP seems to be that the TTC subway is apparently a federally regulated railway (see Steve’s posts from yesterday). If that’s the case, the uploading proposal appears DOA if the federal government steps in. I’m no legal expert though, so I might be misunderstanding the situation.
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Agreed. That is a much more relevant concern, but it isn't one the Globe & Mail opinion piece brought up.

That said, ownership changes of railway lines occurs regularly; and as far as we know operations will not be changing. Fed libs blocking this would almost certainly lose them the next election as Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec would have a fit about provincial rights.
 
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rbt said:
Yeah, it probably wouldn't be.

Agreed. That is a much more relevant concern, but it isn't one the Globe & Mail opinion piece brought up.

That said, ownership of railway lines occurs regularly; and as far as we know operations will not be changing. Fed libs blocking this would almost certainly lose them the next election as Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec would have a fit about provincial rights.
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Or they win due to the voters doing the "What have we done" provincially. Ford may be exactly what Trudeau needs to win.
 
Doesn't mean much. This has always been the federal government's position: "we don't tell municipalities what to do." Then there's just an added sprinkling of, "but we've given them so much money to build what they think needs building."

He doesn't even say "The City of Toronto" and says something about not drawing lines on a map. No evidence they're sticking their noses in, or have any interest in doing so. Much ado about nothing, if there's anything ado at all.

BTW, I don't know that I saw anyone else post this but the Board of Trade did publish an addendum to their Superlinx plan, addressing some of the "concerns" they heard after the first version. It's still probably not perfect, but it seems to me more coherent than anything else out there right now (and that includes the status quo):

https://www.bot.com/portals/0/Connect the Region_Feb 5_Final.pdf
 
No plan is coherent without $$$ attached. The fact that QP plans to spend only $100 Million annually on upkeep tells me everything I need to know about QP’s uploading plan. The Government of Ontario clearly does not understand the magnitude of this responsibility. They will not be responsible stewards of our subway system.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
No plan is coherent without $$$ attached. The fact that QP plans to spend only $100 Million annually on upkeep tells me everything I need to know about QP’s uploading plan. The Government of Ontario clearly does not understand the magnitude of this responsibility. They will not be responsible stewards of our subway system.
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It's not that I trust the Ford government enough for me to lend em $5 for lunch, but I still don't think that proves anything one way or another.

first of all, under Toronto's stellar management, I do believe the TTC has a $33 BILLION repair backlog. Again, $33 BILLION. Even if Toronto wanted to, they couldn't make up for all that. Secondly, whether they're dreaming up a one-stop subway extension or an LRT network, they can't build a damned metre of it without provincial funding anyway. So, what evidence is there, really, that the City of Toronto understands the magnitude of its responsibility for maintaining transit; where's the evidence they have been - over the course of decades - responsible stewards?

And we haven't seen anything yet from the province about how they're going to do the upload or what it might entail.

So, for me, I don't really see all the fuss, as a general matter of principle, of saying, "You guys wanna take this on, get it up to speed, be responsible for expanding it and making sure it doesn't fall apart? Have at it - because we simply don't have the resources."

Could Ford do it as a big money grab, starve the system, make a mess of it etc.? Sure he could.
But the general attitude that no one - especially an upper level of government with deeper pockets - can do a better job? That I don't see at all.
 
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TJ O'Pootertoot said:
It's not that I trust the Ford government enough for me to lend em $5 for lunch, but I still don't think that proves anything one way or another.

first of all, under Toronto's stellar management, I do believe the TTC has a $33 BILLION repair backlog. Again, $33 BILLION. Even if Toronto wanted to, they couldn't make up for all that. Secondly, whether they're dreaming up a one-stop subway extension or an LRT network, they can't build a damned metre of it without provincial funding anyway. So, what evidence is there, really, that the City of Toronto understands the magnitude of its responsibility for maintaining transit; where's the evidence they have been - over the course of decades - responsible stewards?

And we haven't seen anything yet from the province about how they're going to do the upload or what it might entail.

So, for me, I don't really see all the fuss, as a general matter of principle, of saying, "You guys wanna take this on, get it up to speed, be responsible for expanding it and making sure it doesn't fall apart? Have at it - because we simply don't have the resources."

Could Ford do it as a big money grab, starve the system, make a mess of it etc.? Sure he could.
But the general attitude that no one - especially an upper level of government with deeper pockets - can do a better job? That I don't see at all.
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?
To me the fear mongering being perpetuated about a subway upload is unfounded speculation about privatization and/or loss of union jobs. When the NDP flank of city council is behind a policy, chances are they are spreading unfounded hysteria about those two things.

(Or they are pushing tax hikes)

Yet it’s self-evident that Toronto doesn’t have the fiscal capacity, planning processes, or political structure in plan to repair and expand the TTC to the scale it needs to be.
 
pstogios said:
?
To me the fear mongering being perpetuated about a subway upload is unfounded speculation about privatization and/or loss of union jobs. When the NDP flank of city council is behind a policy, chances are they are spreading unfounded hysteria about those two things.

(Or they are pushing tax hikes)

Yet it’s self-evident that Toronto doesn’t have the fiscal capacity, planning processes, or political structure in plan to repair and expand the TTC to the scale it needs to be.
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At the risk of agreeing with you agreeing with me - this fearmongering is the real problem.
Again, it's not that I think there is NO way Doug Ford would privatize transit but we're seeing - and we're seeing it with healthcare too - is a kneejerk assumption that's the endgame and that, therefore, the upload itself is suspicious, even though there's no indication privatization is in the cards. It's a total strawman and I'm surprised how many are falling for it.

I'm not telling anyone in Toronto to trust Ford to be the man who fixes transit in the GTA, but maybe start by taking a look in the mirror and admitting that you guys could use some help managing this file and asking "daddy" for cheques to keep covering your bills isn't a practical solution. Once I see what Doug's upload plans are, then I'll judge accordingly what kind of scam he may be trying to pull. But I'm not going to look at the current state of affairs and listen to ATU's radio ads and assume there is no way this could possibly benefit the city or - more to the point - transit riders.
 
Any plan that takes something away from Toronto - even something they've openly mismanaged into the ground - must be inherently destructive to Toronto.
You know, the guys building the Scarborough Subway Extension and Gardiner "hybrid." :)

I'm totally willing to attach a "given the government in charge..." caveat to any pro-upload argument I am liable to make. But it also seems clear that it's pretty hard to have a rational discussion about the limits of Toronto's ability to manage the least-subsidized, most-ineptly-expanded-over-the-past-generation transit system in a major city anywhere.

I don't even blame Toronto for how the province has cut its funding and otherwise changed the rules over the years, but given legal and fiscal realities, Toronto is simply not up to the task of managing the system anymore. So bring on an upload! Except, yeah...given the government in charge...
 
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