Globe and Mail's Q&A with Rob Ford. His comments and distorted view of reality make my head hurt. His incompetence and lack of grasp on how projects like this work baffle me.
Q. Your advisor Gordon Chong has said that you’ll only get 10 per cent or maybe 30 per cent private funding for the Sheppard subway. How disappointed are you?
A. I’m not disappointed at all. I’m very confident we can get a shovel in the ground this year and at the latest next year. You look at the federal government, they’ve come to the table already with $333-million, and the province has committed funding, what’s left in Eglinton and probably more. So we’ll have to go talk to the Premier again about it. The private sector’s all over it. There’s people in our office every week about this.
Q. On the provincial side, they have said they can’t hand over that money until Eglinton is done in 2020. That’s a long way off.
A. I get along well with the Premier. I don’t think he’s going to wait until 2020 to make that happen. If he does, that’s his choice, but I think we can sit down and come up with a better timeframe than that.
Q. Are you still planning on one-third each from the province, the feds and the private sector?
A. You have to have a game plan here. I use the analogy of football. Sometimes you have a plan and it’s not working out … but you still have to have a plan going in, and that’s our plan. If the province didn’t have the money and wasn’t going to help us they’d come right out and say it. They haven’t said that.
Q. They did say that didn’t they?
A. I have never heard the Premier come out and say he’s not going to fund the Sheppard subway.
Q. What about the $65-million number TTC general manager Gary Webster kicked around as the cost of cancelling Transit City?
A. I have no idea where he’s getting his number from.
Q. Metrolinx, he said.
A. You hear 15 different stories about this number and I’ve never seen the number on paper. I don’t think any of us have. I think they’re just pulling it out of thin air.