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BREAKING: They finally fixed the wifi at Queen’s Park.
Headline for Toronto from the new Ontario budget: Very little about housing. No TCH repair funding, or commitment for new construction.
Other key thing for Toronto from new Ontario budget: “The province will not move forward with the previous government’s proposed changes to the municipal share of gas tax funding.”
Broader perspective is that this is kind of a weird budget for Doug Ford. No quick movement to eliminate deficit (five years), but it still picks enough fights with things like class sizes to create headaches for PC government.
There is A LOT of booze stuff in this budget: alcohol in parks, happy hours, restaurants selling booze at 9 a.m., etc. Imagine a budget with a lot of booze-related stuff in it, then double it.
The reversal of the gas tax share increase for municipalities will have significant budgetary impacts for Toronto. Was planned to start this year, grow to $328 million by 2021-2022.
And here is your PDF of Ontario’s 2019 budget. Now you can read the thing I spent all day reading! budget.ontario.ca/pdf/2019/2019-… (PDF)
Here’s the language re: gas tax from the budget. 
Also the license plates are blue now.
Here’s the slate of boozy changes, including allowing municipalities to designate certain parks as areas where people can drink. This is going to lead to a super fun council debate.
After unveiling an Ontario Line map yesterday without station locations, the map in the budget includes stations.
The budget also confirms that City Council has bought itself a year on uploading of the existing subway system. Province will own new lines and extensions this year, but leaving rest of upload to 2020.
Here’s a table of stuff the city was planning to pay for with increased provincial gas tax transfers. Lots of maintenance, accessibility for TTC.
Page two of stuff that was to be paid for by provincial gas tax share increase. toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2… (PDF)
Budget quotes the premier on building transit: if other governments don’t want to pay, the province will cover it.
