How do cities and school boards secure sufficient funding for infrastructure?

In the February 16, 2017 Toronto Sun article entitled, “Mayor Tory urges province, feds to step up to the plate”, John Tory states that, “Toronto is locked in a pair of “prehistoric handcuffs” and senior governments have the keys.”

Tory made these comments outside of a Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) building in Etobicoke as he urged the provincial and federal governments to help address the $2.6-billion repair backlog that has been allowed to accumulate in the city’s social housing buildings. Tory goes on to say, “Another year of tweaking and fiddling on the budget front without real help from them just won’t cut it in terms of our responsibility that we have to the people of this city.”

In the January 27, 2017 CBC News entitled, “Mayor Tory decries ‘short-sighted’ road-toll rejection by province”, Tory says that, “he’s tired of Queen’s Park treating him like a “little boy in short pants,” when he’s trying to to secure money to pay for billions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects.”

And in a February 21, 2017 editorial in the Toronto Star, entitled, “The Province must deliver long-term funding support to Toronto”, Mayor Tory continued this general theme.

Mayor Tory is understandably frustrated by the fact that he feels a great responsibility to meet the needs of the people of Toronto and yet is unable to accomplish this because the provincial government holds more power and access to funding.

School board trustees throughout Ontario are likely very familiar with Mayor Tory’s “prehistoric handcuffs”. For years, they’ve undertaken to do what is best for the students, families and communities they serve – but must rely on the province for almost all funding. Given that the Province routinely blames school boards for not meeting the needs of students, Ontario school boards are also familiar with the frustration of trying to secure adequate funding when they can’t control the sources of those funds. Ontario’s 72 school boards must be able to access stable and adequate funding to repair and build new schools so that the real people in short pants, our children, can go to school in safe, well-maintained schools.