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Budget First Responses
So Dalton and the Queen’s Park Posse have announced their budget and he was right there were no surprises! The city is getting lots of money ($600-odd million) to build a subway to York U. which the higher ups at the TTC don’t really want but is better than the subway along Sheppard that goes nowhere.
A little more funding for social programs but probably not enough to completely reverse the gutting that Harris did. More aid for students but not to post-secondary institutions so things like strikes could’ve been prevented. Welfare rates inched upward but child benefits still got cut despite Liberal election promises. And we still got that deficit.
The Globe’s quick analysis is here. The Star’s got a whole team working on their budget coverage, including a CP story that keeping a deficit despite collecting oodles of cash might actually be a Queen’s Park ploy to still be able to cry poor to Ottawa. Or you could go straight to the source.
Torontoist is a bit of a policy wonk so next year we might liveblog the budget…. how many of you will be reading? Yeah, didn’t think so.