Bratina off rails with Freudian slip

City council’s demand to hear where Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals stand on light rail funding has shoved its way onto the local election scene.

And truth was the first thing to bite the dust.

After Hamilton Mountain New Democrat Monique Taylor sent out a press release claiming her party is the only one Hamilton can trust to fund and build the LRT lines, rival Liberal candidate Sophia Aggelonitis quickly struck back with her own.

Aggelonitis said NDP support for LRT is “belated” and accused Taylor of being willing to push forward unilaterally on the project rather than let council decide.

The fact is NDP leader Andrea Horwath has repeatedly made commitments to LRT, most recently during a meeting with The Spectator’s editorial board.

McGuinty, on the other hand, has consistently ducked saying whether he’ll live up to his 2007 promise, arguing instead that discussions are ongoing.

When The Spectator pointed this out to Aggelonitis’s campaign, a spokesperson responded that if the city wants to build two LRT lines, the Liberals have committed to support them.

“The premier was clear about this,” the spokesperson said in an email.

No, he hasn’t been. That’s the whole point behind council’s 13-3 vote. They think the community deserves a straightforward answer.

The fact council came down so heavily in support of the motion should send a strong signal not just to the Liberals but to Mayor Bob Bratina who voted against it.

Truth to tell, Bratina should count himself lucky he wasn’t on the losing side of a 15-1 vote, a situation he’s previously mocked former mayor Fred Eisenberger for finding himself in.

As it was, Brian McHattie and Jason Farr joined him in voting against putting pressure on the Liberals. Not because McHattie and Farr don’t support LRT, but because they have an upcoming motion of their own that calls on council to recommit itself to the project.

McHattie argued their motion takes a more gradual and less confrontational approach and, as such, is less likely to embarrass the Liberals.

Obviously, the majority sided with Terry Whitehead’s view that an election is the perfect time to pressure a political party into coming clean.

Whether or not it results in a definitive answer remains to be seen.

What it should do, however, is put a cork in Bratina’s habit of undermining the light rail proposal through faint support and open disparagement, a position councillor Lloyd Ferguson fears is sending the wrong message to Queen’s Park.

Bratina was squirming all over the map during the debate. One moment he maintained he had no problem with the resolution, the next moment he voted against it.

He said it was wrong to suggest that LRT had somehow been bounced as a priority, even though he’s on record saying it’s not one.

The moment of truth came when he directly compared the projected cost of light rail to all-day GO train service, which, thanks to McGuinty, we now know Bratina has been pushing as his top transit priority.

“We’ve heard the figure around $1 billion (for LRT) in a difficult economy versus about $200 million, which is the GO project,” Bratina told council.