Following the historic new funding deal for the City of Toronto announced Monday by the premier and the mayor, Toronto’s city manager says a little bit of time is needed to transfer responsibility of the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway to the province.

Paul Johnson told The Morning Zoom with Sam and Jane on Zoomer Radio, what’s great about this new deal is that immediately the financial implications change for the City of Toronto.

“So even as we work through the due diligence, even as we work through those processes to transfer it over to the province, the province will begin paying for the capital expenses that the City of Toronto has on the Gardiner and DVP,” Johnson explained, “And why this is important is, that means we can start to reallocate the capital that would’ve gone to the Gardiner and DVP into other important projects – parks, community centres, our local roads and housing.”

And what about Toronto’s $1.5-billion budget shortfall?

“Our pathway to a balanced budget gets a little easier now,” Johnson answered, “We’re not out of the woods yet, but it was never going to be about the province solving all of our problems for us. We’ll get through this together but we took a tremendous step forward to having a much better budget outlook in 2024.”

Johnson went on to say the missing piece is funding from the federal government and for them to come to the table to help the city with the refugee claimants and asylum seekers as well as the capital work that needs to be done.