McGuinty to Toronto: Drop Dead.

That's basically what this amounts to:

Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government is asking its Metrolinx regional transit agency to find a way to save $4 billion over five years by delaying some of the $9.3 billion worth of transit projects previously announced.

Projects likely to proceed include the Union-Pearson/Georgetown GO Transit link, the Sheppard light rail transit line and the York University line, government officials said.

But the austerity moves could affect five planned projects: rapid transit lines for Finch Ave. W., Sheppard Ave. E. and the Scarborough RT, along with the Eglinton Ave. cross-town line and an expansion of York region’s Viva service.

This is a nice endnote to McGuinty's utter refusal to give Toronto the tools it needs to fix its own problems: managing to screw the city just a little bit more by promising money that, of course, will never be delivered. Amazingly, the Province managed to find money to shovel north, to help an industry that was novel and dynamic back when Canada's main concern was beating the Kaiser:

Yet the government hopes development of the recent discovery of a massive deposit of chromite in the Ring of Fire area, 500 kms northeast of Thunder Bay, will help drive down the $21.3 billion deficit.

“For the 21st century, the discovery of chromite in the Ring of Fire could be as big as the discovery of nickel was in Sudbury in the 19th century,” Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said in his budget speech.

I especially like how the thinking seems to be that creating a few thousand jobs in Thunder Bay is going to pay down the deficit, but helping ease traffic congestion, and potentially giving back millions of lost work-hours (currently swallowed up in traffic) is a non-starter.

Now the only thing that is needed is for Rocco Rossi to win the next Mayor's election, and we can start tearing up our bike lanes too. Then Toronto can be totally, truly, unbelievably doomed, all thanks to centre-right Liberals.