this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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You mean by Mike Harris, some 25 years ago.
We’re still reeling from all that common sense, with the amalgamation of Toronto leading to a bigger, more expensive, more inefficient, and more dysfunctional government.
And lets not forget the common sense turd that was the privatization of the 407, an absolute cash cow that generates $1B / year in profit, was built on taxpayer funds, and is now worth 10X what it was sold off for.
I'm pretty sure the amalgamation of Toronto was specifically intended to allow the outer "GTA" to swamp and override anything that urban Toronto wanted to accomplish. What you call inefficient and dysfunctional is just operating according to plan.
The property was leased. The government still owns that 10x increase in value.
When I wrote that, I knew someone was going to come out of the woodwork and say the highway was not technically sold, so I was trying to be careful with the wording. Not careful enough I guess. Yes, you’re right, it was the rights to a 99 year lease that were sold.
But no, it wasn’t just a lease, it was the right to a lease, which is indeed technically a kind of sale, not a lease per se. This is evidenced by the fact that SNC-Lavalin recently sold 10% of those rights for $3B, which pegs the current value of the entirety of those rights at $30B, 10 times what the Harris government originally sold them for.