And yet we still don’t know much about the apparent contents of the video at the centre of all this. We do, however, know a lot about how Ford has responded to the scandal.

We know, for example, that his response has been weird. We know that none of it has made any sense. We know that, in the wake of this scandal, the mayor’s communications strategy — if we can call it that — has been a complete and total disaster.

To illustrate, take Ford out of the story for a second and try this experiment. How would you respond if a major media outlet reported that you used crack? If it were me, I’d do a couple of things. First, I’d loudly deny it. I’d tell every person I could that, hey, that thing you read about me? It’s not true. I’d go to great lengths at necessary. I’d look at rental costs for skywriters who could spell out “MATT ELLIOTT? NOT A CRACK USER! YOU MAY HAVE BEEN MISINFORMED” in big wispy letters across the sky.

I’d get the word out that someone had lied about me.

I’d do this because I am not a crack user and I wouldn’t want people to think otherwise. That’s no judgment on drug users — it’s simply a preference for the truth. Which brings me to the second thing I’d do: I’d see about suing the people who had made the claim in the first place. Legal action may be costly to pursue, but it could be worth it. Under Canadian libel law, I’d have a good chance of winning.

Rob Ford, as of this writing, has done neither of these things. And while it’s unfair to make too many assumptions based on his inaction, I think it’s fair to flag his non-response as curious.

Things got even more curious yesterday afternoon, when Coun. Doug Ford forced us all ask a tough question: Is it possible that Doug Ford can make this scandal any worse than it already is?

The answer, we learned after an early afternoon press conference delivered by the mayor’s brother, was yes. Doug Ford can make anything worse.

He was in fine form at City Hall yesterday, using a lot of words to say virtually nothing. He said the mayor didn’t need to comment any further, as he had “already addressed these allegations three times, on Friday.” Which came as a big surprise to reporters who have been camped outside Ford’s home and office for a week waiting for any kind of official comment on the matter and have been treated, thus far, to only a 13-second prepared quasi-statement and a series of muttered comments about how much the Toronto Star sucks.

Doug also made the Star a big focus of his comments, of course. Of the crack allegations, he said, “our mayor faces yet another accusation — an accusation driven by questionable reporting from a news outlet that has proven they would do anything to stop the mayor’s agenda.” Which is a weird statement, because the news outlet he’s referring to (the Star) didn’t even break the story — Gawker did.

And no one really cares about stopping “the mayor’s agenda.” The mayor hasn’t been able to win a significant council vote since the first year of his term. There’s no agenda to stop.

Coun. Ford spent most of his time in front of the podium going over the same, mostly misleading talking points boasting the mayor’s accomplishments. It was dull.

When he did finally get around to addressing the allegations directly, he offered only these carefully worded statements. First, he said, “Rob is telling me these stories are untrue, that these accusations are ridiculous, and I believe him.” Then, later, he added this hypothetical: “If the mayor stopped and held a press conference every time the media made up a story about him, we would never have accomplished what we have” — which ignores the fact that every other Ford scandal has come with, if not an official mayoral press conference, at least an abundance of commentary from Doug Ford.

Neither of those statements, you’ll note, stand as denials. No one in the Ford camp has flat-out said that the mayor is not a drug user. And no one in the Ford camp has denied the existence of the video or claimed it a forgery.

Again, these omissions don’t stand as admissions, but there’s a weird disconnect here. Early in his remarks, Doug called Rob the “people’s mayor.” And it’s an apt label for a politician who has made a career on being a regular guy who calls constituents back and helps them with their problems. But Ford hasn’t been acting much like a regular guy since the drug story broke.

The average person, faced with these sorts of allegations, would talk. Would explain. Would deny. Would rationalize. Would speak honestly to the people who elected him. But Rob Ford has stuck with the bizarre strategy of saying nothing. Seven days in, it’s not working. The people behind the “people’s mayor” deserve something much better than this.

Under the shadow of those still-unanswered crack cocaine allegations levelled against Mayor Rob Ford, Toronto City Council has voted to totally reject any notion of a Toronto casino. The vote comes after more than a year of political debate, unprecedented levels of City hall lobbying, dozens of thick staff reports, a long public consultation process and relentless championing from Ford, who once introduced the topic of casinos on his radio show by making “cha-ching” sound effects as if he were a slot machine.

It was all for nothing. Council nixed both the proposed downtown casino resort and any expansion of gambling at Woodbine racetrack. We’re keeping the status quo.

Ford tried to jump off the casino bandwagon last week, which it became clear that Premier Kathleen Wynne had reservations about the casino process, but it was hard to put much stock in his supposed change of heart. Today, Ford defended himself by pointing out he hadn’t campaigned on the issue of a casino. Which is factually true, but still misleading. With Ford, there’s a perpetual political campaign that extends far beyond official election periods. So while his official 2010 campaign wasn’t about casinos, his unofficial 2012 campaign was about little else.

In the end, Ford wasn’t even able to get the face-saving result on the council floor he was looking for. His motions were all roundly defeated, with Ford and his brother, Coun. Doug Ford, even losing on their bid to expand gambling operations at Woodbine. The Woodbine vote came as a surprise, both because that part of Etobicoke is the Fords’ home turf, and because the vote — at 24-20 — was close enough that it was probably winnable with a little bit of strategy.

But maybe Ford was too busy dealing with other things.

For casino opponents like the specularly well-organized and effective No Casino Toronto group, today is a good day. It’s also a pretty good day for those of us who were just tired of the casino debate. But I do worry about one part of this outcome: through this long, tortuous process, did Toronto actually learn anything?

I first wrote about a Toronto casino way back on April 12, 2012. It was one of the very first pieces I wrote for Metro. And the points I made then seem basically identical to the points that were made by councillors this morning.  I wrote that “a casino debate in Toronto is a waste of everyone’s time” and that “casinos in Ontario don’t amount to big money for municipalities.” I was right on both counts.

This isn’t an ego thing — I was far from the only one decrying the move toward casinos. But if we knew these things back then, why did it take a full year to get to the point where council rejected a casino? And, more importantly, how much money was wasted — at City Hall, at OLG, and at the provincial level — on what ultimately proved to be a foregone conclusion?

We need to know the answer to that question. It’s also worth figuring out if there was a better way to handle this — could councillors have been given the opportunity to vote on whether to proceed with the reports and consultations before staff went out and started working the issue?

It’s important to know this stuff for next time. And don’t kid yourself: there will be a next time. Just as this latest Toronto casino debate was only about 15 years removed from the last one in 1997, another bid for a Toronto casino is likely. There will always be times when reflexively anti-tax politicians ride populist waves to power and look to the glitzy lights of a casino as their budget saviour.

But, hey, next time, let’s see if we can be any quicker about saying “no.”

I was all set to go into the long weekend with a quick blog post about Mayor Rob Ford and magnets. It would have been light, and maybe kind of funny. That the mayor of Canada’s largest city stepped out of an important meeting on Tuesday to wander around a parking lot and attach a bunch of promotional magnets to cars is, after all, inherently funny. That his magnet spree was investigated by the city’s licensing and standards division as a potential bylaw violation is even funnier. It’s an absurd joke without a punchline.

But the story about Rob Ford and magnets is gone now.

There are a lot of things about this story that we don’t know for certain. What we do know is that a group of people are attempting to sell a video they say shows the mayor smoking crack. We also know that at least three journalists, from Gawker and the Toronto Star, have seen said video — though all declined to pay for exclusive rights to it — and have provided written descriptions of its content. But we don’t know where the video is right now. And its contents have not been fully verified.

The mayor hasn’t publicly responded to any of this, aside from calling the whole thing “ridiculous” and casting blame at the Star. That’s not good enough. Ford needs to issue a more complete statement, and quickly. And he needs to do much better than blaming the Star — they didn’t even break the story. And the photo attached to the story, which purportedly shows the mayor posing with a man who was killed in a shooting, badly needs an explanation.

What Ford does in his free time is his business. If he has an addiction or substance abuse problem, we should offer sympathy and support, and wish him and his family well. This kind of thing only becomes the public’s business when it starts to affect the job the mayor was elected to do.

If anything, the other reported elements of the video should prove more damaging than the suggested drug use. It’d be hard to forgive the mayor for things like tossing homophobic slurs at politicians and making what seem like disparaging comments regarding the young football players he coaches at Don Bosco Secondary School. If substantiated, those kind of comments go beyond crossing the line — they set the whole damn line on fire.

But where this story goes from here is beyond Ford’s control. It’s down to Ford Nation. If the video never comes out, then this could very well be stick-handled like most of the other scandals that have marked Ford’s tenure in office — chalked up to political vendettas and media outlets that just don’t like the mayor’s agenda. Ford Nation will roll on.

If, on the other hand, the video does surface — and shows anything like what it’s been said to show — then Ford’s political career is in trouble. He’ll maintain some of his most adherent supporters no matter what, of course, but those die-hards won’t number enough to keep him afloat at the polls.

What makes this different from all the other scandals and missteps that have marked Ford’s time in office is two things: first, the nature of the transgression, and, second, the possibility of unassailable proof.

The nature of the transgression at the centre of these allegations is likely to play badly with Ford’s base. As much as I don’t want to judge anyone’s drug use, crack cocaine isn’t going to square with the just-a-regular-guy image that has so defined Ford’s electoral success. People will accept a guy who has one too many beers, but hard drugs are another thing all together. And the stuff he’s alleged to say on video goes beyond the pale — voters aren’t likely to defend blatant homophobia, and they’re even less likely to accept remarks disparaging the high school football team that has become such a critical piece of the mayor’s image.

Then there’s the supposed existence of real, hard evidence. That’s the lynchpin. Every other headline-making Ford scandal has been defined by conflicting accounts. When Star reporter Daniel Dale encountered an angry mayor on public land near the Ford house, for example, it turned into a story of the mayor versus the Star. The same goes for the sexual assault allegations involving Ford and Sarah Thomson, where the narrative from the Ford side quickly became more about character assassination.

But Ford can’t attack the integrity of video footage. And that’s why the reported contents of the video would, if verified, hurt him so badly. We’d finally see my peak scandal theory tested. If anything can shake the mayor’s solid-as-a-rock 42% approval rating, it’s this.

In other words, unlike that silly magnet thing, this could stick.

Still, it’s important to take a step back and retain perspective on where the GTA’s debate on transit funding actually stands today. Councillors, after all, were merely playing the role of advice-givers. It’ll be the provincial government that ultimately determines the path forward for transit expansion in the GTA.

But it’d be a mistake to let Toronto City Council members off the hook for their performance last week. Those who voted in favour of having the debate on transit funding had one job: to advise the province on how they’d prefer to raise the $2 billion a year in revenues needed for transit expansion. With their rejections of various staff-recommend taxes, this council came up very short.

With that in mind, let’s look at how this GTA-wide transit funding debate has played out so far.

Step One: Acknowledging the $2-billion hole

The first step in dealing with the GTA’s transit funding problem was to acknowledge that a problem actually exists.

Some politicians have had trouble with this step, instead insisting there would be no problem if only some other government were in charge at Queen’s Park and also if we simply reversed Earth’s rotation for a bit and retroactively avoided costly mistakes made years ago relating to suburban gas plants and eHealth and so on.

But aside from those protests, most seem to agree there does exist a significant funding gap standing between the region and the transportation infrastructure we need to halt worsening congestion.

We can visualize that gap like this, with an appropriate question mark:

The widely circulated figure is that the GTA needs about $2 billion per year in new revenue to fund transit. Some, like the Toronto Region Board of Trade, have argued that the target should be higher. And they’ve got a point. While $2 billion is a ton of cash, it’s only projected to build enough transit to keep average GTA commute times from getting worse than they are today.

But let’s stick with $2 billion as our target for now. I’ve drawn a red line across the graph so we don’t forget about it.

Step Two: A shortlist of favourites

For the next step saw Metrolinx table a shortlist of 11 potential revenue tools that could help get the region to the $2 billion target. (And, yes, “revenue tools” is just a euphemism for taxes. So what?)

Here’s how the Metrolinx shortlist stacked up to our revenue goal:

All told, the shortlisted revenues added up to nearly $8 billion per year in estimated revenue. Unless we decide to start looking at transit plans that include bullet trains and underwater monorails, that’s way more than we need.

Which is good, because some of the shortlisted revenues would never fly politically. Nearly every local politician in the GTA will stew with rage if you suggest funding transit expansion with property tax increases. And the idea of charging drivers based on how far they drive seems fraught with privacy issues and expensive administrative costs.

But there’s a lot here to like, and seemingly more than enough to get us above the $2-billion line. (All revenue estimates, by the way, are taken from the Metrolinx shortlist fact sheet. Land Value Capture is included but barely visible as Metrolinx attached no revenue estimate to it.)

Step Three: Enter the bureaucrats

Metrolinx asked municipal governments across the GTA to weigh in on the shortlist of revenues and provide guidance on their final investment report. In Toronto, that meant a report from the city manager laying out which taxes, tolls and fees he saw as most appropriate.

This is what he recommended:

The report recommended a parking levy, a sales tax, a fuel tax and increased development charges, all of which would be applied equally region-wide. This cuts potential revenue way down from the shortlist, of course, but still keeps us well above the line.

The city manager also recommended the region adopt additional revenue tools later, after construction of some of the high priority transit lines included in the initial phase of the Big Move. But let’s set those aside for now, and just focus on phase one stuff.

In addition to the taxes, tolls and fees on the Metrolinx list, the city manager studied options like a personal income tax increase, a congestion levy and a vehicle registration tax. But none made the cut.

Step Four: Elected officials screw things up

The final step was what we saw last week. It required city councillors to debate the contents of the city manager’s report, make amendments, and ultimately determine whether to send their advice to the province or quash the whole thing. Mayor Rob Ford, of course, was in favour of the quashing, but his objections were overruled after an unprecedented two-thirds of councillors in attendance voted against him.

So the debate happened. Things got derailed by Scarborough subway fantasies, which prompted even wilder fantasies about mythical subways criss-crossing the city. And when it came time to vote, any notion of council actually endorsing a new tax or toll went out the window. Instead, councillors opted to only tell Metrolinx which revenue tools they opposed.

After dozens of individual votes, that left us with this:

A regional sales tax of one per cent and increased development charges bring in a lot of revenue. But not enough to get us to our red line $2-billion figure. In fact, the whole exercise leaves Toronto’s recommendation to Metrolinx with an annual revenue gap totalling half a billion dollars.

On Friday, I wrote that council’s transit debate wasn’t all bad, as messy as it was. And I stand by that. No one would have predicted when Rob Ford was elected mayor in 2010 that his council would, less than three years later, tacitly endorse a region-wide sales tax to pay for transit. That’s big.

But there’s another side of this story. Councillors who generally support the Big Move and voted to have this debate had a obligation to provide workable recommendations that could help Metrolinx reach its revenue goals. That was the task they signed up for. That was their responsibility. That was their job.

And still this council came up short.

This week, though, as Toronto councillors had their long-awaited debate about transit funding, we were treated to more than just the regular sausage-making. Instead, we saw the sausage-creation process from its earliest and most primitive stages. We got to see — metaphorically, of course — a pig slowly beaten to death with a hammer, crudely skinned and diced in the most confusingly grotesque way possible, and then roasted over a bonfire — one tiny piece at a time.

Or maybe that’s just what it felt like.

And the outcome? Eh. It wasn’t the historic victory for public transit that advocates had been hoping for. But it also wasn’t any kind of victory for Mayor Rob Ford either. Council did not directly endorse any specific taxes, tolls or fees to fund transit expansion, but the list of funding tools they formally rejected was curiously missing a couple of items. The bottom line message to the province? Councillors in Toronto are probably okay with a regional sales tax and an increase to development charges to fund transit expansion.

(Also missing from the rejection list? Corporate income taxes. Expect to hear more about that.)

The strategy was odd, to say the least. A late-stage motion by Coun. Josh Colle saw councillors opt not to specifically endorse any revenue tools, but instead only indicate to Metrolinx which ones they explicitly rejected. That meant all votes — more than 50 of them — were conducted using double or triple negatives. I would have much rather seen the city take a stronger leadership role in the GTA by simply endorsing revenues.

But then, I guess, to take a leadership role you need a leader.

At least all talk of a Scarborough Subway turned out to be mostly hot air. After hanging tough on Wednesday, subway-booster Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker ended up moving only a lame duck motion that saw council state its general “support” for a Bloor-Danforth subway extension. It doesn’t appear that his motion will have any impact on current transit plans — there won’t even be a formal request made to Metrolinx or any further study of the idea from the TTC.

In the part of the debate actually about transit funding, TTC Chair Karen Stintz ultimately showed a measure of support for five revenue tools from the Metrolinx short list, matching the recommendations from the City Manager, save for her objection to a tax levied on commercial parking spaces. She and TTC allies Coun. Colle and Coun. John Parker voted not to include a sales tax, increased development charges, a fuel tax, road tolls and high occupancy toll lanes on council’s list of rejected funding tools.

Here’s how things broke down on the five votes related to those funding measures (click the chart for a larger image):

I’ve also put together a Google Spreadsheet with the results of all the transit funding related votes. Again, take these with a grain of salt since the nature of the Stintz strategy meant all votes were conducted using double (or triple) negative phrasing, making everything incredibly confusing. I don’t doubt mistakes were made on the council floor.

In addition to the mayor — who was forced to have this debate against his will and just opposed everything  – 13 councillors voted against every type of funding measure for transit expansion on the Metrolinx list. That list is a bit surprising, as it includes normally left-leaning councillors like Coun. De Baeremaeker, Coun. Maria Augimeri, Coun. Anthony Perruzza and centrists like Coun. Gloria Lindsay Luby and Coun. Ron Moeser. Meanwhile, more conservative members like Coun. Parker and Coun. Peter Milczyn showed a great deal of support for various transit funding strategies.

(To their credit, Coun. Augimeri and Coun. De Baeremaeker did ultimately support a motion to use corporate income taxes to fund transit expansion. Coun. Perruzza didn’t even support that.)

It’s hard to say exactly what will happen next. For all the talk of how this exercise was about giving Metrolinx advice in advance of the publication of their investment strategy at the end of the month, it’s unlikely that today’s vote will send Metrolinx staff scrambling to do rewrites. If anything, council’s vote may give a preview of what we can expect in that investment strategy. It’s a very safe bet that a regional sales tax will be the major focus — and that measure, by itself, is capable of raising nearly 70 per cent of what’s needed to fund the Big Move.

That council is not on record as opposing that sales tax is at least a small victory. Despite some serious questions about the wisdom of their strategy over the last couple of weeks, I’ll give Coun. Stintz and co. that much. They tried.

Which is more than I can say for some of those other councillors. For those who saw fit to attempt deny the debate, vote against every option or turn this into fodder for some pet hobbyhorse subway they think will aid their re-election chances, I’ll say only this: don’t bother showing up at any ribbon cuttings for transit lines that might be funded with these revenues.

You’ve stood against progress. You’ve chosen your place in history.

But no matter. The vote means that council will finally have its debate on how to fund transit expansion — which is, you know, the necessary first step toward actually building an expanded transit system.

But there’s still the matter of the Scarborough subway. According to some narratives, support for the subway — a Bloor-Danforth extension that would replace the Scarborough RT — was the lynchpin for gaining the votes of some east-end councillors to debate new revenues for transit. Which could very well mean that there’s now enough support on council for a motion that would request that the provincial government re-open the recently-signed master agreement on transit and tinker (again) with Toronto’s transit future.

But here’s the question I have: does anyone on council actually expect the transit plan to change? Do Scarborough councillors really think they have a shot at building a subway extension?

I’m not sure they do.

Let’s look at the evidence. City Council, of course, doesn’t have any real authority to unilaterally change transit plans. All they can do is ask. And Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, has been surprisingly clear with its position: they’re not looking to change anything and just want to move forward with the current plans. Premier Kathleen Wynne also seems focused on moving forward with current plans without further changes. Even Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker, who has helped lead the charge on the latest Scarborough subway movement, penned an open letter last week with a final paragraph that gave the impression that he was almost resigned to failure on the issue.

Meanwhile, the case for switching the Scarborough LRT plan to a subway extension has grown weaker as the days have worn on. Transit blogger Steve Munro suggested the cost of a conversion could be double the $500 million figure floated by subway supporters. And the TTC has thrown water on the notion that a subway solution would help avoid a transit shutdown in Scarborough during construction — apparently maintaining the rickety old Scarborough RT for another few years isn’t likely to be either simple or cheap.

And then we have politicians like Coun. Michael Thompson, who on Monday advanced some questionable arguments in favour of the subway, suggesting that subway construction — a thing that dates back to the nineteenth century — “ensures we’re part of 21st-century Toronto.” He also said his residents “are not necessarily convinced the LRTs will be able to withstand the weather over time.” That kind of misconception seems more easily countered with some kind of informational brochure, but I guess spending hundreds of millions building another type of transit is a workable solution too.

All this makes me wonder if the game from these councillors isn’t real transit advocacy but instead just political cover. Maybe the idea behind this latest push isn’t to get a subway, but rather to provide defence from the perpetual re-election campaign of Rob Ford, who maintains a great deal of popularity in Scarborough. It’s a safe bet that Ford will try to capitalize on the inevitable challenges associated with large-scale transit construction, blaming any traffic congestion or business closures on the choice of LRT as opposed to just common, unfortunate outcomes of building large, expensive things. When that happens, this last push for a subway will give local councillors a measure of plausible deniability.

It’s looking a lot like a “Don’t blame me — I voted for the subway!” strategy.

Too cynical? Maybe. But there’s got to be some reason why these councillors are pushing so hard for a subway that doesn’t seem likely to go anywhere.

So when the brothers Ford started pointing to an actual study last week to justify their view that Toronto shouldn’t even bother debating the topic of new taxes, tolls and fees, I took notice. This is a novel thing.

The study in question is a report by the Fraser Institute titled Taxes versus the Necessities of Life: The Canadian Consumer Tax Index. It received some press when it was released a few weeks ago, and apparently the Fords jumped on it. Rob brought up the study when delivering his epic speech at the close of the executive committee meeting where he tried to limit debate on transit taxes. Doug then used it as a central pillar of his argument in an op-ed opposing taxes he wrote for three Toronto newspapers on Friday. On Sunday, the Fords brought Fraser Institute president Niels Veldhuis on their radio show to give an overview of the report.

After all that, I got the sense that the Ford brothers really, really like this thing. So I gave it a read.

The Institute’s report, which is available online, makes a few conclusions. First, it says, “the total tax bill of the average Canadian family, including all types of taxes, has increased by 1,787 per cent since 1961.” It also suggests that “taxes have grown much more rapidly than any other single expenditure for the average Canadian family” and that “the average Canadian family now spends more of its income on taxes than it does on basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing.”

It all sounds like scary stuff, until you consider that the big 1,787 per cent figure is calculated totally independent of inflation. The authors of the report, at least, take care to acknowledge this, including a table that puts their inflation-adjustment percentage increase at just 143.5 per cent. The report notes that “this adjustment has the effect of reducing the steepness of the index’s path over time.” No kidding. Factoring in inflation will do that.

Then there’s the issue of what exactly the Fraser Institute considers a tax. For their hypothetical average family, which brought in $74,113 in 2012, they’ve calculated a $31,615 tax bill. This calculation includes obvious things like income tax (29.1 per cent of tax paid), sales tax (15.2 per cent), taxes related to gas and driving (2.5 per cent), and property tax. (11.4 per cent, or $3,607.) But it also includes some oddities, like $1,680 in “liquor, tobacco, amusement, and other excise taxes.” That kind of seems like a lot of smoking, drinking and gambling for the average Canadian family. But I ain’t judging.

Then there’s $3,302 in “profits tax”, $512 in “natural resource taxes”, $245 in “import duties” and $700 in mysterious “other taxes.” Oh yeah, and there’s also a whopping $6,769 in “social security, medical, and hospital taxes.” Classifying Canadian Pension Plan contributions as a tax might seem like an odd thing to do, but that didn’t stop them.

The report also tries to index the increases in the cost of clothing, shelter and food from 1961 to 2012, using those numbers to demonstrate that the average Canadian family now devotes a much greater percentage of their income to taxes than to what they call “basic necessities.” But they kind of gloss over that, according to their numbers, this has been true since 1981 — for more than 30 years.

Also, since 1961, the percentage of income their Canadian family spends on basic necessities has declined from 56 per cent to just 37 per cent of total income, while tax as a percentage has grown from 34 per cent to 43 per cent over the same period. That would seem to leave their average family with a whole whack of extra cash overall.

And, oh yeah, about that date: 1961. Why 1961?

The report doesn’t really go into it. But it might have something to do with the fact that 1961 is roughly how far back you must go to start getting numbers that support the apparent thesis of the report. If you take, say, 1969 — the Institute’s very next data point — as your starting point, that cuts their top line number from 1,787 per cent to 914 per cent. If you take the data back only as far as 1992, which is still a good 20 years of tax history, the supposed increase in taxes paid shrinks to 69 per cent, a number that further shrinks to nine per cent after inflation is factored in. Sounds a little less scary, doesn’t it?

But even if we don’t quibble with any of these choices, I’ve still got some questions about the methodology. The big chart in the Fraser Institute report looks like this:

But defining their “Canadian Consumer Tax Index” based on the percentage increase of total taxes paid since 1961 seems like a needlessly complicated and perhaps arbitrary way to measure things, doesn’t it? Call me crazy, but I think a fairer way to look at a family’s tax burden might be to look at taxes paid as a percentage of total cash income.

But that chart would look like this:

Yes, that’s a decline you’re seeing over the last decade. Meaning that according to the Fraser Institute’s own numbers, total tax paid by their average Canadian family as a percentage of income is the same in 2012 as it was in 1974. It’s also fallen about three percentage points over the last 10 years.

But that didn’t make the headlines, and it’s not a stat that we’ve heard from the Fords. I can only speculate as to why.

Specifically, these councillors — who are supported by TTC chair Karen Stintz and several TTC commissioners — want the province to swap the current plan to replace the rickety old Scarborough RT with a rebuilt light rail transit line, and instead go forward with an extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway.

The first thing we need to clear up about this proposal is that this Scarborough subway is not that Scarborough subway. This is a decidedly different thing than the subway extension which was front-and-centre during 2012′s transit battle. The key difference? There was never really a good case made for extending Sheppard. With the SRT, though, the issue is at least a little cloudy, with some decent arguments on both sides.

Here’s a quick comparison of the two options for the Scarborough RT, culled from a TTC report published in January:

Looking at that table and the other assembled arguments, I just have questions. Questions that need answering before councillors should even considering this latest and probably last Scarborough subway push. Questions like:

What’s the real motivation behind this? There are some good reasons why Council might want to green light a Bloor-Danforth extension to Scarborough, but “Scarborough deserves a subway” is not one of them. Politicians like Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker are testing my patience with comments calling a subway an “upgrade” over light rail transit, when in fact there’s little operational difference.

Let’s not legitimize the view that subways are somehow inherently superior to LRT. The bottom line on subways should always be that we put them where demand warrants. Period.

What’s the situation with the transfer at Kennedy Station? Talk to most Scarborough commuters and they’ll point to the long, awkward transfer at Kennedy Station between the RT and the subway as one of the worst parts of the trip to downtown. It’s been a pain for years. The TTC and Metrolinx have indicated that the current LRT plan will make for an “improved, easier transfer” but what does that mean, really?

Removal of the transfer of Kennedy for thousands of daily Scarborough commuters is one of the more compelling arguments in favour of the subway. It shouldn’t be overlooked or dismissed.

Do we really want to change our mind on transit again? Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but part of my frustration with this debate is that it only furthers the perception that Toronto politicians like to talk transit more than they like to build transit. Councillors had their chance to make a case for a subway extension instead of an LRT rebuild last year. Before that, they had other chances. There is now a signed agreement between all parties detailing the plan.

Changing things now risks giving credence to the view that everything about Toronto’s current transit plan is up for debate — a view that could be dangerous during the looming 2014 municipal election.

Will a subway extension really save Scarborough commuters from years riding crowded shuttle buses? This is the big one. The real downside to the current LRT plan is that it necessitates complete shutdown of the Scarborough RT for a period estimated at anywhere between three and five years. That will leave commuters with no real option except for shuttle buses. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

The subway plan, on the other hand, calls for a new alignment through Scarborough, meaning that theoretically the RT could remain in operation as workers dig the new tunnel.

But that’s theoretical. TTC staff have described the state of the Scarborough RT as touch-and-go for years. In January, a commission report noted that the RT “situation is now approaching critical, with the line being required to operate at reduced speed and capacity owning to the deteriorating state of the vehicles.” Staff also suggested that prolonged debate on the future of the line, delaying construction, could make things much much worse.

In other words: Yes, it might make sense on paper that a subway extension will forestall a situation that pushes riders onto shuttle buses. But it seems far from guaranteed. A frank and full analysis of the state of the RT is necessary before anyone can accept this argument.

Is this really a good use of a half billion dollars? In the debate next week, we’re likely to hear councillors suggest that the $500 million difference between the LRT and subway options is somehow a negligible cost. But that seems a bit disingenuous, especially in an era where Mayor Rob Ford is freaking out over the cost of hand sanitizer.

Yeah, when you’re talking about $2.3 billion, a jump to $2.8 billion seems kind of small, but consider what $500 million could pay for. That amount of cash would wipe out the brunt of the repair backlog at Toronto Community Housing. It could pay for new community centres in virtually every ward in the city. Spent on transit, it could build the promised LRT on the the eastern waterfront or go a long way toward extending a Scarborough LRT network toward Malvern or University of Toronto-Scarborough.

Even if spending the money on a Bloor-Danforth extension will help avoid headaches that come with a prolonged shutdown or a forced transfer of Kennedy, these opportunity costs need to be factored into the decision. Councillors and Scarborough residents have to consider whether what they’ll get is really worth the price tag. After all, this isn’t about building a transit system for the next five years — it’s about building a transit legacy that will outlast all of us.

Going into yesterday’s meeting of Ford’s cabinet-like Executive Committee, conventional wisdom had it that members had two choices when it came to an agenda item relating to new taxes, tolls and fees to support transit expansion in Toronto and across the GTA. They could either endorse a set of revenue tools recommended by staff at City Hall, or they could indicate support for some other kind of funding strategy. In both scenarios, Toronto City Council would have been granted the opportunity to debate the committee’s decision and make a final recommendation to Metrolinx, the provincial transportation authority.

Instead, the committee tossed aside conventional wisdom and voted for a surprise third option. Led by the mayor, they decided to simply do nothing, deferring their decision and forestalling any council debate until after the planned unveiling of Metrolinx’s long-awaited transportation investment strategy. With their votes, the mayor, Coun. Gary Crawford, Coun. Norman Kelly, Coun. Frank Di Giorgio, Coun. Cesar Palacio and Coun. David Shiner signaled that they’re cool with Toronto having no formal input on the shape of that strategy.

While the province and other municipalities decide the long-term future of transportation funding and expansion in the GTA, the Mayor of Toronto would prefer that the region’s largest city not even show up.

Ford, for his part, justified this with a rambling speech, pushing some of the same tired arguments against transit taxes that I wrote about yesterday. He brought up eHealth, ORNGE and even City Hall’s excess supply of hand-sanitizer, insisting that before we fund any transit, “let’s get every level of government in line and efficient … and then you can go to the taxpayers.”

Ford also cited some anti-tax stats from the Fraser Institute, called the whole conversation “ass-backwards” and suggested that hell would freeze over before he supported any of this.

Ford’s temper tantrum likely won’t matter, of course. Even before the committee votes came down yesterday, opposition councillors — now a broad group made up of progressives, centrists and conservatives — were putting together strategies to remove the matter from the purview of the mayor’s committee. They’ll likely need 30 votes to bring the deferred item to council, but early signs suggest that they can find the support. Which means council will get to have its say and Toronto will get to contribute to this important region-wide process, despite the mayor’s objections.

If this scenario all sounds familiar, it’s because the very same thing happened last year after Ford refused to compromise on the plan for suburban light rail lines and instead fixated on an unrealizable privately-funded subway dream.

As for the mayor himself, he seems more concerned with running for re-election than he is with running the city. Soon after yesterday’s decision, his chief of staff was out in force indicating that councillors who support participating in this conversation about transit funding will find their names on a Ford For Mayor campaign poster in 2014, presumably under some kind of heading like “people who are bad.”

I’m not sure when winning an election — one still almost 18 months away — became more important than working to solve a transportation crisis that costs the region billions of dollars every year. But, well, here we are. Again.

None of these arguments have convinced me. At best, the reasoning seems to come from a place of idle obliviousness, where the very real crisis of congestion gets downplayed as something we might want to get to addressing at some point, but, hey, what’s the rush? At worst, the arguments are actively anti-transit and zealously anti-tax.

Let’s go through three of the more common reasons given for why we shouldn’t implement new mechanisms for funding transit now.

The ‘Let the Perfect be the Enemy of the Good’ Argument

I’m not unsympathetic to this one. It suggests that, in an ideal world, a laundry list of sales taxes, gas taxes and other things wouldn’t be necessary to fund transit, because government would just leverage the fairest and most progressive form of taxation out there — the income tax.

But there’s been virtually no analysis of using either personal or corporate income taxes to build transit, with most reports dismissing the idea out of hand. Which is a bit odd, considering that most of the infrastructure we use today was built with income tax revenue and rates have been mostly declining for years.

The problem appears to be that the idea of using personal income taxes is politically toxic. Just 16% of people polled in an Ipsos Reid survey commissioned by Toronto City Hall supported the notion. Leveraging corporate taxes seems to be a more popular strategy, but that apparently comes with its own set of complications. (It would be nice if these were spelled out.)

Ultimately though, so what if all income taxes are off the table? Lamentable, sure, but is that reason enough to shut down the conversation?

The Time Machine Argument

This argument goes like this: maybe we wouldn’t need new taxes and such to fund transit if the Ontario government hadn’t wasted so much money on things like eHealth, ORNGE, various gas plant cancellations and, um, maybe if Toronto City Hall hadn’t bought so much hand sanitizer.

This argument is flawed on a couple of fronts. First, even if those alleged government screw-ups amounted to enough wasted money to fund large-scale transit expansion, we can’t really do anything about that now. There’s no way to get that money back. Any funding plan that implicitly starts with “step one: invent time travel” is probably doomed to fail.

And then there’s the fact that transit expansion costs way more money than most people seem to understand. The $275 million the Ontario Auditor General says was spent to cancel a Mississauga gas plant seems like a lot of money in most contexts, but in terms of transit it doesn’t even work out to a single kilometre of underground subway construction.

The Trust Argument

This one usually comes hand-in-hand with the time machine argument, because it too invokes the spectre of ORNGE and the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way and other supposed government-led travesties, then asks how it is that we could possibly trust government to build a $50 billion transit plan when they’ve screwed up so many things.

I get the sentiment, but the argument both lets government off the hook from actually tackling an incredibly important issue and brings with it no credible alternative. If we can’t trust the government to do this, then who can we trust? Yes, there’s an inherent risk to taking on huge projects, but there’s a risk to doing nothing, too. We’ve already lost billions in economic output due to unaddressed mobility issues.

Today, in a possibly doomed attempt to fix that, Mayor Rob Ford’s Executive Committee is set to debate a slate of funding tools recommended by staff at City Hall. We’ll likely hear some of the arguments above, plus another few dozen — there’s no shortage of hypothetical reasons to delay and dawdle, to push back transit expansion by another few years.

But from where I’m standing, all that is effectively countered with this argument: we’ve waited far too long already.