Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson says the Liberal party recognized that its success depended on city voters.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
Justin Trudeau owes his unprecedented number of seats in the West to city voters, and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson says the incoming prime minister knows it.
Mr. Robertson, who is head of the country's big-city mayors' caucus, said that his first phone call Monday with the prime-minister-designate shows that Mr. Trudeau is ready to move quickly on the commitments to transit, housing and a green agenda that Canada's urban dwellers want.
Liberal Party campaigners "realized their election success was going to hinge on city voters," Mr. Robertson said after the call. "I was really pleased to hear [Mr. Trudeau] speak to the urgent needs for these investments in cities."
Mr. Trudeau's party won every seat but two in urban and even suburban Toronto, shutting out the NDP completely. It dominated in Montreal and, in the West, Liberals won 17 of 24 ridings in the Lower Mainland, as well as two seats in each of Calgary and Edmonton.
The mayor said people will be expecting the new government to produce a specific road map on transit and housing investment when it plans next year's national budget.
Mr. Trudeau will be facing intense scrutiny in the months to come from city politicians because his party made a raft of commitments that were city-specific.
The party platform has a promise to invest $125-billion in infrastructure over the next 10 years, with spending to start almost immediately. That included an extra $20-billion beyond the Conservative budget for things such as transit, roads and bridges in those 10 years, along with an extra $20-billion for "social infrastructure" such as housing.
The promise on funding for transportation infrastructure was a sharp departure from the Conservative and NDP parties, which promised less money delayed to later years in the term.
In such cities as Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, the Liberal commitment means money for key rapid-transit projects that city politicians are hungry to move on.
Mr. Robertson said city politicians will be pushing Mr. Trudeau more on specific commitments about housing. The party promised to give developers tax breaks to encourage the construction of rental housing – breaks Canada offered in the postwar decades as the country was scrambling to house the baby boomers.
But the Liberals didn't make specific commitments about restoring funding to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the government agency that for years provided the subsidies for social housing. And it was the Liberals who killed federal commitments to social housing, as then-finance minister Paul Martin was cutting government spending. Many see the federal departure from housing subsidies in 1994 as the beginning of the country's struggle with rising homelessness.
Mr. Robertson said that Mr. Trudeau also emphasized the importance of Canada taking on a new, strong role on environmental issues. "He's well aware that in the absence of federal leadership, mayors and provinces have been trying to shore up Canada's image" on the environmental front.
The other major topic that came up in the 20-minute conversation was Canada's response to the international refugee crisis, with Mr. Trudeau wanting to know what preparations cities have been making to help settle the thousands of new refugees that the Liberal Party promised to allow in. That's something that Toronto Mayor John Tory has been spearheading "to make sure we're ready on the ground," Mr. Robertson said.
The mayor said the topic of legalizing marijuana didn't come up.
"We'll see what they decide to do next," said Mr. Robertson, who noted that his city is moving ahead with a process for regulation retail outlets.
"My priorities are to focus on transit, affordable housing, the refugee crisis and Paris" – the upcoming UN conference on climate change.
Frances Bula