Watson meeting Ford to cinch LRT cash

A day before the public is allowed to weigh in on the proposed $4.66-billion LRT Stage 2 project, Mayor Jim Watson is inToronto asking Premier Doug Ford to finally commit the province's $1.2-billion share.

The mayor, along with a few councillorsand a delegation of local business, education and health leaders,will beat Queen's Park Tuesday for so-called "Ottawa Day."

They'll meet with seniorministersincluding Ottawa MPPsand cabinet ministers Lisa MacLeod and MerrilleeFullerton, but the keyevent is Watson's meeting with Ford.

• $1B from province for Ottawa's LRT phase 2 in question
• EXPLAINER:4 things you should know about the $4.66B contract for LRT Stage 2

Council is having a special meeting Wednesday at 1 p.m. to hear from public delegations and ask staff questions about the complex technical document dropped last Friday, which stunned many with the news that the latest estimate for the LRT extension is $1.2 billion higher than previously thought.

There are a lot of questions about the infrastructure projectby far the largest in the city's historyand one of them is how we will pay for it.

One of the outstanding issues is getting the province to sign on the dotted line for the $1.2 billion committed by the previous Liberal government.

Ford and Ottawa-area MPPs have expressed support for the project during last spring's election campaign and since entering office, but no one from the current Progressive Conservative government has officially confirmed the money.

Council to approve contract next week

Councillors are being asked to approve the contract on March 6,a tight deadline for such a complicated deal.

They were told the timeline was compressed because the bid for the Trillium Line extension, which is set to go to SNC-Lavalin, expires at the end of March.

And the city needs an official letter from the province by then.

"We do have to have transfer payments agreements with the province in place and we need to have those done by the end of March in order to execute our contract with our proponent [for] the Trillium Line," the city's director of O-Train planning, ChrisSwail, told reporters last Friday.