There was no candy inside the Gardiner Expressway.
No, not the real-life highway, but a piñata version took a beating Wednesday morning outside city hall by activists upset with Toronto Mayor John Tory’s budget priorities.
It took about 90 whacks to bring down the replica. Loads of Monopoly money poured out, along with toy footballs, cars, houses and other items representing funding priorities being ignored, according to the group.
“We’re concerned the budget’s not fair,” said Michael Polanyi, a community worker at the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto.
Polanyi is part of a coalition of activists called Toronto Can Do Better that organized the demonstration.
“It’s cutting services, it’s making life more expensive through transit fare hikes and program fee hikes and it’s not really doing anything about the long wait list for affordable housing, childcare and transit,” he said.
He called the piñata’s candy-substitutes “symbolic of what the city could do in terms of using that money more effectively for the needs of people in the city.”
“The Gardiner is increasing in cost,” said Polanyi. “It’s a huge capital expense and when there’s so many people struggling to put a roof over their heads, we think it’s not necessarily the best use of $3.6 billion.”
City council was set to begin debating the 2017 budget Wednesday.
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