After Ontario's health minister said one of the reasons Toronto could absorb cuts to its public health authority is because of increased transit funding, Mayor John Tory blasted the rationale.
"What does that transit funding have to do with filling the stomach of a hungry child?" Tory said Friday. "What does that transit funding have to do with doing dental checks on young children?"
"The very fact that they would be juxtaposed to me, it's hard for me even to take that seriously."
Earlier in the day, Health Minister Christine Elliott told NEWSTALK1010 the city could absorb funding changes to Toronto Public Health.
"They've got a huge commitment with respect to subways that should certainly help," she said, adding the responsibility for public health rests with municipalities.
"For the city to say they have no room in their budget to add one more cent into public health makes absolutely no sense to me when they are getting this huge assistance in other areas."
Earlier this month, the province revealed its nearly $30 billion transit plan, including almost $11 billion to expand the downtown relief line.
Over the next three years, the province will shift its funding model to Toronto Public Health from 75 per cent to eventually 50 per cent.
Elliott said the cut amounts to a third of one per cent of Toronto's overall budget, with the impact this year to TPH being $33 million, raising to $42 million annually by the end of the three-year shift.
But in an email to council Thursday, city manager Chris Murray said the changes backed the claim made by TPH board chair Joe Cressy earlier in the week that it would amount to a $1 billion cut over 10 years.
Murray said it's partly based on the cuts being retroactive and the province expecting that current levels of service will be maintained, while not providing an explanation of how it reached its own calculation.
"The cost-sharing changes will be retroactive to April 1, 2019, and will have an anticipated budget impact of about $64.9 million for the City in 2019," Murray said. "The cumulative impact is more than $1 billion over a 10-year period starting in 2019."
Various city officials including Tory have called on the province to release its exact numbers.
The city has warned the cuts will have immediate impacts on programs including disease prevention, student nutrition, water testing, restaurant inspections and others.
Cressy said last week they're now dealing with a hole for this fiscal year that had been previously budgeted and they don't know how to fill it.
However, Elliott also said Friday that the province would upload some of the work being done by public health units itself and assured that essential programs such as vaccinations and breakfast clubs will continue.
When it comes to the province taking over some of the units work, Tory said that's news to him.
"Never before mentioned, never before a part of this and that's part of the problem when stuff isn't in writing, is that it seems to be a bit of a moving target," he said.
Tory added he suspects that based on knowing Elliott and her "big heart" that she did not came up with changes to public health units funding, nor does he think it came from Premier Doug Ford.
"I think somehow a finance department bureaucrat or somebody else came forward, which is why they've also been unable at the health department to explain to us how their numbers work on a piece of paper," he said.
Both Elliott and Tory said they look forward to the city and the province sitting down together to discuss the changes, but there's no indication of when that will happen.
"We would meet with them anytime, anywhere," Tory said. "And as yet, we've received no invitation to a meeting and we've reached not a single piece of paper setting out all the calculations."
Earlier this week while speaking to reporters, Elliott's Director of Communications Travis Kann said the province is ready to talk.
"We've reached out to the city to try and reconcile the difference in the numbers and we want to do that directly with them, not through the media," he said. "We're truly committed to good faith, direct consultations."