This is the best summary I could come up with:

While the news that Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow are creating a working group to tackle the city’s financial problems may not sound all that startling, it actually marks a seismic shift for the man in charge at Queen’s Park.

Ford’s marked change in tone opens the door to negotiations about the province taking on a greater share of the city’s costs, what the government’s news release calls “A New Deal For Toronto.”

Asked to clarify Ford’s stance, a senior official in the premier’s office threw cold water on the idea of giving Toronto a share of HST, saying it would prompt every municipality in the province to demand the same.

Chow listed off housing, transit, welfare, highways, child care, and policing as areas where the province and feds could shoulder a bigger share of the cost burden.

Coming on the heels of weeks of controversy over how the government boosted the value of land owned by select developers by removing it from the Greenbelt, the timing of Monday’s announcement is good for Ford, says Lydia Miljan, a political science professor at the University of Windsor.

Those MPPs (including Ford himself) could expect to hear it from their constituents if the province simply left Toronto to flounder financially and forced city hall to slash services.

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