I want to thank the member from Ottawa Centre for his comments today. It’s really enlightening.

I will say that in my riding, I’m deeply concerned about Metrolinx and their continuous failures. We’ve had P3 projects in Ottawa, in Hamilton and now the Eglinton Crosstown—it was just announced today that they do not have a finish date. They started that project in 2011. It’s now $4 billion over budget. The Liberals started it as a P3 project, even though the Auditor General says that P3 projects cost 28% more and do not deliver on time and on budget.

My big concern is this Ontario Line is breaking ground in my riding right now. Metrolinx’s Eglinton Crosstown debacle has bankrupted 400 businesses along Eglinton. I’m concerned that this government refuses the NDP request for an inquiry into what’s happening at Metrolinx. If you were in government, what advice would you give to this government so that we do not have another debacle with the Ontario Line?

You know, it’s interesting: an act called the Transportation for the Future Act is right up my alley as a civil engineer. Even though Metrolinx and GO Transit really don’t touch upon my constituency of Windsor–Tecumseh, certainly I see a lot of potential in this bill to make things better for the people of the GTA, improve transit connections to surrounding communities and get us out of the infrastructure deficit that I know we have province-wide.

The main things are, number one, GO Transit stations will be built faster. Adding more capacity to the ability to pay for a station through the station fee gives that opportunity to implement the changes needed as they are needed, not 30, 40 years behind, and that’s something I will get into in a little bit.

Incentivization of housing around transit stations: We can best leverage density in those locations and the available services. The greater Toronto area is legendary for its congestion. I make that trip often enough; most of the time, I do take the train, and I’ll elaborate a little bit on that further in the debate. But really, I’ve driven in Los Angeles on the 405. It doesn’t compare to the 401. There is so much traffic here that keeps families from getting home.

We have to start addressing our capacity issues. This bill brings us down that path. In fact, I think it was data from transportation group Inrix—they did a study recently—that noted that Torontonians lost 118 hours waiting in traffic just last year. That’s about a 60% jump between 2021 and 2022. In 2021, the city was in 22nd place for congestion; in 2022, it was in third place. We can definitely combat this by making transit and the broader travel network more convenient and give more options for the residents of the GTA.

As noted, this bill doesn’t apply to the residents that I represent in Windsor–Tecumseh, but certainly applies to the goods and services that my constituents buy. A lot of them originate here from distribution centres. They’re manufactured here. Services are predominantly hosted here.

Down in the southwest, we don’t have a lot of the professional services. We have, certainly, a strong manufacturing base, but when we are reliant on banking, insurance and other matters, we need those people at work to answer our calls and to actually make the decisions that will facilitate our livelihoods. We know, in Windsor, that delays mean costs, and delay after delay could mean the difference between a shop opening and a shop closing. Just-in-time delivery is a necessity for local competitiveness. I don’t see why it would be any different for Toronto.

Our rights of way are not infinite. There’s only so much widening you can do of a freeway. Investing in public transit is certainly a tool in the tool box to help make sure that our lands are used well and that we use the best possible assets to bring people from point A to point B. Shifting modes of transportation is truly vital. It’s one of the things I do appreciate about the time I spend here in Toronto, where I get to walk from where I live. And really, supporting public transit is a tool that we have to support our goals, and the most recent Ontario budget had an ambitious capital plan. I believe it’s the most ambitious capital plan in the province’s history.

We know that gridlock on highways and roads costs the economy more than $11 billion a year in productivity, including the time that was lost to commuters and drivers—the higher costs of doing business if your employee doesn’t show up for work because they’re stuck in traffic, or your delivery is stuck. Hey, someone has got to eat that cost. It means that things become more and more expensive for us and it keeps people, more importantly, from getting home to their families faster.

To support this growth, the Ontario government is investing $70.5 billion over the next 10 years for transit. Building our province through critical public transit projects is vital to supporting Ontario’s economy, to get people home faster and alleviating gridlock, connecting people to their jobs and to housing, creating thousands of terrific jobs—I know there are a lot of terrific jobs. In fact, I remember when I was canvassing for my municipal election for the first time, I wanted to identify all the people I knew in town—bad for me. I looked at my voters list, and I just wrote every name on there of someone that I knew or grew up with who had moved out, moved away. Yes, they’re on the voters list; they did not reside locally anymore because they could not find work in my region, in the Windsor-Essex region. They came here to Toronto because this is where the job opportunities existed.

We do need to invest, as a government, to catch up, but the demand for service that is created from land development very much ought to be satisfied through the land development projects. This is where we see lots of local issues, and I’ll certainly get to go through them and I’ll mention a couple.

Development charges do exist to help pay for the capital costs of infrastructure to support new growth. If we want to avoid the mistakes of the past—we heard earlier in the debate, a lot of assumptions were made in the past that growth would be more static than it is realistically—we need to have foresight and to plan for that growth, and that means capitalizing the projects. We need to set a good path for the future. The GO station contribution fee is an appropriate measure in which to ensure we have the funds that we need and avoid having to play catch-up later.

The consequences of unrealized investments in my area are visible every single day. During a 1983 public meeting, as I found published in the Windsor Star, the Ministry of Transportation advised the local community that an interchange, the freeway, at Banwell Road and E.C. Row Expressway, would need to be constructed within a decade. An environmental assessment of the expressway 10 years later in 1993 confirmed that the traffic volumes were set to be reached in 1994.

Forty years after that mention and 30 years after the stats showed we needed that interchange—and this key interchange is located right where the NextStar Energy battery plant is being built—there is no interchange. The intersection has not changed. This is the result of not enough capitalization of our infrastructure projects. E.C. Row Expressway turns into County Road 22 at its east limit, where Windsor meets Tecumseh, and it’s still a controlled-access road. In 2005, it was determined that grade separations at Lesperance Road and Manning Road would be warranted as the 2005 level of service was E. In traffic engineering parlance, that is a step away from failure. The 10-year level of service was failure. That was 10 years ago. We have been in failure for 10 years.

These projects are supported by property taxes; they’re not supported by development charges. The funding is planned for between 2034 and 2037. But truly, think of the cost of a highway interchange. They’re running about well north of $50 million these days—probably closer to $80 million. Given that Essex county’s capital budget was $43.6 million for the entire county, every single project combined, the chances look pretty challenging, to say the least, that those two interchanges will come online in the 2034-37 time frame.

This situation that I get to face back home in my own neighbourhood speaks to why development charges for regional arterial roads and transit infrastructure are terrific tools in the tool box that can help accelerate infrastructure investments. Development charges are discretionary fees. Sometimes they’re the right tools; sometimes they’re the wrong tools. But municipalities can choose whether to use development charges, and if they are used, which services or infrastructure they want to include from the services that are listed as being eligible in the Development Charges Act. Truly, there is no greater opportunity for the province of Ontario than to further develop GO Transit to move our people quickly and safely.

Speaker, my father often told me that in order to pursue his career in his company, moving to the GTA was the only option. It was the only opportunity for promotion because the headquarters were here in Toronto. Then they moved to Mississauga and, ultimately, they ended up in Hamilton. But for the sake of myself, my brother and our whole family, he would forgo those career opportunities because it meant that approximately 90 minutes of his day in each direction likely would be spent in traffic. And that’s away from us, his family. He worked 12 hours a day, as it was, often longer. My own commute back home when I worked in downtown Windsor was 30 minutes on a bad day from the eastern limit of the town of Tecumseh, the far east of my riding. Happily, we’re in a better, more nimble world now. Those choices aren’t as necessary.

But having lived here in Toronto during our legislative sittings, I have benefited from the connectivity that transit provides. I can get on board the Walkerville VIA station in Windsor. It’s right in my riding; I’m very proud of that. I can then take the train, which takes about four and a half hours, transfer onto the TTC subway and then get off at Wellesley station and walk two blocks to where I get to sleep while I’m here—and, truly, finish that walk here to the Legislature each and every day.

You know what? I know there’s always room for improvement. Certainly, I’d love to get home earlier than 1 in the morning after House duty tomorrow. But I’m truly happy that this service exists for us. There are tremendous benefits that go to those communities where these stations are built, and access to transit is something I truly appreciate having here. We can unlock so, so much opportunity for our people by having the capitalization to respond to those stations being built.

Even back home, when I was on municipal council, public transit service was offered on a loop basis, but it only connected at one point in Tecumseh Mall. That’s the unfortunate byproduct of a dispute over inter-jurisdictional coverage, which is also another part of this bill. But they truly did rely on transit to get to and from work, to go shopping, to find stores that carry clothing. Living in a suburb, there aren’t a lot of options, to be honest. We had a time in the 1980s when residential was the only type of development that was built, and so the mix of communities is not always there in the built environment. That’s why it’s important that we have that connectivity to go between communities.

I remember also at the University of Ottawa, I often took the 95 and the 97 on the Transitway, and it certainly gave me access to all the services I needed. I did not bring a car up to Ottawa. I often took the train. Sometimes I flew out of Detroit, actually, to get to Ottawa; it was the shortest way. But the 95 and 97, which have now been somewhat supplanted by the LRT, truly provided me an opportunity to access the services, the stores and the various things that I needed while living, including access to recreation.

I truly commend the foresight that the city of Ottawa has put forward in its broader network to develop its transit system. I know there were almost certainly good intentions with the LRT and, undoubtedly, I hope we all learn from their experience. It’s truly a shared responsibility to make sure that we are where we need to be.

Municipalities may have goals to accelerate construction. I’ll give one example: The city of Windsor does require developments to pay for their arterial roads. There was a time, though, when the developer didn’t want to build. There’s an arterial called Wyandotte Street, and it crosses the entirety of the city, really. It doesn’t quite reach the eastern limit at the town of Tecumseh, but it comes darn close. For many years, there was a gap because the land developer was just truly not ready to build. Still to this day, the lands are vacant where that gap in Wyandotte Street was.

The city council took the initiative to use its development charge fund and complete that road so that it’s unbroken from start to finish, with one small block in the east still remaining. Having that ability to be nimble, have access to funding and to be able to not only assess from our existing financing methods but also have the municipalities be able to collect as well through the station fee is something that I know will turn the corner and ensure that we’re not always playing catch up on infrastructure.

The other part of the bill spoke to the cross-border connectivity of the systems, and the city of Toronto had requested that they be given this permission. Transit disputes between jurisdictions are pretty common. I mentioned Tecumseh and Windsor; Windsor didn’t want Tecumseh operating in the city. There is a connection point at Tecumseh Mall; they had to go to the transportation board to get that. But in an ideal world, we would all work together, Speaker, and we would put transportation and opportunity front of mind, but sometimes life is not like that. This paves the way for an opportunity to open the discussion between the city of Toronto and its neighbouring municipalities to consider the cross-border transportation options so that someone doesn’t reach a barrier or a wall that’s unnecessary at the municipal limit. There are many people who would like to go in both directions to visit, to shop, to see family. This is an essential part of life, connectivity.

Years ago, I had the chance to go to Ghana and Burkina Faso—no public transit to be had in either of those countries that I could tell. But everyone had a cellphone—actually, multiple cellphones. The reason why they had those cellphones is because it was the only way they could talk to their families. Cellphone coverage was so expensive because each network had high roaming charges. But that phone is a lifeline. We’re blessed that we don’t have that in Canada, that we have the opportunity to actually find a way to go see our families. They are often expensive, but there are methods to do that here that we can leverage.

I look to the interoperability of systems in different municipalities. In York region, the Viva system is one that—honestly, routes have come and gone, but it’s had a number of operators. It demonstrates you don’t really need a consolidated operator within a given network.

Looking at Metrolinx and the fare integration that has already been attempted, really, that’s going to be a game-changer. As I mentioned, in Windsor–Tecumseh, you still have to pay several fares when you hit the municipal border—or, actually, at the last stop. You get off, and the transfer is not recognized, and that’s unfortunate. I’d love to see a consistent fare to encourage public transit and to ensure that we have the opportunity to go access what we need to have a great life here in Ontario and to make those journeys as seamless as possible and as hassle-free as possible.

I’ll conclude by going back to my time in Ottawa: The STO, which is from the province of Quebec, operates somewhat in the city of Ottawa, with a transfer station at Eaton Centre—or the Rideau Centre, rather. There was Eaton’s there, but no longer. Now it’s Simons. We also have that in Windsor-Detroit. We have the tunnel bus that crosses into the United States. It opens up a world for those that cannot afford a car to go see pro sports, go see the fabulous Detroit Institute of Arts and the different amenities. The architecture there is phenomenal. It’s such a quality of life improvement for us in Windsor and Essex county to have access like that, but it’s made possible because of the investments in infrastructure. So this bill provides the opportunity for that investment, to capitalize those projects and making sure that the services can exist, that we’re not always playing catch-up, as many municipalities have experienced.

I’ll conclude there.

Further questions?

Further debate?

Thank you, member from Windsor–Tecumseh, for that wonderful presentation. He spoke from the heart because he came from the municipal world. Thank you for sharing your Windsor experience and how we can improve transit, and the transit-oriented communities we can build in this wonderful province.

I have to thank the Minister of Infrastructure and also the Minister of Transportation for their wonderful vision, and our Premier for bringing this transit-oriented development, building transit-oriented communities across the province.

My question to the member: Infrastructure plays a critical role in supporting the quality of life for all walks of life of Ontarians. So please explain, how will the station contribution fee enable transit and building more houses in the province?

Thank you, Speaker, and thank you as well to the member for Windsor–Tecumseh. I had a question, and it relates to the member for Ottawa Centre, in his debate. Schedule 1 really looks like it’s going to interfere with collective bargaining rights. There’s been a history with the Conservative government bypassing collective bargaining rights and it costing the taxpayers a lot of money. Bill 28 is a perfect example. Bill 124 is another good example where the government is just spending a countless amount of money fighting these battles, often losing these battles. Knowing that there’s a clause in ATU’s collective agreement that might allow for this anyway, doesn’t it make sense to the member to remove schedule 1 so we don’t have the taxpayers paying this needless battle?

We’re going to move to the member from Sudbury for questions.

Further questions?

I was listening to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh, because I was sitting there and I had to, but it was good. And you had such empathy for municipalities. I was like, “Okay, so this guy understands the situation that municipalities are in.” And yet, with this new station contribution fee, the municipality must first complete a background study, meeting prescribed requirements. They can only do this with the consent of the minister. The station contribution fee is payable upon receiving a building permit, so there’s a little red tape mixed in here. A transit-station-charge bylaw is not appealable to the Ontario Land Tribunal, unlike development charge bylaws. So you’re putting the responsibility onto an already stressed municipal level. This actually has the great potential to slow down transit in the province of Ontario.

Further questions?

Further debate?

I want to thank the member from Windsor–Tecumseh for his comments today.

The section of this bill that causes me a lot of concern is schedule 2, which downloads the cost of building the GO Transit stations onto municipalities. The former Conservative government downloaded the cost of roads and bridges and housing onto municipalities, which has pushed municipalities almost to the brink of bankruptcy in many cases and caused this infrastructure to decline over the last 25 years. Bill 23 was a download of a billion dollars a year onto municipal governments.

Why is this government now going to download the cost of GO Transit stations, which is under provincial jurisdiction? Why are you downloading that onto municipalities?

Thank you, member, for your question. I definitely don’t see it that way. This fee is a voluntary charge by the municipality to help it achieve its specific goal. If it wants the station built sooner, the capital will be there to do so.

The reason why this tool is to be made available is really to expedite the process to build new stations. When it’s not used, the province continues to fund the way it funds today: It uses the market approach to develop new stations. But ultimately, that takes time, and just as in my example of Wyandotte, you have to wait for the development to happen before you see the service. This is the kind of thing that maybe the service needs to be brought in ahead of time.

So it’s a completely voluntary tool, one that the province will not allow to be used unless the municipality can demonstrate its financial capacity to do it using the station contribution fee approach and, certainly, the municipalities can benefit from the regional connections that this opportunity brings forward.

Really, this proposed legislation is in response to requests from the municipalities locally for a new optional funding tool that truly enables them to raise the revenues needed to build the much-needed transit and housing. This tool, the station contribution fee, allows municipalities to fund the design and construction of new GO stations and recover those costs over time as transit-oriented communities are built around these future stations. Some municipalities do that for stormwater retention ponds, for example, or for oversizing of sewers. They want that development, and so they’re willing to play the banker, so to speak, to make sure that happens. It really does speed up the construction of these GO Transit stations, and it creates opportunities for mixed-use communities around those stations. So by expediting the design and construction of these new stations, the station contribution fee can help the province meet its goal of building 1.5 million homes, at least, by 2031.

Earlier today, the new Associate Minister of Transportation spoke, and I do want to officially congratulate him on his new role. Today, he spoke so eloquently about my riding, because in the town of Aurora, we have amazing things going on with our transit, specifically with the GO train. I think we are a prime example of the investment that’s happening in that station and how all of my constituents in Newmarket and in Aurora are going to benefit, and even further out. I say all of that because I have constituents who do call in and send emails. They’re so excited. They can’t wait for that two-way GO all day long to Aurora.

All of that to say, my question to the member from Windsor–Tecumseh is, why are we trying to pass this legislation, and why now?

I am very glad to be able to take my place in this Legislature for the first time since the summer session. And while there is a lot to talk about, I am pleased to stand to discuss a bill that we’ve only had in front of us for a couple of days.

So I know that the government is eagerly wondering, will we or won’t we support it? But we do have questions for this government, and we’re still working with the folks out in the community to have a better understanding of what lies beneath, so to speak.

What we have here is Bill 131, which is the Transportation for the Future Act, and it has two schedules. The first one would make changes to the City of Toronto Act, and it would allow for transit service integration between the TTC and other local transit agencies but may affect provisions in collective agreements. We have questions around that, and we are working with partners in the community and want to make sure that while we’re talking about fare integration—and I think this Legislature has been talking about fare integration for decades—there’s an opportunity to do things well, and this government seems to never take the opportunity to do things well. They do things fast or they do things in ways that I would be called unparliamentary if I were to identify them, but not often well. So we would like to be reassured by this government that they have the best of intentions when it comes to the unions and respecting collective agreements.

Schedule 1 of the bill re-enacts an unproclaimed schedule 1 of Bill 2, which is the Plan to Build Act, which would allow the Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC, to enter into service integration agreements with neighbouring transit agencies. It adds a new provision that clarifies that these agreements do not constitute contracting out for the purposes of that collective agreement.

When it comes fare integration, I had a really—oh, here it is. This is a piece from not too long ago, March 2023. It says: “Is It Finally Time for Transit-Fare Integration in the GTA?” This is a piece by John Michael McGrath. I’m just going to read this one section:

“Take transit-fare integration, the notion of allowing transit passengers to pay a single fare when they get on a bus in, say, York region, move onto a GO train, and then board a TTC subway. The Hansard at the Ontario Legislature says that the words ‘fare integration’ were first uttered by an MPP in 1986—though, even then, it was a member saying, ‘This has been discussed on and off for the past 15 years or more,’ so we can say with some confidence that it’s an idea that MPPs have been talking about for about a half-century.”

So, just a little bit of background.

I think any one of us who meets with folks in their community, anybody who rides public transit, we have heard from them loudly and clearly that they just want to get to where they’re going, that the cost can be prohibitive. We’ve talked to students, we’ve talked to workers, and we know that it doesn’t matter to them, as we have heard, what colour the vehicle is; they just want to go where they need to go—not necessarily GO, but TTC where they need to TTC.

We do encourage the government—and as we’ve worked with TTC riders and various other groups, there is a right way to move forward with this. We have to respect collective agreements. Of course, we support transit fare and service integration, but the impact of schedule 1 on existing collective agreements is unclear. I’m going to hazard a guess here: I can imagine that the union would regard amendments to the City of Toronto Act and contracting out language in ATU 113’s collective agreements as a pretty definite move. You know, is that an attack on collective bargaining rights and their charter rights? Is the province trying to sidestep workers as a partner in ironing out how transit service agreements can be integrated without diminishing TTC working conditions or TTC service standards?

Looking forward to answers, and I don’t do well with the government standard, “Just trust us.” We would like a little more to work with there because these are issues that need to be sorted out at the bargaining table. It’s my understanding that this is a change that was sought by John Tory. That’s fine. Every idea has an origin story. But the future—as you have named this bill the future of transportation, let’s do things well.

Also, ATU 113 already has a provision of their collective agreement that allows the TTC to negotiate service integration agreements with other transit authorities, provided reciprocity of service standards are maintained. There was an arbiter’s ruling that confirmed this union right. There’s room for discussion and pilot projects, as my colleague—where are you from? Ottawa Centre; so sorry; my colleague from behind me—just gave an important one-hour speech on this and he laid this out, you know, that there is room for the pilot projects. I hope that the government is going to put our concerns to rest here today.

I’m going to move on, though, to schedule 2 because schedule 2 is of particular interest to me, and I know that I’m among seven elected MPPs that represent the Durham region and that all of us have an interest in public transit, transportation challenges across our interconnected communities and the issue of the Bowmanville GO extension. That is a long-standing issue.

What I would be glad to do is take us back in time a little bit. In fact, here is an article from September 25. What’s today?

Interjection.

The 27th. So, you’re going to think, “Oh, that’s a recent article,” except that it’s from September 25, 2009, and it’s entitled “Let’s Get GO-ing on Train Extension into Clarington.” This piece by the Oshawa This Week 14 years ago says, “The extension comes with a $500-million to $600-million price tag, but it’s a timely initiative that dovetails perfectly with increased Durham growth and the need to reduce congestion, smog and greenhouse gas emissions caused by commuting vehicle traffic.” It goes on to say that the then-Premier Dalton McGuinty—we remember him—was “ensuring construction starts as planned, by 2011.” So, this is a project that has been waiting to happen for a long time and it has not—well, it’s 2023 and we still don’t have it.

Another piece from June 2016: “The GO train is finally being extended to Bowmanville.” This is when then-Premier Wynne announces GO train extension to Bowmanville, and there’s a flashy picture here that says, “Future site of the Bowmanville GO train station,” and I remember when those billboards went up. It says, “The GO train is finally being extended to Bowmanville. Premier Kathleen Wynne made the announcement on Monday morning alongside Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca”—I’ve heard of him—“Durham MPP Granville Anderson, Clarington mayor Adrian Foster and Durham regional chair Roger Anderson.”

Mayor Foster said, “It has been an exceptionally long journey. There are newspaper articles that go back to the early 1900s about Bowmanville being excited about a train to Toronto. We’ve had public consultations on what stations might look like, we’ve known where the stations are going. It has been years and years and years of work.”

Again, that’s a piece from 2016. Speaker, I tell you that to tell you this: The folks in Durham region are looking forward to this train. And since I’ve been elected, which was now nine years ago, it has been right around the corner. As it has evolved and as the plans have evolved, it has taken more shape. In fact, I’ve got a pretty snazzy map here that shows the four proposed stations. Where the existing Oshawa GO station is, that won’t be one of the four, but it’s going to be Thornton’s Corners East station, Ritson Road station, Courtice station and Bowmanville station. And those four stations are pretty exciting and the people in this community are eager to have this happen. The business plan lays out peak and off-peak and all of that. We’re looking forward to this happening.

I’m not here to rain on that parade at all. But, as the opposition critic, I have been eagerly chasing the details, and I will say to you that it was a fascinating meeting that I had had with the Metrolinx folks just in June. When I talked to the folks from Metrolinx in June, I said—well, I’m paraphrasing—“In the budget, there’s money for the rail. The government has budgeted it; they’re going to build the train. We’re going to have rails.” And then at the meeting with Metrolinx, when I said, “Tell me more about these four stations,” they were like, “Everything is on the table.” And if I heard that once, I heard it half a dozen times. Because at that point in June—and I understand things can change—they could tell me that the four new stations would be delivered through transit-oriented communities programs; that they were going to be owned and operated by Metrolinx; that the station would reflect a GO station; the naming rights would be a separate program, but they were talking about investment from third parties.

And so at that point, I understood from them that these stations will be integrated into the community, into the neighbourhood, making sure that folks walking there or cycling or wanting to shop in the area—that all these things were factored in. Well, this sounds fine. This sounds good. But where would the money come from? And that was the question at the time. The station would function as a GO station, but as they had told me, everything was on the table in terms of what it could be and who was going to pay for it and all of that. So if there wasn’t a developer or if there wasn’t an investor eager to invest in that location—and, you know what? Those four spots along that line? Exciting and interesting spots. But if they didn’t have investors—and back in June, they didn’t have anything committed for those four stations; there wasn’t a magic unicorn investor who said, “I’m going to pay for these.” There still isn’t, is my understanding.

I was worried because the funding had not been secured for any of the stations. They’re looking for third-party investors; they said that the conversations were ongoing and that funding is separate for the line, that in the 2022 budget, Metrolinx had received stage 2 Treasury Board approval at that point. Okay.

So I went from that conversation into estimates. I see that the Minister of Infrastructure is here. She remembers estimates, when we were at the committee before the summer intersession, the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy, and I had the distinct pleasure of being able to grill both ministers—well, I say “grill.” Some of it was grilling and some of it was conversational. But I was able to get questions on the record about the government’s numbers, both to the Minister of Infrastructure and the then Minister of Transportation. I’m going to just focus on that one section since we’re talking about the stations.

At estimates, I took the last 30 seconds that I had and I asked the then Minister of Transportation—and I’ll just read from Hansard here: “I had a conversation with Metrolinx about the Bowmanville GO extension, because there’s no money for stations whatsoever on that line, and they’re working with partners and hoping that they have the investment to build the stations. Will the province help us out if they can’t find that magical investor to build all the stations? Will the province put in a platform and a bridge or whatever would make it safe so folks can get off the train if there’s no station money?”

The then Minister of Transportation assured me, “Our Transit-Oriented Communities Program and our development program is a big part, but we will make sure that” they “can get on and off the train.”

I was relieved, Speaker. It’s unusual and so it seems a bit absurd, but governments, historically, when they’re building public-provincial infrastructure for folks, pay for it because they have a lot of revenue tools, and that’s what they do. They provide what is needed in communities.

When you have a train that has been promised, people assume stations come included, but there’s a little asterisk that’s like, “Buy the battery separately as well as the stations,” and that was not part of the original deal—so, surprise.

Anyway, what we have here is, the government has budgeted the train line. The stations come separately—assemble yourself. You could have communities—and I don’t know how it is in the Kitchener and Waterloo area, but I know you guys are excited about GO trains. If you have a small or developing community or a place that maybe you don’t have that excited investor yet, who builds the station? Well, here we have this bill. We have this bill that is, as we’ve heard from the government, giving tools to municipalities so that, basically, they can pay for the stations, but they can recover, I hope, all of it, and that means that the stations get built faster.

My question is, how come you’re not paying for it and building it? This seems like a pretty significant policy shift, right? You used to build provincial infrastructure; now it’s like, “Just kidding. Pay for it yourself.”

Plan A would be the government pays for our public infrastructure, and builds it. I mean, we pay for it, but they make sure that it gets built. They put the money in, build it. I guess plan B, where municipalities have a tool to ensure that the stations get built, is better than not having stations, but I’m going to stick to: The best solution would be if they didn’t have to pay for it. We know municipalities are strapped. I know that Durham region—I was at the annual business excellence awards for the Greater Oshawa Chamber of Commerce last night and was glad to see folks from the economic development part of the region, the regional chair. I know that Durham is relieved that they’re going to have their stations, that there is a mechanism for them to have stations—well, me too. We want stations. We don’t just want the rail to go all the way to Bowmanville and back, where people wave at where they want to get off and just jump.

This is something that I know the region is relieved that there is an opportunity for those stations to all happen at the same time, and for that, I am glad. I know that the government has been working with Durham region and hopefully with others who are excited about GO trains to ensure that these stations happen, but this is totally unusual. This is not how the province has historically gotten things done or built things. This is a whole new policy shift, and I’m wondering if it is a whole new policy shift and if you’re actually going to own up to that, that you’re not building infrastructure anymore.

Speaker, I can’t believe that I’m almost out of time, although really does it surprise any of us? Okay, I will wrap it up a little bit.

This bill is called the Transportation for the Future Act, and I think as many members are in this room, there would be that many thoughts and ideas about what transportation could look like in the future, what it might look like in the future, how we plan for that, how we’re excited about that, how we’re fearful of that—all of those things. But one of the things that I would highlight is that, today, Phil Verster, the CEO of Metrolinx, dropped a bomb on us again that, folks, there is no deadline for the Eglinton Crosstown. There’s no deadline for completion of the Eglinton Crosstown. Folks in that community are so fed up. It’s over three years late, over a billion dollars over budget, and Metrolinx—anybody I have talked to in the engineering world or the construction world are so fed up with dealing with some of the folks at Metrolinx.

The government, MTO and IO and all those folks: You should probably do a little in-house talking to those folks, because when the engineers don’t have access to Metrolinx, we all have a problem.

When you have a CEO whose salary went from $200,000 to $1 million a year, and he’s not delivering? I don’t know who he’s friends with and I don’t know, you know, whatever—all that stuff. I don’t know what measurables and what deliverables you are using to keep him.

I know that the NDP today, in the wake of that announcement, have called for the government to get rid of him. So look at why you would keep him. If you’re not willing to listen to us and you’re not willing to fire Mr. Verster, figure out why on earth you would keep him, and hold him to some kind of account.

Oh, no, that is so how I really feel. The member from Kitchener–Conestoga, that’s how I feel. When I’m dealing with folks in the construction industry and the engineering world who can’t—it’s one of the worst agencies for them to deal with. That’s a problem for this province.

So, transportation for the future: Let’s do things in the right way. I will leave it there and take questions. Thank you.

So, a little bit of skin in the game: I take your point. But at the same time, when you have Bill 23, that withdrew a lot of the skin in the game, withdrew revenue from municipalities—I know this isn’t downloading per se, but it feels like it. It is giving them another thing that they have to pay for, should they so choose. But if they don’t choose to, what happens? Can Breslau afford to build this station? What does it look like if they can’t?

I want to thank the member for Oshawa for her comments. She started out by saying that it’s not just that the government does something, but that they do it well. We have seen a lot of examples from this government where things have not gone well, and I wanted to share the experience of London with the GO Transit pilot that was announced two years ago by Metrolinx.

There was going to be a GO train connecting London to Toronto. Now unfortunately, that train left London in the wee hours of the morning. It spent four hours on a meandering route to get to Toronto. And after two years—guess what, Speaker?—Metrolinx determined that the pilot showed that it wasn’t viable to have this service because people weren’t taking that four-hour option to Toronto.

So I want to ask the member, is there anything in this bill that would address the transportation needs of communities like London and southwestern Ontario?

It’s now time for questions.

Wow, tell us how you really feel.

But I think something that’s been really important that we’ve done as a government is we’ve tried to bring everybody together to have a little bit of skin in the game. I think that that is really the way of the future and looking at how we’re going to keep people accountable. Obviously we’ve got Metrolinx, we’ve got the province, we’ve got the upper-tier and lower-tier municipality involved and some of the developers in the region that are very keen on seeing this get done.

I’d just like to hear some more of your thoughts—obviously, Bowmanville, we’ve got the GO train coming out there—and just kind of what you’re hearing from your community and how you think that’s playing out.

It’s a pleasure today to rise to speak to Bill 131. I do want to congratulate the member from Oshawa, because it was such a good metaphor: “shouting into the abyss.” I don’t think I will ever forget that. I haven’t heard that before; I probably should have. Let’s hope I’m not doing that right now.

Here’s the thing: Schedule 1? Yes, it makes sense. Good idea; I can support it. Schedule 2? It’s kind of hard to understand why we’re collecting development charges for provincial infrastructure. GO trains, GO Transit is provincial. I don’t know when we started collecting DCs for stuff that we fund here as a government. That’s another issue. So that’s one issue with schedule 2.

The second one is collecting development charges for infrastructure that we pay for. The simplest way is to just build the station, pay the money, like we do with the other stations. So something has changed.

Number two: development charges. I have this vague recollection—I don’t know if anybody can help me. In Bill 23, we eliminated development charges because we said, “You know what? This is making it hard for people these days. It’s making it harder for them to buy a house. It’s making it harder for them to rent. We can’t get stuff built, so we’ve got to eliminate DCs.” Now we’re putting them back on. At a time when people are just struggling to pay the bills, we’re making housing more expensive by adding DCs. I don’t understand. I think they call it cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t make sense. They don’t add up.

In the first place, to compare the DCs, is that with Bill 23, if we thought the DCs were actually going to be saved on the cost—if anybody here thought that was actually going to happen and it was going to make things more affordable, no, it wasn’t. I know builders. We all know builders. The DCs will go down, but it’s not going to change the price of the house. They’re just going to gobble that up. They’ve got space. That’s what’s going to happen. We all know that. Bill 23 actually removing those DCs was more about doing something for the development community and the people who were building the houses than the people who were owning the houses or renting the houses.

Then you would say, “Okay, now that we’re collecting DCs to build this provincial infrastructure, who is it benefiting?” Developers again, right? If they get a station built below the thing, they can go up 30 storeys. Who’s going to make the money? Developers. I’m not against people making money, but right now, we’ve got a problem with people not having enough money to be able to afford living.

The other piece is you won’t allow cities to collect DCs for things like, oh, fire stations, community centres, pools, kids’ playgrounds, but you will let them collect money for something that we pay for here. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t sound like this is a decision that’s benefiting everyday Ontarians. It makes it hard to support.

I’m not going to support DCs going on the price of rental housing or the price of a house in my community—it’s not going to happen in my community, because I don’t have GO Transit, but in other communities in Ontario—because that’s going to make it harder for people. We’re actually asking cities to collect money for stuff that we already pay for. It’s just that we don’t seem to want to pay for it anymore.