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

Further questions?

I thank the member for Sudbury for his question. I will add, doing finance committee, I was so pleased to visit your lovely city. I really had a great opportunity to be there and appreciate that you were there, supporting the different organizations of your community.

Really, the TTC and the ATU are the parties to that collective agreement, and I understand that there are ongoing discussions, given that the TTC did make the request for this cross-border service. So, implementation details are a necessary next step, but the Ontario Ministry of Transportation is not a part of those discussions between the TTC and ATU, so the city of Toronto might be able to better answer your question on that.

Truly, we know that building high-density communities around transit has always been the goal of the transit-oriented communities movement. I know I witnessed it in my many discussions, being a member of the engineering staff of the city, with the planning staff of the city. By expanding the design and construction of these new stations, that station contribution fee can help the province meet its goal of building at least 1.5 million homes by 2031.

But we don’t want the new fee to slow down new housing development, so this tool will include a requirement that municipalities demonstrate an offset to the costs, and this requirement will be outlined in the subsequent regulations for this bill.

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.

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.

The province will be posting legislation to the regulatory registry for public comment. Also, if the station contribution fee is approved, the Ministry of Infrastructure will conduct broader engagement with the development community to inform the design of regulations and implementation. This being the case, my question to the member from Oshawa: Would you not agree that these are great, transparent moves to ensure that this tool is used effectively?

Further questions?

That’s a good question. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure, because this second schedule of the bill that lays out basically a fairly drastic policy shift for the government about who pays for provincial public transportation infrastructure is going to change things for municipalities. Will they factor that into their plan and save up all of their ducats for one day they could build a station too? I don’t know. I think a lot of places are looking to the government for leadership but also for that commitment to help them as they are growing communities with growing and changing infrastructure needs. This would be a sign to them that the government doesn’t seem to be in the game of building public transportation anymore. And I would love clarity—because I’m not just trying to scare people, but it does seem like a pretty significant policy shift, so I don’t know what this says to London.

But when the government is suggesting, “Don’t worry, there’s going to be a consultation period,” that means nothing to me, because your consultation periods are often—you take information in, and then that’s the end of it. So if it doesn’t shape what you do—and when I hear from engineers that they weigh in and that they give opinions and then the government goes ahead with things anyway and says, “Thanks for your comments, but we’re doing it anyway,” I don’t have faith at all. Prove me wrong, though, please.

Your question—I don’t remember it. Are we at a tipping point? Where do we go from here? Something like that? I don’t know. I would have thought that with a bill called Transportation for the Future Act—I mean, it’s fine that there are these two pieces that we’re debating. I look forward, though, to both this Minister of Infrastructure and the new Minister of Transportation hopefully working with not just Metrolinx but with other agencies and partners to re-up some of the confidence and actually build the transportation infrastructure that is needed in this province.

To my friend from Oshawa, thank you for those remarks. I wanted to follow up on something given the skepticism you expressed and others have expressed about Metrolinx’s capacity to build transit. It would seem this bill itself, as I mentioned earlier in debate, is a vote of non-confidence in Metrolinx if we’re asking municipalities to take on this risk burden.

I also note, from the Auditor General’s 2020 report on the Eglinton Crosstown, my friend, that Metrolinx was continuing to work with an agency, Crosslinx, despite the fact that Crosslinx has over 380 rejected designs. They were continuing to build in a capacity called “building at risk,” which meant they were building with designs that had not been properly approved by people required to scrutinize them.

So, my friend from Oshawa, what the heck is going on at Metrolinx?

I really do appreciate the comments by the member from Oshawa. I mean, we’re really at a tipping point here with Metrolinx. They’ve abandoned their original mandate. They are essentially leaderless. Phil Verster once told me in a briefing that, “Catherine, trains run on tracks.” I mean, that’s the level that we’re working with here. What do you think is moving forward for Metrolinx?