Absolutely.

Madam Speaker, right now, one-fare transit travel is coming soon to the city of Toronto. As with the introduction of open payment, we have taken a measured, phased approach to the elimination of double fares, starting with the local agencies outlined above and working our way up to the TTC, North America’s third-largest transit agency. Over the coming months, because of the great work done by the former Associate Minister of Transportation, our government, Metrolinx, the TTC and the connecting agencies in the 905 will continue to perform design and assessment work so that our collective systems are aligned for fare integration.

By early 2024, Toronto riders can expect one-fare transit travel. And do you know what, Madam Speaker? Our government is fully funding this initiative. To be clear: What this means for riders is that when connecting to the TTC from anywhere in the GTA, you will no longer have to pay double fare or triple fare; you will only pay one fare. Eliminating double fares for commuters in the city will save riders considerable money every year, helping families combat the affordability crisis that they’re facing right now, save for a rainy day, and relieve just a bit of that stress that so many people are feeling now.

Cutting costs for commuters is important to our government. That is why we didn’t just create one-fare transit travel for much of the greater Golden Horseshoe; we went further. In March 2022, we also increased Presto discounts for youth and post-secondary students. These riders now enjoy a 40% discount compared to a full adult fare. This applies to youth and anyone enrolled in post-secondary education who rides on GO Transit or takes the UP Express.

We also launched an affordability pilot program for low-income riders accessing GO Transit in the Peel region. Today, adult riders who enrol in Peel region’s affordable transit program are reimbursed 50% of their Presto fare when they travel on GO Transit. This has tremendous benefits for low-income residents of Peel region. We look forward to rolling out our affordability pilot to other cities soon.

Just last month, we reduced the cost of a physical Presto card from $6 to $4, cutting the price commuters pay to access the Presto program by one third.

All these initiatives have made life more affordable for Ontarians and have helped get people from point A to point B with less stress and less hassle.

Moving forward, we will continue to work in lockstep with our municipal partners to make public transit as affordable and as convenient as possible. That’s why we have created a Fare and Service Integration Provincial-Municipal Table made up of senior representatives from transit systems in the greater Golden Horseshoe and along the GO Transit rail network. The table is focused on short-term building blocks that are needed to improve fare and service integration while developing a long-term vision that will see riders throughout the greater Golden Horseshoe transition seamlessly from one transit provider to another transit provider. Currently, the table consists of senior representatives from transit agencies in Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Guelph, Hamilton, Mississauga, Toronto, Durham region, Niagara region, Waterloo, York region, Peel region, Oakville and Milton.

As we continue to make progress on fare and service integration, engaging with our municipal partners and engaging with transit systems will be critical, especially as our population continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Speaker, one last note on improving our existing transit network: As we emerged from the pandemic, municipalities saw an increase in ridership on public transit. With more people returning to public transit, our government was happy to provide municipalities with the funding they needed to accommodate more riders. In February of this year, we were pleased to provide more than $379 million to help municipalities operate and improve their local transit systems. That funding, which was delivered through the provincial gas tax program, was used to extend service hours, buy transit vehicles, add routes, improve accessibility, and upgrade infrastructure.

To make up for reduced gas sales during the pandemic, we provided an additional $80 million to municipalities to ensure they could continue supporting their transit systems as riders began to increase. Throughout Ontario, 144 communities across 107 municipalities benefited from this funding, which helped them deliver reliable service to riders at a time when ridership was booming after two years of slowdown. This was just one example of our commitment to working in co-operation and collaboration with municipalities across the province to improve public transit.

But our government’s stellar work to improve public transit doesn’t stop there. Not only are we improving the existing transit experience today, but we are building the necessary transit infrastructure for the future. In recent years, we have made historic investments in public transit across the province of Ontario. We have done this in collaboration and co-operation with our municipal partners, working together to get Ontarians, as I said, from point A to point B quickly and safely. And by doing that, we are keeping our economy growing.

Ontario’s population continues to grow at a rapid pace. Every year we are welcoming more than 500,000 new Canadians to Canada, who mostly settle in Ontario, in the GTA. These new Canadians are eager to contribute to our thriving economy and are proud to call Ontario home, but they can’t get ahead if they’re stuck in gridlock. Whether you’re new to the province or you have lived here all your life, you should be able to get to where you’re going safely and quickly. Our government is committed to making sure that happens, and that is why we’re investing more than $70 billion over the next 10 years to transform public transit infrastructure throughout the province. Public transit is a key driver of economic growth in Ontario, helping connect people to their destinations, whether they’re going to school, going to appointments, going to work or running errands. Our government is committed to working with our municipal partners, providing them with the funding they need to accommodate growing ridership on public transit, and this funding helps our municipal partners to continue to deliver a safe and reliable transit network for people in their communities, benefiting Ontarians across the province, improving their quality of life, and helping them contribute to our economy.

Madam Speaker, last year our government achieved several milestones en route to completing the largest transit expansion of its kind in Canadian history, including breaking ground on the Ontario Line.

The Ontario Line will add 15 kilometres of new subway track to the city of Toronto’s transit system. Once complete, the new line will have a total of 15 stations delivering up to 40 trains per hour, with wait times as short as 90 seconds, and add six interchange stations connecting to existing transit lines. It will reduce crowding by as much as 15% at some of the TTC’s busiest stations, including—

Absolutely.

The busiest stations that we’re going to connect are going to be Union station, Bloor-Yonge station and Eglinton station. This historic investment in Toronto’s transit system will reduce gridlock and get commuters from point A to point B safely and quickly and give more people access to rapid transit within walking distance of their homes, accommodating up to 388,000 riders per day. The progress we have made to date wouldn’t be possible without working in collaboration and co-operation with our partners at the city of Toronto.

Construction for the Ontario Line is currently under way at Exhibition station, at the site of the future Corktown and Moss Park stations, and in the joint rail corridor east of the Don River. Contracts have been awarded for the southern portion of the line, which will include four new underground stations, two new underground stations that will connect to existing subway stations, and one above-ground station that will integrate with the Exhibition GO station.

In April, our government reached another milestone in our plan to deliver fast, reliable transit for the greater Toronto area. We began issuing requests for proposals to design and build the Pape tunnel, underground stations, and the elevated guideway and stations for the Ontario Line. The contract for the Pape tunnel and underground stations will deliver three kilometres of twin tunnels and two new stations, one at Cosburn Avenue, another at Pape Avenue, where the all-new Ontario Line will connect to the subway’s existing Line 2.

The contract will also include the construction of two new portals where the Ontario Line will transition between above-ground and underground operations, and the contract of the elevated guideway and stations includes a three-kilometre elevated guideway, emergency exit buildings and five above-ground stations, two within Metrolinx’s existing rail corridor and three along the elevated guideway on the northern part of the route. This is important progress on the Ontario Line, on this monumental project—again, progress that would not have been possible without working in close collaboration with our partners.

Speaker, building our province through critical public transit projects such as the Ontario Line is vital to supporting our economy, alleviating the gridlock on our roads, and creating thousands of well-paying local jobs. The Ontario Line alone will support 4,700 jobs annually during construction over the next decade. It will reduce commute times and connect more people to housing across the greater Golden Horseshoe and beyond. We are making it faster and easier for everyone to access reliable transit in their own neighbourhoods by improving connections to other subway, bus, streetcar, light rail transit and regional rail services. And we’re working with municipal partners in Toronto and surrounding regions to make sure this important work gets done quickly.

Madam Speaker, our government recognizes how important it is to build transit that will connect communities and create new travel options for people across the greater Toronto area. Another milestone initiative that will help us achieve that goal is the Yonge North subway extension, which will extend the TTC’s Line 1 subway by approximately eight kilometres up into Richmond Hill. The extension will include an approximately 6.3-kilometre tunnelled segment, as well as an above-ground segment that will run along the existing rail corridor on the northern section of the route.

Once complete, the Yonge North subway extension will connect with local transit services and GO transit, improving access to public transit for area residents; reducing travel time for the residents; contributing to our economy by creating jobs and connecting Ontarians to employment opportunities; and reducing gridlock and gas emissions. Once complete, this vital piece of infrastructure will accommodate more than 90,000 daily trips and bring faster transit to more communities across York region and Toronto. The Yonge North subway expansion will put 26,000 more people within a 10-minute walk of transit and is expected to reduce daily travel times for commuters by up to 22 minutes. The extension will create thousands of jobs during construction and generate over $3.6-billion worth of total economic benefits to help stimulate the economy, and it is a key part of our plan to deliver vibrant, complex and mixed-use communities around transit stations for the people of Toronto and York region.

Earlier this spring, we got one step closer to breaking ground on the Yonge North subway extension. In April, the province issued a request for qualifications for the extension’s advance tunnel contract. This marked another significant milestone in our plan to reduce gridlock, connect people to jobs and make travel between York region and Toronto faster and easier. The advance tunnel contract focuses on designing the tunnels and building the launch and extraction shafts that will be used for the tunnel-boring machines, and that contract also includes the design and construction of headwalls for stations and emergency exit buildings.

To deliver the new subway as quickly as possible, tunnelling will begin first, followed by a separate contract to build the stations, rail and systems. Early progress on the Yonge North subway extension is currently under way at Finch station, where workers are making upgrades to accommodate the future subway service. This is a great step forward for the Yonge North subway extension and the overall multi-billion dollar transit expansion under way across the GTA.

All said, the progress we have made to date demonstrates what we can achieve when we work together with partner agencies and municipal governments to expand transit for our residents. A project of this magnitude has far-reaching benefits for local jobs, for the economy, for the environment, and for commuters. By building critical transit like the Yonge North subway extension, we are ensuring sustainable growth for the region, providing future generations with the means to move freely and giving people access to more choices and more opportunities.

Speaker, York region is a fine example of one of our province’s rapidly growing communities. Every day, more families, businesses and commuters are moving to York region, and they’re choosing GO transit to get to their destinations. Throughout the summer, we continued to deliver on critical infrastructure upgrades for public transit systems by collaborating with our local partners in York region and investing in major infrastructure upgrades for the Aurora GO station.

By 2041, the Aurora GO station is expected to serve more than 5,000 commuters per day.

By 2055, GO rail will become one of the busiest railways in North America, with more than 200 million annual riders.

To address this explosive growth, we were thrilled to announce major infrastructure upgrades at the Aurora GO station just last month. These upgrades aim to provide commuters with better service, more transit connections, and future two-way, all-day service between the Aurora GO station and Union Station in Toronto. The infrastructure upgrades at the Aurora GO station will include a new, second platform, a new pedestrian tunnel with elevators, additional parking spaces, and rail signal upgrades. Once complete, the new station will improve accessibility for riders and support Ontario’s plans for 15-minute two-way all-day service on the Barrie line, better serving communities such as Aurora, East Gwillimbury and Newmarket, connecting Ontario residents to new opportunities and creating vibrant, connected neighbourhoods throughout the region.

In our spirit of collaboration and co-operation with our municipal partners and transit agencies, we are living up to a promise to bring more GO Transit trips and more frequent services to communities across the entire GO network. Alongside our municipal partners, under the leadership of Premier Ford, the Ontario government is delivering a fast, frequent and reliable transit network to keep the province moving for generations to come. We do this through our continued collaboration with our municipal partners like York region and other parts of the province.

The new and improved Aurora GO station will accommodate a growing number of people who call York region home, while connecting more people to jobs and housing across the greater Golden Horseshoe.

The investments we are making today will ensure that our growing communities are well served by the public transit system for decades and for generations to come. These investments will also encourage even more people to rely on transit to get where they need to go, reducing gridlock, benefiting the environment and improving the quality of life for Ontarians throughout York region and beyond. The investments we are making today will pay dividends for years to come.

While we were busy announcing major upgrades to our GO network this summer, we were also busy completing others.

Commuters in Scarborough deserve the same access to reliable public transit as people living in downtown Toronto. And our government is making the critical investments needed to make this a reality. Just recently, on September 13, we were proud to announce the completion of major infrastructure upgrades at the Milliken and Agincourt GO stations along the Stouffville line. Enhancements at Milliken GO station include an additional track and platform, two new pedestrian tunnels, and additional vehicle and cycling lanes on Steeles Avenue.

People are getting to their destinations with greater ease. Their lives are improving. The gridlock on our roads is starting to ease. These improvements could not have come at a more crucial time. With more people choosing to call Ontario home every year, building reliable public transportation has never been so important.

There is no greater champion for public transit than our government, under Premier Ford. We have a bold vision for the future of the province—a vision which we share with municipalities across Ontario. We are working together to build a world-class, fully integrated transit network that seamlessly connects people to all of their destinations—their homes, their jobs, their schools, and their hospitals.

Ontarians want choice in how they travel on public transit, and that’s what we are giving them by offering debit card and credit card payments on our busiest transit systems, saving people time during their busy commutes and making their lives much more convenient. That’s why we are rolling out our fare integration, our service integration, across the greater Golden Horseshoe.

We are working hard to upgrade existing infrastructure and get shovels in the ground on long-overdue transit projects to tackle gridlock, boost the economy and create well-paying jobs throughout the construction. We are not afraid to do the hard work that’s needed to get transit built, and neither are our municipal partners across the province.

We could not be prouder of our many priority transit projects in the GTA area, because these historic investments in public transit are game-changers for commuters across the region, and across the surrounding regions. They’re also key to economic growth in our province. Every $1 billion we invest in public transit supports 10,000 jobs and adds another $1 billion to our GDP. The subway projects we have under way in the GTA area alone will support more than 16,000 jobs annually.

We are so proud of what we have accomplished to date, but the best is yet to come. We’ll continue to work with our municipal partners to deliver world-class transit for the people of Ontario. We look forward to working with the city of Toronto on transit fare and service integration that will benefit Ontarians for generations to come.

I hope all the members of this House on both sides support this bill to make life more affordable and convenient for the people of Ontario.