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.