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.