It’s always a pleasure to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the people of Parkdale–High Park. Today we are debating Bill 131, Transportation for the Future Act. I’ve got to say, when I read the title, I had to shake my head. This government is not building transportation for the future. This government is not building transportation for the future. This government is not even building transportation for the present.

Eglinton Crosstown is the biggest example right now: 12 years of construction, tens of thousands of people’s daily lives disrupted, over $13 billion already and we don’t know how much more. It’s a bottomless pit, and we still don’t know if the transit will ever run. So what future is this government talking about when we don’t know if, after everything related to Eglinton Crosstown, the transit will ever be built?

I know that this P3 contract for Eglinton Crosstown was signed by the Liberal government—big mistake on their part. But in 2018, when the Auditor General audited the Eglinton Crosstown, she said that there were numerous things that were going wrong and Metrolinx wasn’t doing their part to hold the Crosslinx consortium to account. Two years later—2020—the Auditor General did a follow up report and said that not only did everything that she raised not get addressed by this Conservative government; things were actually worse now.

The only thing that has actually happened since the Auditor General’s report was lawsuits and more payout from the public purse to the consortium. Now, we still have no credible plan, no timeline. It’s an indefinite delay. So this government, we can say confidently, Speaker, does not know how to build transit, does not know how to deliver on transit projects.

There are numerous issues with Metrolinx, and the previous transportation minister did not hold Metrolinx accountable. And it seems that the current Minister of Transportation is following in the same direction. The Metrolinx CEO is one of the highest-paid public servants—almost $900,000 a year in salary. Fifty-nine vice president positions at Metrolinx, 19 C-suite executives—all of whom seem to be unable to hold a P3 contractor to account.

Get this, Speaker: There’s no engineer at Metrolinx; it’s all consultants. The work is all farmed out. You have contractors hiring subcontractors. The whole structure is very opaque, I would say deliberately, because then it becomes very hard to hold somebody to account.

Metrolinx has forgotten that they are a public transit agency. Metrolinx has forgotten who they work for. Did the government learn from the Eglinton Crosstown fiasco? They blamed the Liberals, but then what do they go ahead and do? Award more P3 contractors for the Ontario Line project and award even bigger contracts. We’ve seen the same thing happen in Ottawa. It’s happening at Finch, at Eglinton. Why is this government continuing to go down the same path? They don’t seem to be learning the lessons, and they certainly don’t seem to be respecting public dollars.

The government side talked quite a bit about the tap feature—credit and debit tap. I have to say, I like it. I use it; it’s convenient. But then, we have forgotten what it took for us to get here. This was announced with great fanfare, but let’s not forget that the technology has existed for decades. The city of Toronto actually wanted to go with tap service 13 years ago, but what happened was that the Liberal government forced Presto on the city of Toronto. And that Presto system not only took years to roll out; there were so many problems. It was expensive: a billion dollars. Add it to the list of numerous billion-dollar scandals and problems that the Liberals had.

Also, by the time Presto was being offered to, or rather forced on, the city of Toronto, Presto technology was already out of date. The Liberal government signed a contract, in secret—we can see there’s a lot of similarities with how Liberals do and what the Conservatives do—with Accenture to deliver it. I remember—and actually it happens still very often as a transit rider—Presto systems not working, especially in the early years. What does that result in? Lost revenues for the TTC.

Now we finally have tap, 13 years too late, a billion dollars wasted. So, no, in this province we don’t have transportation for the future, because we don’t have what is needed for the present. We are so behind.

In this bill there are two schedules. The first schedule re-enacts un-proclaimed schedule 1 of Bill 2, a previous bill, the Plan to Build Act, which allows the Toronto Transit Commission to enter into service-integration agreements with neighbouring transit agencies despite the TTC’s statutory monopoly on transit service within Toronto. Such an agreement is not a sale or transfer of the TTC under the Labour Relations Act. It also adds a new provision that clarifies that such service-integration agreements do not constitute contracting out for the purpose of the collective agreement.

We support fare and service integration. It makes sense. As a transit rider, I think it will make life easier. TTC riders certainly strongly support fare and service integration, because it allows riders to travel seamlessly across transit agency boundaries without paying multiple fares.

The NDP does support transit fare and service integration. However, we do not support interfering in collective agreements. So we have to make sure that this schedule—schedule 1 of this bill—does not interfere or undermine collective agreements.

What the impact of schedule 1 is on the ATU’s collective agreement is not quite clear in this legislation. I understand from ATU that there is a way forward, because ATU’s agreement already allows for transit-service integration, provided reciprocity of service is assured with other transit agencies. What does that mean? It means that you don’t replace a TTC bus that comes every 15 minutes with another region’s bus that only comes once an hour. An interest arbitration award has confirmed this as ATU’s right, so if the government opens up the TTC’s collective agreement, just know that transit workers are going to push back. It’s an unconstitutional intrusion into their workplace. It will not be well received by transit workers, by transit riders and the general public.

So I urge the new Minister of Transportation; the Associate Minister of Transportation; the new Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development; and the Minister of Infrastructure to sit down, to get on the phone and engage the leadership of the ATU—Marvin Alfred, John Di Nino. Work together and get a deal, because when you get a deal that works for ATU, we know it will also work for the riders.

Speaking of fare and service integration, I also want to make note that the Conservative government still refuses to reverse the cuts that were made by previous governments; that is, refusing to cover 50% of operational funding for municipal transit. It used to be that way, that the province covered 50% of the operational costs of local transit. Because of decades of underfunding, the result has been unreliable service when it comes to—I can certainly speak for the TTC, because that’s my local transit. Transit doesn’t arrive on time and the service wait times between buses and subways take much longer.

If people cannot rely on the TTC to get to work on time or to get to school on time, what happens? They start looking for alternatives. And that means more cars on the road. It means more traffic. It’s bad for the environment. It costs more.

We need to fund public transit to a level where, even though people have a car, taking transit and having that option is the better way. That’s when you know we have strong public systems and services in the city and around the province, because it’s the thing that everybody does, regardless of their income, regardless of where they live in the city or in other areas.

In Toronto, very specifically, we also had conservative leadership for the last 12 years, who also underfunded transit. Thankfully we’re moving in a different direction now, with a new mayor. They’re still not quite at the pre-pandemic level of service, so the province needs to step in, provide operational funding and ensure that the TTC runs smoothly, it’s reliable and there’s higher frequency of service.

I also wanted to talk about safety. I’ll just say for now that one of the things around TTC reliability and people’s confidence in the TTC system is it also needs to ensure that people feel safe. For over a decade now TTC had been trying to engage with the big three—Telus, Rogers and Bell—to provide cell service, but they were not interested. Come on: 2023 and we still don’t have cell service to make an emergency call or to call a loved one, if needed? We pushed very hard with the previous Minister of Transportation. The Minister of Transportation simply pointed a finger back to the TTC.

It is another area that we need to ensure we take action on because if people do not feel safe taking public transit, then it doesn’t matter how often transit runs. We just won’t have the ridership. We need to make sure we do that.

I want to go into schedule 2 of this bill. In schedule 2, it allows the municipality, with the consent of the minister, to impose a transit station charge—which the government is calling a station contribution fee—on new developments within a designated area around a proposed new GO Transit station. The objective of this fee would be the recovery of the construction costs of the new GO station and, of course, the revenues must be used for the intended purposes. There are some other requirements in order to proceed with that.

Essentially, in plain language, what schedule 2 is saying is that the province is telling municipalities, “We will allow you to assume the risk to build GO Transit”—provincial infrastructure, mind you—“because we can’t be bothered to build it ourselves, really.” It basically requires the municipalities to assume the risk to build this infrastructure. It’s a clear downloading of responsibilities.

There are some municipalities, I understand, that are very eager to do this. They’re only eager to do this because the government of Ontario hasn’t bothered to build important transit stations in their communities. This, unfortunately, has happened under successive governments, both Liberal and Conservative.

Already the responsibility to build and operate transit and the cost is not being appropriately shared between the province and municipalities. With this bill, Bill 131, it is possible that the situation could get worse. Think about it. Let’s say that this bill moves forward and some years down the road, a GO station is built in a particular municipality. What about the operations? The member from Waterloo, even before I got elected, in 2018, I remember has been fighting for two-way GO service—11 years.

If this Conservative government is not going to fund the operations of public transit, they’re not really building transit that people can use. It has to be there when people need it, and that means weekend service. It means more frequent service. It means things like having bike racks on GO trains and GO buses—simple things. Everybody that wants a GO station in their community knows what needs to happen, and municipalities absolutely cannot do it by themselves.

As well, this bill, with this option for municipalities to assume the risk to build a GO station, is coming at a time when the government has dramatically reduced revenue capacities of municipalities through their controversial Bill 23. Over a billion dollars in municipal revenue province-wide—gone. The government is basically saying, “We’re going to take away revenue tools through Bill 23. We will give you new tools, but then that means you have to take on a whole set of responsibilities that used to be provincial.” The government has also said, without much detail, that municipalities can only levy a station contribution fee on developers building housing projects and amenities at GO stations provided an incentive of some kind is offered. Given the recent instances where the government has engaged the private sector in controversial and questionable infrastructure projects, I would say there’s cause for concern.

While it is possible to imagine ways in which this particular schedule, schedule 2, could serve the public interest, the Minister of Infrastructure’s Transit-Oriented Communities Program is still cloaked in secrecy, and I would say it’s not deserving of public trust. The Minister of Infrastructure’s secrecy extends beyond this particular program, and we know that very well in Toronto, because we still have not seen the agreement between the province and Therme spa. A 95-year lease—it’s secret. Why is the government not releasing the lease? No one in Toronto or outside of Toronto, no one you speak to, buys that for 95 years, there’s going to be a spa in that location. So why award a 95-year lease? That’s not good business.

Also, the government announced that 850 mature trees at Ontario Place are going to be cut down. They sent a press release out. These trees are healthy, mature, and should be saved. It’s very hard to grow trees in urban settings, even harder to grow them at the waterfront. And the trees are being mostly cut down on the west island. That island, conveniently, was not included in or part of the environmental assessment, which is one of the parts of the entire Ontario Place redevelopment plan.

Just recently, the province removed the temple bell, less than a month after the creator, architect Raymond Moriyama, passed away. Speaker, that bell commemorates the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to Canada. This government continues to do things in secret, last-minute—things that either people find out on very short notice or find out as things are happening. The Conservatives also want to destroy the Ontario Science Centre, which is another masterpiece by the same architect. This is from the Globe and Mail, and this is what they wrote: “The late Raymond Moriyama built boldly in an era when public spaces mattered. We must save his legacy from the small thinking of our time.” The small thinking of our time—

It is now time for questions and answers.

Further debate?

Thank you to the member from Whitby for his words on this bill. My question is, considering that Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113’s collective agreement already allows for transit service integration with reciprocity of service, why does the government believe that schedule 1 of Bill 131 is necessary, and how does the government plan to address potential pushback from the transit workers if their collective agreements are opened up?

Thank you to the member from Parkdale–High Park for your contribution to this debate. My question to you is this: Out of all of the issues that you highlighted in your comments about issues with this bill, what do you think causes the most hesitation with this bill for you?

It’s now time for questions.

I recognize the member for Oakville.

We have heard that this new station contribution fee is voluntary, but the member from Parkdale–High Park raises a very good issue around equity: Not every community or municipality that wants or needs a GO station is going to have the capacity to do what this bill is suggesting, which is, essentially, work with developers to fund a GO station in exchange for development rights. The government evidently expects municipalities to assume funding responsibilities.

Metrolinx is out of the picture; that may be a mixed blessing, given the way that they’ve been currently working. And we have no idea what sort of funding agreement the government has in mind or how the risks will be allocated. This is very simply a downloading of building GO stations to municipalities who are already stressed. So do you think that this bill should actually be renamed the “transportation for the extreme distant future act”?

I’d like to thank the member from Parkdale–High Park for her comments. The member stated that the government doesn’t know how to build and doesn’t know how to deliver on transit and cited the really infamous Eglinton Crosstown fiasco. What we’ve seen from this government is a disturbing ideological reliance on expensive, wasteful P3 contracts and very little respect for public dollars. It’s as though the government wants to take a back seat while others do the driving. They’re continuing this party with public money.

In the bill itself, though, it says that they are doing this to “support the creation of local and regional transit connections.” “Regional transit connections” shows up once. “Rural” doesn’t even show in up this bill. Does the member from Parkdale–High Park think that this plan will support regional models outside of the GTA such as in southwestern Ontario?

Thank you to the member from Parkdale–High Park for her presentation today.

First, if I may indulge, I want to take a moment to say thank you to this entire House for the ability to honor and raise awareness for childhood cancer. I think all of you know my background and my family history with that, and it is never far from my awareness, so thank you.

With regards to the member from Parkdale–High Park, I want to see if I can get your agreement on something—I’m sorry; I want to see if I can get the member’s agreement on something: the overall goal. I will say that the overall goal is not just to get more transit built, but to get more transit built in affordable areas with access to modern facilities, that that goal is actually a positive, laudable goal. But I would also ask if you would agree—if the member would agree—that waiting until all of the problematic issues from the projects from 15 years ago under previous governments, until all of the antiquated facilities in downtown Toronto and all of that is resolved, if we have to wait for all of that, don’t you agree that we will never actually get these new, modern facilities built?

I would say—I mean, there are only two schedules in the bill, and both schedules are cause for concern, because in schedule 1, it is possible—it’s not clear yet, but it is possible that the government is going to interfere with ATU’s collective agreements. We do not support that. The courts don’t support that.

In schedule 2 of the bill, again, the government is downloading the responsibility for building provincial infrastructure to municipalities. Think about what happens to municipalities who desperately need a GO station but are not able to attract the developers, the investors. What happens to them? They don’t get a station? Where are the equity considerations? They go to the back of the line. So both these schedules in the bill are cause for concern.

But let’s talk about how they got there. It’s because the province failed to build a GO station for Durham. So now, the province is essentially saying, “We’ll get out of the way if you want to build it yourself.” And heck, Durham is saying, “We’ll do it. We cannot wait any longer because who knows when that is?”

So yes, Durham wants to build it. I say go for it, but only because the province failed to do their part.

To the second part of the member’s question around regional transit, again, when the province is not actively building transit in every part of the province, whether it’s urban, rural, south, west, north—it doesn’t matter—the province has a responsibility to do that, to connect the entire province, to connect people in the province. And when you leave it to simply developers taking up the incentive, you’re not going to have that equitable infrastructure built in this province.

It is a goal that is laudable. We agree with the overall goal, but we do not agree with the downloading of that responsibility. We think that provinces must play an active part. And keep in mind the context as well. Municipalities have already lost a big source of revenue because of Bill 23, which your government put forward. And so when you are putting them in such a tight place, with limited revenue and no transit infrastructure projects happening, they’re going to start to look at different avenues to do the work.

It’s always a pleasure to rise in the House. Today, we are debating the second reading of the Transportation for the Future Act, 2023, legislation dedicated to connecting communities and making sure that we are able to help our growing Ontario and Ontario’s population.

Madam Speaker, this is a decisive step designed to help create jobs and much-needed housing closer to transit. As we all know, Ontario is growing at an unprecedented rate; the greater Toronto area is growing even faster. But this is not a coincidence. Why? Toronto and Ontario are growing because of the policies of the government. What are we doing? We’re reducing the cost of doing business by $7 billion a year. When you reduce the cost, what you do is you attract more investments. When you attract more investments—and at the same time, as a government, when we make more investment into the people, into the workers, into the job seekers, into the job creators, when we make investment in the infrastructure, what it does is it helps to build further momentum to grow. And that is why we know that the need of the hour is to steer this growth in a way that we have the support and the key infrastructure for the quality of life people need and deserve now and in the future.

Madam Speaker, Ontario’s population is projected to increase by 43.6%—that is almost 6.6 million—over the next 24 years. If you look at now, we are at an estimated 15.1 million on July 1, 2022, to almost 21.7 million by July 1, 2046. The net migration will account for 85% of all the population growth in the province between 2022 to 2046. What does this mean? When more people come, they need jobs. They need housing. They need health care. They need infrastructure. With this anticipated growth, we need to make sure we have the ability to welcome them so they can have the life they chose: a better life.

This bill is not an option. I believe it is a necessity to build a stronger, more resilient Ontario. That is why we are planning well in advance for this anticipated growth to create a sustainable future.

Make no mistake, we want to welcome each and every person who wants to make this province as their home, like me. I came to Canada on January 15, 2000, and I can’t thank enough Ontario. I can’t thank enough Canada for giving me and my family an opportunity to not only grow but thrive.

Our government, under the leadership of Premier Ford, Minister Surma and each and every member of this caucus are working hard to ensure that the people of Ontario have high-quality public transit, housing, jobs, public amenities and social services. Why? Because they chose to come to Ontario for a better life. And how are we doing it? We are making sure we are building a stronger Ontario by refueling and rebuilding Ontario’s economy and making sure we are working for our workers. We’re putting investment into highways and key infrastructures. We’re making sure the cost of living is low and we’re investing into health care.

Some of the things our government is doing is investing into 30,000 long-term-care homes, four hours of home care service, 86,000 child care spaces, 1.5 million homes, multiple subways, highways and many, many other infrastructure. We are investing $184 billion in the next 10 years—a $50-billion investment into the hospitals. We’re expanding the broadband and natural gas so that our northern communities can grow. At the same time, we’re making sure that we are investing into IT, we are investing into life sciences and we are making sure that every part of Ontario grows.

Madam Speaker, this is the reason we are doing what we’re doing today through this bill. This bill sets out to achieve this goal by moving steadfastly toward building transit-oriented communities to bring vibrant, mixed-use communities to support a booming and growing Ontario. By building transit where people live and work, we are making life more convenient for Ontarians while stimulating economic growth, increasing much-needed housing supply and lowering the cost of building infrastructure for our taxpayers.

These transit-oriented communities—we call them TOCs—will bring more housing so that people can live and build more jobs so that they can work. They can go out and shop, so it will have retail facilities and public amenities right close to the transit. Ontario’s Transit-Oriented Communities Program will increase transit ridership because it’s easy, it’s convenient, it’s right there. It will reduce traffic congestion.

It’s no secret, Madam Speaker; every day when I come to the legislative building, I see a lot of traffic congestion. By investing into the infrastructure, we are making sure that as we welcome more people, it should not increase the congestion. It should rather decrease the congestion so that those families can spend time with their loved ones.

We’re making sure by doing so, we’re increasing housing supply, including affordable housing. We’re making sure we’re investing into the infrastructure so that people can have jobs. It will stimulate the economy through the major projects, bringing retail and community amenities within a short distance of public transit stations so that they have a good quality of life. Offsetting the cost of station construction would save taxpayers money.

By the way, we’re not the only place doing it. It has already been successfully implemented in cities like Sydney and Washington, DC.

By doing so, we have learned that in order to build these TOCs, the province and the municipalities need new and innovative tools to accelerate transit expansion. Why do we need to increase and accelerate the transit expansion, Madam Speaker? Because we want to welcome more people. As we welcome more people, we want to give them a good quality of life. I’ll give you an example.

When we talk about the number of people, Madam Speaker, just talking about the last five years, we have welcomed, as Canada, over 800,000 international students. When they come, many have their spouses who come with them. Once they come and they are graduating, their parents also come. As we see this influx of people, there is a need to make sure, as people come here to make Canada their home, we’re prepared to help them and support them to have a good life. That is what, Madam Speaker, we are doing through this bill. We are making sure that TOCs are a forward-thinking approach to strengthening the relationship between transit, employment, housing, commercial spaces and public amenities to create vibrant, mixed-use communities.

As Minister Surma mentioned, we are making significant progress. For example, on the Ontario Line, we have proposed transit-oriented communities at six stations. We have East Harbour, Corktown, Exhibition, King-Bathurst, Queen-Spadina and the future Gerrard Station. All these stations will provide new housing, retail, jobs and other amenities. Meanwhile, on the Yonge North subway extension, the proposed sites at Bridge and High Tech stations would also bring new housing, parkland, commercial, retail and community spaces, all within a short distance of transit.

As Minister Surma and my colleague PA Sandhu mentioned, we are creating new housing and mixed-use communities around GO and light-rail transit around the GTA. Our government will continue to work closely with the city of Toronto and York region to identify and plan additional opportunities to bring more TOCs to subway stations. Why? Because it is required.

Madam Speaker, through this bill the province is proposing—I’m going to say this word—a new voluntary funding tool for municipalities that will help spur the construction of new GO Transit stations. The tool, which is a voluntary tool, will be called the station contribution fee.

In recent years, Metrolinx has had conversations with communities as part of their market-driven strategy to deliver GO stations. Through these conversations, it was clear that, in many cases, while the development community supported the idea of contributing towards the stations, economic and local real estate conditions make it difficult for many stations to be delivered by a single development partner. What we’re doing here is we’re using an approach, through innovation, to support spreading the costs of stations amongst multiple developers.

The province will be posting the legislation to the regulation registry for public comments. 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.

If passed, this act will allow municipalities to recover costs for funding the design and construction of new GO stations through a levy placed on new development. The station contribution fee—again, which is a voluntary tool—would allow municipalities to create a new revenue stream solely for the purpose of funding GO station delivery costs. And as we proceed, the province and the municipalities will work together to ensure transparency.

This optional tool would also be used in places where the province has determined that the new GO station is necessary for the community. The municipalities must show that they have sufficient borrowing capacity and will be required to transparently demonstrate how the station contribution fee is calculated, as well as how it will be offset through a reduction in development costs. Municipalities can show an offset to the fee through, for example, a reduction in parking requirements, reduction in other fees or development requirements to increase the density of proposed development.

Municipalities would only collect the fee until the full station costs are recovered—so it’s not indefinite. All these requirements will be clearly outlined. There will be a regulation that will allow the province to exempt specific types of developments, such as, for example, schools, hospitals and other such institutional uses to that list.

Madam Speaker, the idea of this bill is to make sure there is greater regional connectivity, there is more housing, helping and supporting more job-seekers and job creators, and adding investment opportunities. It will lead to reduced travel times. It will make sure there is better connectivity between rural and urban areas. The other benefits would include diminishing traffic congestion—we know this, how difficult it is now for families stuck on the highways—and encouraging the use of eco-friendly public transit, which the parties opposite always talk about. It would assist municipalities in taking an active role in transit expansion and delivery timelines in their communities. It will create more construction jobs.

Just like housing, creating good-paying jobs is another important goal of our province. As we all know, there are over 300,000 jobs going unfilled every day. To tackle this labour shortage, our government has made investments through the Skills Development Fund and the Skills Development Fund training stream to find people meaningful work. The province is investing an additional $160 million in the Skills Development Fund to help an additional, at least, 100,000 workers get free training. Through its first three SDF funds, the government was able to support 596 projects.

And another thing I’m going to talk about is that as we are building a stronger Ontario, Minister Surma said we are not building transit in isolation. We are making sure through this bill that our government is taking action to build Ontario. The proposed legislation will create new voluntary funding. The station contribution fee may also facilitate earlier GO station construction and the province will be working with municipal partners to integrate transit services across the greater Golden Horseshoe. By taking these steps, our government is championing the community, supporting economic growth, creating more jobs, delivering better services and improving the lives of Ontarians today and tomorrow for the generations to come.

To conclude, I would like to congratulate the Ministry of Infrastructure for this out-of-the-box legislation. If passed, this will bring more prosperity to the province through better transit, more housing and more jobs. We will continue to build many more healthy, sustainable vibrant communities and this is only possible if we all come together, work together, support this bill and build a better Ontario, a stronger Ontario.

Thanks to the member for his comments on Bill 131. I do want to say, though, that he did not address this new funding tool, the station contribution fee, which remains a huge issue for municipalities. While we support fare integration as a concept, there are some issues around schedule 1 as well.

Schedule 2 implies the existence of a new Transit-Oriented Communities Program—a new one—whose details still remain unknown. The member did not clarify that. The original idea was for Metrolinx to negotiate deals in which developers would fund a new GO station in exchange for development rights, but now the government evidently wants and expects municipalities to assume funding responsibilities. We have no idea what sort of funding agreement the government has in mind or how the risks should be allocated.

Can the member explain to municipalities across the province who want GO stations how they’re going to negotiate the cost of a GO station with developers in the community?

Questions?

I want to say thank you to the member for Mississauga–Malton for his comments. He represents a constituency that very much relies on GO Transit and an apt service. Down my way, we don’t have GO Transit. We don’t have any provincially supported regional transit so I’ve got a little bit of jealousy, I have to admit.

I wanted to ask, just because Peel region is different from the city of Toronto, can you explain your experiences with the integration? I’m hearing there is a legislative barrier in the City of Toronto Act that precludes the TTC from picking up passengers from outside its boundaries, but the reverse isn’t true. My question to the member is, can he elaborate a bit on that legislative barrier in the City of Toronto Act that means the TTC cannot pick up outside of its boundaries, but other municipalities’ transit systems can?

I think what—I’m trying to understand—the member opposite is asking: How is this station contribution fee going to work? What are the key design elements of this station contribution fee?

Yes, the applicable fee is only to new development. It’s voluntary and applies only to new development. It is area-specific, applicable only within a specified area surrounding a new GO station, identified by municipalities. In fact, until full costs are recovered—so it will not be indefinite. It will make sure that the requirement is to have the background studies, and there will be a fee offset and it cannot be appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal. This is how the government is going to make sure that the voluntary SCF will be designed.

What we’re doing through this bill, Madam Speaker, is we’re making sure that all the municipalities, all the commuters within those municipalities will benefit as we are integrating those transit systems.

So I wish and I hope that the members opposite are going to stand up for Ontarians and will support this important bill so that not only Toronto but the other municipalities and communities can get the benefit.

To the member for Mississauga–Malton: He will certainly be aware that there has been a huge breach of trust between the government of Ontario and the people of this province because of the government saying that they weren’t going to touch the greenbelt, and then going forward to carve it up for developers.

Now, given the total lack of details that the government has released about its Transit-Oriented Communities Program, given the delays that we’ve seen with Metrolinx and its failure to deliver on the Eglinton Crosstown, given what we saw with the Ottawa LRT as the result of a public-private partnership transit project, how on earth can Ontarians trust this government to deliver on transportation projects?

That’s all the time we have for questions and answers.

It’s now time for further debate.

It’s always an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the great people of Toronto Centre and, in particular, today’s debate is around Bill 131, the government bill entitled Transportation for the Future Act.

You know, when it comes to public transit, I have a very personal and deep relationship to this critical piece of infrastructure in the city of Toronto, this essential service that my family and I have used for my entire life in Canada and my entire time in Toronto. My parents never had a car. They never had a driver’s licence in this city. I was the first person in my family—believe it or not, Speaker, this might be a very challenging story for folks in the House to comprehend, but I was the first person in my family to actually get my driver’s licence here. So, for the majority of my life, right up until being a young adult, if the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission, didn’t take us there—meaning it didn’t travel there or the route wasn’t covered—we simply didn’t go. That meant that my mom, my dad, my grandmother and three children would all pile onto a streetcar or a bus or the subway if we were to make any journey as a family. Imagine that being difficult for newcomers, especially with young children, kids who didn’t always listen, who were always being sort of pulled around. That was very, very difficult.

So I am deeply invested in the quality of public transportation, the quality of public transit in Toronto, but also recognizing my experience is not so uncommon, for many people don’t necessarily have access to a vehicle. And, if some families do have access to a vehicle, you may have five or six people who need to go in many different routes—someone in the family is reliant on public transit.

This bill is actually very important, especially as we talk about the future of transit in Ontario. I want to be able to support the spirit of the bill because I think that’s important, but as we dig deeper into this bill, things start to unravel, and it unravels very quickly, so I am very pleased to be able to provide some thoughts and some feedback with members of this House.

Transit riders in Ontario have been waiting at stations, as well as bus stops, for far too long. We have seen advocacy groups, like those in the city of Toronto called TTCriders, who have been calling for fare integration for literally years and, beyond that, decades. I’m very happy to know that this government is listening, as previous governments have said that they are very interested in fare integration. This is a long time coming. Fare integration, of course, will reduce expenses for transit users, especially those who have the furthest to travel. Like you and many who are still using transit, I don’t want to necessarily spend my time calculating how much my trip will cost. I just want to be able to go in and tap. With the rising costs of gas, insurance and maintenance, fare integration and the reduction of fares overall is actually going to be welcome.

But we’re not talking about the reduction of fares; we’re simply talking about fare integration. At the same time, the cost of operating transit is on the rise.

Let’s not forget that the government has refused to continue the previous Liberal government’s commitment to at least reducing GO riders’ fares by $1.50 in 2020. This government scrapped that. There was another short-lived fare integration project that predates this one, and this is where Torontonians were asked to pay an extra $60 a month for a little sticker that we would have attached on the back of our monthly metro pass that would allow us to ride the GO system within Toronto. While those measures may have been well intentioned, they never really did meet its obligations, and that also was a problem, as it hurt thousands and tens of thousands of Ontarians trying to get through their daily commute.

I worry about the fate of our small businesses in the downtown as more and more people are now working from home and they don’t oftentimes go out to buy their lunches or perhaps do their local shopping while they’re here. Workers have obviously created their own schedules, and they do this oftentimes in collaboration with their employers, but I would hate to think that small businesses who are actually reliant on the reliability of the connectivity of transit in order to move shoppers and diners through the city—if you don’t have a reliable transit system that is going to be properly maintained and staffed, you will also see the decline and the struggle of small business. Of course, we saw that during the pandemic, and many of the businesses in the core of the city have said they are still not up to the sale and revenues of where they needed to be before the pandemic. And we know that many businesses in Ontario are still covered in debt. The average small-business debt these days is $134,000. When we build transit—good, reliable transit—it’s going to foster and help our economy. Not only are we moving goods and services along when we build good roads, a connected highway system, but transit actually allows us to move people along, which then drives the economy as well. So those are definitely good, attainable goals that we should all be striving for, but if the transit isn’t there, it’s not going to be helpful.

Let me share with you, Speaker, an experience that I have had sitting on Toronto city council, and it was the first of many experiences that we had at city council. On the first day of then-Mayor Rob Ford’s tenure, he stood up at city council and he tore up Transit City, which was an $8.15-billion LRT plan which covered 120 kilometres across the city over seven LRT lines. Shovels were already in the ground. Shovels had to be put down. Contracts that were signed up to $1.3 billion were then torn up, and everybody was frozen. They didn’t really know what to do. Some 150 Transit City staff were told to stop working, and $130 million that was already spent was gone, with another $65 million of sunk costs that we would never recover.

We have a legacy here where we have Conservative politicians coming into Toronto and ripping up our transit plan. In 1995, Mike Harris did the same thing; he came into power with the Common Sense Revolution. Very shortly afterwards, he actually said no and tore up two significant projects that were under way. One of them was the Eglinton West line. A couple of years later, he began the most horrific impact to the TTC that, generations afterwards, we’re still living with, and that’s when he cut the operational funding and the subsidies to transit in Toronto. To this day and time now, the transit system in Toronto is one of the least-funded—regionally, provincially, state-wide funded—transit systems in North America. What a horrible title that we hold there, Speaker, but yet we are living with the legacy, unfortunately, of Conservative politicians constantly meddling in the affairs of city council, and in this case with the transit plans that the city had already put under way.

But they’re not alone, Speaker; they were supported. In this case, with Mayor Ford at that time, he was supported by the Liberals at Queen’s Park as well as the Liberals in Ottawa. What we saw there was, if the Liberal government of the day here said no to the mayor—“You shouldn’t be tearing up a transit plan. You should build what’s already under way. Finish the LRT system”—Toronto would be moving faster today than it ever would be, because that’s what would have happened.

We have two significant factors that cannot be ignored where we have Conservatives and Liberals constantly working together in partnership to undermine local transit planning as well as local transit construction. Now we have the Premier who took a crayon, and he decided to redraw the downtown relief line. When he did that, he moved stations around and then dropped stations without any consultation, without any technical review or design. We are now building the Ontario Line—or you’re building the Ontario Line—and it’s creating a little bit of chaos and a lot of confusion, largely because we are watching the Eglinton Crosstown fiasco unfold—and I would say it’s a fiasco. You can ask the residents and the business owners along Eglinton how that line has served them over the past 13 years while it’s been under construction. As billions of dollars have ballooned in terms of overrun and with no opening date on the horizon, there is lots of cause of concern for whether or not this will actually work well for the local residents.

Speaker, the other thing I want to point to your attention is that we had a mayor, John Tory, who actually created a new transit plan called SmartTrack. Largely, everyone would agree that that SmartTrack cinched him the 2014 victory. Ten years later, SmartTrack is nowhere to be found. It’s a shadow of itself. The project went from 22 stations under the Transit City banner to about five stations, and who knows if they’re going to actually be realized? We have a city that’s growing, bursting at the seams. The project has dragged on, as projects sometimes do when you don’t have core funding and it’s not properly vetted and if it’s not properly acknowledged by all parties, and you have it now left sort of floating, again, in the wind.

So it’s not that Torontonians in particular don’t rely on transit. I just told you my personal story. Without a transit system that’s well funded and properly operating, my goodness, my family wouldn’t have been able to get to work. And both my parents worked. I hardly saw them because they worked so darn hard. Everybody else who doesn’t have a car is reliant on transit. That’s why the stakes are so incredibly high.

We now have a new mayor in Toronto who is deeply committed to public transit. Her first few political acts in the city of Toronto have already shown us that she’s going to be reversing service cuts, she’s going to be putting money back into transit as she can. But Mayor Chow and Toronto city council can’t do any of that work on their own. None of that can be done without actual government support here.

And that’s what brings me to Bill 131 and why I think we need to be able to move through this very carefully. Cities need to build transit in partnership with the province. That is non-refutable. But when you defer those costs, and you download the responsibilities to the cities, and you talk about building transit for the future when you can’t even get transit done today, there isn’t going to be a lot of trust. We know that through Bill 23, cities are going to lose about a billion dollars already in Ontario, and so we’re also seeing an economic real estate slowdown. Every developer that I speak to, especially in the busiest part of the country, in Toronto Centre, they tell me it’s coming.

When you have a bill that’s largely structured—that talks about attracting development and levies to build the transit that government should be building, you’re walking into a timeline right now that is not going to be proven to have a good outcome. Nothing is going to be built, especially when you have developers who are already very nervous, as they all are right now, about the future of construction, the future of the housing sector because of high interest rates, because of high labour costs, because there’s disruption in supply chain. All of that is before us, and you’re putting forth a piece of legislation that has very little details, that doesn’t say anything with respect to how you’re going to operationalize it. It’s very vague on how you’re going to fund it, except for that some developer, some private sector partnership with the municipalities is going to build it for you. It makes no sense.

Developers will tell you, because it’s been tried before in the city of Toronto—many conservative politicians have said, “The development industry will build you transit.” They will tell you they are not going to do it. Every single one of them will tell you that transit is provincial, it’s a city responsibility or it’s a federal responsibility. “You build it. We come to build the housing.” That’s what they’ll tell you.

This strategy, this legislation as laid out, is not going to be producing the transit that you think it will, because it’s not going to work. It has been promised over and over again, and it has never, ever really built a network of connected, reliable, affordable, well-operationalized transit.

It’s clear to me that the government’s actions are going to create that condition where municipalities are backed into a corner, and that corner is: They’re starved for transit. They haven’t really had working partners in the provincial government that will sit down with them on a regular basis and take a look at their expansion plans and how they want to grow up their neighbourhoods, grow up their cities. They haven’t had that mutual relationship and constant back-and-forth feedback loop where everyone is working together. It’s always “my plan or your plan,” and “If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to withhold funding. If you will take up my plan, I might give you a little bit of funding, but you have to come up with more on your own.” This is why we have gridlock, and that’s why we are struggling in Ontario right now, as we see transit start and stop, transit plans drawn up and ripped up constantly.

I want to join the members of ATU Local 113, the hard-working men and women who actually run Toronto’s transit system, in sharing their concern that this bill could have very significant implications to how they operate the system, the largest transit system in Canada. They haven’t been consulted. They haven’t been asked to come to the table, to work with the government to resolve some of these big loophole questions. You put forward a bill that’s going to impact ATU 113 and the transit workers, who are deeply committed to keeping Toronto running, but you haven’t talked to them, and that, of course, is a big, big problem. We know that you and I are not going to operate those trains, buses and streetcars, so you’ve got to talk to them, and that needs to happen as soon as possible.

If Bill 131 interferes with collective bargaining rights or their collective agreements, then you’d better bet that we will oppose it every step of the way, because we are not going to allow anything that will actually upend their collective agreements. The courts will not let you either.

Bill 131 also requires municipalities to negotiate with developers when it comes to the construction of GO stations. I have shared with you that that doesn’t work. I’ll tell you that if you think you’re going to be building housing on the greenbelt, and that it’s going to be highly desirable and it’s not going to further urban sprawl, there isn’t a single piece of construction of transit that’s going to connect those new homes, which should be built elsewhere, especially on lands that are already approved, that are already within our urban municipal boundaries.

Any reliance on development charges or any type of levies is really tipping into the P3 partnership. Of course, P3 partnerships have been proven to be an utter disaster for public coffers, for public decision-makers and, ultimately, the public taxpayer. They are always much more expensive. They never finish on time. They’re always, always a disaster. We have so many examples to point to, and they don’t necessarily need to be transit. It could be hospitals; it could be other types of public buildings. They’re all stuck in the same boat when you’re trying to contract out your risks and you think that somebody is going to do it for you without the profit structure. That’s just not possible. That’s not how capitalism works, and they’re not doing it because of benevolence.

What we’ve also seen with the government’s transit agency, which is tasked with building transit in Ontario, is that they’ve been mired in secrecy. I’ve experienced that and the good member for Toronto–Danforth has experienced that, when we had political staff in the Minister of Transportation’s office direct them to actually exclude us from notification: “Take the names of the member for Toronto Centre and the member for Toronto–Danforth off the notifications.” That was revealed in a Toronto Star article. When I tried to ask some questions, it was shut down. When I tried to FOI this information, I was given a very long list of costs. It was very hard, and I am a public office-holder. I have every right to have that information, because a public agency is tearing down 21 trees in my community. It happened on a bitterly cold weekend, and without any notice to my community, which is an absolute disrespect there.

We are now seeing Metrolinx and the Eglinton fiasco unfold even further. It is an absolute joke. It really is a painful pressure point in the city, as it actually has created so much additional gridlock with no end in sight, and the costs continue to balloon. When we ask for accountability, we’re told that it’s almost like it’s not really ours to ask for. Well, it is—it is every Ontarian’s right to know what’s happening with those billions of dollars being spent with no service being offered, with no infrastructure coming online that we are aware of. And of course we want it to be safe, but we’re not getting the answers without a tooth-and-nail fight.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity of speaking to this bill. I look forward to any questions that come forward and it’s been an honour to speak to this House.

Thank you to the member opposite for the important question. Absolutely, I actually had an opportunity to meet another MPP yesterday, and what he was telling me—the important part of our job is to serve the people who have sent us here, Madam Speaker. Talking about the confidence of those people in us, the data speaks.

When we talk about 2018 to 2023, 700,000 more people are working. When we talk about building more homes, when we talk about making sure we’re on track to build 30,000 new long-term-care beds—we are making sure that we have increased the revenue for the province. These are the key indicators that show that the people of Ontario have confidence in this government, and that is why they sent us back in 2022 with a much bigger majority and I have the privilege to see many more faces—

Building high-density communities around transit has always been the goal of transit-oriented communities. By making sure that we have that mixed community, we’re able to make sure that we build those homes wherein people can go and work, there are retail spaces, there are amenities, and they have a better quality of life.

Madam Speaker, we have seen over 800,000 people came to the province of Ontario. We have seen there is going to be a 43% increase in the population, all these people coming with the dream that they’re coming for a better life, and we have to be prepared to make sure that we give them the better life. That is what this bill is doing.